Game 6: Mariners at Twins, Frozen Tundra
James Paxton vs. Kyle Gibson, 1:10pm
This is the M’s 6th game, and they’ve played a single night game. This early season schedule is wild. Case in point: the Twins are trying to get their home opener in today despite tons of snow on the ground and frigid forecasts. Bundle up, M’s.
James Paxton’s first start didn’t go to plan, so I hope we see a bit more from him today, starting with more variety in his pitch mix.
Kyle Gibson, the veteran ground baller, was so ineffective last year that he suffered a surprise demotion to AAA. It’s a testament to baseball’s unpredictability and the Twins’ young offense that the Twins somehow won a wildcard despite Gibson, Phil Hughes and Hector Santiago all pitching awfully. Since he arrived in the Twin Cities, Gibson throws more of his four seam FB as opposed to relying on his sinker, and he’s starting to rely more on his curve rather than his slider as his primary breaking ball. He throws a change, too, but none of these offerings are whiff pitches; they’re designed to get weak contact, though obviously that didn’t happen last year.
Target Field has large dimensions, but it’s seen more barreled contact than most parks, which is a big reason it’s seen a lot of home runs (the approach of Santiago/Hughes is another). Of course, with temperatures hovering near ‘permafrost’ the ball may not fly very far no matter how it’s struck.
1: Gordon, CF
2: Segura, SS
3: Cano, 2B
4: Haniger, RF
5: Seager, 3B
6: Vogelbach, DH
7: Healy, 1B
8: Ichiro, LF
9: Freitas, C
SP: Paxton
It’s opening day in the minor leagues today. I’ll have more on that later, but re-read JY’s posts, and then check out Mike Curto’s post on the Rainiers and the PCL at his blog.
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7 Responses to “Game 6: Mariners at Twins, Frozen Tundra”
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The new schedule is very weird, tomorrow the M’s will have another Friday off.
I came into the game late… so a bald eagle attempted to land on Paxton?
Well, at least Segura continues to be hot.
The eagle was pissed because he sniffed out Paxton as a canuck pretending to honor the national anthem. Tried to scare the Big Maple off, but he was frozen in place.
Vogelbach is jinxing the team.
I don’t understand how a few extra days off during the season help a damn thing if they all come in the first week of the season.
It has to do with home openers. If a Thursday game was postponed due to bad weather, the open Friday would be used. Last week, it didn’t make sense for the Mariners, but the only other option would be to open the season on a Friday, a day after everybody else.
I know that but the negotiated purpose of the extra days was to satisfy the players association’s desire to get more rest for players to try and reduce injuries. But the M’s have already used up 2 of their 3 extra days off in the first week. So the player’s association got nothing out of this deal.