NOBODY PANIC! It’s just one game. - Twinkie Town

Yes, yes. We all know. The Twins dropped the season opener in Milwaukee on Thursday. As many of the Twinkie Towners have already pointed out, the Twins lost in heartbreaking fashion thanks to a 9th inning shit show meltdown and a really stupid rule.

I, being the walking oxymoron of simultaneously wearing sarcastic crabby-pants and rose-colored glasses, have decided to put together a list of reasons that yesterday’s loss was totally ok.

• Our beefed-up centerfielder Byron Buxton didn’t shatter any bones *and* he hit a home run. This is his year, you guys! He’s going to have a career year while trying to earn that contract extension. It’ll be like watching Joe Mauer dominating in 2009 all over again. When you think about it, Buxton’s currently on pace to hit 162 home runs this year. Is that a lot? I think so.
• Josh Donaldson was perfection, and he got his leg injury out of the way nice and early in the season. He hit a double in his only at bat, so he’s not only batting 1.000, but his slash is 1.000/2.000/3.000! It doesn’t get any more perfect, really, so there wasn’t a need for him to keep batting yesterday. It’s early in the season and his muscles are just working out the kinks. That hamstring is just doing its job by keeping that calf from straining again, so it’s not even really an injury - it’s a precaution. And with a few days rest, he can come back and bring all that rain. Build your arks, bitches! That rain’s gonna flood this town.
• Speaking of Donaldson, he’s still making the Twins money. I mean.. if he is making $92 million for four years and he misses, say, three games from this hamstring thing, it’s costing the Twins.. <hang on... 92,000,000 divided by 4, divided by 162, carry the one......> like only $425,000 for three missed games. They’re not losing the full $23,000,000 that he’s supposed to make this year. And with 10,000 fans in the stands per game, at an average of $40 per ticket.. the Twins are making approximately $400,000 in ticket sales per game at Target Field, and it’ll only take 1.25 home games to make that money back in ticket sales, right? So they’re really coming out ahead here, guys.*

*Let’s not think about the fact that the Twins have to pay other players and staff and pay to keep the lights on and that the injury could last longer than 3 days or that tickets might cost different amounts, or that it’s not exactly $23,000,000 per year based on the 2020 adjustments.. blah blah blah. What I’m saying is don’t @ me with your logic. This is a satire piece, not an actual statistical breakdown.

• Kenta Maeda beat the Brewers starter Brandon Woodruff. Sure, the Twins lost the game, but they won in the starting pitching game. Both starters gave up six hits and two walks, and both struck out five batters. But the Twins ace outlasted the Brewers starter by a whole ¹⁄₃ inning and threw ten more pitches. Also, Maeda only earned one run, while Woodruff earned three. To top it off, he hit former NL MVP Christian Yelich with a pitch to remind him who’s boss. So suck it, Brewers! The Twins really won when you think about it that way.
• Max Kepler almost hit for the cycle. Our right-fielder went 3-5 and was a homer short of the cycle. That’s some solid-ass offensive baseball right there. And, he wasn’t one of the two Twins players to commit an actual error in the opener (though some might complain about his ninth inning fielding). Gold stars all around for our boy.
• Miguel Sano has been working on his patience. He drew a walk in the first, singled (and ultimately scored) in the third, and then only struck out three times after that. In years past, he might have struck out rather than walked in that first at bat, so clearly he’s making progress.
• Colomé will never, ever, everrrrr make a boneheaded throw to second again. Now he knows that if he’s ever in the same situation he’ll throw to first base and get the easy out. Some lessons you have to learn the hard way, so you might as well learn it early in the season, rather than in a game 163 situation.

Related: Expensive new shortstop Andrelton Simmons got his new-team jitters out as well with his error.

• We got to see extra innings! After a long, cooped up winter, it was so very nice to get to watch a little extra baseball. That is, you got to watch a little extra baseball if you were at the game itself or able to actually watch it on Fox Sports North Ballgamey Sportsballs Network. Sucks to be you if you don’t have cable or DirecTV, or if you had to work, or you don’t feel comfortable going to a local sports bar to watch a game with all that pandemic happening around you.
• The winning run wasn’t earned by Dobnak. In a sense, Rob(-Baseball-of-it’s-diginity) Manfred earned that losing run with his stupid ghost runner rule. Pace of play, shmace of shmay. That rule is a giant, steaming pile of horse poopies and we all know it. Who in their right mind doesn’t want to see some exciting baseball in the late innings? If you truly must insist on having a ghost runner at some point in the game, do it in the third inning or something, when people have told their kids that they can get up to go to the bathroom at the end of the inning. You’ll save a lot of wet pants that way and get to the end of the game faster. Win-win. Oh, what’s that? You’re saying that doesn’t make sense to throw a runner on base for no reason other than to speed things up? THEN DON’T DO IT WHEN THE GAME IS ON THE LINE, EITHER.

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It’s one game you guys. One. There are 161 left this season, assuming the ‘rona doesn’t cause any significant delays. To be fair, the Twins played a solid season opening game of baseball, with some bad luck at the end. This isn’t like a few years ago when the Twins went something like 0-10 (I can’t remember specifically) to start the season. This is a really good ball club, and they can’t win them all.

This is fine. The Twins are fine. We’re all fine.

xoxo,

Marea

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https://www.twinkietown.com/2021/4/3/22363976/mlb-minnesota-twins-nobody-panic-its-just-one-game

2021-04-03 16:09:55Z
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