Well, you can throw out nearly everything that I covered in the Game Thread preview this afternoon. The Twins pitching has indeed been struggling, but they tossed their sixth shutout of the season in a brisk 5-0 win Friday night at Progressive Field.
The Indians were hot and the Twins have been stumbling since last weekend’s four game sweep in Minnesota, but tonight’s win brings the Twins back to 1.5 games behind first place Cleveland.
I’ve now seen Adelberto Mejia and he indeed does not appear to be much of a prospect. I was perusing Mejia’s preseason write-up in Fangraphs’ preseason prospect review which noted his “rotund” build and that his “body is completely devoid of projection”, but he pitched well enough over five shutout innings to pick up his second career win.
This was certainly one of those games that hinged on a few key moments or half-innings, but the few coin flips all seemed to go Minnesota’s way tonight. The Indians, for instance, reached base nine times in the first four innings against young Mejia. They stranded all nine, including the bases loaded twice.
If you remove the second inning, Trevor Bauer continued the solid work he’s been putting out lately. 5 2/3 innings, four hits, one unearned run, no walks and four strikeouts. But all innings count, especially the ugly ones, and the Twins knocked out a single, pair of doubles, a walk and a two run home run in a four run inning that put this one out of reach.
At the end of the game, you can only appreciate that Bauer almost got seven full innings for Tito Francona. It would have been a real bullpen killer to have him knocked out early and at 4-0 in the second, it was starting to look hairy.
So what does it all mean? Not much. The Indians are still playing better than Minnesota recently, and tomorrow’s starting pitcher is all the momentum the Indians could hope for. Yep, this guy:
Anyway, it’s not a game worth losing sleep over. In fact, quite the opposite – it finished in what feels like a relatively snappy 3:11. That’s quite an accomplishment nowadays.
Enjoy the post-game fireworks show downtown, everyone.