The Moment: The Tigers took an early lead, but the Twins wriggled back and took a 3-2 lead by the 5th inning. That’s when Max Kepler came up with a couple runners on and doubled the Twins’ total with his first home run of the season. There were still 8 more runs to be scored in this game, but Kepler’s blast put this one to bed pretty early.
The Hero: It’s hard to top a player who takes a close game an turns it into a not-so-close game with one swing of the bat. Max Kepler opened the game up with his home run, but also scored after hitting a double in the 6th, when the game really got out of hand for the Tigers.
The Goat: Anibal Sanchez doesn’t start for the Tigers anymore, but he gave up more runs than Jordan Zimmerman, the actual starter did, and he did it while retiring only 4 batters. I think I understand why Anibal Sanchez is no longer starting.
The Soundtrack: Rockabye – Clean Bandit (Feat. Sean Paul and Anne-Marie) – No lie, I am sort of obsessed with Sean Paul and his continued pop music relevance. He has been producing music since I was in high school! That’s at least 15 years! Sean Paul is the Jeff Francouer of pop musc.
The Story: The Twins, perhaps listening to the skeptics saying that they would need to hit if they wanted to continue their early season success, well, they started hitting. They were hitting like it was the middle of July in Texas, frankly. They had three home runs to help fuel their offensive explosion, and they weren’t cheated on any of them. If you followed the link to Kepler’s home run video, you saw that it ended up a solid 15 rows into the bleachers. Miguel Sano’s blast was to dead center and a no doubter. That isn’t something that happens, especially on a brisk April day in Detroit. Robbie Grossman wasn’t cheated on his 2 run shot in the third, either.
That wasn’t the only bit of good news for the Twins. Every starter got at least one it, with Kepler and Brian Dozier notching a pair. The team only struck out 5 times, though perhaps just to show he wasn’t an imposter, Byron Buxton did strike out twice. On the plus side, when he was on base, he was able to steal his first base of the season. He is an automatic double if he could ever start getting on base.
Phil Hughes had an underwhelming performance, but still good enough. After 5 2/3 innings of work, he gave up 4 runs and two home runs, which isn’t a great outing, unless you get 11 runs of support. He did strikeout 5, suggesting some of his stuff was back after an uninspiring first outing.The real diamond in the rough was Justin Haley, who stepped in and worked the rest of the game after Hughes was pulled. He struck out 6 and allowed only one late run that was ultimately meaningless as the Twins ended their time in Detroit with a victory. Maybe Haley will work out afterall.
Their win against the Tigers was definitely more reflective of the type of W’s we were expecting from the Twins when we came into this season.
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