Six Pack of Stats: Twins 3, White Sox 1
As they say in baseball: Let's do that baseball! (FanGraphs)
There's a throwaway gag in Family Guy, where Peter and Lois go to a drive-in movie theater (in a tank, because why not) and watch "The Even Couple" starring Jeff Daniels and Bill Pullman, two mild mannered, evenly tempered actors who you could probably interchange in literally every movie they've been in and not notice. This Sox/Twins "thriller" was pretty much like this bit. Two teams performed functional baseball, gave workman-like, professional efforts, and had some moments that moved the needle ever so slightly towards: Meh. Anyway! Here's your Six Pack of Stats! (brought to you by the number 6)
1+1+1+1+1+1
Both the Twins and White Sox offenses were relatively quiet for most of the night. The Sox could only muster six hits all night. Five singles sprinkled throughout, and one BIG FLY from our very own Tim Anderson that made the game 2-1 in the fourth inning.
Inner-half fastballs don't usually get hit 400 feet to right center, but (Dr. Malcolm from Jurassic Park voice) Tim ... uh ... finds a way.
The Twins also had six singles, however the remaining two hits they got were solo homers off of Giolito in the second inning, which ended up being enough tonight!
203
The number of strikeouts for Lucas Giolito so far in the 2019 season, which for those counting at home, makes this the first 200-plus strikeout season of his career. The soon to be AL Cy-Young vote getter didn't duplicate his dominant performance from last week, but a quality start and nine K's make for a fine effort.
6th
With his 200-plus K season, Lucas Giolito became the sixth pitcher in franchise history to achieve this feat! The number of 200-plus K pitchers/convicted drug kingpins on this list remains at one, however.
Six feet
That's how far Steve Stone's loved ones would have buried him underground had this fifth inning foul ball off the bat of Twins batter Mitch Garver shot into the Sox TV broadcast booth a few inches lower than it did. Thankfully for him (and not so much for NBC Sports Chicago) the monitor just behind his noggin caught the brunt of the damage. Rob Manfred immediately called for the installation of nets to cover all broadcast booths.
.666
The game batting average for one Yolmer Sánchez, who went 2-3 and despite them only being singles, had the highest WPA of all Sox players for the game at .118. (The second single came with one out in the seventh inning, which was the only time the Sox had a man in scoring position with fewer than two out.) Naturally, Matt Skole pinch hit struck out and Leury lined out to Sano to end the last Sox offensive threat of the night.
Y-E-L-I-C-H
Let's make up for the fact that the last stat was barely worth mentioning, but again, not much exciting happened in this game, one that mattered way more to the Twins than the Sox. So I will instead recognize the reigning NL MVP (and six-letter surnamed) Christian Yelich, who was involved in a one-sided twitter owning of some random troll. Yelly will be featured in ESPN's The Body Issue and some of his tasteful nudes popped up on Twitter (sorry ladies and gents, no peeks at his Wonderbat) and some random Twitter-MAGAbot named @RoxaneJ77 who claimed to be sad in a now-protected tweet because Yelich "didn't give a thought about all the kids that idolize him before doing his naked photo shoot."
Yelich responded simply with a two-worded tweet: "Relax Roxane."
But did our hero let bygones be bygones? NO, dear reader, he most certainly did not, and owned this troll into an early Twitter grave by doing this:
#RIPRoxane