Sometimes it's hard to choose between two often-inept teams, but not here. Baltimore has the better players and is in a better spot. Although they lost two games at Philadelphia they were close games. the Twins on the other hand are in that dreaded "first game back" from a road trip lasting well over a week, and they lost eight of nine games. Add that to the fact that their bullpen has been getting brutalized to the tune of a 6.44 ERA and two blown saves over the last week. Cashner gets a lot of bad PR, but only once in his last ten starts has he allowed more then three earned runs. When he misses it's generally up, but this is the right park for that. Slegers will strike people out, but he'll also walk people - and the free-swinging Orioles are, in my opinion, not a good matchup for him. Minnesota has some key losses to injury, which is about when things started sliding South for them. They lost Buxton who's super disruptive on the bases, they also lost Juan Castro, their catcher, and Garver nor Wilson hit as well nor do they handle a pitching staff as well - which also shows up as about when Minnesota started giving up tons of runs. The bottom line here is that the Twins were indeed a Playoff team last season, which is/was a big anomaly, and although the Orioles' record doesn't show it, they're not as bad on paper and they are in the W/L column, and that gets as a W tonight.

07/05/2018 7:01 AM