Baldelli says marquee pitching duel is “must-see TV”

For all of the well-deserved pregame hype about the Twins facing Pittsburgh ace Paul Skenes on Friday manager Rocco Baldelli admitted that in meeting with his hitters they didn t burn incense light candles or take any other extreme measures in order to coax a hit or two against the dominant righty The challenge of facing Skenes who earlier this month became the first Pirate ever selected to the All-Star Competition in each of his first two major league seasons is the same for every athlete that actions into the batters box I can t tell you they re that much different Baldelli noted of the pregame hitters meeting prior to facing Skenes If there was several secret plan that was reasonably obvious to anyone on Earth we would seemingly know about it and any club every club would ostensibly be focusing on that There is no overriding plan that you know has a high level of success You have to go in there and win a lot of individual at-bats and individual pitches Still with Twins All-Star right-hander Joe Ryan headed to the mound to start the championship and a big crowd on hand Baldelli acknowledged that these kinds of head-to-head matchups on a warm summer night with Minnesota battling for a wild card spot are the type of games that bring fans out to the park or have them tuning into the TV broadcast Those types of days can be an enjoyable spectacle They re the types of matchups that get people talking a lot they get people excited they get people in this building and in this clubhouse excited and hopefully a lot of our fans at home are going to enjoy watching various good baseball and very well-pitched games he stated So I think that s what it s about And seemingly one of the more you know it doesn t happen every day Like you ve got to take advantage of the opportunities that you have to watch great players out there And when you see two pitchers like this matchup it should be must-see TV Confidence boost from Cubs series The Twins fell short of a sweep in the three-game series with Chicago earlier in the week But with the Cubs coming to Minnesota on an offensive tear holding the visitors to one run in the series opener and two runs in the second match was chalked up as a confidence booster for the defense and pitching staff With a huge contingent of Cubs fans at Target Field for all three games keeping the visiting fans mostly quiet was a nice bonus That s a really good club with a really tough lineup and to take two of three from them just shows how good our unit can be when we play to our probable commented Twins reliever Danny Coulombe who pitched of an inning in each of the wins It was kind of crazy to see so much blue Obviously the Cubs journey great but it was a really fun week Metrodome memories for McCutchen While he has spent the bulk of his career in the National League and has not been a rival of the Twins Pirates slugger Andrew McCutchen has a few good memories of summer trips to Minnesota In when the All-Star Tournament was at Target Field he represented Pittsburgh and he came into Friday s match with a dozen career home runs in Minneapolis McCutchen s first career home run was hit on June off Twins ace Francisco Liriano at the Metrodome in the final season the Twins played indoor baseball Related Articles Twins prep for all scenarios ahead of Sunday s first round of the MLB Draft Twins can t complete sweep as Cubs bats absolutely wake up Byron Buxton misses Cubs series finale with hand bruise Will he be back this weekend Byron Buxton leaves competition with injury Twins beat Cubs once again Joe Ryan is an All Star for Twins after initially getting snubbed