Silva pitched great.

Pat Neshek finally blew a save and had a bad outing. It wasted a fine performance by Silva who threw six shutout innings. How the Rays only managed 1 hit off of Silva I’ll never know. This is the same Silva who has been horrible all year who just pitched the best game of the year. I guess even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes.

I guess this will give Gardy reason to start Silva the rest of the season, no matter how bad he stinks over his next few starts.

The bullpen finally blew a game. That happens to the best of them. But Neshek has now given up 5 homeruns. That is quite a bit for a guy who has only pitched 27 innings. The good news is that he has a homerun per flyball rate of 21 %. That is the highest on the Twins.

The normal rate is about 12%. Over time this stat tends to equalize towards 12%. So it could be that he has been getting a little unlucky up to this point. It should improve. Even with all of those homeruns he has still pitched well with an ERA of 2.33. But his peripherals give him a FIP of 3.79. But his XFIP is a very respectable 2.61. XFIP equalizes his normal peripherals with the fact that he has given an inordinate amount of HR/F.

The amazing thing is that the Twins only scored 2 runs off of Hammel. He now has a 5.61 ERA and a FIP of 5.77. On the face of it he has not pitched well. But after a Garza like first start he has improved and pitched OK since then. So 2 runs is bad but he seems to be a better pitcher than his stats show.

There is a big 4 game series this weekend against Detroit starting tonight with Verlander vs Baker.

Don’t miss it.