The Twins polished off the A's in just 2 hours and 16 minutes this afternoon -- a rare quick game compared to recent efforts and also rare in the fact that Minnesota won. It prompted us to take a look at some of their time-of-game trends, which frankly we rarely look at. A few facts from this season, which is now 50 games old: *Today's game (not shown yet on Baseball Reference), was the third-fastest the team has played all season. Generally speaking, quick games have not been a good thing for the Twins this year. In their 10 fastest games going into today, they were 1-9 -- likely because quick games tend to be well-pitched games, and the Twins haven't had many of those this season.
*Going into today, 5 of the Twins' previous 6 games and 8 of the previous 11 had lasted at least 3 hours, 13 minutes. Seven had lasted at least 3:20. Those are some long games -- and all but one of them finished in 9 innings. Eight of their 12 longest games all season have come since May 16.
*Long games, however, have generally been a good thing for the Twins. They have won their three longest games of the season and are 7-4 in their 11 longest games -- the latter figure including the victories over the A's in the first two games of this sweep, which lasted 3:22 and 3:25, respectively.
*Back in the Twins' last good season (2010), they were much better in quick games -- compiling a 19-13 record in games that lasted 2:30 or less, including Carl Pavano's famous rain-beater against Mark Buehrle in 1:52. In their 20 games that lasted the longest, they were just 8-12.
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