The Strib Sports team is at Yankee Stadium preparing for Game 2.
Here are my lingering questions regarding Game 1:
-Should the Twins have kept Berrios in the game past the fourth inning?
I think their argument, if they were willing to publicly make it, would be that Berrios had reached 88 pitches and would have trouble surviving the Yankees lineup a third time.
My argument: The Twins aren't going to win this series without getting a certain number of innings out of their ace. I would have preferred Berrios in the fifth over Zack Littell, who did not seem prepared for this stage. It's an easy second-guess. But that's the way I felt at the moment. Why have an ace if he can't pitch into the fifth in a playoff game?
-Should Luis Arraez have been in the lineup with a sore ankle?
The easy second-guess here is that he barely missed a popup and didn't convert a double play so the Twins would have been better with Jonathan Schoop.
This one, I'm not so sure about. Arraez ran well on the bases and it's hard to tell if his ankle affected his throw. And Schoop isn't as fast as Arraez, so I don't think he makes the play on the popup. Schoop is excellent at turning double plays, so maybe he saves a couple of runs by making a better throw in that situation.