Cole De Vries

#38 / Pitcher / Minnesota Twins

Height: 6-2

Weight: 180

Bats: R

Throws: R

Born: Feb 12, 1985

Will Smith

#53 / Pitcher / Kansas City Royals

Height: 6-5

Weight: 240

Bats: R

Throws: L

Born: Jul 10, 1989

Between tonight's starters there is a total of 19.1 innings of Major League experience. Neither pitcher has a particularly impressive resume in the minors, though Will Smith is almost four-and-a-half years younger than his Minnesota counterpart. We all know what Smith is (read: somewhere between probably not very good and [looks at McKinney] legitimately terrible).

Now, if I were to describe Cole De Vries, I could basically just tell you that he's a starting pitcher for the Twins, and you'd have a pretty good idea as to what he is. According to FanGraphs' pitch type chart, De Vries throws a cutter, slider, fastball, curveball, and change-up, mixing his pitches fairly heavily and in that order of preference. Presumably this is because all of his offerings are pedestrian at best. His career minor league K/9 is a Smithian 7.0 with a K/BB of 2.66. The fact that De Vries has always been at or above the median age at a level should speak volumes as to what sort of pitcher he likely is. 2011 had seen De Vries lowering his walk-rate to an extremely low 1.4 BB/9. Obviously, the SSS warning applies here. The thing that Royals fans have to worry about most is the fact that De Vries is an alumnus of The University of Minnesota, both my and much more importantly Ryan Lefevbre's alma mater, which means that Ryan will no doubt regale the home-viewing audience with hours and hours of tales of life at Pioneer Hall, a dormitory I admittedly also lived in, though many years after Lefevbre.

Given that De Vries is in the running for most boring pitcher in the history of mankind and more shockingly Minnesota Twins history--which actually means more than the history of mankind, as their pitcher history is filled with far more mind-numbing boredom than mankind's history is, despite the inherent logical fallacy in that statement--the Royals will surely find a way to get two-hit and then erase those baserunners on the basepaths.