Game Plus Seven

On weekdays, I get up at an hour of the morning that should probably be listed as cruel and inhumane under the terms of the Geneva Convention. So by the time the sixth extra inning commenced I was feeling pretty droopy. And when the Twins opened said extra inning with a double and then failed to so much as advance the runner to third, I yawned, swore a little, and went to bed.

So, naturally, they scored five runs in the next inning (the sixteenth) and won the game.

I'd like to feel happy about that, and part of me does, but mostly I'm just sleep-deprived and kind of annoyed. You couldn't go ahead and score five runs after that double, could you, boys? Ingrates.

Of course, now that I think about it, we've won the series. Against the Whine Sox. And we've got Santana pitching tonight. That just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

You know what would be fun? Winning tonight. In nine innings. And even (dare I dream?) by a bunch of runs. Like, ten. That would definitely make up for waiting until I passed out to score last night.

Yes it would.

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Musings

I've been thinking about a few players lately.

Jason Bartlett
So, let me get this straight. He comes into the season as our everyday shortstop, gets a grand total of 91 at-bats to adjust to major league pitching, and is bundled off to Rochester in disgrace. After making a lot of AAA pitchers run home sobbing for their mommies he comes back and is again named our starting shorstop. He is then allowed the extravagant sum of 29 further at-bats before being relegated to the bench.

Apparently, you're only allowed to suck a little your first season (or three) if your initials are MC or LR. Cover your ears, I'm going to swear the paint off the walls now.


Matt Guerrier
You know what I wonder about this kid? I wonder why we aren't using him more. He's good. (Okay, when he's bad, he's pretty bad, but he's very rarely bad.) He's got the lowest ERA on the staff, he's got a nice strikeout-to-walk ratio (1.60), doesn't give up a ton of walks, gets his share of strikeouts and then some, holds opponents to a .238 average, handles inherited runners pretty well and generally goes out there and gets the job done, whether we ask him for one inning or four. He's pitched nearly ten innings this month and has yet to give up a run.

I've noticed the fans seem to be kind of down on him. Whenever I'm at the Dome and he trots to the mound, I hear a chorus of groans. Now, he's had a couple of spectacularly bad outings, it's true, but name me a pitcher who hasn't. I think this guy's going to help this team out for years to come, and he's exactly the card we need to have up our sleeve with Balfour injured, Mulholland aging rapidly, Rincón verging on being overused, Crain increasingly succumbing to a late-season slump and Romero playing (in the words of Batgirl) "Crazy Pepe's Chug and Toss" out there.


JC Romero
[wailing, gnashing of teeth, and rending of garments]


Juan Rincón
Ah, Juan. My dear, darling Juan. He of the striking people out and the empty bases. He of the .219 opponent batting average and the Knee-Buckling Slider of Doom. Juan is fabulous, and Juan really needs to be the one who steps in when there are runners on, thank you very much.


Justin Morneau
Oh, Canada! Have you seen what he's been doing to the ball lately? He's not so much with the high batting average (in this he resembles the rest of the team), but when he does hit the ball (and we hope that will soon occur more often), the poor ball doesn't stand a chance, does it? I'm normally a small-ball kind of girl myself, but I do love those upper-deckers of his.

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Put This on the Board

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9		R	H	E
Minnesota	0	0	0	4	0	0	0	0	0		4	9	1
Chi White Sox	0	0	0	0	1	1	0	0	0		2	9	1

And the Player of the Game must surely go to Nick Punto, with three hits and three stolen bases, with honorable mentions to Lew Ford (2 RBI and some fancy glovework, as well as the most entertaining slide into home yet this season) and Juan Rincón (struck out the side in his inning of relief).

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Avast!

With friends like these...

...who needs reality?

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Back in the Saddle

Hello, everyone! With the advent of the Renaissance Festival--and therefore the ending of pre-Fest preparations--the pace of my life has slowed from frenetic to merely frantic and there is blogging time once again.

(Yes, there will be pirate pictures, once they've been culled and organized.)

Speaking of pirates, did you know there's a baseball team called the Pirates? It's true. They're from Pittsburgh, they're in the National League Central Division, and they aren't very good. Actually, they're pretty bad. They're not as bad as the Royals, though, who are in the American League Central Division. There's another team in the American League Central Division which is much better than either the Royals or the Pirates, and they're called the Twins.

(Don't the Twins sound better when you lead into the subject like that?)

This weekend, the Twins won a series. They only scored five runs, but they won the series. That's impressive, in an aenemic, fans-breaking-out-in-hives sort of way. They've actually won two of their four series in August so far, though you wouldn't know it from the mounting Prilosec bills among the team's loyal followers.

(Fun [?] fact: Lew Ford is the team's best hitter so far this month, with a .310 average, but he's only got two RBI because you need guys on base for that.)

On Friday, Johan "Dios, This Team is Heavy" Santana overcame lousy run support--one, count it, one run--by pitching a complete game shutout. On Saturday, Justin "This is My Boom-Stick" Morneau treated Joe "A Little Help, Here" Mays to the munificent total of two runs, only to see ol' Joe hack up twice that many in the bottom of the inning--apparently Joe only pitches mutual shutouts. On Sunday, Carlos "Please, No More Lone Ranger Jokes" Silva took the lone run his teammates managed to give him and nursed it until the sixth inning when, alas, some jerk ran in from third on a patented Silva double play grounder. But the Twins did eke out another run in the ninth to win it for fellow Venezuelan righty Juan "Señor Reliable" Rincón, so all's well that ends with a series win.

(All's well unless you're Juan Castro, that is--he went on the disabled list with a strained knee on Saturday.)

And now the Twins head back to the Central Division, and the Central time zone, to face the Whine Socks in the Windy City. These two teams haven't played each other since April, which coincidentally was about the last time the Twins were in the race for the division.

(Did I say that? That sounded a little bitter. What I meant was...well, pretty much what I said, actually.)

So what's at stake now? Pride, I suppose, or at least our tattered, patched and oft-darned dignity. We have enough games left with them to play the spoiler to their homefield advantage hopes, too, though that would require a whole lot of winning. And maybe a little ass-kicking.

(The fun starts at 7:00. In the event of a bad outing, multilingual swearing classes begin in my living room around the fourth inning.)

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Media Roundup

The media, they are abuzz today!

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From the St. Paul Pioneer Press:

Hernandez is supposed to be the top pitching prospect in baseball, and he threw 97-mph strikes with a hard-snapping curveball. He's no Daffy Duck, but he is a teenager, and the Twins have lived this one-play-short scene far too often this season for at least Gardenhire's patience.
And a sixth-inning move that went unexplained publicly might be a sign that the manager's tolerance has run out.
Center fielder Lew Ford's failure to execute a routine sacrifice bunt with runners at first and second in a scoreless game cost the Twins their best scoring chance.
Ford bunted the first pitch foul and then bunted a fastball just to the left of the mound that Hernandez fielded quickly enough to get the lead runner at third on a good play. The inning fizzled after that for the Twins when Justin Morneau followed with a strikeout.
When asked about pulling Ford from the game defensively in the sixth -- and putting infielder Nick Punto in center -- Gardenhire made a reference to the hip flexor Ford has played with and then said, 'Internal stuff... . That's in this clubhouse.''
Ford was not immediately available in the clubhouse after the game. Other players suggested that more went on between the failed bunt and the bottom of the sixth inning to prompt the change.
Whatever the specifics, it seems that with less than eight weeks left in the season and the end to a postbreak free fall nowhere in sight, the manager is ready to respond swiftly to continued failures of this underperforming lineup.

Gardy.
Gardy, Gardy, Gardy.
Two things.

One.
You can't spend years devaluing the bunt and then get mad when some poor schmuck can't execute.
What makes me think you devalue the bunt, you might ask? Well, mostly it's the fact that the only Twin who lays down a decent bunt with any regularity is a product of another team's farm system. I figure proper emphasis on bunting technique should have resulted in a certain basic level of competence in at least a handful of players from the Twins system.

Two.
Does "the manager is ready to respond swiftly to continued failures" mean you won't be using Romero with runners on anymore? Or that, at the very least, you'll kick his ass from here to Toledo next time he plays Inflate-O-Matic with someone else's ERA?

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From ESPN.com:

Lohse lost his fifth decision in seven starts since posting his last victory June 2. But he pitched a strong game, too, allowing one run on four hits and two walks, with a season-high seven strikeouts.

Poor Kyle. He really has been doing a lot better lately, but he's got serious run support issues.

Let's look at those last five losses:

August 9th, lost to Seattle 0-1. 7 innings, 4 hits, 2 walks, 1 run, earned.
July 30th, lost to Boston 2-6. 5 innings, 7 hits, 4 walks, 3 runs, earned.
July 24th, lost to Detroit 2-5. 6 2/3 innings, 11 hits, 3 walks, 5 runs, 4 earned.
July 14th, lost to Anaheim 2-3. 6 innings, 7 hits, 3 walks, 3 runs, earned.
July 7th, lost to Kansas City 5-8. 5 innings, 9 hits, 2 walks, 4 runs, earned.

So, he's given up 1, 3, 4, 3 and 4 earned runs going back to early July, and took a loss in every last one. Some of those outings weren't great, but they were all winnable. In each of the two no-decisions mixed in among those losses, he gave up two earned runs. In his last two wins, back in the mists of time, he gave up no more than one earned run. Is that what he has to do--keep it to one earned run or less just to have a chance?

Sad. Truly sad.

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From twinsbaseball.com:

Francisco Liriano extended his scoreless streak to 26 2/3 innings as Triple-A Rochester cruised to a 7-3 victory over Ottawa in Tuesday's doubleheader opener.
Liriano (7-1) yielded four hits and three walks while fanning four over seven innings at Frontier Field. He owns a 1.46 ERA and has allowed only one run in his last 43 2/3 frames.
The 21-year-old left-hander was named the International League Pitcher of the Week for the week of Aug. 1-7, receiving the title for the second time this season since being promoted from the Double-A New Britain Rock Cats on June 16.

Le pant. Le drool. Le swoon.

Oh, September can't come soon enough, can it?

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Catching Up

Editor's Note: TBL has been desperately busy getting ready for the Renaissance Festival. What made her decide that she really needs a sixth pair of bloomers and a new cloak embellished with embroidery (and not machine embroidery, thank you very much), she doesn't know. But suffice it to say, she's been spending more time with a needle than a keyboard these days. At any rate, let's look back on the weekend in Twinsland, or at least what bits of it TBL managed to catch:

Boston @ Minnesota

Game 1: Best. Game. Ever.

Now, I like a good pitcher's duel as much as anyone. But after a month of taking sucking lessons from Kansas City, what I really want is a blowout. An honest-to-gosh, take-that, I-spit-in-your-general-direction blowout. I want to see the other team grow tails for the express purpose of having something to tuck between their legs as they slink out afterward. I want to see the visitor's fans (who were out in great numbers that evening) wailing, gnashing their teeth and rending their logo-emblazoned garments.

It didn't look good in the beginning. When you're playing the powerhouse Red Sox and the first batter of the game gets a triple against Brad "First Inning Blues" Radke, you've mentally tallied three or four runs against before the dust has settled from the slide.

Have you met Brad's brother, Johan K. Radke?

With a runner on third and no outs, the rest of the first inning went like so: K, BB, K, K. One hit, no run, one left. I couldn't believe my eyes. Radke would go on to record eight strikeouts on the evening, ably assisted by the sparkling defensive play of Lew "Just Call Me Torii" Ford. Radke would not give up a walk or an extra-base hit after the first.

While Radke was pitching a gem, the Twins were doing things to Bronson Arroyo that would be illegal outside of a baseball diamond. Every player contributed at the plate, quite possibly for the first time this season.

The starters:
Ford - 5 AB, 3 hits, 2 runs
Punto - 4 AB, 1 hit, 1 RBI
Mauer - 5 AB, 3 hits, 3 runs, 3 RBI
LeCroy - 4 AB, 3 hits, 1 run, 1 RBI
Jones - 4 AB, 3 hits, 2 runs, 2 RBI, 1 walk
Morneau - 5 AB, 1 RBI
Cuddyer - 4 AB, 1 hit, 1 walk
Ryan - 4 AB, 1 run, 1 walk
Bartlett - 3 AB, 1 walk

The substitutes:
Rodriguez - 1 AB, 1 hit, 1 run
Tiffee - 1 AB, 1 hit, 1 run

I said everyone, I meant everyone!

The Twins win, 12-0.


Game 2: Opportunity Knocks Late

I was catching what may well be my last Saints game of the season Saturday night, so with the exception of checking the score on my mobile, I missed this one. However, the final at-bats of the game were replayed many times on the TV, and they were worth watching.

The score was tied at three in the bottom of the ninth, when Cuddyer hit a chopper to his counterpart at third, Bill Mueller, who air-mailed it to the first baseman's invisible, levitating twin. Cuddy scampered into second, and up comes the only Twin who successfully bunts with any regularity, Nick Punto. And Punto, naturally, bunts. The pitcher fields, juggles the ball a little, and throws exactly where Mueller just threw--which is to say, more toward the stands than his own fielder. Cuddy sprinted home, and there's your game.

Sometimes you win 'em, and sometimes they lose 'em. Boston loses, 4-3.


Game 3: There Aren't Enough O's in Oops

I missed the first half of this game, too. I know, I know--I'm a bad fan. But I really can't regret missing Shannon Stewart flipping the fly ball which consituted the second out of the inning into the stands for a fan, thereby allowing a run to Boston. I'm so glad I missed that, I refused to watch the news last night, just so I wouldn't see a replay. I don't watch Bush, and I don't watch plays like that. It keeps me from going prematurely grey.

There was a ray of hope, however. Our boys went into the ninth trailing 11-4, and quickly made two outs. Then they strung together a walk, a single, a throwing error, a double, a single, a walk, and a bases-loaded walk to score three runs and load the bases, bringing the tying run to the plate.

And then, of course, the tying run struck out, but hey--what a rally, right?

Twins lose, 11-7.


Wrapup: Two Out of Three Ain't Bad

The Twins scored 23 runs over the three games and recorded their first series win since the All-Star break (pardon me while I cringe). They had scored 22 runs over the eight games prior to the series, so we're looking at a real surge here.

Meanwhile, per twinsbaseball.com:

A seventh-inning strikeout of Roberto Petagine ended struggling reliever J.C. Romero's streak of nine batters faced without recording an out over his last three games. In that span, the lefty allowed five earned runs, six hits and three walks.
Romero owns a 14.75 ERA over his last seven appearances while also allowing six of his last eight inherited runners to score.

Can I get an "Ack!"?

The Twins are out west to face the listlessly struggling Mariners for three games. Let's hope they can keep those bats going.

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