Month: September 2010

I hope everyone – including our boys of summer – enjoyed their off-day and return to baseball happy and well-rested.  I know one of our boys enjoyed it probably more than any of the rest.  Congrats to Justin Morneau and wife Krista on the birth of baby girl Evelyn Audra Sheryl Morneau, born at 4:33 a.m. Thursday, 7lbs, 2oz, 20 inches.  He thought he was feeling woozy and had headaches before?!?!  LOL  Just kidding!  Everyone who knows me knows that I’m a complete baby addict so I am ecstatic for the Morneaus and think their choice of names was LOVELY.

Secondly, for however long it lasts, the Twins are currently holding the best win record in baseball.  Last night, the Rays WHALLOPED (I like that word) CC Sabbathia and the Yankees in a big way.  Yes, we’re all still together in a little huddle and we’ll have to stay on target to keep the top spot but getting here at all just proves that it’s possible for the Twins to accomplish this.  Keep up the good work!

The bad news is that Mauer is out for the series this weekend. His knee is still having issues, he did have a cortizone shot but Gardy is being firm with saying he will rest the knee and stay off of it as long as is necessary to get it performance ready. Gardy clearly has the post-season in mind and will not sacrifice Mauer’s stability now that a position is secured.

Well that game was… interesting. If you have a really broad definition of the term.

I have to be honest. I started watching the game at a Buffalo Wild Wings and had a few beers before the game was 3 innings old. When I got home, it sure looked like we had ourselves a good old fashioned pitchers duel between Frankie and Justin Verlander.

Then there was a Tiger HR.

Then the trainer was running out to check on Frankie… which is really NOT what you want to see a few days before he’s scheduled to start Game 1 of the playoffs.

So, if I have this correct, it turns out Liriano and Alexi Casilla got ahold of some bad food somewhere in Detroit and both had to leave the game with… err… um… intestinal issues.

Outside of just connecting flights at the Detroit airport, I’ve only been to that city twice and only once have I gone out to eat. I went out with a group to a restaurant in Greektown. I had lamb for the fist time. It was excellent. At least I think it was, but I admit I had quite a bit of ouzo that night, too. Anyway, I think Frankie and Lexi might want to give Greek food a shot the rest of the weekend because the folks in Detroit’s Greektown area do Greek food really, really well. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess those guys went out in search of some kind of Latin American food. I can’t imagine that Detroit is a good place for that kind of thing.

After Liriano left, it seemed like every time the broadcast came back from commercial, the Twins were down another run or two. There was a questionable call or two at first base. There was a very questionable call down the 3B line that Gardy came out to discuss (rather uneventfully, I thought). It seemed that since he was already out on the field, he decided he might as well do something productive and change pitchers and give FSN a chance to sell something. But when that commercial break ended, there was Gardy back out on the field yelling pretty loud at the umpires again. Exit Gardy.

By the time the Tigers were done hitting off of a parade of Twins pitchers that probably (hopefully) won’t be on the playoff roster, they had tallied 10 runs. Our guys pushed one across in the top of the 9th inning to avoid the shutout. By the time all of that happened, however, I was watching Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure on one of the more obscure HBO channels. That’s how bad this game was.

Fortunately, the Yankees gave up 10 to the Red Sox tonight, too. The ECBS tried to give the game back to the Evil Empire, but held on to win 10-8. The Rays, however, won their game. I think I’m going to give up trying to figure out who’s leading whom in that whole “best record in the AL” thing for a week or so.

I apologize for this poor effort at a game summary… but then I’m not sure it’s any worse than the effort the Twins put out on the field in Detroit tonight, so I’m not going to lose much sleep over it.

Let’s hope for better on Saturday night! – JC

Today’s lineup is going to play with your head a little bit – if you can pull yourself away from the Vikings game anyway.  Apparently Gardy is in a juggling mood.  I get this mental image of him with with a big erasor and his pencil redoing a whole big roster list – mostly because he just doesn’t seem like the whiteboard type to me.

According to LaVelle, they are also swapping spots in the pitching rotation.  It’s been rumored for a couple days that now that Baker is feeling better, they were going to give him a start – that will happen on Tuesday.  After that, the rotation will look like this: Francisco Liriano, Carl Pavano, Brian Duensing, Nick Blackburn, Kevin Slowey.  From here out, it appears we have six starters and until someone has another issue, I’m totally ok with that. Liriano apparently didn’t get a lot of sleep last night because he has some sort of rash but he’s still going out there. Good man.

Other items of note:  Punto is BACK! I know some don’t care but I’m happy to see him – Valencia’s bat has not made me decide that I don’t like Nicky anymore.  And keep an eye on the dugout because apparently Lexi has died his hair – preparing I guess for an off-season move to blond.  Boy do I hope he has to wait a LONG time for that.

And still Cuddyer is out there… really, someone has to get some innings at 1B besides him.. right?  someday??

Ok, so I only got a couple innings of actual watching so I’m not really going to be much help with this postgame wrap up.  So I’m going to rely on the MLB Play by Play to give you the game info.  Click that link and it will give an inning by inning account of the game.  As far as highlights, the only thing that really makes me nervous is Mauer leaving the game.  The report isn’t TOO serious – a jammed knee that leaves him day-to-day.  But the way I see it is we’re ALL day-to-day.  I just don’t know how we lose yet another productive bat out of our lineup and succeed with more long-term seasonal goals.

I kind of wish tomorrow was an off-day but I’m sure the boys will just keep plugging.