Today’s game wraps up the Twins’ third series of the season and I think it’s about dang time they WON one of these things.
In the rubber match, fans at Target Field will apparently get to see #5 stationed at second base. I guess you can’t blame Gardy for trying pretty much anything he possibly can to maximize his offense. Here’s what you see when you look at the Twins’ offensive stats:
Joe Mauer’s batting average is .231, exactly the same as his slugging percentage. Yes, that means he doesn’t have any extra base hits at all, yet.
Alexi Casilla is hitting .188 and has an OBP (on-base pct + slugging pct) of just .548. That’s pretty bad, even for the light-hitting Lexi.
But before we get too anxious to run Casilla out of town, look at who’s BEHIND him in terms of offensive output:
Justin Morneau .185 BA ./500 OBP, Delmon Young .179/.421, Danny Valencia .148/.492, Jim Thome .143/.536, and Michael Cuddyer .125/.347.
Denard Span (.290/.772) and Jason Kubel (.308/.679) aren’t going to be found anywhere near the top of the American League leaders in offensive categories, but those two are looking downright Killebrew-like compared to their team mates, at this point.
I don’t suggest any of us panic over this bit of team-wide impotence (after all, who among us hasn’t had a little “performance anxiety” at some point in our past… and I bet most of us didn’t have 40,000 people watching us at the time), but I mention these stats really just to point out that it’s pretty amazing this team has managed to win three games!
If the pitching keeps doing their jobs, this team could get really hot when the team finally has a bonfire to burn all the assbats!
There’s no “Sunday B Team Lineup” today, folks. I say let the beatings commence!
| A’s | @ | TWINS |
| DeJesus, D, CF | Span, CF | |
| Barton, D, 1B | Mauer, C | |
| Willingham, LF | Morneau, 1B | |
| Matsui, H, DH | Thome, DH | |
| Sweeney, R, RF | Young, D, LF | |
| Ellis, M, 2B | Kubel, RF | |
| Kouzmanoff, 3B | Cuddyer, 2B | |
| Powell, C | Valencia, 3B | |
| Pennington, SS | Casilla, A, SS | |
| McCarthy, P | Baker, S, P |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E | |
| Oakland | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 9 | 0 |
| Minnesota | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 10 | 0 |
Another tough loss, dropping our guys to 3-6 on the season. I do hope these players remember that games in April count in the standings just as much as games in September.
Not a lot to get enthused about in this game, although Justin Morneau did get a few hits. But the big news was Jim Thome’s 8th inning home run. It traveled an estimated 444 feet and cleared the “batters eye” in dead center field. That’s a wallop, boys and girls!
Yes, it was Jimmer’s 590th career home run, but MOST importantly, it made a winner out of Jessica S in our “First Twins HR of the season in Target Field” contest. Jessica got her guess in early (she was the 6th person to enter the contest) and totally nailed it with her prediction that Jim Thome would hit the first Twins TF home run of the season on April 10 in the 8th inning.
Jessica and a guest will be getting two tickets to the April 26 Twins game with the visiting Tampa Bay Rays. She may be sitting about 444 feet away from home plate, but lets hope we don’t have to wait until the 26th for the next Twins home run!
I didn’t count up exactly how many entries we had in the contest, but I’m guessing it was 25 or more. Not bad for our lil ole blog here. Thank you to all who entered and to all of you who continue to visit us here at Knuckleballs regularly!
– JC