Our guys (they ARE still our guys, right?) start a four-game series with the Royals in Kansas City tonight and it gives us an opportunity to see what Anthony Swarzak can do for an encore following his near no-hitter on Saturday vs. the Angels. It also gives us a chance to get a good look at some young Royals who are reportedly on the cusp of becoming a pretty fair ballclub.
After the game last night, word came that the Twins would likely be placing either Jason Kubel or Jim Thome on the Disabled List today and that Ben Revere was on his way back up from Rochester. Today, it seems Gardy couldn’t make up his mind which of his lefty DHs to put on the DL list, so he decided to drop both of them from the active roster. That left him short on lefties, so now Brian Dinkelman will be coming up, as well.
I know I’m not the first to say this, but it really is true… this roster and the line ups we’re seeing really do resemble what we’re more accustomed to seeing at road games in Spring Training. At this point, frankly, there’s probably an argument to be made that we all might as well get a good look at the “next generation”.
Joe Mauer caught three innings of extended spring training baseball today and told media he felt “fatigued” afterward. I’m not sure what to make of that and I’m really not sure what else we should expect. If you put anyone behind the plate for three innings after he hasn’t played baseball for three months, there’s a pretty good chance he’ll feel fatigued. Still… I can’t help but feel like there’s a helluva lot more to this story than anyone is reporting. But I could do a 1,000 word post on the Mauer issue itself (and probably will… soon).
Here’s tonight’s lineup:
| TWINS | @ | ROYALS |
| Span, CF | Gordon, LF | |
| Casilla, A, 2B | Cabrera, Me, CF | |
| Morneau, DH | Hosmer, 1B | |
| Cuddyer, 1B | Francoeur, RF | |
| Valencia, 3B | Butler, DH | |
| Young, D, LF | Betemit, 3B | |
| Revere, RF | Aviles, 2B | |
| Rivera, R, C | Treanor, C | |
| Tolbert, SS | Escobar, A, SS | |
| Swarzak, P | O’Sullivan, P |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E | |
| Minnesota | 1 | 0 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 10 | 0 |
| Kansas City | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 9 | 1 |
Well that was kinda different. I’m not sure that, over the course of the entire game, the Twins really were all that impressive. But wow, that 3rd inning was a piece of work unlike anything we’ve seen in a long time!
No one particular offensive player had a huge game but Denard Span and Matt Tolbert both managed to get a couple of hits, six different guys had RBI and seven different players scored runs. Nice team effort.
The bullpen contributions of Jose Mijares, Alex Burnett and Matt Capps didn’t suck at all, either!
But while his six innings of work wasn’t quite as impressive as his near no-hitter on Saturday, it was still solid enough to earn Anthony Swarzak his second consecutive Boyfriend of the Day award! Do the Twins have a new “stopper”?
