ooooookaayyy…. yeah. Tonight is going to be INTERESTING and I mean that in the most Minnesota sense of the word.
Poor Gardy has a bit of a situation – and I don’t mean the kind that can’t wear Abercrombie & Fitch – he’s missing a LOT of people. We called up Luke Hughes last night knowing that we were going to need the extra person in the roster anyway.. we were thinking ahead right? Yeah, he went to the wrong gate and missed his flight… he’s not here yet. He was supposed to be taking the place of Kubel who is gone tonight dealing with a family emergency. Then there’s Cuddyer – who apparently has a herniated disc in his neck that he wants to play through… Ouch. But regardless, he can’t play tonight. And Denard is back down dealing with more concussion symptoms (and/or drug reactions). Tolbert still can’t swing a bat – we were darn lucky that when he came up to bat last night, the bunt thing was appropriate. The worst part about the Tolbert situation? HE’S THE ONLY PERSON WE HAVE ON THE BENCH!! If you check the lineup, you’ll see that Mauer gets to appear in yet another new position tonight – over in right field. I guess at the rate he’s going, he’ll be completely ready for whatever position he needs to be in when Catcher is no longer his primary… I hope he manages the change as well as he did covering 1B.
So, um, let’s hope that a) no one gets hurt tonight or we’re going to try to find bullpen members to field positions, b) Thome needs to hit almost all homeruns so he doesn’t have to run too much and c) Duensing can pitch a near or complete game in order to allow the above mentioned bullpen members to fullfill other duties!!!
And Thome will be honored before tonight’s game for his accomplishments joining the 600 HR club. He gets a huge crowd for it tonight and perfect weather. Congrats Big Jim!
Have I mentioned we’re facing the Yankees tonight? Who knew that the Twins could actually manage to make THAT situation worse…
| NY Yankees |
@ |
Minnesota |
| Jeter, SS | Revere, CF | |
| Granderson, CF | Plouffe, 2B | |
| Teixeira, 1B | Mauer, RF | |
| Cano, 2B | Morneau, 1B | |
| Swisher, DH | Thome, DH | |
| Jones, An, RF | Valencia, 3B | |
| Nunez, E, 3B | Tosoni, LF | |
| Cervelli, C | Nishioka, SS | |
| Gardner, LF | Butera, C | |
| Sabathia, P | Duensing, P |
| NY Yankees | ||||||||||||
| Minnesota |
Well that could have been better but boy could it have been a LOT worse. We didn’t have to go to any desperate measures to put 9 guys on the field at any one time, Joe Mauer did well at his sub job in RF and the boys did actually try to bring the offense. It was a tough night for officiating calls and it seemed to put the fans in the stands in a morose mood, much less the players. Gardy got himself booted at the beginning of the game arguing the reversal of Morneau’s HR call but it wasn’t a particularly vibrant episode of Show Time. Nothing much anyone could do about it though.
The real pain for tonight was giving up the Homeruns to the Yankee hitters… yeah, that happens to better teams than the Twins. Let’s do better tomorrow shall we? It’s a four game series afterall.