GameChat – Cleveland @ Minnesota #2, 12:10pm

First things first – Happy Birthday to Justin Morneau & Brian Dozier! It would be REALLY great if they could get a win to honor the day! Good baseball would be a gift to us all quite honestly but a Win would be the icing… There has to be something you can gain off birthdays right?

Phil Mackey put out a very interesting piece about Pavano’s start last night. I definitely recommend giving it a read but to sum up, Pavano is basically in charge of his own rehab (given recent history, I don’t blame him) and he says that he IS feeling better even if it’s not improving as fast as he would prefer. It sounds as though he is not going on the road with the team – at least for the Detroit portion – and work with a soft tissue specialist here in the cities. This could make the pitching rotation a little interesting and with this rotation, that’s kind of hard to do.

Today’s lineup is a bit interesting but then again, Gardy has a reputation to uphold for getaway day “B” lineups… Of course it doesn’t look all THAT different from our regular lineups but that is mostly because we don’t exactly have a big bench. Span is out today with a tight hamstring – supposedly nothing serious. It’s kind of fun to see a kid like Mastro showing up in that leadoff spot instead of Lexi for a twist. Hope to see him have a good time.

Also, the talk is that Morneau will be activated after the game today – I guess that’s SOMETHING for your birthday anyway – and Gardy has said that he will NOT go to 12 pitchers so one of position players is going to go back to Rochester. I don’t think it’s going to be a “last in, first out” situation. Reports are that either Plouffe or Parmelee will be heading back down. Given Plouffe’s performance lately, I can believe that but I’m trying to figure out how the platoon situation for 3B works without him – full time Carroll? Parmelee is more likely given the existing coverage I think.. we’ll just have to see what happens in the post game.

oh yeah, today’s game is only on MLB.tv or 1500espn radio.. (not that there’s a whole lot of people other than me that have mid-day TV access)

Well… the weather was gorgeous? not much else you can say about this game that is all that positive.. Derek Lowe managed to pitch a complete game shutout – without throwing a single strike. So, congratulations to Derek Lowe? The twitter stream started a meme of “worm killing” to describe the Twins hitting – fairly appropos. Thank you Phil Mackey.

Yeah, not sure what else I can pull out of this experience for you other than I think this was a very good game to not have televised.

[Edit] I was right about the Plouffe/Parmelee scenario. Despite Plouffe not hitting OR fielding worthy of the big leagues, Parmelee was optioned down to AAA immediately following the game and Justin Morneau was activated and will play tomorrow in Detroit.