GameChat – Minnesota @ Cleveland #3, 2:05pm

I think it says an awful lot about our young pitchers (ie PJ & Diamond) that I look forward to their starts a whole lot more than I do our veteran guys.. I think it would be great to take another series – this one in the division. Whether or not we really have a chance to be competitive in ANY thing this year, even the weak ass Central Div, I really enjoy the GAMES we play when we win..

So what I think I really mean is – winning is fun, let’s do it.

As Babs said above, winning really is fun… so much more fun than losing… and when the wins come against divisional rivals, that’s even better. The Twins won 6-3 and, in the process, took two of three games to claim the road series at Cleveland. I have to say THIS is was the kind of baseball I was hoping to see more of when the season opened. Guys did what it took to get on base, took extra bases, move runners over and drove runs in when the opportunity presented itself to do so.

Yes, there were more errors than we’d like to see and the starting pitcher wasn’t exactly one that many of us expected to be relying upon when the season started, but since pretty much every member of the expected rotation has failed in their roles so far, I’ll take a good start out of pretty much anyone. We will have to hold our breath a little bit to find out how Joe Mauer’s injury is. He reportedly sprained his right thumb late in the game and is “day to day.”

There were several good performances today. Josh Willingham, Brian Dozier and Trevor Plouffe all had multi-hit games and Glen Perkins & Matt Capps shut out the Tribe for an inning each out of the bullpen. But today’s Boyfriend of the Day is starting pitcher Scott Diamond. He not only gave the Twins a Quality Start by giving up just three runs in seven innings of work, but exactly ZERO of those runs were earned, lowering his ERA to just 1.86. – JC