Soooo… Guess who is a late scratch because his thumb still doesn’t work?? yeah, and headed for the DL after being unavailable to play for 7 days… I gotta say that somewhere (probably the managers office) the air has turned blue from all the cussing. Gardy is likely royally PO’d about this because I got the sense early on that his preference all along would have been the DL but he went along with the info he was given.. which clearly was faulty to begin with. With Plouffe going down, the roulette wheel of replacement players has landed on Danny Valencia. Let’s see what he can do with the opportunity.
note: The irony that no one else would ever know about? The official lineups were actually up sooooo early that I thought perhaps I had the game start time wrong. Of course that would be the day that there is actually a late scratch and they have to fix them.
For all the issues of ‘who is playing what base’, our real issues are always ‘who is throwing the ball’. Tonight, it’s Scott Diamond’s turn and I think all of us have more confidence in him than anyone else in our rotation. Let’s hope he’s able to live up to that.
| Cleveland |
@ |
Minnesota |
| Choo, RF | Span, CF | |
| Cabrera, A, SS | Revere, RF | |
| Kipnis, 2B | Mauer, C | |
| Brantley, CF | Willingham, LF | |
| Santana, C, 1B | Morneau, 1B | |
| Hafner, DH | Doumit, DH | |
| Lopez, Jo, 3B | Dozier, SS | |
| Duncan, LF | Carroll, 3B | |
| Marson, C | Casilla, A, 2B | |
| Tomlin, P | Diamond, P |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E | |
| Cleveland | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 |
| Minnesota | 3 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | x | 11 | 15 | 0 |
It was one of “those” weeks for me at work so I spent a lot of time today/tonight in a bar, but I did remember to have them put the Twins game on one of the TVs, so I was witness to Scott Diamond’s outstanding performance tonight. It was, of course, also a lot of fun to watch Justin Morneau launch a ball on to the plaza and Josh Willingham put one in the bullpens. I couldn’t help but wonder, though, whether I was seeing the last bomb off the bat of either of those gentlemen in a Twins uniform.
In the end, a complete game shutout is pretty much a no-brainer for Boyfriend of the Day and I can’t tell you how pleased I am that Diamond was given the opportunity to finish what he started. A perfect game through 4+ innings and, in the end, a three-hitter. Great job, Scott! – JC
