Month: July 2012

The news for today is that Justin Morneau has come back home to be with his wife as their second child arrives. Congrats to the family and I hope that everything goes well. To take his place, the Twins have brought up Chris Parmelee…

Here’s hoping that Scott Diamond can continue his remarkable work and here’s hoping that the Twins offense can do their part as well…

Not such a good night on a couple of fronts. Scott Diamond gave up four runs in six innings of work, which is short of “quality start” territory, but that certainly wasn’t the worst of it. The bullpen through gas on the fire as Jeff Gray and Brian Duensing both coughed up more runs and the offense managed just one hit in seven ABs with runners in scoring position.

By the end of the game, the only suspense involved the question of why Denard Span was pulled from the line up. Span, the subject of continuous trade speculation, was pulled simply because he was feeling ill, according to media reports quoting manager Ron Gardenhire. – JC

First, #MNTwins Twitter feed is ALL aflutter this morning! Ryan Doumit is making his first appearance as a pro, EVER, in Left Field today. I hope that ERolfPleiss snags us a couple pictures of the momentous event. More than that, I hope the Twins give him a good win to honor the event of his attendance. Yay for one of the Knuckleballers actually showing up at Target Field this year!

Second, I know sooooo many friends are at the game today but there are some there that are very special. Brinna is there with her mom as part of a promo shoot with Brian Duensing. She’s fighting a form of Lukemia but she’s on the winning end of it at this point. I have known her parents for over 15 years and had Brinna as one of my childcare charges for a time. Their story is far more common than you’d think and by no means an easy one. She’s a wonderful little girl and I’m glad she’s getting the chance today to have a little fun! My thanks to Marney Gellner for supplying the picture!

And Lastly, anyone else out there really hope that Cole DeVries can just have an awesome outing with lots of run support? I do!

Ok, that one hurt. I really thought we might be able to take this series and we had the lead for so long.. Even Cole had a great game! And then, we lost it.. how typically Twins. The most memorable thing for this game (and last night) despite both games being losses, is Gardenhire choosing to IBB JJ Hardy in order to get to Thome. Are you freaking kidding me?!??! Yes, it’s because we had a lefty pitcher up in both situations and it WORKED both times too but good grief Gardy.. you’re giving us fans a collective ulcer!!

Congrats to ERolfPleiss for getting to enjoy this game with other Twins bloggers and being our representative in the FSN suite. I’m pretty sure he was having a LOT more fun there than we fans watching on TV!

The Twins can clinch a series win over the Orioles with a victory tonight in the 3rd game of the 4 game set. Francisco Liriano goes to the mound for our guys and please excuse me for just hoping he doesn’t do anything to screw up his trade value. I’m not saying I necessarily “want” Terry Ryan to trade Frankie, but I’m convinced it’s probably going to happen. That being the case, you just don’t want to see anything happen that would make it tougher to get something of value in return. Of course, trade value aside, another good performance by Liriano also would improve the Twins’ chances of winning the game, and that would be nice, right?

Speaking of trade possibilities, it’s not too late to let us know who you think is most likely to find his way in to another uniform before the end of the summer. Just scroll down to the next post and cast your vote(s).

If you were hoping to see Jim Thome DH for the Orioles again tonight, you’re out of luck. He’s sitting out against the lefty, Liriano.

I really didn’t think that first inning home run that Frankie gave up would end up being enough to beat the Twins, but that’s exactly what happened. It’s not that our guys didn’t have opportunities to put more runs on the board because they certainly did. Just couldn’t get the run pushed across when those opportunities presented themselves. Still, Liriano had a good game and so did the bullpen. So it wasn’t a total disaster.

I’m not going to lie. I’m tired of the losing. More than that, I’m tired of the looking bad while losing. It’s like there are two groups of players… those that have given up and are going through the motions and those that are trying so hard (maybe to impress other teams that might trade for them and thus rescue them from this quagmire and take them in to some semblance of a pennant race?) that they end up tripping over themselves (sometimes quite literally). Oh yeah, there’s a third group… Josh Willingham. Is he a pro or what? I really hope Terry Ryan doesn’t trade him away.

On the positive side, 1500ESPN’s Tom Pelissero Tweeted that Twins President Dave St. Peter has noticed that the Twins pitching sucks. They say the first step to recovery is to admit you have a problem.

There’s just nothing encouraging to say about any of the baseball played this weekend by the Twins. No errors today, so I guess that’s a step in the right direction, but that’s not nearly enough to draw positives from. The Twins used SEVEN pitchers in this fiasco and only Tyler Robertson worked a clean inning. They say that at this point in the season, all players can do is play for pride. I sure hope that’s not the case, because if so, there are not many guys on this team showing any pride at all. – JC

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