I haven’t seem much of the news today so I have no idea what may or may not have happened with the Twins. I do know Denard Span was scratched from the lineup with a tight hamstring and that Justin Morneau returns at 1B tonight.
I won’t be around much, if at all tonight, but I’m opening up the GameChat. Pray for the best!
| TWINS |
@ |
TIGERS |
| Komatsu, CF | Jackson, A, CF | |
| Dozier, SS | Dirks, LF | |
| Mauer, DH | Cabrera, Mi, 3B | |
| Willingham, LF | Fielder, 1B | |
| Morneau, 1B | Young, D, DH | |
| Doumit, C | Avila, C | |
| Plouffe, RF | Raburn, 2B | |
| Casilla, A, 2B | Boesch, RF | |
| Carroll, 3B | Santiago, SS | |
| _Blackburn, P | _Porcello, P |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E | |
| Minnesota | 2 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 11 | 14 | 0 |
| Detroit | 1 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 11 | 4 |
Well that was kinda fun!
It’s a good thing that all runs count instead of just “earned” runs or these two teams might still be playing. Before the season started, I recall poking fun at what I expected to be a pretty inept defense that Detroit would be putting on the field. I haven’t watched more than a handful of innings from their season so far, but I’ve been reading and hearing that their defense isn’t as bad as some of us thought it would be. You wouldn’t know that to be the case based on how they booted and tossed the ball around against the Twins tonight.
Regardless of how poorly the Tigers defended, the Twins deserve credit for (a) putting the ball in play, and (b) coming through with some timely hitting, as well. Yes… the Twins… timely hitting! I know… I couldn’t believe it either, but it was happening. In fact, our guys were 6 for 15 with runners in scoring position tonight. Six hits! For that matter, even having 15 ABs with guys in scoring position is pretty remarkable lately!
We’ll skip the discussion of Nick Blackburn’s start… after all, he wasn’t really in the game long enough to worry about it. But the bullpen did a heckuva job again. Jeff Gray, Alex Burnett, Brian Duensing, Jared Burton and Glen Perkins combined for seven innings of 5-hit baseball, giving up just one run.
That was good enough to hold off the Tigers while the Twins bats set about pretty much raking the Tigers’ pitchers. Josh Willingham had three hits (including 2 doubles), while Joe Mauer, Jamey Carroll and Brian Dozier all had two hits apiece. In fact, among the position players who got in the game, only Erik Komatsu failed to get at least one hit (and Komatsu managed to reach on a Tiger error and score a run).
It was a tough decision to come up with just one Boyfriend of the Day, with the entire bullpen proving worthy, as well as probably half a dozen hitters, but in GameChat voting, Brian Dozier’s defense and his critical 3-run home run in the second inning earned him the honor! – JC
EDIT: The news apparently wasn’t all good for the Twins after the game. The Strib’s Joe Christensen reports that Ryan Doumit has been placed on the 15-day DL with a strained calf (what… already? What happened to waiting around for a week to decide that kind of thing?). Ben Revere is on his way up to take Doumit’s spot on the active roster.
EDITED EDIT: Thursday morning, the Twins announced that they were a bit premature in declaring Ryan Doumit would be placed on the DL. Instead, they decided Doumit would be day-to-day (sigh) and Nick Blackburn would be the player DL’d, with his strained quad. That drops the pitching staff to 12 as they head in to the weekend’s interleague series with the Brewers. Hopefully, Doumit’s able to contribute in some manner.