Boy, am I glad the Twins are on the road right now… We Minnesotans get enough crap about living here without a game possibly being postponed AGAIN for snow – on the first of May. It’s only raining at my office right now but we’re supposed to get a slushy mess of crap through this afternoon. I’ll try to distract myself with following the game on Gameday – oh yeah, and work, that too.

At any rate, I would love to see Scott Diamond go deep into the game (would have liked that from Vanimal too but oh well) but I’m sure a lot will depend on how he fares against a pretty potent hitting lineup. Hicks is back in the lineup today and Mauer is getting a day off but that is basically to be expected since he caught last night. We have Carroll coming in at 3B so no Plouffe today..  let’s see what happens!

Now THAT was a fun game to watch!! err… sort of “watch” since I was limited to gameday tracking but you get the idea… WINNING is GOOD! It was very good to see the Twins offense show up and do well up and down the order. I wish I could have SEEN the stolen base by Doumit! It’s good when baseball is fun – especially when I look out the window and it’s snowing here in Minnesota. And right now, that means we have an even split on the season series between us and Detroit at 3 apiece if I recall correctly. AND it also means the Twins are back to .500 for the season as well… honestly, given the expectations during Spring Training, this is a dramatically better result.

Today what made me the happiest though was the performance by Scott Diamond. He’s definitely making his way back. His top number for velocity was only 90 mph and I only saw that once (wasn’t watching TOO closely) but there didn’t seem to be anyone on the Detroit roster who was going to hit off him until the 5th inning! That’s pretty unusual given the way the Tigers have been hitting us lately. So for that, the GameChat unanimously elected Scott Diamond as today’s BOD!

Scott Diamond (photo: Genevieve Ross/AP)

[apologies for the lack of gamechat yesterday - apparently all Knuckleballers were off busy elsewhere - not that hard to believe actually]

The final game of the series – I would love it if we could SPLIT it. Yesterday’s win was a nice come back after going down in the first two games. I would like to continue to enjoy this phenomenal spring weather with another Twins win!

I’m beginning to wonder if I’m a jinx. The two games that I am not able to watch are the ones in which the Twins manage to have towering victories over the Rangers. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE it. I just wish I had been able to actually SEE it. But it’s a great way to finish the homestand and send the boys off on a long road trip.

Since this is not a regularly scheduled game, it’s fighting for local broadcast time with Wild hockey tonight. So the Twins game is on that FSN+ channel that gave us all fits during Spring Training. Hope y’all remember where to find your game!

This afternoon’s game was cool and sunny and it looks as though this evening will be the same way. It’s actually warmer now than when the earlier game started so that isn’t bad. Frankly, most locals are just happy to see the sunshine. This is actually pretty similar to Pelfrey’s start last week.  I would REALLY like to see him step it up tonight – and by that I mean PACE. Something about last week had him slowing to an absolute crawl like watching the Red Sox play the Yankees… I would rather not do that again if my opinion counts for anything (which it doesn’t).

We had some REALLY fantastic offense from Eduardo Escobar and some pretty phenomenal defense from Brian Dozier but it wasn’t enough to overcome the general malaise that seemed to exist from the poor tone set by Pelfrey.  I KNOW I’m biased but once again his pace was painfully slow. If he was being successful at that speed, I might steel my patience to wait out the 4 hour games but he’s not and they suck.

I will say it was a lot of fun to see Redmond, even if it is in that atrocious Marlins tangerine uni.. ouch.

Next game for the Twins will be much warmer…

So far it appears that the game will actually happen but it has started to drizzle at my house.. makes me nervous. It’s going to be cold again tonight AND tomorrow isn’t looking any better. It could be a dicey situation..

Heads up on the roster situation:

1. Mastrioanni is officially on the DL with what’s being called a “stress reaction” which was aggravated by an outfield mistep, twisted ankle. He could be out for 3 weeks. That means Arcia is back up. 
2. Ramirez is feeling ok after a scary moment at 1B last night – he took an errant throw to first right on the spine. In fact, he’s the backup CF if anything happens. Let’s cross our fingers that nothing does. We’d like to make sure he’s doing fine when that brand new baby girl, Venus (born Sunday) arrives to see Daddy playing baseball.

The Twins started the first two games of this series with an offensive streak that none of us probably expected. It would be really great if they could figure out a way to keep that up. But like everything right now, it all depends on pitching which suffers a lot in this cold. I really would like to see Vance keep things under control.

well that was somewhat predictable… Game is officially postponed – date TBD.