Fire Gardy

The Twins played well today, winning two games. 7-2 over the Red Sox and 4-0 over the Blue Jays in split squad action. With so much action today, I thought I’d just give a recap of the day’s notable performances.

• Liriano
  • Apparently throwing in the low 90’s, Liriano looked decent in his spring debut. He went 1.2 innings hitting a wall in the second inning after a good first in which he struck out Manny Ramirez on a changeup. They say velocity increases throughout the spring, so don’t worry about his fastball; it’ll speed up. He couldn’t control the slider, which is also unsurprising: the breaking balls are the hardest to get a handle on.
• Gomez
  • He’s clearly giving it his all to win a spot with the big club. He led off the game with a bunt single, and stole second on the next pitch. He later scored on Delmon Young’s RBI base hit. In his second at bat, he failed to move a runner from second to third with a grounder to the right side … instead poking an RBI triple down the right field line. He nearly fell down between second and third. He scored on Punto’s squeeze bunt; he had it beat, but decided to slide anyway for style points.
  • Gomez clearly has a lot of promise, but he’s been making a huge number of mistakes. He needs to learn to turn the corner around the bases without falling down, and when to hit the cutoff man. But his presence on the bases is clearly disruptive. Plus, he’s hilarious.
  • His 2 hits brought his average up to .222.
• Span
  • Went 0-4, bringing his average down to .167. He’s not helping his cause, despite his highly-reported confidence. He did have a steal and a run scored, though.
• Morneau
  • Went 1-3 with a 2 run HR in the first inning. Morneau’s been struggling so far this spring, with just a .235 average. Hopefully he starts seeing the ball a bit better soon.
• Monroe
  • He’s been injured, but connected on a home run on the first pitch he saw today. It looks like he’ll be somewhat valuable for us this year, and has the “comeback” attitude that he needs to have. The only concern I have is that he may steal too many at bats from Kubel.
• Kubel
  • Went 1-4 with 2 RBI and 1 SB. His average is hanging at .231 in his limited action. Gardenhire is continuing to do what he can to keep the bat out of Kubel’s hands, and I still haven’t seen any reason for it.
• Humber
  • After his poor start against Concordia’s aluminum bats, Humber has rebounded nicely. Today he went 2 scoreless innings, giving up only 1 hit while striking out 3. His spring ERA is 0.00.
• Mulvey
  • Continues to pitch well, not allowing a baserunner in his 2 innings, striking out 3. His spring ERA is 2.25. The pitchers we got from the Mets have looked better than expected.
• Blackburn
  • Bailed out Liriano with an excellent 1.1 innings. His spring has been brilliant, and he’s definitely raised his stock.
• Perkins
  • Gave up 2 hits and 1 walk in his 3 scoreless innings, racking up 3 strike outs. He’s been on and off this spring, but this was definitely an “on” performance.
• Buscher
  • Got his first start at first base today, going 1-4 to drop his average to .333. He continues to carry a hot bat this spring, giving Lamb a run for his money for the starting third base job. Regardless, he may prove himself to be another valuable weapon off the bench if Gardy penalizes him for not being washed up yet.
• Young
  • The DelBat is awesome. He went 1-3 today, driving in his 5th RBI of the spring. His average is now .563, and is swinging it like a superstar. It’s beginning to look like no price was too high to get this guy on our team.

For the first few games of Spring Training, things looked bad. The Twins just didn’t look ready to play. But now they are ready to play, and there are a lot of reasons to be excited about this team. The CF battle is entertaining at the very least, Liriano is always electric on the mound, Delmon Young slides in and immediately becomes the best hitter in a surprisingly promising middle of the order, Buscher is showing definite promise, Casilla is playing like the experience he got last year did him good, and Humber/Mulvey have pitched better than their scouting reports indicated.

Perhaps best of all … the Twins have crushed every highly touted East Coast prospect that the Yankees and Red Sox tried to lowball us with. Buchholz, Lester, Kennedy, Chamberlain … have all been rocked by the “lowly” Twins’ offense. Of course it’s still early, but it definitely feels good to make those teams thing they made a mistake by not selling high on their overhyped prospects.