April 6: Royals 3, Twins 1
The offensive woes continued as the Twins lost a close game to the Royals. Boof looked solid, but again received little run support. The lone run came on a Morneau homer in the 6th. It was a moonshot to the upper deck in right. We seemed to get most of our hits with two outs, and stranded lots of guys. Denard Span made his debut and didn’t look terrible. Tolbert has continued to impress me, but I still think he role should be that of a utility player. Its good to see Morneau hitting the ball hard. Kubel also stung the ball pretty good. Harris made a nice play at second as well. Gomez made another bonehead play when he singled to shallow right and decided he should try for a double. Gomez totally could have stolen second pretty easily, so I don’t think he should have taken the risk to try to stretch it to a double. I blame Scott Ulger.We still seem to have a problem with stranding runners, and getting the leadoff man on base. I also don’t like to have the bottom of the order leading off innings constantly. I know it is very difficult to prevent this, but it is possibly to minimize it. We have a lot of division games coming up, going to chicago tomorrow, and then KC next weekend, with a trip to Detroit after that. This is a perfect time to rack up wins within the division. Detroit is struggling, and Cleveland seems to be starting slowly. Here’s to hoping for a successful first road trip.
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I don’t think Ullger can be blamed for Gomez’s decision to go for second. Runners don’t pick up the third base coach when rounding first … especially when the ball’s in right. That was just a terrible, unforgivable decision by Gomez. (That said, I understand that you hate Ullger.)
Speaking of stranding runners, maybe we should start taking batting practice with guys standing at second base. Just to get our guys used to trying to drive in runs.
Hopefully the road trip goes well and we come back to the Dome with a winning record. But if memory serves me well, nothing cures a team’s ills like facing the Twins. I don’t hold out much hope that the Tigers will still be “struggling” after they face us next week.
That said … hopefully the Tigers are 0-12 after we’re through with them.
Speaking of Ullger, his decision to send Kubel home during Saturday’s game was absolutely awful. I was watching him at the game fairly closely on the play, and it looked like he was struggling with the decision. Kubel had barely rounded third when the ball was being caught by the shortstop. The ball beat him to the plate by over 5 feet. Thankfully, Kubel somehow made a good enough slide to be safe, but it doesn’t excuse a poor decision to send the runner, especially a runner as slow as Kubel. Even Gomez probably wouldn’t have beaten the throw.
I was glad to see Morneau start hitting the ball well. It was great to not see much of Punto this weekend, however somewhere in the back of my mind, I know he will eventually be playing way more than he should. It was nice to get a series win and hope for many more.
I agree, we got very lucky on that play. It was a good slide I guess. Or a bad play by the catcher, but the throw beat him there. Ullger seems to either make a bad decision or no decision. Rarely does he make a good one. During the telecast on friday night Dick and Bert were making comments about how Ullger wants to be a big league manager some day. I hope someone hires him away so A) he is gone, and B) we get to play against whatever team he mismanages.
The talk leaking out of the organization over the last couple of years has been that Gardy’s grooming his best friend Ullger to replace him as manager.
It would make sense, since the Twins always promote from within, and Gardy was the 3rd base coach for TK before he got the managing job.
Hopefully Wild Bill realizes that replacing Gardy (when the time comes) with Ullger would be just about the dumbest thing he could do. And I think he does realize it; that’s why my money’s on the Cliburn brothers as the eventual replacement.
That does, of course, presume that Gardy won’t have any say in who replaces him.