Twins 6, Mariners 5: Finally Some Home Runs!
Homers by Morneau and Span were the most obvious evidence of the offense awakening in game 3, showing off the first power the Twins have found so far this year, lifting the team to a 2-1 record despite a rough night from Slowey — the third consecutive sub-par start we’ve had to try to overcome. Given that a big strength of the team is supposed to be the starting pitching, this is a little worrying. But again, it’s still early; I think they’ll hit their stride.
Twins/Mariners, 4/8/09
This WPA graph from FanGraphs is evidence of a significantly more comfortable game than we’ve played so far this year, and hopefully we can enjoy plenty more games with graphs like this. Especially when the game trades back and forth in such exciting fashion. Absolutely nothing wrong with entertainment like this.
I want to point out Morneau’s “double” in the 5th inning, when he drove in a run to tie the game. It was a hard grounder up the middle, that got through and went to center. It scored a run, sure, but the impressive part of the play was the Morneau managed to take second before the ball came back in from the outfield. Blyleven apparently* pointed out that Morneau saw that the CF was running to his left and would thus have to stop his momentum before throwing the ball back into the infield.
* I say “apparently” because I had the game on mute, and my dad reported Bert’s comments to me via Skype. (Which, by the way, is a great way to watch a ballgame when there’s nobody you know within miles of you.
However it happened, it was good. Because Morneau scored what turned out to be the winning run on the next play when Kubel doubled him home — Morneau and his “speed” could not have scored from first. It was simply a great play by the Twins’ MVP.
Despite my concerns about Slowey and all our starting pitching at this point, this was a good win and we’ve pushed ourselves into the above-.500-column, which is exactly where we want to be. Game 4 is at noon on Thursday, and hopefully we can push some runs across again and win the series.
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Was anyone else surprised to hear Joe Nathan got his 200th save as a Twin last night? That is second in team history. He racked those up pretty quickly.
Good stuff all around, Span has been most impressive, his OPS is like 1.300! Bert (however unlikely) also pointed out that had Morneau only gotten to 1st, then Branyan would have easily made the play on Kubel’s hit down the 1st base line since he would have been on the bag holding Morneau… Sometimes that Blyleven actually says stuff that makes sense! Then I had to take a drink… yes, Congrats to Nathan.
And I just checked, Span’s OPS is 1.361… keep that going!
That’s an interesting point about where Branyan would have been playing, but it’s almost moot given that if Morneau had been at first he wouldn’t have scored on a double anyway. Which means the inning would have ended at 5-5 regardless of whether Kubel’s hit had been fielded.
Given that Span has been looking great, I think it’s time to start fearing that Gardy benches him for this afternoon’s game. He’s always hated seeing talented young players have success with the bat. “Sit the hot bat,” I always say!
I was shocked to see Morneau diving into second, especially since there was no throw to the plate. He picked a great time to start hitting and hustling.
I also love how Span is The Man after such a miserable Spring Training. More proof that those stats don’t mean all that much.