Fire Gardy

This has been the pattern for what seems like the entire season.  The Twins lose a few (usually badly) and the sky is falling.  Twins fans go into a panic.  They start buying tickets to JFK or Logan for Joe Mauer.  Then we win and the Tigers and White Sox lose.  Suddenly we are just four games back.  Everyone starts thinking “You know, that Liriano isn’t so bad”. 

I admit, I think this way too.  You’d be lying if you said you didn’t.  Thats why baseball is great.  You can seemingly turn things around in one day.  For better or worse.  In football you have to wait a week, sometimes two.

Now that we have waxed poetically about the greatness of baseball, lets get back to the issues at hand.  The Twins looked good last night.  Awesome.  But remember, it was against the Royals.  They simply aren’t good. One of the best things we can take from this is Liriano’s performance.  Yeah, he beat up on a mediocre lineup, but I think this will help his confidence immensely.  He needed a good start, who cares who it is against.

After scrolling through the #Twins twitter feed last night, I noticed that many people were a little upset that both Guerrier and Nathan pitched last night in a “blow out” game.  Nathan hadn’t pitched in forever, so he needed the work.  Not using him enough is almost as bad as using him too often. A lot of people were clamoring for Manship and so was I (Go Irish!), but its not that big a deal.  If we only allowed Nathan to pitch in save situations he will have pitched something like 3 times since the all-star break.  How is that good for him?  I hate the save, and I really hate the role of “closer” in the sense that most AL managers use them.  If we are up by 4 in the ninth with a murders row coming up, do we want to be using someone like Brian Duensing, or Joe Nathan?  Its not a save situation you say?  Duensing it is.  That makes no sense to me, but I’m no big city lawyer (snaps suspenders).

Anyway, lets see if Pavano can have a repeat performance this afternoon.  A series win will be big here, especially since it looks like the Tigers can’t hang with the Red Sox.