Fire Gardy

What the hell was that?

Hovechar pretty much couldn’t throw a strike to save his life in the first few innings, yet we still couldn’t get a hit, let alone a run.  Blackburn pitched reasonably well, but if we don’t give him any semblance of support we can’t expect him to win.  We had a pretty fair number of baserunners since we drew a few walks, but we couldn’t move them over at all.  Just pathetic. 

I don’t blame Gardy for getting kicked out.  Although he was right, that ball hit Kubel’s foot. 

Does anyone know what the Twins can do to make a playoff push here right around the halfway point, or are we just a .500 team?  I’m beginning to think its the latter.

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I, along with apparently every other Twins fan, made the trek to Chicago over the weekend to watch the Twins play three games at Wrigley Field. I will admit, I really don’t like the Cubs.  Not sure why.  I just don’t.  However, taking in a game at Wrigley field is great.  We had phenomenal seats, provided by a college buddy of mine.  I was unable to watch the Milton Bradley game on Friday as I was traveling, but we watched the games on Saturday and Sunday. 

One of the reasons I find Wrigley field so much fun is there is a bunch of stuff to do (read: bars) around the stadium.  What do we have at the dome?  One bar, a hospital and a bunch of freeway entrance ramps. That’s not fun. 

The game on Saturday was delayed, but it turned out to be a great day for baseball.  Not too hot, and the sun eventually came out.  My cubs fan buddy Mike (who provided the tickets) said the Twins were as impressive a traveling fan base as he had seen.  The Twins fans were loud, and not including me, not too obnoxious. 

So we take two out of three on the road.  I’m happy with that.   We really cannot lose any of the next six games at home.  Neither the Pirates nor the Astros are very good.  I think Perkins is back for his start on Thursday, and I am interested to see what the team does regarding Crain.  It is clear he can’t be used in a game anymore.  He just doesn’t have the ability to get major leaguers out.  Whether or not he can regain this ability is still TBD.

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I only watched the first six innings of the game because I was tired.  I would use this time to get on a rant about the uselessness of time zones, but I won’t.   When I woke up to two text messages that read as follows:

This is getting ugly

and about 15 minutes later from another friend

How the hell do you go into the ninth with a ten run lead and need to call on Nathan to bail you out?

So I rushed to my computer to see what in God’s name happened, and saw that our lovely bullpen teamed up with Baker to almost blow the game.  Now, Baker pitched very well, but I question the decision to leave him in.  You know he will give up a big inning.  It hadn’t occurred through 8 innings, so by process of elimination it was going to happen in the ninth.  Why leave him in?  Why not bring in Guerrier or someone to start and finish the ninth?  What is probably a worse decision is bringing in Crain with the bases loaded.  There is no way he gets three outs without giving up a run.  No chance in hell.  This is Jesse Crain we are talking about.  Anyway, a win is a win (is a win, for some reason Gardy felt like saying it three times on the post game show which apparently FSN re-airs at 6am).  The offense looked good, especially in the sixth.  Delmon Young had his first extra base hit since April, but he still sucks.  Hopefully this Span “dizziness” thing isn’t serious and we won’t be without him for long. 

Who bats leadoff today? Tolbert? Gomez? Not good.  I think we need to move Mauer back to the 2 hole.  But I bet Gardy does something like Tolbert-Harris-Mauer…. Not cool.

Although I do like that Gardy admitted he might be willing to leave Harris at short and play Punto at second when he comes off the DL this weekend.

Another bit of good news: we have a late afternoon game today followed by 4 day games.  Dick mentioned that maybe redmond catches this evening (I think the game is at like 5 central time or something) then Mauer can catch Thursday afternoon and the three day games at Wrigley since he can’t DH him.

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Scott Baker started for the Twins yesterday afternoon and turned out a fine performance.  Although that Cleveland lineup is terrible.  It has exactly one good hitter: Vic Martinez.  If we had walked him every single time he came up in this series it probably would have been for the best.  Anyway, I’ll take a good start from Baker if he gives it to me.  Even if it is against a AAA team and Victor Martinez. 

The top four guys in the lineup were tremendous.  Kubel, Morneau, and Span  homered, Mauer scored 4 runs.  Great day to be at the top of the Twins lineup.  The bottom was as terrible as usual.  Gardy said he wanted to stretch the success of the top of the lineup all the way through the bottom.  That isn’t possible when the bottom of your lineup consists of no-talent ass clowns.  They aren’t slumping, they are just no good.  Harris-Redmond-Tolbert-Gomez isn’t even the worst bottom of the order we could have fielded.  Throw Punto and Young in there and its probably worse. 

Liriano goes tonight against King Felix for the third time this year.  I am bracing for the worst.  And by “bracing” I mean consuming many, many beers.  I’m setting the over/under on innings pitched for Liriano at 4.5.  Leave your picks in the comments section.

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