Thursday, September 3, 2009

Absolutely blown away.

Joe Nathan is about as much of a performance "lock" as you'll find on the Twins roster. Except Joe Mauer. In 53 innings, he's sporting a 2.36 ERA with 70 strikeouts. The guy has 35 saves. He's nearly untouchable. And yet, yesterday afternoon, he took a elephant dump on the mound when we had the White Sox in a choke hold. And it wasn't just your run-of-the-mill blown save. He did it spectacularly, giving up back-to-back bombs to Gordon Beckham and Paul Konerko. Oh, and it didn't end there… he then walked two batters in a row before Ron Gardenhire realized the game hadn't ended in a 2-0 win, like he planned when he sent Joe to the mound to start the ninth. Oooff! Stomach-punch, baby!

And it's not like the season is over, but it's been over 24 hours since that second home run cleared the left field wall, and I'm still reeling. Really up in arms over this whole thing. I can't concentrate at work, my food tastes weird and my tooth even hurts. Things just don't feel right.

Thankfully, the Twins play a three-game in Cleveland this weekend. And the Indians are ripe for a butt-kicking after being swept by Detroit from Tuesday-Thursday.

Carl Pavano duels with Jeremy Sowers Friday night, then Scott Baker takes the mound Saturday against Justin Masterson. Then Sunday, we've got Nick Blackburn facing David Huff in the finale. Three very winnable games with -- I think -- our three most-trusted pitchers on the mound.

If this team has any designs on the division, they'll take 2-of-3 this weekend, and possibly sweep.

I'll be watching as much as possible, so hopefully these guys give me some reason to believe Wednesday was a complete fluke.

2 comments:

ExtraPaleMale said...

jeez, sorry about your tooth. get it extracted before you need to eat October hot dogs at the dome.

Noni said...

You have a real knack for making words come alive! Love it

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