Short Rant

I can't write a whole lot today, if only because I'm sure to punch a hole through anything/anyone if I start getting worked up again. Last night was a pitching and fielding abomination. A complete meltdown. A glimpse of hell.

Our starter, Nick Blackburn, had pitched six very good innings and had a nice 3-2 lead after Joe Mauer cleared the bases with slicing double to the left-field gap. Things felt pretty good at that point... then they turned to crap. Blackburn started the inning off well enough, getting two of the first three batters out, which left Kevin Mench on second base with two down. That's when Nick Punto - normally a sure-bet to make an inning ending play - biffed on a hot grounder to short. The ball bounced off his glove and arm, but somehow he didn't knock it down. Mench came around to score, tying the game at three. Folks, if Punto makes that play, the inning is over and it's possible that none of the following happens.

Five pitches later, Matt Tolbert makes a beautiful stop at third base, but fails to connect with Justin Morneau on the throw. The ball ended up in the stands, which thankfully stopped the runners from advancing. Then, inexplicably, Gardenhire removes Nick Blackburn from the game with just 84 pitches thrown. There is no more ridiculous move that could have been made in that situation. Quick Recap: Blackburn gets (seemingly) two ground-ball outs, then is removed from the game? Was he pointing a gun at Tolbert? Did he lunge at Punto with a knife? Why take him out? He's still effective, the bullpen obviously isn't capable of closing out games... what was the deal? Dammit, I'm getting pissed off again.

As we all know, Matt Guerrier pitched 1 1/3 innings of spotless relief before giving way to the suddenly-helpless Joe Nathan, who once again barfed up a terrible performance when the team needed a pick-me-up. Forget the Pridie error... Nathan hasn't looked good for over a week... he's letting tons of men reach base, and isn't giving himself a chance to close out the game (read: isn't giving the TEAM a chance to win). I'd never suggest a change with the kind of pitcher he is, but this is getting ridiculous. The bats are producing and the pitching can't hold down an opponent? AARRRRGGHHHH!!!!!

Here's a sweet post from someone named "The Wombat" in the CBS.Sportsline.com Twins message board area:

Well, hindsight being 20/20 and all, maybe we should have done more for the bullpen at the trading deadline. Regardless, there's no debating where to lay the losing record from this road trip.

Starters

4-2; 80.9 IN; 89 H; 30 R; 27 ER; 17 BB; 52 SO; 3.00 ERA

Relievers

1-6; 31.8 IN; 30 H; 17 R; 15 ER; 10 BB; 23 SO; 4.25 ERA

1-6?!?!?! Incompetence hardly describes this. I would've been happy with a 7-7 record coming out of this road trip, and we should have been able to accomplish that. Bullpen my ass. Try Pig pen.

My sentiments, exactly.

The 11th inning loss was tough to take, but none of that crap would ever have happened without the earlier bloopers.

Sometimes, I wonder why I even bother to watch. Slowey vs. Litsch tonight at 6:07 p.m... hoping for better things. I'll be watching football.

I'll try to write something more coherent tomorrow... thanks for reading!

Perk's Peak

In just seven percent of their games this year before the Angels series - or nine out of 126 contests - Twins starters have lasted eight or more innings. Now, in the most important series of the year to date (vs. the team with the best record in baseball, no less), Scott Baker and Glen Perkins go eight innings apiece in back-to-back wins. If that's not good timing for 8+ inning starts 10 and 11, I don't know what is. Perkins, as he always does, started batters of with first-pitch strikes, then simply let them put the ball in play in the manner he deemed fit. Soft grounders, lazy flies and pop ups were king. Conversely, Friday's opposing starter Joe Saunders (who is very similar to Perkins) has shut teams down time and time again en route to a team-high 14 wins. It's just that the batted balls fell in for the Twins.

One of those "batted balls" was Delmon Young's ninth home run - a two-run job - of the season that gave Minnesota a 2-0 lead in the fourth. Later, Denard Span would tack on a three-run shot - his third of the season - to push the lead to an insurmountable 9-0 advantage in the eighth inning.

I've noticed that the Twins are hitting the longball a little more frequently than earlier in the year... lo' and behold, it wasn't a figment of my imagination.

Duration	HRs per game	Runs per game
August	0.85	5.63
Pre All-Star Break	0.68	4.86

As you can see, they've cranked up the juice a bit lately. It's funny though - the Twins are scratching tooth & nail for every homer they get, while the White Sox have 41 homers in 20 August games. Incredible. Oh, and speaking of the White Sox, they got ripped by Tampa Bay last night 9-4, and the Twins' win pushed them a 1/2-game ahead in the standings.

Tonight, we'll face a guy we should pummel in Jon Garland... he'll take the mound vs. Minnesota's Nick Blackburn, who tossed eight excellent innings vs. Oakland in a loss Monday. Hopefully he can keep the good times rollin', but I'm not convinced we can keep this powerful Angels lineup in check for much longer. Check it out at 8:05 tonight!

Twins Notes: SS Matt Tolbert went 1-for-4 with a strikeout in his fourth rehab start at Triple-A Rochester. He's been decidedly unimpressive ... Dennys Reyes pitched the ninth inning in relief of Perkins last night, and the non-closer bullpen arms now have 10 straight scoreless innings (three games) after posting an awful 4.64 ERA over the past 30 days.

Minor League Notes:

• Looks like Phil Humber is right as rain after struggling through the first half of the season. Against one of the best-hitting Triple-A teams around - the Pawtucket Red Sox - Humber pitched a complete-game, one run masterpiece. Humber gave up just one run on five hits while striking out eight batters. In addition, Humber is now 5-1 with a 2.61 ERA, 0.828 WHIP and 8.75 k/9 IP since coming back into the rotation on July 23.
• New Britain right fielder David Winfree blasted his 19th homer (T-4, Eastern League) of the season last night, and now has 87 RBI (no. 3, Eastern League) on the season.
  

Thanks for reading, and have a wonderful day!

Torii Claus

I give Nick Punto all the credit in the world for the bomb he smoked off Justin Speier in the top of the 12th inning last night, but Torii Hunter catches that ball 99.79 times out of 100, folks. Lemme give you a quick recap: Hunter is a seven-time Gold Glove center fielder. He had p-l-e-n-t-y of time to find the ball, get to the spot and make the grab. Yet he doesn't, and the epitome of our franchise - Nick Punto - ends up with a "triple" with nobody out. Hunter would like to wish you and yours an early, yet equally Merry Christmas. 

As you probably know, Denard Span went the other way for a single down the left field line that ended up being the game-winning hit. But that wasn't even the story of the night.

Did I mentions that Scott Baker is my freaking hero? I don't use the word "freaking" a lot in my writing (I save it for emphasis in speech), but he was dominant last night. It makes me wonder if he's once again locked in, and ready to bring his "A" game every night the rest of the season. Because in eight innings against the Anaheim Angels (best lineup in baseball), Baker was virtually untouchable. He gave up just one run - a solo shot to Mark Teixiera in the bottom of the first inning - and five hits while walking two and striking out six batters. He went toe-to-toe with a top-five AL pitcher in John Lackey, and while he didn't win the decision, he certainly didn't look out of his league. Impressive, yet somehow, not the story of the night. 

If you stayed up to watch the entire game, you know who I'm talking about. Matt Guerrier stepped onto the mound in the ninth inning, and what followed was something we hadn't seen for weeks... a full inning of scoreless work for our "setup" man. Two, actually, and it came at the perfect time. This, from a guy who had given up 14 runs over his past 6 1/3 innings (nine appearances, 19.90 ERA) and recently received four days off due to absolutely horrid pitching. I savored every pitch he threw last night, and maybe - just maybe - this road trip is what he needed to get back on track.

Of course, if you look at the appalling numbers our bats came up with, you'd probably have a big-time negative spin on last night's event. For me, good pitching was enough... there's no way we go an entire series stranding 18 base runners a game. It was disheartening to see Morneau and Casilla come up empty time and again, but I'm going to forgive and forget - we face Cy Young candidate Joe Saunders tonight, and there's no time for sulking.  

Twins Notes: With another two-hit night last night from Nick Punto, the utility infielder now has a nine-game hitting streak. What's more impressive is that he has eight multi-hit games over that span, and moved his batting average back up to .282 from .256 on August 11... Denard Span's on-base percentage finally creeped over .400 on the year last night - Carlos Gomez' remains quite a bit lower, at .287... Jesse Crain pitched a scoreless 11th inning as the bridge to Joe Nathan, who picked up his 34th save of the year... For all the talking up we did, Delmon Young's bat sure hasn't backed it up lately - he's batting .056 over his past four games (1-for-18)... Last, Matt Tolbert busted out the lumber last night with two hits in four ABs for New Britain. He's now batting .300 for the Rock Cats and will be up in 10 days or so. 

Minor League Notes: 

• Rochester's Luke Hughes lined two singles in five at bats, and Alejandro Machado boosted his batting average up over .350 with a three-hit night last night. Unfortunately, starting pitcher Tommy Shearn got destroyed for six earned runs in just five innings of work. 
• The double-A club had quite a night... four hitters (Ramos-4, Portes-3, Woodard-3, Ovalle-3) totaled 3+ hits and starter Alex Burnett threw six dominant innings, striking out 10 batters while giving up five hits and just one earned run. 

Thanks for reading, and have a great day... another late-night game tonight!

Casilla back... Angels await

Francisco Liriano is scaring me. You look at his 4-0 record, 1.14 ERA, .182 opponent batting average and very good 20 strikeouts in 23 2/3 innings, and it feels good. It feels like Liriano is back. But he's not, and we all know it. The same dominance just isn't there - he's not throwing as hard as he was before, and might not ever get all the way back (yes, we all knew this was a possibility). Even more disturbing though, are the 10 walks in those near-24 innings. Folks, our "golden boy" is having trouble finding the strike zone, and though he'll miss the Angels and continue "tuning up" vs. the whipping boys of the American League for a bit, there's going to come a time when a patient team eats him alive. A few more Liriano stats:

• He's thrown 401 pitches in 23 2/3 innings, which is about 17 pitches an inning - pretty inefficient. His fellow starters' numbers over the past four starts... Perkins (14.88 per inning), Slowey (16.01), Baker (16.8), Blackburn (15.4). Basically, he's giving himself the worst chance of ALL of our starters to go 6+ innings. Even Scott Baker, who's obviously struggling, has been a bit better.
• While Liriano has thrown about 61% of his pitches for strikes since "The Call-up", fellow Twins starters have faired much better - Baker (69.6%), Slowey (68.6%), Blackburn (64.3%), Perkins (69.1%).

Anyway, despite all this, I went to bed last night with a good feeling - the Twins had won their fourth consecutive series, and six out of their past seven games. The starting pitching is looking decent and the bats lively... even the bullpen looked good yesterday. What's more, Alexi "it's a miracle" Casilla (4-for-7, RBI in two rehab starts) is back from his hand injury and will look to help spark the top of the order where Nick Punto faltered. The Twins optioned Brian Bass to Triple-A Rochester to make room. Good riddance. Casilla's at bats are much better than anything we have in the middle infield, and we have to hope he can hit the ground running this evening.

Conversely, I woke up this morning and that feeling was all washed away... I mean, we're going to Anaheim...we're facing John Lackey tonight... we're a game back in the Central Division. Our starters have to deal with Vlad/Tex/Hunter for four games... our hitters - if there's to be a comeback win - will have to hit vs. the only guy better than our closer in Francisco Rodriguez. It's a brutal way to start a road trip, but I suppose it's best to get the worst over with first.

Game 1, tonight at 9:05 p.m. CST, will feature Scott Baker (7-3, 3.91 ERA) vs. John Lackey (10-2, 3.22 ERA), and tomorrow evening Glen Perkins (10-3, 4.17) will take on 14-game winner Joe Saunders (14-5, 3.14). Saturday's pitching probables are Nick Blackburn (9-7, 3.71) and Jon Garland (11-8, 4.33), and the series finale will feature Kevin Slowey (10-8, 3.78) and Ervin Santana (13-5, 3.39). Needless to say, we'll have our hands full with these guys, but it'll likely be the toughest test we face - outside of the White Sox series and the @Tampa Bay in September - the rest of the year.

Thought you should know that Matt Tolbert is now 1-for-6 in two rehab starts for New Britain, and is expected to rejoin the Twins when rosters expand on September 1... Last, I wanted to mention that Boof Bonser is looking much better lately. John Gordon talked about some increased velocity yesterday afternoon (hitting 95 mph), and that can only mean good things for our bullpen. He's boasting a 2.79 ERA, .250 BAA, 1.344 WHIP and 8.38 k/9 in eight August appearances.

That's enough for now...

Minor League Notes:

• 2B/3B Luke Hughes belted two hits, scored twice and stole his second base as a Rochester Red Wing last night. His batting totals (.284/.373/.540) have dropped a bit, but he's still looking good.
• Looking dominant, SP Anthony Swarzak moved to 4-0 with a 2.10 ERA/1.300 WHIP in five starts at the Triple-A level. Swarzak pitched one-run ball for six innings and struck out six batters while giving up just five hits. In addition, reliever Bobby Korecky now has nine straight scoreless innings, and racked up six saves and 9 Ks over that time period.
• Matthew Fox, a starter for Single-A Fort Myers, has been quite good over his past four starts (2-0, 1.14 ERA, 1.183 WHIP in 23 2/3 IP), including his most recent outing where he pitched seven shutout innings, striking out five.
• After getting blown up for eight earned runs in four innings on August 3, Beloit's Steven Hirschfield has been nearly untouchable. He's given up just three runs in the 21 subsequent innings, going 3-0 over that span.
• Elizabethton 1B Jonathan Waltenbury hadn't hit for much power lately, but rocketed two homers last night to bring his total to 10 on the season. He's currently on 10-game hitting streak that has his batting average back up to .329 on the year.

Thanks for reading, and have an awesome day!

Three in a Row!

Win the 7-6 late-inning comeback win over Seattle yesterday afternoon, the Twins set themselves up to sweep the Mariners today as Glen Perkins faces Ryan Feierabend. What's even more impressive is that the team is now a season-high 16 games over .500, a mark they never hit in 2007 with the likes of Torii Hunter and Johan Santana gracing the field. It's been an exciting ride, and to be in the division hunt is something that we, as fans, should be thankful for after such a disheartening offseason. And the fact that we did all of this in spite of Livan Hernandez is all the more awe-inspiring.

What hasn't been inspiring of late, however, is Scott Baker. He came off the DL in June and absolutely baffled hitters, but in his past five starts - including yesterday - Baker has seemed to lose his sense of the strike zone and is allowing hits at an alarmingly high rate with a 1.674 WHIP (34 hits, 14 BB) and 5.96 ERA in 28 2/3 innings. Baker has failed to get into the sixth inning in three of those starts, so not only is he hurting the team, he's also taxing the bullpen whenever he starts. Baker throws again on Friday in Los Angeles as the team starts a massive 14-game road trip, and there'll be no better time this season (barring playoffs) for him to start pitching well again.

We got some good news about Alexi Casilla and Matt Tolbert this weekend - both could play with the team in the coming weeks. Casilla took grounders, threw and hit off a tee Friday night and pounded some soft toss Saturdsay and is vying to return to the Twins at some point during this next road trip. Probably near the end of the month. Tolbert, on the other hand, will probably be a September addition to the team... no word on when, exactly, that will happen. Update: Alexi Casilla will begin a rehab assignment Monday, and should be back with the Twins on Wednesday.

Sunday Twins Notes: With four straight multi-hit games in a row, Delmon Young continued to slowly march his batting average upward - he's at .294 now and hasn't cracked .300 yet... Joe Mauer is 4-for-9 with a home run and 3 RBI ... found out that the new stadium is going to ROCK ... After batting just .136 so far in August, Justin Morneau came through with two hits yesterday to break a three-game hitless streak ... Just when you thought it was safe to put Jesse Crain on the mound, he gives up two earned runs on a hit and a walk - we need to rely on Crain, but he's making it awfully difficult ... Dennys Reyes, however, hasn't allowed an earned run in his past 10 appearances (since July 27), and has a 0.546 WHIP, 8.1 K/9 IP and incredible .111 BAA over those 7 1/3 innings.

Minor League Notes:

• Rochester OF Jason Pridie went hitless on Friday to end his 20-game hitting streak. Pridie got the night off Saturday as well. In his stead, 2B/3B Luke Hughes belted his third homer of the year for the Red Wings, and continues to look quite comfortable at the Triple-A level.
  
• With two home runs in his past three games, New Britain's Daniel Valencia has nearly matched his power output from high-A Fort Myers in the first half of the season. His .275/.320/.412 hitting line as a Rock Cat is decidedly worse, however. Teammate David Winfree now has 17 home runs on the season and has bashed three in his past seven games (11-for-30, .367 BA, 9 RBI).
  
• 24-year-old SP Yohan Pino has a 13-game scoreless streak for New Britain, and has two straight wins over that span, including an eight-inning shutout performance on Friday night.
  
• Elizabethton center fielder Angel Morales has caught fire of late, slamming eight hits - four for home runs - in his past 14 at bats (four games) for a team-leading 15 homers and .329 batting average in the process. This kid is only 19 years old, so keep an eye on a possible quick rise through the organization.

Thanks for reading, and enjoy the noon game today... SWEEP!!!