Archive for April, 2011

Tonight’s 11-2 loss – and the 8 runs the Royals “scored” in the bottom of the 8th – galvanized my opinion about things. From Rene Tosoni‘s ill advised dive to the moment Justin Morneau squeezed his glove a split second early on Matt Tolbert‘s throw, there can now be no doubt. It’s crystal clear that the 2011 edition of the Minnesota Twins is jinxed. At least for now … While I can’t guarantee that this jinx has taken us to rock bottom yet, I can guarantee that at some point this year the Twins will bounce back. The breakthrough certainly [...]

Let’s start with this; the Rays are a good team. I thought that during the offseason and I thought it when they gave the rest of the AL East a weeks head start by going 0-6.  Still the Twins just got swept by Tampa Bay for the second time this season. Unlike the first time around, these games were not remotely close. The offense continued it’s struggles and scored only 6 runs off of Rays pitching. That’s just more of the same for the 2011 Twins. Far more concerning is the fact that Minnesota’s pitching staff gave up 29 runs [...]

I was chatting briefly with Mr. Wally Fish this afternoon regarding his status on G-Chat.  It was a poem about Liriano’s less than stellar performance yesterday evening. “Liriano’s pitching is so dumpy and I am very grumpy.” Wally is certainly no Shakespeare but his poetry had me thinking of the Twins’ biggest grump, FanaticJack, and I started channeling Fanatic Jackspeare. “Nick Blackburn is the biggest bum said Jack” (FanaticJack FTW!) “And that there Gardy is an or’paid hack!” (IambicSteal! Winning!)

The 2011 MLB First-Year Player draft will take place between June 6th and June 8th. That may still be a month and a half away, but it’s never too early to start keeping tabs on where players are projected to go. Last year, I was immersed in draft coverage from a general baseball perspective for Call to the Pen. This year, I’m very happy to be able to focus my attention on who the Twins may, or may not be, selecting without too much concern for the other teams. Of course I still care about the other teams, because I [...]

The season is still very young, and for the Minnesota Twins and the Tampa Bay Rays, the newness of the 2011 season helps to dissipate high levels of panic as each team was off to a sluggish start.  Since starting 0-6 the Rays have been playing pretty decent baseball and now find themselves at .500 (thanks to a series against the then struggling Minnesota Twins and the slumping Chicago White Sox).  The Twins, meanwhile, found their groove after leaving Tampa Bay and are only 3 games under .500 after some solid performances in the past week against Baltimore and Cleveland. [...]

Hello and greetings from somewhere out in the deep blue sea.  I was all set to finish my post on Nick Markakis of the Orioles prior to the start of the Twins/O’s series, but due to the dynamic structure of life while on deployment I never got the time (or necessary internet bandwidth) to finish the post.  As such, I’ll be saving that gem for August when the Orioles visit Target Field. We’re number one… we’re just not quite there yet.

The Twins are starting to pick things up and have quietly won 5 of 7. With the scheduled off day today the team has some extra time to get healthy, purge the flu bug from their systems and prepare for a three game series against Tampa Bay. Like the Twins, the Rays have recovered from a terrible start to the season but have done so in more impressive fashion winning 10 of their last 13. Earlier this month, Minnesota lost 3 of 4 to the Rays in Tampa, but with a combined 27 runs scored (TB 15 and MIN 12) [...]

After tonight’s games every team in the AL Central finds themselves on a streak. Both Minnesota and Detroit spent the weekend ”WINNING!” while the White Sox, Indians and Royals have all found ways to lose their last three. What a difference a weekend makes.  The Twins are starting their climb back towards the top of the AL Central standings. And now it’s time to introduce the readership to my Twins Shrine, which as I am inclined to believe, will be a key ingredient to many late season victories that propel the Twins into the post-season and beyond. My Shrine

With their come-from-behind win Sunday afternoon the Minnesota Twins have won 3 in a row and more importantly 5 out of their last 7. On Saturday the offense finally broke out and scored more than 5 runs for the first time all season. It was their 20th game of the year. The bats have slowly been coming around for a while, but the runs simply weren’t following. In the end all Minnesota needed all along was one of the big bats to wake up and all the “little” bats would follow. Justin Morneau was the big bat as he went 2-5 [...]

Remember Billy Bullock? You know, that guy with the power arm that was sent packing so the Twins could retain the services of lefty Scott Diamond? Remember the outrage over that deal? I certainly do, and yes, I was one of those outraged people. That’s not a stance that made me unique of course. In fact, about the most positive spin you could find from those with the thickest “Twins colored glasses” could muster was that the trade was curious. The logic behind that stance was that Minnesota at least had guys similar to Bullock in the minors so he was [...]