I said going into this four game series with the Red Sox that I’d be satisfied (and possibly even delighted) if we came away with a split, it’s hard to believe that we won three out of four. Especially given the fact that our team wasn’t very sharp for chunks of those games. I suspect we owe a fruit basket to the Red Sox starting pitchers for giving us a little help here.
Kevin and I were at the game on Saturday and were very impressed with Glen Perkins. Pleasantly surprised. Sure, I was pulling for the nice local guy to have a good first MLB start, but given he was facing the Red Sox, I feared he’d have it pretty tough. We were pretty darn excited by his performance and then disappointed when he was brought back out to pitch the 7th and gave up those two home runs, but of course our bullpen had been overworked and we lost Pat (the most depressing news of the season so far) and I understand and yet . . . bummer. Still, giving up just three runs to the Red Sox in seven innings is pretty darn good.
How about Go-Go? Not a great showing yesterday, but his newfound (occasional) patience at the plate is encouraging. Two walks in rather critical situations were key. The circuitous routes he takes to catch balls in the outfield have me shaking my head and I bet Jerry White has gotta be working with him hard on his positioning out there in CF and how he approaches getting to the balls hit out there; I sure hope Jerry’s working with him.
Cuddy bouncing that ball of his head last night was one of the funniest things ever (would’ve been far less funny if he hadn’t recovered and caught the ball). From our vantage point in 127, we couldn’t fully appreciate it– they showed the replay on the scoreboard quite a few times right after the play and later in the game and it always got tons of applause and laughs. On the replay, it impressed, that’s for sure. Cuddy got a standing ovation. Manny chatted him up as Cuddy left the field after that half-inning and was giving him grief. Too funny.
We enjoyed the heck out of last night’s game at the Dome. It’s so great to see CARIG do well, I hope he’s turned a corner and will have a good season. “CARIG” is our nickname for Craig Monroe, which comes from them spelling his name like that on the scoreboard at the Dome at one of the first games of the season.
I’m so sad about Neshek’s injury and hope that it works out as best as it can. Would hate for them to take a “wait and see” approach and then later realize he does need surgery, but I understand not going for surgical options if you don’t have to. It’s all scary sad stuff and we wish Pat nothing but the best because he’s just such an incredible talent, seems really cool in his blog, and he’s local and that’s swell too. I can’t help but root for Twins fans who grow up to play for the Twins and think it’s neat that Mauer, Neshek, and Perkins all are on the team; I wonder if they ever get together and geek out among themselves a little bit about it.
I need to get back in the habit of posting here, but I’ve been really busy with other projects. I did twitter from the game on Saturday.
I only rarely have been reading blogs or even newspaper articles about the Twins or I’d be posting links and such here. I did just check out what Brad Zellar had to say about this series and the season thus far and I agree. What he said. Good stuff. It’s been a weird season so far, but better and more interesting than I think many people expected.
