April 2007 Archives

There's no doubt that the Twins are sitting in a much better decision right now than they were as April closed last year. They finished off April with a 14-11 record compared to last year's 9-15 and they sit just 1.5 games behind the division leading Indians rather than trailing the White Sox by 8.0 games. That's not to say they exceeded expectations. Most people, including myself, expect the Twins to be a winning team this season and the April record puts them on pace to win about 91 games.

Johan Santana wasn't at his best on Sunday against Detroit and him and Mike Maroth dueled in a game that was close all day long. Pitch count ultimately got the best of Santana and he was forced to leave after throwing 114 pitches through six innings. Home runs got the best of Santana; the two he allowed accounted for all three of the runs he allowed.

Scott Baker gave up just 4 hits and 0 walks while striking out 7 against Toledo on Saturday. He gave up 1 run through seven innings to get the win. Sidney Ponson will pitch on Tuesday against Tampa Bay. What do you think the chances are of Baker receiving a phone call shortly after that game?

After the first inning of Saturday afternoon's game in Detroit, things couldn't have gone much smoother. After a good game Friday night, it looked like the Twins had reverted to their old ways. Jason Tyner and Nick Punto singled to start off the game only to have Punto get picked off at first and then have the inning ended on ground outs from Joe Mauer and Michael Cuddyer. In the Bottom of the inning, Carlos Silva allowed two singles, a double and a triple, but escaped with only 2 runs allowed.

Last night's game between the Detroit Tigers finally got back to a level that was bearable to watch, or listen to, as was my case last night. After a stretch of games featuring no clutch hitting, fielding errors and mental mistakes all-around this game was actually well played by both sides. Through the first six innings there was again no sign of Twins' offense, but that all changed in the seventh and eighth.

Most Twins fans can remember the series in Detroit on the last weekend of April last year. The Twins lost 9-0, 18-1 and 6-0. It was, without doubt, the lowest point of last season.

The fact that the Twins won Thursday afternoon's game against the Kansas City Royals doesn't make me feel much better about the way the Twins' played. All-around, they were terrible, and against any other team they should have been crushed. However after 11 innings one team was finally able to put a single run on the board and that just so happened to be the Twins.

There's not really much I can say besides rehashing what I've said the past few games. The Twins offense is failing to come up with timely hits and the middle of the lineup is in a slump. On Wednesday night Michael Cuddyer and Justin Morneau were both 0 for 4. The Twins have now lost 4 straight and haven't surpassed 3 runs of scoring in five games. Odalis Perez, who came into the game with an ERA over 8 got a quality start and the Twins failed to score on what has been baseball's worst bullpen.

Didn't they just play these guys? They sure did, but it didn't go so well, so they'll give it another go.

The Twins offense is now officially in a slump. They haven't managed to exceed three runs scored in the past three games, all three of which came against poor to average pitchers. On Tuesday night the Twins dropped the second game of the 2 game series against Cleveland despite the fact that they had ace Johan Santana on the mind. The Twins rely heavily on the guys in the middle of the lineup, mainly Justin Morneau and Michael Cuddyer. Over the past three games the two have combined to go 4 for 24 with just 2 RBIs. This isn't meant as a knock on Morneau and Cuddyer--everyone is entitled to a slump from time-to-time, it's meant to indicate that with guys like Jason Tyner, Nick Punto, Jason Bartlett and Alexi Casilla batting at the ends of the lineup, the offensive relies almost exclusively on the RBI production of Cuddyer, Morneau and Torii Hunter behind Joe Mauer, who is always on base.

The Twins went into extra inning for the first time of the season on Monday night against Cleveland. Carlos Silva held Cleveland scoreless until the fifth, but he managed to rack up a high pitch count before that point. Early in the game Silva was pulling the same stunts as his past three starts--he was stranding base runners. Things finally caught up to him when Victor Martinez came to bat with 2 outs and 2 on in the fifth inning. He hit a no-doubter to give the Indians a 3-run lead. Silva completed five and allowed 7 hits and 2 walks. He did strike out 6.

The Twins will open up a short two game series against the Cleveland Indians on Monday night at the dome. The Twins will be fortunate enough to miss C.C. Sabathia by one day and they'll have Johan Santana going for them on Tuesday.

Jorge De La Rosa shut down the Twins offense as the Royals won the series two games to one. De La Rosa got into trouble early as he loaded the bases with just one out. However, he got Justin Morneau on strikes and Torii Hunter flied out to end the inning with three runners stranded. After that first inning The Twins didn't see a baserunner until the sixth inning when Joe Mauer got his second single of the day. Cuddyer doubled after that to score the only Twins' run of the day.

Saturday afternoon's game got off to an ugly start. Boof Bonser loaded the bases with a leadoff single by David DeJesus, a bunt single from Mark Grudzielanek and an infield single from Mike Sweeney. Bonser struck out Mark Teahan and Ross Gload for the first two outs of the inning, but then Luis Rodriguez, who was playing second had a pop fly bounce off his glove in shallow center field to allow 2 runs to score. Bonser then struck out Alex Gordon to end the inning.

Saturday's game isn't being broadcast by the Twins. I still don't understand why they can broadcast 150+ games, but there's a few they can't. As far as I know, there are 3 options:

This was an ugly night for Twins pitching. First, the Sidney Ponson experiment might be nearing an end. I'd give him one last chance before turning to Matt Garza. Ponson gave up 10 hits through 4 1/3 IP and was charged with 6 of the 11 runs scored by Kansas City. The Twins bullpen also continued its early season struggles. Glen Perkins took over for Ponson in the fifth and allowed3 hits and walk through 1 2/3. Perkins has had inconsistent playing time since being called up, so I'd be curious to see how he does once he gets more innings.

Better late than never...Here's the series preview for the Kanas City Royals.

Seattle held a narrow 1-run lead against Johan Santana and the Twins for most of this game, but the Twins were able to put together a big inning in the seventh and hold off a ninth inning charge from the Mariners to win the game and sweep the 3 game series. The Mariners scored first when Ichiro reached on a Jason Bartlett throwing error. Ichiro was thrown caught in a run-down later in the inning between third and home, but it allowed Jose Vidro to move to second and be driven in by a Raul Ibanez single.

It was an interesting game for the Twins. The Felix Hernandez hype was short-lived as he left the game early with soreness in his elbow. Hopefully it's not serious, but the whole event was eerily similar to Fransisco Liriano's departure of last season. The game also featured a crazy ending thanks to a little too aggressive base running from the Mariners.

Before the game it was safe to assume that it would be a high scoring affair with two not so great pitchers, Jeff Weaver and Ramon Ortiz, faced off against each other. Ortiz got through the game without much damage, but Weaver was absolutely terrible. Weaver actually cut his 31.50 ERA in half with the 7 runs in 6 innings, but a 15.75 ERA still sucks.

The Twins will start off a 6-game road trip with a stop out west to face the Seattle Mariners. The Mariners literally got off to a slow start this season when they were forced to sit around in Cleveland for an entire weekend as games got postponed. None of the four games were able to be played. They were also postponed on Thursday in Boston. When they've been able to play they've been up and down. The Mariners have lost by lopsided scores such as 9-0 and 14-3 and they've recently had lopsided victories against Texas (8-3 and 14-3).

It was, for the most part, a disappointing series for the Twins against a team that they should be able to defeat easily. Not only did they lose on Friday night with ace Johan Santana on the mound, but Joe Nathan took the loss in the ninth inning on Sunday. With the exception of Saturday night, the Twins bats were weak all series long largely due to the ineffectiveness of the "piranhas".

In 2005 Johan Santana started off the season with 3 straight victories. He was poised to do it again, but one bad inning and the lack of offensive support sent the Twins and Johan to a loss against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. The Twins could muster only 2 runs against the tough lefty, Scott Kazmir.

Thursday night's game against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays was a low scoring affair that didn't feature many highlights until the ninth inning. Carlos Silva looked like his old self again. He gave up a lot of hits, but they were scattered and he left a lot of runners on base. He nearly gave up a homerun in the third inning, but it was caught by Jason Kubel right against the wall. Other than that he got a good mix of ground balls and managed to go 6 2/3 innings without allowing a run.

The Tampa Bay Devil Rays will come to the Metrodome for a four game series beginning on Thursday. They've lost 4 of their last five games, but are coming off a 6-5 victory against the Rangers on Wednesday night. They split their opening series with the Yankees last week. The D-rays are known as the perennial cellar-dwellers of the AL Eeast, but they might be starting to build up a better team (though they're not there yet).

The high-powered Yankee lineup was no match for...Ramon Ortiz??? I fully expected another beating from the Yankees, but Ortiz stepped up big-time for the longest Twins start of the season. He allowed just three hits and a walk through eight innings. The Twins offense came around just in time with four runs in the eighth inning to give Ortiz the win. The first two starts of the season for Ortiz have been about as encouraging as possible.

This year the Star Tribune's Twins beat writers, Joe Christensen and Lavelle E. Neal III (LEN III) started their own blogs. It gives them a chance to write from a different perspective than in their newspaper stories and, obviously, it gives readers a chance to comment.

If there's any truth to the first paragraphs of this SI.com story then we have good reason to cherish the next two years.

It was another ugly night of Twins baseball at the dome. Once again the Twins bats made a struggling pitcher look brilliant. Andy Pettitte pitched six shutout innings before the Twins finally scored their only run of the game off Scott Proctor in the seventh. Boof Bonser got hit hard. He allowed 2 homers and a double and couldn't make it out of the fifth inning.

Sidney Ponson had pretty much everything going against him in his Twins debut on Monday night. First, he hadn't pitched in a game in a week and a half and second he was pitching against the high powered Yankee offense. When the game started he also didn't get a lot of help from his defense. There are plenty of excuses to make for Ponson, but the truth his he didn't pitch that well either.

...this is how I'd imagine them turning out. Found at Ballhype.

The Twins are coming off a split with the Chicago White Sox after a fabulous April start from Johan Santana and a 3-run homer from Justin Morneau on Sunday. The Twins sit atop the AL Central standing with a 4-1 record (2 wins ahead of Cleveland who hasn't been able to play due to weather). The Yankees are off to a bit of a rough start, similar to last year. They'll begin their first road trip tonight at the dome after a 2-3 homestand against weaker teams like the Devil Rays and Orioles.

The Twins lost their first game of the season as they just couldn't get their bats going in the cold weather. A lot of Twins fans will point to Carlos Silva's start as an indication of good things to come, but I'm still a bit skeptical. Hitters don't like cold weather and when you look at the fact that Javier Vasquez held the Twins to just 1 hit in 6 2/3 innings, it's probably more likely that the hitters were just struggling in the cold. The cold can only do so much, so we still have to give Silva credit for an effective outing.

The series has been cut short due to cold weather and wind on Friday, but it appears that the next two games will go on as scheduled. Sidney Ponson will be shuffled to Monday leaving Carlos Silva to get the start on Saturday afternoon and Johan Santana to pitch on Sunday. The White Sox will stick with their original rotation plan by having Javier Vasquez pushed back to Saturday and left handed rookie John Danks face off against Santana on Sunday.

Tonight's game in Chicago has been postponed due to "cold and blustery" weather. Game time temperatures would have been in the 30s with fairly strong winds, so I can't blame them. Tomorrow and Sunday's forcasts don't look a whole lot better (upper 30's), so it's hard to say if they'll tough it out or not.

You can't ask for a better start to the season than a 3-game sweep at home. For the most part, the Orioles were a pretty unimpressive team in all aspects, so I'm not ready to predict a 100 win season just yet. It was encouraging to see a quality start from Boof Bonser on Tuesday night and now Ramon Ortiz on Wednesday night. The real test will come in the next two games with Carlos Silva and Sidney Ponson

I was in attendance at Tuesday night's game against the Orioles and while there wasn't a great deal of excitement from the bats, it was a good, close game to watch. Boof Bonser pitched well, only running into some trouble in the third inning. He left the game after 6 innings in a 2-2 tie and allowed just 3 hits (and 3 walks).

The Twins' home opener had just about everything you could hope for. Joer Mauer started off with a single and the Twins got on the board in the 2nd inning with back-to-back solo homers from Justin Morneau and Torii Hunter. Johan Santana wasn't perfect, but he did accomplish something that took him nearly the full month of April last season--he picked up his first win of the season.

It's opening day! In case you're not a weekend reader (which is common), please be sure to check out the two posts I made over the weekend discussing the hitters and pitchers on the Twins opening day roster. This year I want to start previewing each series, so here's the preview of the opening series at home against the Baltimore Orioles.

Yesterday I gave a rundown or the Twins hitters for opening day, today it's a chance to look at the pitchers that will make up the rotation and the bullpen.