July 2007 Archives

Joe Christensen says it's about to happen.

Winning the series against Cleveland was certainly not expected the way the Twins limped into Cleveland after being clobbered in Toronto. With C.C. Sabathia on the mound for Cleveland it seemed even less likely the Twins could win the rubber game of the series.

The Twins are 7-8 since the All-Star break and in their 7 wins they've outscored their opponent by an average of just 2 runs. In all wins they didn't allow the opponent to score more than five runs, so it's been pretty all pitching in those games.

Rondell White has been recalled to the big club sooner than most expected after just a couple games rehab after suffering a setback a couple weeks ago. It's certainly a sign of the Twins' desperate need for a bat in the lineup with Michael Cuddyer on the 15-day DL.

-- It was definitely one of the better All-Star games in recent memory. Jose Reyes lived up to his billing as one of the most exciting players in baseball, A-Rod was thrown out at home Scotty Ulger style, Ichiro hit the first inside the park home run of All-Star game history and the NL made things interesting in the ninth against two of the AL's best closers this year. And also, FOX made complete asses of themselves throughout coverage of the game. Example 1 - Example 2 - Example 3.

A quick note that I've got an article over at Ballhype discussing many of the free agent signings of last off season, so please check it out and hype it up, if you deem it worthy. It is the first of what I expect to become regular baseball columns at Ballhype. It gives me a good opportunity to expand my focus beyond the Twins once every week or so.

The Twins offense exploded for a combined 32 runs in the two games in Chicago on Friday. That one day accounts for nearly 7.5% of the Twins' runs scored so far through 86 games. Things were going so well that even Nick Punto had 3 hits on the day.

Voting for the All-Star 32nd man ended just a few minutes ago. Thanks to everyone who downloaded and used the script. It looks like Pat Neshek will fall short in the voting, but it was a fun run.

The Neshek Fast Cast script has gone through a couple updates since I originally released it almost 24 hours ago, so I wanted to make sure everyone knew about the improvements and got the update.

It's been a busy day at Twins Nation. Since releasing my vote Neshek script late last night the traffic has been about 5x what it typically is. The response has been pretty good and I know several people are using it. Although Pat Neshek was still in third place, there still may be hope with almost a full day of voting left.

Casting endless votes for Pat Neshek can get tiring real fast, so I put together a Greasemonkey script to save a little time and hassle in the process. If you're not familiar with Greasemonkey, here's what you need to do (it's definitely easier than it may seem).

This is a short one mostly because I spent my time working on the Neshek voting script and partially because it's just depressing to talk about the Twins right now.

One of the more memorable moments from the 2006 season was the game in late June in which Francisco Liriano faced off against Roger Clemens in his season debut for the Houston Astros. Liriano stole the spotlight from Clemens as he allowed just 2 runs through 8 innings on his way to his seventh win of the season.

Scott Baker has replaced Carlos Silva as the pitcher that gets no run support. Baker pitched a gem his last time out, allowing just 1 run through 7 innings, but won in a close 2-1 game. On Sunday night Baker allowed his first run in the eighth inning on a Marcus Thames solo homer and went onto a 1-0 loss.