Juan Castro Topic Page

Jason Bartlett has probably attracted more attention and more emotion from the Twins blogosphere than anyone since his late March assignment to AAA Rochester. I have a feeling that Bartlett may get the call pretty soon, so I wanted to write once more about Jason Bartlett before it happens. I believe Bartlett deserves (and has earned) a shot to play on this team. I'll be the first to admit that his addition isn't going to radically turn the team around, but it will make a difference. Bartlett may not be a long-term answer at SS, but he's the answer for the rest of this season and probably next season. Maybe he'll even be suitable for the Twins long-term plans; we'll never know unless he's given the chance.

I started writing this entry at about quarter to midnight Wednesday night. It was the top of the 8th and the Twins were down 9-4. I assumed the game was lost (I know—bad Twins fan) and I was going to start writing about everything that went wrong in the game.

The Indians scored 5 runs off Johan Santana and the Twins were forced to go 10 innings to pick up the win. The Twins jumped out to an early 4-0 lead with 2 runs in each of the first two innings. The Indians scored two runs in the 5th and three runs in the 6th. Batista made a throwing error resulting in 1 of the 5 runs to be unearned. The Twins tied the game in the bottom of the 6th on a Tony Batista GIDP that scored Justin Morneau from third.

The Twins stadium bill has passed, but the debate certainly hasn't. There's talk of legal challeges, which sound like they have no chance. There's also been a lot of talk about getting a roof on the stadium. That obviously would involve $100 million or so and the two main funding ideas I've heard are:

The Twins jumped out to an early 6-0 lead off Milwaukee starter Ben Hendrickson. Hendrickson gave up 6 runs in the first before he was pulled without retiring one Twins batter. The Twins also put together a 5 run fourth inning which included triples by Michael Cuddyer and Juan Castro. The Twins also added runs in the 5th, 7th, 8th and 9th. The Twins have had a handful of high-scoring games this year, so clearly this offense is capable of scoring more runs than it could last year.

The Twins dropped their fifth straight game and were swept again by the Tigers Thursday afternoon. This is the fourth time the Twins have been swept by an AL Central opponent. Radke struggled early again and the Twins trailed this entire game. Radke did, however, pick up a quality start as 2 of the 5 runs he gave up were unearned. The Twins had 3 errors in the game (Punto throwing, Castro throwing, Morneau fielding) which combined with Detroit's 2 errors set up for a pretty sloppy day of baseball.

Last week I whined about how difficult it was to pick a player of the week, since the team as a whole had played so poorly. I hoped that this week's decision would be difficult for a different reason, and my wish has certainly come true.

The season is underway, so it's time to start what will become a weekly series at Twins Nation. Monday is often an off day for the Twins, so we'll take advantage of it to announce who we think was the most valuable player of the previous week for the Twins.

Live commentary was provided for this game.

Spring Training Game.