For Those Who Were Sleeping or Drunk

You missed quite a game last night. Ole Gardy was up to his usual tricks and tried everything in his power to get a loss, but the Mariner's left fielder was up to the challenge and made sure to get the Twins a 10 inning win to kick off a big road trip. The bullpen continued it's impressive run by throwing four scoreless innings and the only hit given up was a doinker that Gomez misread and probably should've caught. Forgive him, he's dumb. Liriano also probably saved his spot in the rotation by pitching a solid 6 innings. Gardy did try a suicide squeeze in the 10th inning. Good in theory, but probably not the best idea with Tolbert at the plate. Also they might wanna change the sign for the squeeze as the Mexican-Chinese manager from the Mariners called for a pitchout and hung Mauer out to dry. This isn't as much fun being positive. Fuck it, I'm sure I can find something to bitch about. Oh yeah, here's 3 things that should never happen in any game, yet they all occured last night...

1. Brian Buscher starts a game. With Punto out, he's quickly becoming the new Punto. He doesn't seem to have control over Gardy like Punto does, but anytime this clown is in the lineup it's depressing. I say send him down and call up Todd Kalpakof. I hear he's hitting almost .300 again this year, also plays SS like a young Ron Coomer.

2. Sacrifice bunt with Span. This one probably caught the fearless leader off guard. Who would have thought that Gomez or Casilla would get on base, let alone both of them. Yet that's exactly what happened last night in the 3rd inning. Both of the above mentioned re re's beat out infield hits, bringing Span up with nobody out. Now if Casilla, Tolbert, or really anybody except Mauer is hitting behind Span, ok I can understand the bunt. Chances are you're going to need a sacrifice fly or wild pitch to get a run in that situation. With the lineup the way it is, let your leadoff hitter, who is batting over .300, swing away. Over his career, Span has hit into 6 double plays (less than 1% of his AB's) so you can pretty much take that out of the equation. Now the worst you're looking at is Mauer coming up with runners on 1st and 2nd and 1 out. Of course he's prone to hitting into the routine 4-6-3, but he's also just as likely to hit a gapper and knock in both runs.

3. Try to steal second with 2 outs and Mauer at the plate. Again, Mauer has a slugging percentage of .833 and is extremely likely to deliver an extra base hit. Unless Ricky Henderson is at first and Santiago Casilla (look it up, he's real, that's him at the top of the post. also, he's pitched over 100 games and never caught anybody stealing or picked anybody off) is pitching, it just isn't worth it.

One other thing, since when do the Twins play Saturday afternoon games every damn week? Thanks once again to Fox's "Nationally Televised Games" I won't be tuning in today, but I'll definitely be drinking so that should be fun. Oh yeah, if you haven't seen the Hangover yet, do it as soon as possible, it's good.