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.

Thanks Ron

If there's one thing Gardy is good at, it's providing material for every Twins fan to have something to bitch about on a nightly basis. You all know who I'm talking about, it's no secret that I'm not a fan of Punto's. Regardless, some more venting about the little idiot.

Here we are again. Another day and another start for your gay little ass. Of course you'd be in the lineup after getting a hit in one straight game. In fact, you ballooned your average all the way up to .193 yesterday. Let's not dwell on the positives though, you also picked up your team leading 4th error of the year. Feels good to lead the club in something, doesn't it? And not to be outdone by yourself, you already notched #5 in the first inning tonight. Your 5 errors are over 1/4th of the total errors the Twins have this year. You do realize that when you lead the team in errors you really shouldn't be at the bottom of every offensive category possible. In the last 10 days or so, we've all seen you boot balls around, throw balls into the stands, get caught stealing, fail to get sacrifice bunts down, pretty much failing to do everything a "role player" needs to do to keep getting his name on the lineup card. You're a special one though, no matter how asinine it seems to put you in the lineup, ole Gardy makes sure it happens on a nightly basis. Now I'm not busy, so here's just a few more stats to help shut up the few fans you have left. And trust me, there are some. I hear from them everytime you get a hit, usually about once every other week. Anyways...

So far you have 26 total bases on the year. 23 hits, 3 doubles, zero triples, zero homeruns. Nice. The closest player to you in total bases is Jose Morales. Remember him? He was up for awhile when Mauer was out, racked up 53 at bats (less than half as many as you) and has 22 total bases. He also has no major league experience, yet you're considered a veteran. Act like it.

Ok, so you're more of a singles guy. When I think of singles hitters, I think of guys who must steal a bunch of bases to get themselves into scoring position. Think again, cockface. Your total steals of 4 this season are in a dead heat with none other than Michael Cuddyer. Granted it's hard to steal bases when you only get on base twice a week, but that should put an end to that argument anyways.

Pretty much the only other aspect I've heard people argue in your favor is defense. Unfortunately, the stats lead us to believe that you are utterly useless in this aspect as well. With your throw tonight that sailed over Morneau's head, your fielding percentage dropped to a pathetic .949. This puts your rank among shortstops at 68th out of the 84 players who have time at short this year. Jesus fucking Christ.

Timeout, you know who is at the plate right now. Let's live blog it.

Pitch 1 - called strike
Pitch 2 - called strike
Pitch 3 - ball high
Pitch 4 - ball in the dirt
Pitch 5 - ball high (got excited as it almost struck you in your mouth)
Pitch 6 - pop out to short

Typical AB for you. Nice to see you make the pitcher work a little. Nick Green could've caught that with his ball sack and it wouldn't have hurt, but you put it in play alright. Your average dropped a point to .192 and with a typical game you should be back in the .180's by the end of the night.

That's pretty much it for now, please do us all a favor and kill yourself.

They were warned

The best part is when the ass-hat running the camera says, "The same thing happened yesterday, too."

A Not So Random Observation

Skoula fucking sucks. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Skoula fucking sucks. He's the Nick Punto of the Wild. Seriously, it's like watching Dave Gordon on skates. He should have been traded for a used puck bag and six practice jerseys a long time ago.