04152012
I was lucky enough to get to go home this weekend and that means I don't have to watch the Lastros.
I got to watch all of the Feliz outing today and all of the Darvish outing yesterday and boy let me tell you, was I ever impressed with both.
Maybe the final result wasn't exactly what both wanted, 5-5-3-3-2-3 for Neffy and 5.2-9-2-1-4-4 for Yu, but both had everything working, and every pitch was biting.
We all knew there would be an adjustment period for Darvish, especially with a bigger baseball here in the states, and his first two starts shouldn't even be alarming. He'll take the ball next in Detroit, somewhere the Rangers notoriously play dreadfully, disregarding the 2011 ALCS of course.
Joe Nathan did work today. Wash showed faith by tossing him out there in the ninth and Joe responded with a 9 pitch inning for his third save. Solid.
Elvis Andrus' reported offseason bulk-up showed for the first time today when he roped a triple off the wall over a lunging Clete Thomas scoring Ian Kinsler, Andrus went in standing up to third with the cutoff man having to eat the ball and on the very next pitch, Andrus came across on a Josh Hamilton moonshot, which I called beforehand thank you very much.
So we walk out of Minneapolis with a 3 game sweep and head to the first off day of the season with an 8-2 record. A lot can be said about how this team should be 10-0, the two losses, both charged to Nathan, coming on a blown save with a two run lead in the 9th, and on an Alex Rios homer in the 9th with the game tied at three a piece. This is true but just think of how many times the wins could have gone complete opposite directions, especially considering how many times the Twins had the bases loaded over the weekend.
We sit in position A, with the best record in the AL and second to only the Dodgers in the Majors, who will start losing at a rapid pace if either Matt Kemp or Andre Ethier, who have 3/4 of the Dodgers RBI total on the year, reduce their production at all.
We're about to run the gauntlet of Boston, Detroit, New York, Tampa Bay, Toronto, which may be the toughest stretch we go through all year. It's time to show these guys what we're worth and we came to play ball.
To steal a line from Jamey Newberg of the Newberg Report...
Breen Gett.
--Cheyenne T. Bauman
"I always like to see a person stand up to a golf ball as though he were perfectly at home in its presence." - Bobby Jones
