Swept at Cleveland. Another loss with Johan on the mound. Another loss to Fausto. Seven games back and fading. … Time for a deep breath. Time for a diversion. Here’s some stuff to take your mind off the recent events at Jacobs Field.

Tomorrow night, Toby Gardenhire and the Class A Fort Myers Miracle will square off with Roger Clemens in Tampa. Think anybody will take the Rocket deep? I’ll take Whit Robbins, the first baseman from Georgia Tech. He’s 4-for-7 in his past two games, and while he hasn’t gone deep this year, I remember one Twins official saying good things about him in spring training. A home run tomorrow night, and he’ll be all over ESPN.

Speaking of ESPN, Jayson Stark has some fun comparing the stable of top National League shortstops in his latest Rumblings & Grumblings column.

Finally, I remembered that I’d teased to a Jim Leyland quote Sunday, saying I’d probably write what he said in my off-day story Monday. Well, I wound up writing about Nick Punto and lost the recording of Leyland’s words. I asked him about last April, when the Tigers swept the Twins in that 33-1 series and how he was the only one with anything positive to say about the Twins’ chances. Going going back to my notes, Leyland said, “I was a [lousy] hitter, but I know a good team when I see one. … They probably got a little out of sync early on [last year] and got away from their usual way of doing things. But they’re so good at what they do, they quickly figured it out and turned it around. That’s one of the quality organizations in baseball.”

Leyland, of course, was referring to the shakeup the Twins made last June when they jettisoned the left side of their infield — Tony Batista and Juan Castro — before going on their big run. The Twins started this year’s shakeup Sunday, when they got rid of Sidney Ponson. The way things are going, I’d expect more changes soon.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 17th, 2007 at 3:47 pm and is filed under Around MLB, Down on the farm, Twins thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.