Twins righthander Nick Blackburn will make his first major league start tonight after making all six of his appearances last September in relief. Lefthander Joe Saunders pitches for the Angels, with first pitch at the Metrodome at 7:10.

Manager Ron Gardenhire told a story Tuesday of his son, Toby, getting hit by a Blackburn pitch to start a game when the two were in junior college. Blackburn was at Seminole State Junior College at the time, and Toby was at the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith JC.

Any hard feelings have been forgotten, of course. The skipper spoke highly of the way Blackburn pitched this spring.

“When he uses all his pitches, he’s got as good of stuff as anybody on this staff,” Gardenhire said. “He’s got a great curve ball, he’s got a great cutter, he can sink it, and he can throw the heck out of the ball. He had a good spring.”

As I mentioned last year, one of my favorite ways to get up to speed each morning on the next set of games is to go to Baseball Musings for David Pinto’s “Games of the Day” post. Today, he notes that Matt Garza, who makes his Tampa Bay debut today, held runners to a .213 average last year with runners in scoring position.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008 at 10:14 am and is filed under Around MLB, Twins thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.