Twins manager Ron Gardenhire is trying to find a spot to get a look at lefthander Jose Mijares. The ninth inning last night seemed to be a good time,  but the manager - with memories of several blown leads this season fresh in his mind - didn’t want a situation where Mijares gave up a couple runs and force him to warm up Joe Nathan. “Six runs is not that big of a lead in this league,” he said.

Mijares did warm up in the eighth, but sat back down.

I can see where Gardy is coming from, but I’m anxious to see what Mijares can do. In 370 minor league innings Mijares has struck out 419 batters. He’s a lefty who hit 93-94 on the gun at Class AA New Britain this year.

The Twins seem to be in good shape with left-handed relievers, with Dennys Reyes and Craig Breslow in the majors and younger arms like Mijares here and Mariano Gomez at Class AAA Rochester. Not sure what future Carmen Cali and Ricky Barrett have in the organization.

Couple other things:

How about those Rays? Two straight nights of battlin’ baseball with Boston and winning both close games.

The Royals plan to throw Gil Meche and Zack Greinke at the Twins during the final series of the year.

Lineups

Royals (61-83)

1. David DeJesus, CF
2. Mike Aviles, SS
3. Jose Guillen, RF
4. Billy Butler, DH
5. Miguel Olivo, C
6. Ryan Shealy, 1B
7. Esteban German, LF
8. Mark Teahen, 3B
9. Alberto Callaspo, 2B

Pitching: Brandon Duckworth -lefties are 9 for 22 - .409 - against him.

Twins (80-65)

1. Denard Span, RF.
2. Alexi Casilla, 2B
3. joe Mauer, DH
4. Justin Morneau. 1B
5. Jason Kubel, LF
6. Mike Redmond, C
7. Brian Buscher, 3B
8. Nick Punto, SS
9. Carlos Gomez, CF

Pitching: Francisco Liriano 5-0, 1.44 since his return.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 11th, 2008 at 11:24 am and is filed under Game threads. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.