This would have been great day for outdoor baseball, eh?

Bill Lester of the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Committee said that the field could be ready for batting practice by noon, and he was just about right. The infield is in place, the batting cage is sitting in right field, ready to be moved behind the plate. You can see some of the football lines, even after workers tried to blast them away, but it’s really not that bad.

Good stuff in the game notes. The Twins are 41-32 since the All-Star break while the Tigers went 38-37. The Twins have outscored the Tigers 379-320 since then, while the Tigers have a better team ERA, 4.53 to 4.71.

Joe Nathan has converted all 30 of his save opportunities against the Tigers.

Denard Span is batting .413 in his career against Detroit - .432 this season.

Joe Mauer will lock up his third batting title today. He’ll join a group of three-time winners that includes Nap Lajoie, Ty Cobb, Harry Heilmann, Ted Williams, Carl Yastrzemski, Tony Oliva, Rod Carew, George Brett and Wade Boggs. Wow.

Magglio Ordonez is batting .386 over his past 55 games and leads all active players with at least 25 plate appearances against Scott Baker with a .462 batting average.

 Curtis Granderson has hit 16 homers in 81 games against the Twins in his career. His .536 slugging percentage at the Dome is seventh among active players.

The Miguel Cabrera situation is buzzing through the pressbox. My buddy John Paul Morosi of Fox Sports feels Cabrera should  be benched. Here’s more background on the controversy. Cabrera is expected to play today, but you wonder if he’ll be able to focus.

The batting cage is being wheeled into place. The clubhouses will open in a few minutes. Joe C. will have the lineups on his blog when they become available.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 6th, 2009 at 12:30 pm and is filed under Random thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.