Yo, Miguel Cabrera. There’s no batter’s bill of rights that requires Livan Hernandez to throw you a fastball. You looked like a punk yelling at him after he popped you up Friday night. And you looked like a fool when Baker and Nathan sat your butt down Saturday night on fastballs. And even more so when Nathan got you with the slider to end Sunday’s game. Sweet.

Any time I start to get uncomfortable about Mike Lamb at third base, I’ll close my eyes and think of Carlos Guillen.

Craig Monroe’s home-run trip around the bases Saturday night was a cool moment. Reality is that the Tigers didn’t have a place for him and set him loose, his fine 2006 season notwithstanding. The move made sense for them, although you’re going to explain to me what exactly Marcus Thames and Jacque Jones bring to their current outfield that’s so much better. For him to go very, very deep at a key time was a big deal for him and his celebratory hand-breaking high fives were fun to watch.

Justin Verlander said he thought Monroe showed him up and talked silly about being eager to face him again. I think Mr. 1-and-5 Ace has more important things to worry about.

Speaking of which, having Monroe/Tolbert/Redmond on the bench makes me feel like the Twins can go ithere at a key time and have a reasonable shot at getting someone on base. Combined with Kubel as DH, it’s a better deal than the DH/PH/what-the-H options that were too routine last year. Anyone miss Luis Rodriguez and Jason Tyner?

Speaking of which II: Is there anyone you’d rather come to bat in the ninth inning of a close game than Jacque Jones? For the other team, that is.

If Gardy instead of Jim Leyland had yanked Kenny Rogers with Gogomez coming to bat in the seventh on Sunday — and it led to the same game-destroying result — what would we be saying and writing? Good managers make bad choices over the course of 162 games. It’s fine and proper to point out moves that (we think) shouldn’t have been made, but for one or two or three of those to equal “the manager bites” is silly. I’ll take Leyland as a manager any day and I’m hard pressed to name too many folks I’d rather have managing the Twins than Gardy. Ozzie Guillen?

That being said, yes, it was a little unsettling to see Juan Rincon warming up in the eighth on Sunday after the Twins had fought back from 0-6 to 7-6

A 5-0 homestand. First-place by 1 1/2 games. Three games with the White Sox, followed by four with Boston and three with Toronto. It’s more fun that it looked at this time last week, huh?

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This entry was posted on Sunday, May 4th, 2008 at 4:55 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.