It’s a morning without the day job and I’m taking a break from preparing to visit with a group of summer journalism campers this afternoon. (If you’re reading this over at the MITY program this morning, it would really be great if someone ran to Dairy Queen and got me a Blizzard. Thanks!)

On the previous post, Mudcat asked me about my lineup choices for tonight against Randy Johnson because “this seems to be a game no one expects to win.” I don’t buy that theory because this is old Randy, not young or middle-aged Randy, and I’d rather face him than Dan Haren. That being said, I’d go with the conventional lineup with one wrinkle: Gomez, CF, Casilla, 2B, Mauer, DH, Morneau, 1B, Monroe Cuddyer, RF (see comment below), Redmond, C, Young, LF, Harris, SS, Macri, 3B. It’s a night game after a day game and Joe hits lefties pretty good, don’t you think. He can rest on Monday.

sane noted that if the Twins had kept Johan with the idea of moving him for a premium at the trading deadline, current events show us that CC Sabathia and Erik Bedard could well be on that market, which would have depressed the market. He’s right — but, as JimCrikket, points out, it would have been wonderful drama to see what the Twins would have done near the trading deadline if there were, say, 4 1/2 games out of first place. Frankly, at this very moment, I prefer the way things have played out. The Yankees don’t need either of those guys now because they have Sidney Ponson!

Bisonaudit and romer want to revise the schedule in various ways, creating more balance. I like having more games against division rivals and I like playing the NL. Still, I’d like to see every team in the American League play here twice. My solution: 15 games against division rivals, 10 against the other teams and 12 interleague games. That’s 60+90+12 for those keeping track. I’ll let someone else deal with logistics.

Several people raised thoughts about Mauer, Morneau and All-Star voting. I simply don’t go there. Last year, I was an active nonparticipant in the ridiculous Pat Neshek/extra player vote. The entire process is a sham, with people voting 25 times — and more when you hit a couple of keystrokes on your computer. The fan voting system is stupid, stupid, stupid and to offer any kind of serious statement about it is just as stupid. On the rare occasions, I fill out a ballot, I do theme teams.

For example, here’s my “guys I’d knock down on consecutive pitches” team: 1B-Richie Sexson, 2B-Dustin Pedroia, SS-David Eckstein, 3B-Miguel Cabrera, C-AJ, OF-Carl Crawford, Johnny Gomes, Matt Stairs, DH-Frank Thomas. All for different reasons.

And my “guys me ‘n’ Rincon could pitch a no-hitter against” team: 1B-1B-Kevin Millar, 2B-Mark Ellis, SS-Julio Lugo; 3B-Mike Lamb, C-AJ, OF-Jacque Jones, Chris Denorfia, Josh Hamilton, DH-Jose Vidro. (Josh Hamilton? Yeah, I don’t know about Juanie, but I’d walk him and pitch to the next guy. I just wanna get an autographed ball before the game.)

What’s your theme team?

Enjoy the weekend.

other people are here too

This entry was posted on Friday, June 20th, 2008 at 10:23 am 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.