After the ineptitude and frustration of New York, playing three games against a team that seemed intent on finding ways to lose was a nice change for the Twins. Despite jumping out to a 5-0 lead in the opener, and seemingly trying to kill both Gomez and Span in the process, Cleveland almost found a way to lose the opener before dropping the final two games of the series.

Yesterday, the Twins put together a fast-pitch softball type rally to take the lead (bloop double, walk, bunt single, 2 RBI grounders) and then won the game when Eric Wedge, the Cleveland manager, pretended that Rafael Perez (”Perez is one of the best relievers in the game against lefties,” he told the propaganda site mlb.com after the game) was a suitable match for Justin Morneau (.347 on-base percentage against lefties and a knack for big hits). Morneau’s double broke a 2-2 tie and Jason Kubel, who has struggled against lefties this season, got an RBI single for the final run.

For the record, opposing left-handed batters have a .321 OBP against Perez and a 1.37 walks/hits per inning. Opposing right-handers? .321, too. By comparison, lefties have a .262 OBP against the sometimes maddening Dennys Reyes this season and a 0.87 WHIP.

Thanks, Eric. You wanna help Ozzie manage the White Sox this week?

If nothing else, this weekend confirmed what has become increasingly obvious. Denard Span absolutely needs to be in the lineup every day, even when Carlos Gomez and Michael Cuddyer are considered fit for duty. Span, who made a stunning catch in left-center to keep Cleveland from scoring more then one run in the eighth, needs to be somewhere in the outfield. In his postgame blog, Joe C. had this interesting muse: “Span said he was playing straight away and deep, trying to prevent a double. So, if he was standing somewhere in from the 400-foot sign in center field, I’m guessing he ran 125 feet to get to the spot where he caught the ball. The catch came just in front of the 370-foot sign in left-center field.”

It’s also becoming increasingly harder to find reasons why Delmon Young, now batting .295/.338/.397, shouldn’t be in the lineup daily. But Span needs to be batting leadoff and playing in the field for the Twins to be putting their best team on the field.

Yesterday, on TV, Dick’n'Bert were making much of the fact that the Twins have played well as a whole against their division rivals — and that all but six of the remaining 25 games against AL Central teams are at the Dome, beginning with the four games against the White Sox that starts tonight. That’s a good thing.

But let me frame it in a way that brings more urgency to the next couple of weeks. The Twins are entering a stretch against the White Sox and Cleveland at home followed by series with awful Seattle and Kansas City on the road. This is a stretch where the Twins needs to be winning much more often than not. Not talked about on TV was the 13-game road trip to LA, Seattle, Oakland and Toronto that begins in a few weeks and runs until the Republicans leave town on September 4.

You don’t have to be a genius, or even a blogger, to realize that trip will have a major, major bearing on whether the Twins will be playing meaningful games for the final few weeks of the season.

The better they do starting tonight and running through the next couple of weeks, the less I’ll be worried about the four-city trip that will require more mental toughness than the Twins have shown on the road this season. No one can deny the Twins of July, through lineup shake-ups and individual improvement, are performing better than they did back in the April and May.

Now, it’s time to show improvement at the mental side of the game.

other people are here too

This entry was posted on Monday, July 28th, 2008 at 8:53 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.