Of course we have.

But there’s not going to be any trashing and bashing and tee-heeing here. We don’t do that in Section 220. (wink) No, siree. Sure, he’s made that catch dozens of times — but never on a drifting drive off the bat of Nick Punto, right?

The Twins opened the road swing by doing what they needed to do in a fun game to watch. I’m not going to buy the “playoff intensity” theme because there’s no way that Sean Rodriguez, the minor-league slugger, comes in as a pinch-hitter and gets asked to put down that (failed) sacrifice in the 10th — and no way that he hits with two outs in the 12th instead of bench options Gary Matthews and Robb Quinlan.

Mike Scioscia, the Angels’ manager, was putting Triple-A-Rod up there in an important situation because he’s probably a candidate to get that kind of at-bat in the 12th inning of a post-season game when all other options have been used up. That’s one of the beauties of having a 15-game lead with six weeks left in the regular season. Thanks, Skip.

The other thing I would have been interested in hearing about is if Justin Morneau had ripped a hit in one of those at-bats when Joe Mauer was intentionally walked. After all, Scioscia is the greatest manager who has graced a dugout in the third millennium and few have been willing to come at Morneau in the last month or so. Seriously, I’ll be trolling the Los Angeles media later in hopes that someone asked him about that.

I really do think Scioscia is a very, very good manager. I also think Gardy ain’t so bad at the job, either.

And Punto? And Matt Guerrier? I’ll turn it over to you all to offer up the praise.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 22nd, 2008 at 1:10 am and is filed under Thoughts, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.