Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it as “sweeeeeeeeeeeep,” does it?

I suppose, however, if you had guaranteed a split against the Angels before the series started, I would have taken the deal. The Angels are an awfully good team, as evidenced by their runaway showing in the AL West, their deep starting rotation, their offense and just about any other measure that you want to inspect them by.

That being said, it makes it a bit more frustrating that Saturday’s game was basically thrown away with an inning of singularly awful defense — the two errors by Brian Buscher and the fly ball that Carlos Gomez missed that could have easily been called an error instead of a double. And then Jesse Crain’s bullpen work left a bunch to be desired in the eighth inning on Sunday. The stuff was there, the location wasn’t.

Bullpen failures are part of late-inning, late-season meaningful baseball. The White Sox bullpen spit up games Friday and Saturday against Tampa Bay, and one of the few problems for the Angels has been some shaky work by their excellent set-up guy, Scot Shields. A chunk of the Tigers season-long mediocrity can be traced to their unreliable relief (keeping them from the realm of meaningful late-season baseball) and the Rays collection of relievers couldn’t hold a one-run lead in the ninth at Chicago, in part due to the nefarious AJ Pierzynski. (Note to all: If a Twin had done what AJ did, forcing the umps to interpret a rule and trying something to avoid a certain out, it would have been brilliant baseball. I’d love to avoid another “AJ good or bad” discussion. Just my preference, though.)

To me, Buscher’s defense was especially unnerving. A bad throw started the big Los Angeles inning on Saturday and a muffed grounder allowed it to continue. They were routine plays and that just can’t happen this time of year, even if he’s batting .309. Some people, myself included, have given him credit for improvement over the way he played third base last year. But the throws have been dicier lately and he doesn’t have the hands of the other third base options, which will multiply in a couple of weeks when the Twins will add Matt Tolbert and, likely, Matt Macri to the roster. In other words, it wasn’t just Saturday.

The importance of solid defense was shown Sunday in the four difficult plays that Nick Punto turned at third base, the first two kept the Angels from threatening in the first inning and the other two helped the Twins hang on to their lead for as long as they did.

Combine that with the fact that Punto is 12-for-25 in the last half-dozen games (and has a 13-game hitting streak) and it’s a no-brainer that, right now, Gardy has to put Punto’s name in the lineup — either at third base with Everett at short or at shortstop with Brendan Harris at third. I’m not a “you guys don’t under how good Punto really is” guy, but he’s a two-way hot hand right now and the Twins need to run with that for as long as he’s smokin’. (Yes, I know how painful that is to some of you, but you’ll just hafta calm down and Punto up for now.)

A couple of other notes: Anyone who has this game figured out should tell the rest of us what was up with Justin Morneau’s performance Sunday. After swinging a tired bat for most of the Angels series — and getting Gardy to talk about the need to give him a break at some point — he carried the offense with a single, double, home run and all three RBI. Maybe it was a trip to In-N-Out Burger or some other day-off placebo. Whatever the case, it was a nice breakthrough I didn’t expect to see Sunday.

And, finally, with six games coming up against Seattle and Oakland before finishing up at Toronto, I think we can be comfortable saying that the Twins can and should come home from this road trip with a winning record. The White Sox are on the road for 20 of their final 33 games, with their road action coming in a pair of 10-game trips.

So it’s not gonna be easy for them, either.

(I’ll be at the State Fair today on Minnesota Public Radio’s Midday Show at 11 a.m. We’ll have some fabulous gifts for people who ask questions and it’s a fine excuse to miss a day or work. Otherwise, you can listen to the show at 91.1 FM or the MPR website.)

other people are here too

This entry was posted on Monday, August 25th, 2008 at 8:05 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.