Because the RNC is in town, things are a bit akimbo in Section 220. I’m working different hours this week — afternoons and nights — as we’re all shifted around a bit to  make sure we’re atop anything that makes news over in St. Paul. It’s a fun and exhilarating thing, although it has pretty much reduced me to watching the Twins with half an eye these last couple of nights. That may be good for my mental health.

Well, after Mauer’s double and Harris’ single last night, I scrambled together a quick post that I was one out away from publishing. It spoke to their fine at-bats and the way they picked up their faltering fielding teammates, and I was going to make the point that even though the Twins were tied for first, it felt like they were five games up. (It seemed only right after last week, when 1 1/2 games back felt like 11 1/2.)

Oh, well.

Maybe because I wasn’t paying hugely close attention, the loss doesn’t seem particularly painful. Gardy took advantage of his expanded roster and a couple of the new  guys made basic defensive mistakes that you wouldn’t expect. Throwing eight left-handed batters in a row at wicked A.J. Burnett was the right thing to do, and I’m interested in knowing what you all thought of the late-inning moves. Gardy went with Nathan for a second inning, which is what Ozzie did with Bobby Jenks earlier yesterday.

The difference, in addition to the White Sox winning, was that Jenks needed only 10 pitches to get his five outs; Nathan threw 45 to get six.

My verdict: Stuff that should have worked just didn’t. The Twins are not a stellar defensive team, which has been their reputation (if not always the reality) in the past, and they showed it with those three errors from the seventh through ninth innings. Does a fielder better than Kubel get to those hits in left during extra innings?

It was an exciting game on a night when you could walk around the Star Tribune newsroom and see the Twins, the Williams sisters, the RNC and Tim Gunn.

Is this a great country? Indeed it is. By Friday, though, I’ll be ready again to put Baseball First!

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 4th, 2008 at 1:18 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.