Gardy went with the Section 220-recommended batting order, with the exception of Brendan Harris at second base and batting second, and it kind of worked out. It kind of had to, given this was the second straight night that the bullpen, uhhhhh, wasn’t very good. (Uhhhhh is for uhhhhhnderstatement.)

Playing in the field for the first time this season, Jason Kubel capped the Twins counter-rally with his fifth grand slam in 45 career home runs, helping turn a messy 9-3 deficit into an 11-9 victory that returned good cheer to the Metrodome and reinforcing that something needs to be done about the bullpen.

Oh, and there was a single, double and triple in Kubel’s night, even if the triple was pretty dependent on as assist from Angels right fielder Bobby Abreu, who, uhhhhh, wasn’t very good at chasing it down. But four rockets are four rockets, especially when the fourth one clears the bases and caps a seven-run rally.

So you’ll have to take any gripes about a wobbly cycle someplace else. I’m not entertaining the subject.

The beauty of the early season is how the numbers can change in a single night. The first time Kubel came to the plate, his batting average was .226 and there was appropriate announcer talk about how he’d been struggling at the plate. Next time he steps to the plate, his average will be .306 and he’d better get a standing O.

With a lefty scheduled to start for the Angels in Game 2 of the series, it’ll be interesting to see if that ovation comes at the start of the game or when/if he enters as a pinch hitter. Even good stuff can create issues for a manager.

But the biggest issue was one that was allowed to be submerged for a few hours in the postgame excitement: The bullpen has given up 32 earned runs in 36 2/3 innings this season. And you can huff about how a dozen games constitutes a “small sample size,” but the bullpen bridge from starters to Joe Nathan was an issue for the second half of last season and it was an issue during the off-season and it was an issue that Gardy and Rick Anderson were trying to solve during spring training.

It is patently unfair to expect Gardy and Andy to have to guess on a nightly basis which middle reliever might be reliable enough to get a few outs. I said on my Opening Day radio gig on MPR  that it will be a test of the front office to react strongly if the bullpen became problematic. They don’t need me to tell them it’s already become so. They shuffled Philip Humber out on Friday and brought in a guy, Juan Morillo, whom the Colorado Rockies were in the process of Humbering. He’s said to throw a high-90s fastball, but, uhhhh, there’s been a problem.

Most notable about Morillo is that he walked 56 guys in 59 2/3 innings last season while pitching in Class AAA. So the expectation must be that Andy will make magic happen. (See Dennys Reyes and his 0.89 ERA in 2006 after ERAs of 5.33, 10.66, 4.75 and 5.15 for six different teams from 2002-05.)

Let’s see what happens next.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 18th, 2009 at 12:01 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.