First off, an admission. I didn’t watch the weekend games very closely because the day job was a weekend job — running the startribune.com coverage of the NFL draft. So I’m a bit more conversant with Percy Harvin and Phil Loadholt than with the inner workings of the Cleveland series.

What I do know is that the 2-of-3 at Cleveland was done very comfortably, the victories being the kind of methodical dismantlings that make me optimistic about what’s to come. Nick Blackburn, with a right-timed visit to the mound from Rick Anderson, made the home team’s bats look pretty lame on Friday and Kevin Slowey came that close to a shutout on Saturday.

I like those hardly-in-doubt games because there will be enough drama in most of the others.

I’m more confident at 9-10 right now than I was after the first few weeks of the 2005 season. The 2005 season? Well, four years ago is my benchmark for a false positive. I remember being more than a little concerned while watching the Twins get off to a 15-8 start.

Why? They were working too hard to win.

I specifically recall sharing my distress with Ms. Baseball at the end of a two-weekend run of games with the Royals. The Twins went 5-0, but I remember complaining about how the Twins were working awfully hard to beat a terrible team — winning four of those games by one run and two in extra innings. In the other game, Kansas City rallied to tie the game after 6 before the Twins broke it open. (The Royals would finish 56-106 that season.)  Yes, the Twins were winning, but they seemed to be doing it in a way they couldn’t sustain — concerns that were borne out when they limped to an 83-79 record after winning the division the season before.

This season, I feel like I can point to specific reasons for the tough times: Slowey’s slow start, which seems to be behind him; an early run of teams playing well (Seattle, Toronto and Boston); the chill from some right-handed bats; the “Nos. 1 and 2″ pitchers in the rotation being winless. Those things will right themselves in time, I think, although Cuddyer and Gomez have to be causes for concern.

It’s hard to get worked up over the Morneau and Kubel strikeouts on Sunday (the bases-loaded situation in the seventh) because they’ve, um, been kinda good this season. And I think Gardy is of doing a good job of using the first few dozen games to figure out the best possible combinations for the rest of the season. The current Twins are constructed in such a way that almost everything the manager decides on a given day is open to second guessing — especially when it comes to his outfield du jour.

The next choice that confronts management is what to do with Joe Mauer’s return. The conventional wisdom had been that Jose Morales’ time in the majors would end. So far this season, Morales and Mike Redmond have split the job evenly. (Morales has 36 plate appearances and Redmond 35.)

First, give the Twins credit for choosing Morales over Drew Butera coming out of spring training. Second, who would have expected that Morales’ offensive numbers would be .375/.412/.469 in any kind of sample size? Third, recognize that Redmond has been playing even gimpier than he usually does.

No. 3 is a problem that can be turned into an opportunity. The Twins could put Redmond on the disabled list for a couple of weeks when Mauer returns. That would buy some time to make a more permanent call, especially if Mauer is only going to start a few games per week when he first comes back? (On the injury report for Redmond, the injury could be listed as head, shoulders, knees and groin … knees and groin.) That would give Morales extra at-bats and a reward, Mauer the ability to return at the pace being set for him and Redmond time to heal (and prepare for his next round of battle bumps).

This entry was posted on Monday, April 27th, 2009 at 10:16 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.