Nick Punto got two hits last night. One of them was a key single in the Twins five-run inning; the other was a double in an inning when the Red Sox reliever retired Mauer and Morneau. Tonight, for an encore, I expect commenters Jason and Dr. Don to win the Powerball.

Based on yesterday’s post, it was the right night for Punto to be in the lineup because — among the Twins starters — Nick Blackburn is the only one who gets more of his outs on the ground than through the air. Of course, in the world of small sample sizes, Blackburn got 8 fly outs, 7 strikeouts and only 5 ground-ball outs while beating the Red Sox.

A side note: If you want a sense of how good Francisco Liriano’s slider was in 2006, his ground out:fly out ratio was 2.16:1 (compared to .76:1 this season), meaning that when he wasn’t striking out opponents (144 in 121 IP), opponents were beating the ball into the ground. Blackburns’ rotation-best ratio right now is 1:23:1.

Tonight, with Kevin Slowey (0.7:1) on the mound, it would make sense for Brendan Harris to be at shortstop, unless you want to make the argument that Punto, who is almost shorter than Marney Gellner, is a candidate to walk three or four times against Dice-K’s traditional wildness.

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A quick batting order thought: In 2004, the Twins were in first place but struggling badly when they dropped the first two games of a series in Cleveland. Their AL Central lead had dropped from six games to one and gloom was in the forecast.  That Sunday afternoon was when Gardy decided to shuffle his batting order, mainly in the Nos. 2 and 3 spots: Jacque Jones and Torii Hunter were moved into those spots, with Cristian Guzman and Lew Ford being moved down in the order.

The Twins won that game, and pretty much ran away with the division from that point on using the revised lineup. (Yes, that’s also the game when a frustrated Corey Koskie ended a slump by smashing a chair in the dugout runway and 112-year-old Terry Mulholland pitched eight innings. And, yes, Lew Ford batted in the No. 3 spot 57 times that season.)

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Finally, I asked yesterday if anyone wanted to “write a short essay about the demands of the No. 9 slot” in the Twins batting order. I received an email from Dan Wade, who writes about the Twins for Bleacher Report. His post takes apart Punto’s career and current performance in a way that is very much worth your time to read. Here’s his essay.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 27th, 2009 at 9:05 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.