Kirby Puckett

Kirby Puckett

Saturday, April 19, 2014

Twins Week in Review: April 12th-April 19th

Three Reasons to be Happy
1. Kyle Gibson? Kyle Gibson!
Gibson makes it his second week in a row on the top of the reasons to be happy. And he is one. He's tied for the league lead in wins, (Hey, even thought it's still April it's still probably the first time since about 2006 a Twin has been the lead.) and boasts a 0.93 ERA. A pleasant surprise after his atrocious rookie season.
2. Our record is kind of decent
Right now we're 8-8, which is like a lot of things this young season for the Twins, decent, but fantastic when you consider that this is the Twins we're talking about.
3. Finally taking a series from Toronto
First time in the last 16 tries. By the way, here's a trivia question. Who has the most homers at Target Field? The answer is Jose Bautista with nine. He plays there three times a year. Jason Kubel, Justin Morneau, Jim Thome have all regularly played there and yet none of them hit more. There is a real Twins killer.
Three Reasons to be Frustrated
1. The pitching
This seems to be a reoccurring theme in this section. I thought it would change when Nolasco went eight innings on Saturday, but nothing else happened out of the usual this week. The pitching has been by far the most disappointing part of the year. I always anticipated that Pelfrey would be awful, and criticized the Twins when they resigned him, but Hughes was supposed to be better when leaving Yankee Stadium and Nolasco pitched in the playoffs last year. There's always time to turn it around, but for now I'm not impressed.
2. They got pretty lucky in game two Thursday
They pretty much won through the Jays eighth inning meltdown, or as my uncle Pete called it while we were watching the game "Sergio Santos and the Wild Pitches!" (cue cheesy Latin music) "Bringing you the sounds of pitches whistling to the backstop" 
3. Nobody is showing up to the games
Seriously, they've been averaging a little over 20,000 per game and it's especially noticeable if you look at the highlight of Bautista you can see it's almost empty in the seats in the second deck of left field. Hey, at least we're not Marlins fans. More on this in a couple days
Random Thought
I'm not worried about Mauer. He'll get his average above .300 easily. He's been climbing since the second week, so don't think of this as a panic watch. Just an observation that this year's all star game will be about 50% less fun if Mauer isn't there. Think back a couple years ago, when Cuddyer was the Twins lone reprehensive, now imagine someone like that in the Twin Cities at Target Field. Does it seem like fun to you? Me neither.
The Dan Gladden Stupidity Moment of the Week
This isn't really a stupid moment, but think of it more as a "Dan Gladden Giant Ego Moment of the week." Danny was talking about a Twins doctor's son sitting in the stands when he said, "He's wearing a number 32 Twins jersey." Provus, answered, "Hicks?"
Gladden responded "No, think of another 32" The next 30 seconds were Provus naming as many 32s as possible not named Gladden while a playing along yet slightly annoyed Danny tried steering him towards himself. Never change Cory Provus.

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