Kirby Puckett

Kirby Puckett

Saturday, May 10, 2014

Twins Week in Review: May 3rd-May 10th

Three Reasons to be Happy
1. Danny Santana
In his first glimpse of Major League action the hopeful shortstop of the future got five hits in 13 at bats while playing good defense at short. I'm writing this while listening to the game right now. The instant I wrote that Santana made a dumb throw to second base with two outs when it would have been easier to go to first. Never mind.
2. Pitching is coming around
Other than two forgettable games against Cleveland and Baltimore, they didn't give up more than four runs in a game. Not bad considering they showed up in the Reasons to be Frustrated in every week up until now. Hughes had two good starts, including the one yesterday that spawned the bizarro universe headline of, "Hughes outduels Verlander"
3. Mauer doesn't have to go on the DL
I was about to add this to the reasons to be frustrated before it was announced today that he was playing. His injury had particularly bad timing because he was on such a tear when it happened. (.370 in the last ten games)
Three Reasons to be Frustrated
1. The injury bug
Willingham and Arcia have both been injured for awhile,and Mauer, Hicks, and  Fuld are banged up. You know things are getting bad when your utility infielder is playing centerfield.
2. Still not buying it
As of right now, the Twins are 16-18, not bad, but look at their record last year. at this time. At one point last  year they were 18-17. The collapse is inevitable. This team is just too young and lacking in talent to come very close to contending.
3. The deep bench
I'll admit it. I saw that they had called up Logan Darnell and said, "Who the hell is that?" Then they called up Matt Guerrier, (member of the second time with the Twins club along with Kubel and previously Bartlett. I still can't believe they didn't sign Johan Santana. C'mon, why not go all the way if you're going to sign former players)
Random Thought of the Week
You all have probably heard of the Yu Darvish near no-hitter last night. Or more specifically, the ball off of David Ortiz's bat that counted as an error. I'm not going to rip this one apart, it could have gone either way, miscommunication is a gray area, but my bigger point here, is the opposite, errors aren't counted nearly enough. Official scorers have gotten way too easy or fielders. There seem to be some rules of errors.
1. The first baseman can't get charged with an error unless it's blatantly obvious.
2. If the ball is hit hard, there's no error on the play
This needs to be fixed. We'd get a much better idea of who the best fielders are and who keeps getting bailed out by spineless official scorers.
Kris Atteberry Awesome Moment of the Week
During the game today, Dan Gladden was on vacation, so Atteberry was filling in for him. The entire time he was riding Joe West, who was umping home plate, the peak coming on a called strike three, when West must have been quiet, causing Atteberry to yell, "Show some energy, Joe West!" That was good enough, but the best part was a few seconds later when he said, "What do you think West says to people when they come to the nice umpire headquarters? 'Hey, get off my floors,
An inning later, they were discussing Provus singing along with the seventh inning stretch and for no particular reason, Atteberry quips, "Down there West is probably saying to Kinsler, 'That Provus is pretty good, but you should hear me sing some time.'" Never Change, Kris Atteberry.

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