The Surging Twins / HAHA GIANTS!

Eight runs off Madison Bumgarner before the first out was recorded. Giants down 8-0 after one inning. Yeeeha! That would really be the perfect ending to a perfect Carrie Jacobs Bond day. But it can't be, since the Dodgers and Tigers play each other. Someone has to lose.

The Twins' 9-2 win is the story. Not the Pretenders' feeble attempts at winning a baseball game. Closest they got was Miguel Cabrera pinch-hitting in the fifth, with the bases loaded, down 3-1. A well-placed hit would have turned the game around. But Teddy Bear grounded into a double play and ... well, that was that. A two-run blast by Andre Ethier, 20 rows of empty seats up in the right field pavilion, also helped enhance tonight's Dodger Stadium fan experience.

Ron Gardenhire's charges have won 15 of their last 17, are only seven games under (32-39), and have climbed out of last place in the AL Central. Not that long ago, it seems, they were twenty under, when your baseball blogger posted the kick-em-while-they're-down post. He did so because a Gardenhire-managed team is never down for very long. They aren't now, and have a knack for getting hot after the All-Star break. A fact impressed that hard way into the minds of Pretenders fans.

Schadenfreude

Noun, loanword from German; pleasure derived from the misfortune of others. 


Miss Fortune has been the Twins' companion all season. 


In tonight's seventh inning, they did kick up their heels and looked like they'd become the old Fighting Ferrets,  ready to piranha out a come from behind win. 


Drew Butera, owner of a .133 batting average, hit a two-run homer off Rick Porcello. Then, a typical Ferret rally: bunt single, hit by pitch, walk. But Al the Amazing, issuer of the free pass, struck out Trevor Plouffe to end the inning and keep the score at 4-2 Tigers. 


Plouffe went pooffe, and therein lies the Twins' woes: guys no one's ever heard of, a collection of relief pitchers assembled via the Patch And Pray method, on the spot with the game on the line. They're 12-9 when leading after seven, and 17-37 overall. Twenty games under .500, one-third through the season. 


After years of wins accomplished ferret style, with bottle caps, leftover pieces of wire, and bits of twine -- all of them, it seems, against the Tigers -- including and especially game 163 of 2009, let us not feel sorry for the Minnesota Twins. Let us, in fact, celebrate every visit by Miss Fortune to the Twins' side of the box score. 

Fighting Ferrets No More

Jason Kubel is hitting .347, Denard Spann .298. No one else, including Justin Morneau, is over .250. Joe Mauer played nine games before going on the DL and is still there. 


I looked it up: The Ferrets are last among the 30 teams in: runs, home runs, runs batted in, total bases, on-base percentage, slugging average, total plate appearances, number of pitches seen, extra-base hits, and OPS (on-base plus slugging). They're fourth from the bottom in team batting average (.230). 


Even the Phillies, with their starting rotation, would have trouble winning. 


They're next to last in winning percentage (.343 after tonight's 10-2 loss to the Tigers, 12-23 record, barely ahead of the Astros). 


All the bite has gone out of the Piranhas. 


The only thing out of the ordinary, for 2011, at Ferret Field tonight was the fourth inning storm that dumped marble-sized hail on the playing surface. 

HAHA YANKEES !!!

It's never too early in the season to say that. And it can't be said often enough. 

HAHA YANKEES !!!

Up 4-0 after seven, with So, and then Mo (Rafael Soriano and Mariano Rivera) waiting to finish off the Twins. 

Three walks, single, three-run bloop double (by Delmon Young) of the sort they always seem to get when they play the Tigers. Tie score. One in the tenth wins it. HAHA YANKEES !!!

Buddhists believe that one can experience extreme joy and sadness at the same time. That's how the baseball fan feels when he reads CC Sabathia's pitching line: seven innings, two hits, one walk.

A great game down the drain, but HAHA YANKEES !!!