Everybody Hurts

Angels 9, Twins 1

Great game to turn off last night. My laptop battery mercifully ran out of juice in the top of the 9th.

I can't remember the last time the Twins played a series against the Angels in which there wasn't at least one game where everything fell in for the Halos. I'm not suggesting they didn't earn most of their hits, but there were a couple of 50-foot bleeders mixed in for good measure. That's fine - they'll almost certainly collect fewer than 15 hits tonight and Thursday.

I was glad that the lineup (minus Delmon Young), defense, and every member of the bullpen chose last night to suck. If you're only going to score 1 run, you might as well give up nine and throw in a couple of errors. I would expect everyone who pitched last night to be more effective their next time out.

Boof, in particular, was pretty good anyway. He needed 4 batters to get through his first-start-of-the-year jitters. After that, he allowed 1 ER on 5 hits (one a cheapie) with 4 Ks and no walks in 5.2 innings. Hopefully, in his next start, he won't give up so many extra-base hits.

The Twins will face a left-handed starter tonight, and I'm interested to see the lineup that Gardy puts together. In his brief career so far, righties have hit Mr. Saunders considerably better than lefties, so I'm sure Monroe will DH. I'd like to see Redmond catching tonight and Friday night, when KC is scheduled to start a LHP. With day games on Thursday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday, it would seem to make sense to put Mauer on the day schedule anyway. Will Lamb still be in the lineup? Punto historically has been weaker (gulp) against lefties. Maybe Tolbert will get the start.

I like the Twins' chances the rest of this series. Blackburn and Slowey have at least as much potential as the Angels' starters. And with only 4 runs (and 0 HRs) in two games, there's plenty of room for the Twins' lineup to get hitting - especially Morneau (0-7). The Twins are very fortunate to be facing the Angels at a time when their pitching staff is so weakened by injuries. The Twins should be able to at least pull off a split against a stronger team, though they will probably be outscored in the process.