Winning is good.

One of the perennial baseball talk debates is:  which is better, high-scoring games or low -scoring games.  Personally, I like a mixture of both.  I wouldn't want every game to be 10-8 or 12-9, but I wouldn't want every game to be 2-1 or 3-2, either.  One of the great things about baseball is that you never know what kind of game you're going to get.  Variety is the spice of life.

I will say, though, that low-scoring games are a lot more fun when you're on the winning side of them.  Last night, the Twins were, thanks largely to the pitching of one Tomaso Anthony Milone.  This was the third start he's made since coming back from Rochester.  In those three starts, he has pitched nineteen innings and given up five earned runs.  He has walked two batters and struck out thirteen.

It has been widely assumed that, when Ricky Nolasco and Ervin Santana are ready, they will be inserted into the rotation and Milone and Trevor May will be removed from it.  That still may happen--it doesn't sound like Nolasco will be ready for a little while yet and Santana isn't eligible until July, so the decision doesn't have to be made today.  If I was in charge, though (and there are a lot of good reasons why I'm not), neither Nolasco nor Santana would simply be handed a rotation spot.*  They would have to earn it by proving they are currently one of the five best starting pitcher candidates the Twins have, because I'm not at all sure either of them is.  Yes, I know they have their contracts, but it's too late to change that.  Their contracts are what they are.  If they can't prove they're one of the five best starting pitcher options, then their contracts were a mistake.  There's nothing to be gained in compounding the mistake by starting them if they don't deserve to start.

*I'm aware of the belief that a player shouldn't lose his job when he's injured.  I just don't agree with it.  I believe that the best players should play.  If, while you were hurt, somebody showed that they were better than you, then that somebody should keep the job.  Yes, it may seem unfair to the injured player, but nobody ever promised that life or baseball would be fair.

We talked yesterday about how the Twins have been winning games by taking advantage of the other team's mistakes and good teams don't make as many mistakes.  Yesterday, the Cardinals made a couple.  Not huge mistakes, but big enough for the Twins to score a few runs.  In the fourth inning, an error on a pickoff attempt scored one run and set up the sacrifice fly that scored another.  In the eighth, Mark Reynolds pulled his foot off of first on a throw for no particular reason (the throw wasn't perfect, but it didn't look to me like he had to come off the bag to get it), resulting in another run.  It wasn't a huge offensive night, but combined with Milone's pitching, it was enough.

The Twins are currently 3.5 games out of first.  They're tied with the Yankees for the second wild card spot.  They finish their series with the Cardinals with a day game today.  Mike Pelfrey, who's had the occasional clunker but for the most part has pitched quite well, goes for the Twins.  The Cardinals counter with Jaime Garcia, who's missed a lot of time with injuries over the last couple of seasons but has been pretty good when he's been able to pitch.  This year he's been more than pretty good, he's been excellent in five starts.  No matter.  The Twins have it going now.  We've started our season-ending ninety-eight game winning streak.  We're still on track for 132-30!