Just passing through.

I got back to town last night, but am leaving again this morning, so I just had time to catch up on the wgom and post this game recap.

The benefit of East Coast games is that old duffers like me can stay up late enough to watch the end of the game.  Except that last night, there was a rain dealy that lasted over two hours, so I was only up for the first three innings.  At least I got to see the Twins take a good lead, which they held and expanded on the rest of the game.  it looks like maybe they took out some of their frustrations of the Yankees series on the Baltimores.

Duff-man had his second straight solid outing, pitching seven shutout innings before tiring in the eighth.  And even in the eighth it looks like they didn't hit him that hard.  They just had a succession of singles, one of the infield variety.  A. J. Achter came in and got the job done, although he walked a couple of guys.  Pretty much everyone contributed to the offense.  Even Hunter, who was the only starter to take an o-fer, drew a walk in an important situation.

Some random notes:

Speaking of frustration, Molitor was asked about it during the pregame show.  He took it as a negative, sort of like "intimidated", and said, no, they weren't frustrated during the Yankees series, everyone was still upbeat and convinced they could come back and win.  I assume they were frustrated against the Yankees, and they should have been.  To me, if they weren't frustrated after losing three games they could've won, that would be a bad sign.

Speaking of Hunter, I'm sorry to hear he's having problems with his hand.  That means he'll blame his poor season on an injury, and decide he should come back next year because he's still a good player when he's healthy.  Unfortunately, I see no scenario in which Hunter wants to play next season and Terry Ryan tells him to go away.  In fact, I think it's likely that Hunter will be encouraged to come back again next year.*

*And in fact, hands are extremely important to a batter.  I can think of no case in which a batter had a hand or wrist injury and it did not affect his batting in a significant way.  It's just that having Hunter back next year makes no sense to the Twins no matter how well he bats.

Speaking of Terry Ryan, I was gratified to read that more citizens are coming on board with my lack of trust in this front office.  That's the one thing that's keeping me from being really excited about the future of this team.  I still see far too much willingness to stick with mediocre veterans and far too much reluctance to stick with struggling young players.  Yes, they've stuck with Sano and even Rosario, but neither of them has had a serious slump yet.  We'll see what happens when they do.  It doesn't help us to have an awesome farm system if we're not willing to give these guys a full shot at the majors and stick with them when they're struggling.  I think the future could be really bright, but I also see a lot of potential for the Twins managment to mess that up.

But such complaining is for another day.  Last night, the Twins won 15-2!  That's awesome!  That gives us Momentum!  That's the start of our season-ending forty-two game winning streak!  We're still on track for 101-61!