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Gameday Thread: Twins at O's

By Scott Christ 
                           
     Carlos Silva, RH                Daniel Cabrera, RH
     (2-0, 3.41)                     (1-2, 5.79)

     LF S Stewart                    2B B Roberts
     2B N Punto                      LF L Bigbie
     C  J Mauer                      3B M Mora
     1B J Morneau                    SS M Tejada
     CF T Hunter                     1B R Palmeiro
     RF J Jones                      C  J Lopez
     DH T Tiffee                     RF B Surhoff
     3B M Cuddyer                    CF L Matos
     SS J Bartlett                   DH J Gibbons

I have a confession to make, everyone. I sort of hate the Minnesota Twins. It's not that I think they're an overrated organization. On the contrary, I think they're a great one, a far better franchise than ours. They do what they have to do and they do it well, developing players and creating loyalty or whatever else.

However, there is a reason. Take the case of Justin Morneau. Here is a quote from Ron Gardenhire.

"He's playing the game the right way."

This is why. I hate hearing how the Twins play the game The Right Way and Do The Little Things. Enough already. Apparently playing the game the right way means, you know, murdering the ball, at least in the case of Justin Morneau. In Torii Hunter's case, it means being a great defensive center fielder. So basically, playing the game the right way is being good at one or many things. No kidding? No one says Miguel Tejada plays the game the right way, or Manny Ramirez. Mostly just the Twins. I think the Marlins get the same thing.

But sportswriters get excited about bunting and the hit-and-run. And this is not even really against the Minnesota Twins as a team. They're a real good team and I do think they play good baseball and it fits their club. So mostly, again, I'm just bothered by things sportswriters and broadcasters hammer into the ground, not to mention managers. Managers say some weird stuff.

But anyway, I'm looking forward to this series to see how we match up with Minnesota. As for the Silva/Cabrera matchup, I defer to the comments of the previous post where community memeber CarrieIC runs through all three of them. In fact, I'll just reprint:

Silva's greatest strength is throwing the ground-out pitch. The good part of that is that the O's will get to make contact with the ball, and as long as they have contact, Lil' Brian and Miggy have a chance of lifting it out of the park. Silva will generally hold a good offense to three or four runs, so the real question is, will the O's bats be on tonight? If they are, we'll take the game. But this lineup has shown a real propensity to fall for the ground-out pitch. We could be in for a frustrating number of double plays.

As far as Cabrera goes, it'll depend on whether the start against Toronto was a fluke. But even so, the Twins aren't doing a great job right now of capitalizing on the mistakes of opposing pitchers. They did a better job of it in Tampa Bay than they had been, but that was against Tampa Bay. Anyone (except the Yankees) can smash around the Rays a bit. Morneau's whacking the living hell out of the ball (if he hadn't been sidelined for three weeks by a bean to the head in April, his numbers would likely be around Miggy's right now), and Mauer isn't far behind.

I think the chances are 60-40 of an O's win.

Game time is 7:05.

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