Who woulda thunk it. The Twins are in first place, yet again. It’s only May 11th, but to see the Twins in first place in the Central Division after 37 games is pretty refreshing.

The Twins pitching is what should mostly be credited, as they have allowed the Twins to win with a somewhat mediocre offense to this point.

I was holding out no hopes for the Twins this year. I always look at the Twins as a team that has potential to win the division. But they always have player turnover and from year to year it is hard to get a read on how good they actually might be. I mean, how many times have they won the division since 2000? That number speaks for itself.

I’m going to keep routing them on as if they were a winning team. I hope that the Twins can keep this up.

Dang.

What a way to end a great nap.

I woke up at about 9pm, flip the TV over to the Twins game that I had been missing, and the Twins have just broken up a no-hitter that had carried itself into the 9th inning. The big news on ESPN appears to be the current news of Gavin Floyd’s almost no-hitter against the Twins.

To me, this is really not a surprise. I get to see the Twins get shut down by mediocre pitchers all the time. It’s just something that happens. I don’t get it.

They are in first place in the Central Division? Great stuff. One can only hope that this young Twins baseball team can hang on. If the Twins can keep up the solid play and general enthusiasm and excitement in their dugout, they should be able to scrape together a pretty nice season.

I’m not saying they’ll win 95 games, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the Twins end up with a strong 2nd or 3rd place in the division. I don’t think they’ll be in the cellar at the end of the season.

Carlos Gomez getting hit in the head

I cringed when it happened, when Gomez got nailed by the throw to second by Ivan Rodriguez during May 2nd’s game. Sounds like he’s used to getting hit in the head.

“I got hit in the head five times in my career, so it’s no big deal,” Gomez said. “I’ll see how I feel tomorrow. I did hit my head, so it’s hard to tell if we play tomorrow or not.”

He was playing again already today.

Oh well.

The “Positives”

Watching the after-game shows, it was apparent that all Twins broadcast crew had become bitten by the nasty little critter referred to as the ‘optimism’ bug. Everybody had commentary about the optimistic angles of the Minnesota Twins loss tonight.

Granted, they did score 5 runs tonight. That alone is pretty cool. Some nights, going into a game, it’s pretty much a toss up as to whether the Twins will actually score more than a couple (and I mean only a couple) or less runs.

Morneau

Grand slam for Morneau. Can’t complain. Great stuff.

Liriano

Regarding yesterday’s game, Liriano. I still think that Liriano will come around eventually and be a pretty good, if not great, pitcher. I mean, the guy just had major surgery. This isn’t exactly Joe Mays coming back from surgery. This is Liriano.

I found this to be an interesting recap of the return of Liriano:

Francisco Liriano became the first Twins starter since Brad Radke on May 20, 2002, to fail to survive the first inning, and the Twins lost their second straight game. Liriano, 0-3 with an 11.32 ERA since returning from Tommy John surgery, allowed six runs in two-thirds of an inning against the Athletics.

Gotta win

The Twins need a nice little winning streak of about 4 games.

The Twins need to lock this one up. C’mon, just one run.

It was fun to watch the Twins try to hit good old Eddie Guardado, but now it’s time to knock in a run or two and keep this game from going into extra innings.

I assume that the Twins will not allow Texas to score in the bottom of the 9th. That is just flat out blind confidence on my part.

On a good note, Mauer’s average is now back over .300, let’s hope he can keep it there, or maybe even drive his average higher.

I’ll take a lead-clinching home run though, too. That would be nice.

Nope, guess we won’t get that, just a pop-fly. Oh well. C’mon bullpen.

This is great. Just….. flat out great Twins baseball marketing.