Dave The Dastardly

The Shoe get the boot. He might have been up around 70 pitches. Get some ice on that arm!

Elvis has left the building! Well, maybe he only moved to the Conservatory.

I guess you don't want to pitch Moreland down and in.

Aaand he goes down swinging! But his AB's are improving. One of these days, Alice!!!

Polanco - at least he hit the ball. Might be hard for Sano to duplicate

I live in the country, mostly wooded 12 acres with a creek running through it. That means a lot of wildlife and that means raccoons dropping by. They bust up my wife's bird feeders, steal the occasional chicken, throw open my grill so they can lick up the grease (thanks for that by the way), dig up the potted plants on my deck, raid the vegetable garden, etc. etc. Basically a major pain in the patootie. Anyway, I once made the mistake of asking two of my brothers-in-law, both avid hunters and one a retired infantryman who got into shooting scrapes in both Somalia and Afghanistan, what was the best Raccoon Eradicator I could buy. For the next half hour I was deluged with footpounds, muzzle velocities, trajectories, grains of powder, etc. etc. They both felt pretty pleased with themselves by the time they finished though my brain had gone dormant about one minute into the conversation. So I went home and continued to eradicate raccoons with my trusty .22 Ruger. Aim, squeeze the trigger and dispose of the bodies. That's all I need to know. And I don't think the coons care how many footpounds hit them. My point is, let the statistics guys, like my two gun nut brothers-in-law, do their thing because that's what makes them happy and guys like me and you can just gloss over all those arcane stats and just talk regular baseball stuff because that's all we need to know to hit our target.

Bieber goes nine, Twins starters can't go 5, bullpen can't hold a lead, hitters can't hit (half the position players are struggling to get to .200) Donaldson and Simmons are the only two infielders who can field (and Simmons is out with Covid) and Rocco makes baffling moves. But I'm positive! Call me Pollyanna.

Interesting debate around Sano; bench him so he can get his head together, or keep putting him in the lineup until he starts hitting. The problem is we've got about 5 guys batting below the Mendoza line. Can't bench 'em all. So we've got four of them (Kepler is almost at number 5) in tonight's lineup. Doesn't portend great things at the plate, but what's the alternative?

What? Wasn't Dobnak supposed to be this guy? Did I miss something?

And that earned Niekro an appearance on the Tonight Show. That was back when we could still laugh at such antics.

You must live in a different Wisconsin than I know. I spent 14 years of my adult life in the Badger state, most of it coaching basketball from junior high to junior college and ran into enough negativity to discharge a Tesla battery. Let's be honest; when a team wins, fans are positive, when a team stinks, fans are negative. Human nature.

Renfroe. .185 hitter. Be very afraid

I expect they will all shift to the left side of the infield.

JD is exhausted. He ran just yesterday.

Fortunately I have inoculated myself against frustration.

Tarot cards

Okay Hansel, Gonzalez's batting .212. Don't give him anything he can hit.

Mound visit: "Yo, Hansel, you're not supposed to hit the batters. Now the next you gotta do is don't let that guy steal second...."

You had me there until you got to that not living past 60 thing...

Cave batting .167. Sano a mind-numbing .079. I think we might be better off going with 7 players.

Today's Sano pool; my bet, 3 AB, only 2 strikeouts, four praising comments from game announcers how Sano's looking more comfortable at the plate.

Well Donaldson did round the bases yesterday. Every Twins player gets a day off for that feat.

This whole "rest" debate makes longtime baseball fans wonder. It wasn't that many years ago when position players would play both games of a double-header (for you younger folks that means a team plays two nine-inning games back-to-back in the same day - which of course is a rarity today) without pulling hamstrings or dropping dead from exhaustion. And pitchers were expected to pitch nine innings, not 4 or 5. In the 1970's 28% of games were complete games. In the 1980's 15% of games were complete games. Today 2% are complete games. Yet in the meantime pitchers requiring Tommy John surgery has jumped from 12 pitchers requiring surgery in the 20 years from 1974-1994 to 194 MLB players requiring the same surgery from 2000-2011. And during the same time period 275 minor league players also went under the knife. So more rest, less innings pitched, less innings thrown but more surgery required. Does it take a genius to realize something is wrong here? I'm definitely not a genius, in fact I've bee called a dumb a$$ many times, but if I was into this over-analyzing craze plaguing baseball these days, I'd start wondering if there isn't something wrong with common weight training and conditioning practices and stop counting pitches as a determinate of arm health. Nolan Ryan once threw over 200 pitches in one game and lived to tell about it and Cy Young reportedly threw over 700 complete games in his career. Think about it, that's more complete games than all the major league pitchers combined have thrown in the last two decades! And required hundreds of surgeries despite throwing fewer innings and fewer games. Hello!!!!

Definition of "Slug Fest on tap" for Twins fans: Take two slugs of whiskey before pouring yourself another tap beer.

Anybody notice Boston has one player batting below the Mendoza Line (.200) in the line up while the Twins have three? And one more (Sano) batting below the Sano Line (.100)? Slug fest on tap?