Nice. Nice. Very Nice.

Wasn’t that swell?

Isn’t it always a fine thing to see the local nine kick the living snot out of those shitheels from Chicago?

And wasn’t it comforting to see Ramon Ortiz get his feet wet coming out of the bullpen, in a situation where there was absolutely no pressure? He did a nice job, too: three outs on seven pitches.

Sixteen hits and seven walks: Swell. Ten hits from the top four guys in the batting order, and six hits from the bottom three. That was also swell.

We’ve seen all manner of swellness over the last several games, and for perhaps the first sustained stretch all year the Twins have looked every bit like the team we all hoped they’d be coming out of spring training.

Meanwhile, Britt Robson, David Brauer, and I kick around some thoughts on the first couple months of the season over at Britt’s blog, On the Ball. Go over there now and chime in on the conversation.

We spent a fair amount of time talking about how difficult it’s going to be for the Twins to find the money to sign Hunter, Santana, and Morneau (the consensus being that Hunter is rapidly pricing himself out of Minnesota’s budget), but none of us mentioned Michael Cuddyer. This is a guy who’s also going to end up costing the Twins a shitload of money.