Sweep

Wow. Three straight bunts in the seventh –a couple for base hits, and a sacrifice.

That’s winning ugly, but I guess it’s still winning. I hate small ball, though. And I hate bunts. I really do. I particularly despise the sacrifice bunt. That sort of stuff is rinky-dink baseball. Or piranha baseball, if you’re buying into that monkey business.

So much of what constitutes baseball strategy –especially the ingrained, knee-jerk stuff like the sacrifice bunt– chaps my ass.

I’m not going to argue with 16-for-16 in the stolen base department, however. Quick, though, somebody do the homework and tell me how many of those sixteen guys ended up scoring.

For the second straight year the Twins have gotten superb play from their super subs; this season’s cast: Tyner, Rodriguez, and Casilla.

Speaking of rinky-dink, conventional-wisdom baseball, how about Seattle’s misfortunes with the intentional walk? First Morneau was given an intentional pass to load the bases and set the stage for Hunter’s grand slam on Tuesday night; then, last night Jarrod Washburn intentionally walked Joe Mauer with one out, and the next batter, Michael Cuddyer, doubled off reliever Juan Matteo to give the Twins a 3-2 lead.

And still Mike Hargrove hadn’t learned his lesson; Morneau was intentionally walked to load the bases for the second time in the inning, and Mike Redmond followed with a two-run single.

The unexpected: Carlos Silva (2.00) and Ramon Ortiz (2.05) have lower ERAs than Johan Santana (3.00). Thus far Boof Bonser has been a disappointment (6.89) and Sidney Ponson has pretty much been the disappointment we all expected (8.18).

The bullpen has had more rocky outings than we’re accustomed to seeing, the team has been out-homered 16-8, and the Twins have already seen a rash of mostly nagging injuries (Rondell White, Jeff Cirillo, Nick Punto, Torii Hunter, Jesse Crain, and Luis Castillo), yet the team is 10-5, coming off its second series sweep of the season, and in first place in the Central.

All of this is surely good news as the team heads to Kansas City to take on the lowly Royals, and –at least for now– we can all stop worrying about the Twins stumbling out of the blocks the way they did in 2006.