Thus Far, A Season Without A Script: The Weekend

The Twins have now lost three of Johan Santana’s last four starts, which would be disastrous were it not for the surprising performances of Ramon Ortiz and Carlos Silva.

Everybody, of course, is just figuring that anything positive that Santana can give the team in April is gravy, given his slow starts in recent seasons. I think that’s about the right way to look at it, and it’s sort of easy to look at it that way when the team has had an erratic April and is still 14-11 and in second place in the Central. It’s easy to look at it that way when two of the big rotation question marks coming out of spring training have thus far silenced critics.

There was no reason to expect that the team that lost five-out-of-six to Kansas City and Cleveland would go to Detroit and take two-out-of-three, but therein lies the basic truth about baseball: there’s really never any reason to expect anything, other than the unexpected. The Twins’ season has already had more highs and lows than a Hold Steady record, but they’re sitting in pretty good shape as they head to Tampa Bay for what should —should— be a little breather (it won’t be, of course, if only because Sidney Ponson takes the hill in the opener) before heading into one of the toughest stretches of the first half: a homestand featuring series with Boston, Chicago, and Detroit, and then a three-game set at Jacobs Field.

Today’s game –a 4-3 loss on a Brandon Inge walk-off homer against the struggling Jesse Crain– demonstrated how much the Twins depend on their middle of the order guys. Gardenhire shook up the lineup; Punto led off, and Bartlett hit second, and they were on base five times, but didn’t score any runs owing to the fact that Mauer, Cuddyer, and Morneau were a combined 0-10.

So far ’07 is looking like a repeat of last season in that the three-through-six guys in the batting order (Mauer, Cuddyer, Morneau, and Hunter) are the top four on the team in both RBI and runs scored.

As far as Crain’s wretched April goes, I’m not going to get too concerned until we get a couple more months out of the way. He was awful last April as well (12 IP, 20 hits allowed, and a 7.50 ERA).