Last night Livan Hernandez improved to 6-1 on the season with a solid pitching performance.  After an unsettling first inning where Manny being Manny hit his 498th career homerun, the Twins were able to get out of the inning only surrendering 3 runs.  After the first inning, Livan had much better control over his pitches.  He continued to use his ability to control the strike zone by painting the corners and using his off-speed pitches.  The Sox were off balance as a result for the rest of the game.  Livan pitched 6 innings while giving up just the three runs in the first.  He scattered 10 hits and allowed the Twins to scratch their way back in the game.  Unlike the game on Mothers Day, the Twins used small ball to score their 7 runs.  Only one of their hits was an extra base hit.  That was a double by Craig Monroe in the fifth inning. 

Last night, Livan stole the show with his ability to keep the score down after the horrible first inning.  The Twins offense has been the real story over the last two weeks.  The key change in the offense has been the emergence of their newly acquired players. 

Craig Monroe is batting .333 (10-for-30) with two doubles, three homers and nine rbi in his last nine games…he has six rbi in his past two games and collected his fourth multi-rbi game of the season.

Delmon Young has hit safely in six of his last seven games, hitting .348 (8-for-23) in that span.

Mike Lamb finished the series with five hits in 12 at-bats with four rbi.  Over the last 12 games her is hitting .316 (12-for-38) with seven rbi.

In order for the Twins to compete over the full season, it will be very important to have good pitching and timely hitting.  May has been a great month as a result of the team finally starting to gel. 

While the Twins have problem areas, their early season success (and equal failure by teams like Cleveland and Detroit) give me optimism that they can continue to win games and be competitive with any team in the American League.

Dan Gaudin is the second coming of Tom Glavine…  Well, not really but last night it looked as if he would be a 300 game winner.  Gaudin had no problems finding his spots as he painted corners and used his slider to keep the Twins batters out of sync.  Once again the 2008 version of the Minnesota Twins looked off balance and were unable to hit anything that came there way.  For each well hit ball there were two at-bats where the hitter was flailing at Gaudin’s slider.  As a result the Twins grounded out 11 times including one double play in the first inning by Matt Tolbert. 

Boof Bonser once again lacked control of his pitches.  From the very start of the game he was struggling to get his fastball over the plate and as a result he ended up walking 4 batters while striking out just 2 in 6 innings pitched.  He now falls to a 1-4 record on the season and while he didn’t have his best game he certainly kept the game within reach despite two of his four walked batters scoring.

The goat of last nights game goes to Craig Monroe.  He struck out twice and failed to make something happen with two outs in the 7^th inning.  He came to the plate with 2 outs and runners on second and third.  He flied out weakly to the shortstop to end the rally.   

The Twins offense continues to sputter and the power that we all thought that they’d have remains to be seen.  Tonight the Twins will attempt to come away with the series when they send Francisco Liriano to the mound.  This will be Liriano’s 3^rd start and he will once again work to remove the rust that has plagued him so far.

It’s about time…  Last night Craig Monroe gave us a glimpse of what he has historically been able to do at the plate.  Monroe had a very good night with 3 RBI including a double and a homerun.  The season thus far has not been kind for Monroe.  Prior to yesterday’s game he was batting a paltry .222 with 3 doubles, 3 RBI and 10 strikeouts. 

After the game, Ron Gardenhire was asked about his decision to start Monroe in the lineup.  He stated that Monroe had a career batting average of .667 versus Joe Blanton.  While numbers can lie, sometimes batters pick up the ball batter against certain pitchers.  Gardy’s statistical gamble paid off last night with Monroe leading the Twins to victory. 

While Monroe seems to be heating up his bat after a slow start, the Twins have greatly improved this year while platooning Jason Kubel and Monroe at the DH spot.  They have combined to hit 4 homeruns and knock in 18 RBI while hitting .276 in just 28 games.  That is a great increase over their production from that position last year.  They are on pace to hit 25 homeruns and around 115 RBI.  While those RBI numbers are probably inflated, anything near these numbers would be a great improvement over last years squad.  The DH position last year accounted for a .269 average with only 10 homeruns and 74 RBI.

The Twins are sitting with a 10-10 record and currently in second place in the AL Central.  They trail the Chicago White Sox by 1.5 games and will look to extend their 3 game winning streak tonight against the Athletics.  We will be sending Boof to the mound.