Twins Win?

The Minnesota Twins are heating up. They are on a 4 game winning streak, the longest winning streak since June of last year. My oh my go Twins. With the win the Twins have increased their playoff chances from 0.5% to 2%. Like I said in the last blog post, sometimes being a Minnesota sports fan is a hard thing to do. Yet we love our baseball. Nothing better than a beautiful day in downtown Minneapolis eating a dome dog, cracking peanuts, and washing it down with an ice-cold beer. Well, actually there would be one thing that could make our new outdoor stadium even better. A decent baseball team.  

Saturday’s game against the defending National League Champions was a painfully exciting win for the Twins. The Twins had the lead multiple times but the Milwaukee Brewers managed to creep back each time. Even though they are still in last place in the Central division, the win the Twins brought their record up to a meager 14-26.

The entire dugout cheered as Trevor Plouffe saved the Twins in the messy win with a homerun in the 11th inning. It was third homerun in four games. Although the Twins managed to scrape up a win, it was a sloppy one full of mistakes and missed opportunities. The Twins loaded the bases without managing to score not once, not twice, but three times. After Carl Pavano was pulled from the game in the 6th inning, the team cycled through so many relievers it appeared as though manager Ron Gardenhire was trying to play every Twins pitcher on the roster. Nonetheless, a win is a win and things are starting to pick up.

Despite playing with a shoulder injury, starting pitcher Carl Pavano’s throw is starting to change for the better. He was able to pitch six reasonably good innings in Saturday’s game against the brewers. His fastball has been lacking emphasis since his injury was discovered about a month ago. On Saturday some of his pitches were just shy of 90 miles per hour. A good sign for Pavano. A good sign for the Twins. He is an essential member of the Twins pitching team. Pavano wants to see the Twins win just as much as the rest of us. He acknowledged the Twins poor play thus far but he seemed hopeful that they can still turn it around.

"It's about picking each other up and weathering the storm. There's going to be storms throughout the season and we hit a pretty bad one there. I wouldn't even say that we're out of the woods, but we're playing better baseball and it is translating to wins."

The Twins are looking to sweep the Brewers today and bring their winning streak up to an unthinkable five in a row. Could it really be done? Will the Twins continue their hot streak or will they go back to their good, old, predictable demise that we are becoming so accustomed to seeing here in the land of 10,000 lakes?