Game One Thoughts
Always good to start with a win. Here are some thoughts from the season opener.
The Twins offense isn’t very good, especially without Joe Mauer. Felix pitched well tonight, but I thought he got away with quite a bit too.
I really liked Gutierrez’s approach at the plate in his first two at-bats, but the swings they ended on were meager. It was nice to see him get some loft on the home run swing. I’m pretty sure he’s going to to be the guy I’m begging the world to notice this year. He’s got underrated asset written all over him.
Beltre is so good defensively – that backhand play he made down the line was sick. I’d personally chip in towards his contract extension if we could convince him to stick around.
Griffey going yard just seemed fitting. In the spirit of positivity, I won’t say anything about his range on that Punto fly ball.
The M’s aren’t going to score 75% of their baserunners this year. You’ll hear someone refer to this as the blueprint for how the M’s will have to win games, I’m sure, but counting on getting six runs out of eight base runners isn’t any kind of successful strategy.
1-0, tied for first atop the AL West. Bedard goes tomorrow. So far so good.
Yes, he had 398 before this season.
You can find it here. About halfway down the page.
2008 AL:
10844 R / (20901 H + 7521 BB + 816 HBP) = about 37% of baserunners scored or 2.69 baserunners for every run.
Of course, perhaps Felix assumes the Twins read USSM, have read the points about his pitches and figures they think they know what’s coming and is just playing some good headgames with them. Kind of like Tom Berenger in “Major League”, “Gosh, all these pitches to choose from . . . .”
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They should move Lopez to 1B, Betancourt to 2B and put Cedeno at SS. With Griffey as DH instead of Sweeney. That outfield full-time + Ichiro is going to be something else.