I don't know about you, but I spent the day not watching baseball. I did tune in briefly to the end of the White Sox game tonight, but what I saw was not encouraging. I saw a tough and resiliant team which is, at least at the moment, showing why it's the best --and certainly the most improved-- club in the Central.
The Sox comeback against Anaheim was a classic small-ball rally, and if you're not already sick of hearing about small ball in connection with the Central, I'm pretty sure you will be --we all will be-- before everything's said and done. The difference between the White Sox and Twins right now is that the strategy involved represents a deliberate organizational approach on Chicago's part.
Trailing the Angels 4-3 in the ninth (after Ozzie Guillen left Mark Buehrle out there in the top of the inning to cough up a 3-2 lead --with an assist from Damaso Marte), pinch hitter Willie Harris walked and swiped second. Joe Crede followed with another walk, and Scott Podsednik sacrificed the runners. Carl Everett, pinch hitting for Tadahito Iguchi, then struck out against Scott Shields.
Yet with two outs, Timo Perez, who replaced Frank Thomas at DH after Thomas left the game in the seventh with a hip flexor, lined a two-run single to left for the game winner. Thomas, of course, was in the line-up for the first time since last July.
We've seen the Twins stage comebacks like this occasionally this year, but after managing just eight hits over the last two games in Toronto, it's becoming apparent that right now they're a small-ball team --and not a very good one-- out of necessity rather than design. More than half of their line-up is not truly capable of executing fundamentally on a day-to-day basis, but they've also so far proved incapable of tossing up crooked numbers with any regularity.
If the 2005 Twins are going to be anything more than a splendid pitching staff and an underperforming offense, they're going to need the guys in the middle of the order to start delivering some extra base hits and hitting some home runs. If it comes down to scrambling for runs and playing station-to-station baseball, the White Sox --who do also have some guys who can hit the long ball with consistency-- will run away with the Central. All those one-run games they've won are something of an oddity, but they're also a sign that they're doing some things right.
Was that Uncle J in Sec. 135 tonight, toting a tattered Tropic of Cancer? Sure looked like him.
Tonight's game proved your thesis, at least as much as one game can. With two on and nobody out and the game tied 2-2 in the fourth (or was it the fifth?), Gardy let Cuddyer swing away instead of attempting a sacrifice, which Cuddyer would just as likely pop up. Cuddyer followed with the all-too-predictable 4-6-3, and one pitch later Sabathia was out of the inning.
The thing is, the Twins have seen C.C. enough to know that you have to scratch for whatever you can get off him, because he generally gets stronger as the game goes. But instead, Gardy must have felt handcuffed by Cuddyer's proven inability to get a bunt down.
I know what you're saying -- you don't bunt to get to your No. 8 and 9 hitters -- but Punto has been hitting OK and Castro suddenly is Mr. RBI. Hindsight is 20-20, but at the time the bunt sure seemed like the right play, if they'd had a guy at the plate who could bunt.