Saturday, June 20, 2009

Beautiful bunts


A Jim Souhan column in Friday's Minneapolis paper bemoaned the lack of small-ball from the Twins, and cited as evidence that this is a problem this set of won-loss stats — the Twins are 24-16 when they hit a homer, 10-18 when they don't.

Make that 11-18 now, after Friday's win — a win with plenty of small ball. The Twins had three sac bunts and a bunt single. Two of the sac bunts came back to back, the last a beautiful suicide squeeze by Nick Punto.

* Matt Guerrier has been in danger of being overworked. And suddenly he was in danger of disappearing altogether before he pitched the seventh inning Friday.

He had pitched five times in six days after last Saturday's game. He hadn't pitched since. Sunday was the Jesse Crain debacle, Monday an off day, Tuesday's win was largely mopped up by R.A. Dickey, Wednesday's loss turned into a blowout by Sean Henn and Luis Ayala, and Thursday was Blackburn's complete game.

For that matter, Jose Mijares, the other primary setup man, made only his second appearance of the past week Friday.

The Twins have both cut their bullpen from seven to six and gotten their main setup arms some days off.

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