Johan Who?

Santana, you idiots. 7IP, 8K’s…we’re going to go ahead and call that The Usual. Goodness gracious, who needs that every five days? (Damn it.)

But…our new favorite player managed to start the season like hot hot electricity was coming out of his heinie…and that makes this morning just a little bit better than all the other mornings since Johizzy was sent to the land of hookers and blow.

Official New Nickname Announcment:

We love Howard Sinker. We really do. And his take on Joe Mauer seems delightfully similar (and more G-rated) to ours:

joe-the-local-hero@babyj.org sent this to his cyberdiary: Dear Diary, I really like having Gogomez bat leadoff. If he’s on second base and I hit a grounder to second, guess what? He goes to third base. That happened twice tonight. Last year, whoever was batting ahead of me would probably still be on first base and those grounders probably would have been double plays. And one time, when Gogomez was on second, I smacked a single to center and he scored. I’m tied for the team lead in RBI right now Cool, huh?

But we’re officially killing the nickname Go-Go on this site, and replacing it with…C-Button. (Props to Smitty)

Did you see him beat out the bunt? Did you see him steal second base on a pitch-out? The only way those two plays happen (plus nearly over-running a ball in the gap) was if Gardy was holding down the C-Button.

Big ups to the new guys (except for Brendan Harris, who I've somewhat arbitrarily decided to hate) and congrats to Smitty for standing in line for three full innings in order to get the holy grail of all Metrodome food; The Chicago Dog.

Hope on a Rope

At this time in the season, if it can be called a season officially at all (at this early point), the media-manager-player arc is selling a lot of hope in clubhouses and on dewy pitches, always in sunny climes located vaguely south of here, playing in cutely named leagues designated by the native produce of the surrounding area (kumquat league?). And normally, I try to maintain a healthy suspicion about these storylines. I mean, how can everyone improve from year to year? Unfortunately, the immutable laws of statistics and the central limit theorem dictate that some players mature and some rot. Some sink and some swim. Some rule and some just plain suck. (I'm looking in your direction Denny Hocking.)

There's one storyline this year, however, that I am buying into and it's about a nice little 23-yr old righty by the name of Garza, Matt. Have we let his average showing in the big league at the end of last year blind us to the fact that he was the Minor League Pitcher of the Year? I'm expecting big things from him this year -- Next Big Thing...er...things. Lavelle had a nice piece about him last week in his blog, and I love to hear about the kid wanting to win the job, fighting for it, and not becoming the Excusemaker 2300 Pitching Robot with defective sinker function. I'm so tired of you Carlos Silva that I almost went to see my doctor this weekend to medicate me for narcolepsy. I'm calling it now, and you heard it hear first....Garza will be the biggest suprise of this season, and will be the locked-in #2 starter by the end of June.

Speaking of Lavelle's blog, the Stribune has a nice little line-up of bloggers in place for the season, including Howard Sinker (with a Bat Girl pedigree) and Joe Christensen in addition to the aforementioned Wobble. Some seem more comfortable than others. Christensen not even being sure that "blog" is a verb til now is probably pretty indicative of his Luddite nature and/or the relative dip-your-toe-in-the-pool approach of big print media to the blogosphere. I look forward to following these three regularly.

Elsewhere on The Internets, two new Twins Territory ads are out. One involving Johan and Joe Nathan in a car where Yoheezy keeps changing speeds, as he is want to do. And the other involving the Piranhas. Good stuff. Kudos (again) to the Twins marketing staff. I look forward to the one about Lew Ford ironing himself (or performing arthroscopic surgery on himself?). Check 'em out...

And finally, it looks like Terry Ryan is finally rubbing off on other local major sport GMs. In very TRyan-like fashion, the Vikings signed two guys that no one has ever heard of, trying to fill gaps without spending Meche-ian money on crap, and relying on their farm syst...oh wait; they don't have a farm system. And Forbes magazine just named Kevin McHale the greatest manager in professional sports, utilizing an algorithm that is as asinine as it is stupid. No, I am not making this up and no, I am not auditioning for The Onion. This actually happened and, presumably, is completely and legitimately, 99/44/100 percent true love.

Terry Ryan finished 53rd.