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.

Memories

Quick one today kids. In They-Used-To-Be-One-Of-Us news, Christian Guzman hit a pair of home runs this weekend, one from each side of the plate. That is wrong on so many levels. And (for some reason) the Rangers signed our old rotund, Caribbean friend....discuss.

Also, if you didn't catch this in the comments of the last post, Carlos Gomez is still amusing. I think he's ahead in the imaginary mind race in Gardy's head to start at center field. This is an interesting look at it from Span's side. Almost enough to make me feel bad for him, but he needs to come up with at least Gomez-like personality quirk to stem the tide. Maybe referring to himself in the third person or ironing himself or something...

Update: Whoops, maybe I spoke to0 soon:
"Gomez ran into his own bunt for an out in the first inning. He didn't realize he was out until after he got back in the batter's box." (link here)

Preen-season Baseball

I'm getting officially excite bike about the 2008 baseball season which is A MERE # AND A !/@ WEEKS AWAY (that'd read "3 and a 1/2" if I wasn't too excited to turn the caps lock off). I always have difficulty during this part of the season which is really not part of the season but maybe it is a teeny bit because I feel the drive to read every blog post and report and snippet and bottom-of-the-notebook item trying to fill the void, while simultaneously my brain tells me that these games and performances don't count yet so don't read too much into them. I try to sift through every 1 inning pitching performance to detect if F-bomb's elbow is coming apart at the seams and look at Baby Jesus' .500 batting average with skeptical eye-batting over the top of my reading glasses (sorry, that wasn't meant for you attrative waitress gal) , all the while a tiny little butterfly of hope is stirring somewhere in my gut. Three things that get me a little twittery in the loins...the baseball loins, that is.

* The return of F-Bomb*
You got to love looking atvideo like this (via Gleeman). Somewhat hard to tell from this, but apparently Francisco has gained like 30 pounds during his extended rehab stint. I guess there's not a lot to do back at home except lift weights. Or maybe he was on the Daunte Culpepper strip-mall gym rehab plan. Or maybe, just maybe, Liriano's agent came to a super secret agreement with Boof Bonser (he's small now) who suspiciously just happened to lose the exact same amount of weight during the exact same offseason! Apparently Tommy John is code for "liposuction transfer surgery"?

*The ridiculousness of Carlos Gomez*
I haven't seen too much of this kid yet (zero, actually), but apparently he is crazy fast. I have to say, there is not much better in the world of sports for me than watching ridiculously fast guys. It's always been a literal fascination, and apparently this kid is the real deal on those terms. I also hear that his batting style roughly resembles that of an overly sugared 11-year-old boy trying to kill horseflies with a 34 oz Louisville Slugger. Like worse than early Torii. I'm sure it'll get REAL frustrating after awhile (especially if he's leading off), but it's going to be pretty damn funny in the interim. I love that honeymoon period. Lastly, you gotta love stuff like this. "A key figure in the Johan Santana trade, he is convinced he is about to become an impact player with the Twins. 'Sure!' he said the other day. 'They don't have no speed like me. I know I can help this team. Especially when I hit ahead of Morneau and the catcher and the other guy.'" Are you serious? He says things like this!? Unbelievably ridiculous. Unbelievably awesome. And we thought Delmon Young was going to be the one with possible character issues? Speaking of Delmon...

*A bit more mash-happy lineup this year?*
I'm excited for the possible emergence of Delmon, no longer just the Jamaican answer to "What kind of laptop is that?" anymore (sorry, couldn't help myself). I'm also excited, and maybe this is one of the side-effects of a so-so year last year, for the re-emergence of the catcher, the Morneau, and yes, the other guy (Cuddy, although Gomez might have meant Delmon?). Taken as a whole, I don't know if the entire lineup is necessarily a significant upgrade over last year or two years ago (that would be tough), but I speculate that it will be. Let's put it this way...given the suspect nature of our pitching staff at this point, it better be. I just get a sneaky little feeling that this is going to be the most home-run heavy Twins team of recent memory. Yeah, yeah, yeahs...I know the bar is REAL low and I'm not really going out on a limb there, but I'm just saying that we could see a fair bit of mashing and that is flat-out fun to watch. Lock-down pitching is cool in kind of a slow and steady defense and rebounding way, but the acute joy of a game-turning home run can't be matched. It's like a tomahawk dunk only...you know...with a bat. And the ball is smaller.

Can't wait for Tuesdays in the home run porch...