BORDER BATTLE

Four months ago, the Twins were looking like a team with no spunk or consistency, while our neighbors from the South side of Chicago were busy tearing up the AL. Boy, a lot can change in four months. The Twins found a young ace sitting in amongst a glut of inconsistent pitchers, gained an injection of energy via some unheralded youth, and received the type of performance from “M & M” that they’d been envisioning for the last two years. At the same time, the White Sox started to slow down and fell right into a neck-and-neck race with the hottest team in the majors during the months of June and July.

Fast forward to today. After a winning two games of an auspicious three game homestand against this Sox team that held a two game lead in the AL wild card, the Twins find themselves half a game back. While Minnesota fans sit on the edge of their seats, there’s plenty of reason for opimism about our chances of capturing the wild card come October. Consider the following:
• After what looked like a lumber slump in three consecutive losses against Toronto, the Twins regained their batting prowess against Cleveland, just in time for the vital Chicago series in which they scored seven runs twice in the three game series.
• While the Twins were breathing down the White Sox neck the past couple months, they’ve had to look over their shoulder to keep an eye on some Sox of the Red variety. Luckily, Boston dropped all five games of their recent series against the Yankees and now look like a ballclub that’s just about spent.
• When ace Francisco Liriano went on the 15-day disabled list, baseball pundits began to forecast doom and gloom for the Twins’ playoff chances. On Sunday, doctors delivered the positive news of a healthy Lirano arm, which hopefully signals some sunny days ahead for the Twins. Don’t expect to have him available until mid-September, but a healthy Liriano when it matters most is really all fans can ask for.
• Perhaps most importantly, the Twins face teams with a lower combined win percentage than either the White Sox or the Red Sox. The next two series: at Baltimore, at Chicago, and home against Kansas City.

With over a month of baseball left to play, a lot could happen in determining the winner of the AL wild card — or even the winner of the AL Central. You may want to get out your calendar and circle September 29, 30, and October 1. It could all be decided right there in a final series against none other than the Chicago White Sox.

• Liriano is placed on the 15-day disabled list. What, me worry?
• Bump ponders the presence of the Human Delusion Hormone in Quarterbacks on both sides of the border. Let’s just say Favre doesn’t look like the fool here.
• The following sequence of events has virally unravelled (right under our noses): Dr. Z writes column disparaging the greatness of Brett Favre’s career. Packer journalists and bloggers write venomous rebuttals. People of Wisconsin begin march to SI offices with beer and weapons in tow.
• Purplepride.org has lots of pretty pictures of Vikings training camp.

While Joe Mauer’s bat has cooled off ever so slightly, the BWE-worthy material keeps comin’ on in. Although he’s known as a shy guy off the field, to the camera he’s anything but, as demonstrated by the cover of last week’s Sports Illustrated. If the casual baseball viewer didn’t know Mauer before the All-Star break, they sure do now.

It wouldn’t be fair to only focus on Joe with the week his roommate — and other half of the “M&M” duo — had against the Royals. Mr. Morneau brought it to the house in the four game series in Kansas City, going 6-for-16 with two doubles, a homerun, and 10 RBI. Now batting .321 with 29 dingers and 99 RBIs, Morneau has even found himself the subject of a little MVP candidacy talk as of late. My counterpart may have put best it earlier in the season with the statement “as Morneau goes, so do the Twins.” Let’s hope the engine doesn’t run out of steam.

After the first two games of the weekend’s Twins-Tigers series, the rampant excitement of Minnesota’s prospects for closing in on Detriot in the AL central had all but washed away. Eight innings into today’s game, you probably could’ve heard crickets chirping in certain parts of the Metrodome. But all that would soon change with the one ultra-convenient breakdown by Detriot’s Jeremy Bonderman.

To provide a bit of context around what the situation was pre-mental lapse, one would only need to look at the box score. Bonderman had allowed merely one hit through seven innings and the Tigers were up 3-0 after an uncharacteristically shaky 5 1/3 inning performance from Johan Santana. But somewhere in between the Twins coming back to the dugout and Justin Morneau walking to the plate in the bottom of the eighth, Lady Luck entered the building. With a quick spurt of hits and a series of fielding errors, the Twins were suddenly down only a run with the bases loaded. Then it happened. Jeremy Bonderman drew his hand away from his glove to signal something to the catcher, foolishly overlooking the fact that his feet were still planted on the rubber of the mound. That simple balk scored a run for the Twins, negated seven innings of commanding performance, and set the stage for some offensive fireworks. The damage by the end of the inning? Six runs and a battered ego. Twins win 6-4.

In the end the Twins may have pulled out only one win in a crucial three game series with the division leader, but given the way their pendulum may have swung if they had been swept, it’s one that the team and its faithful should be incredibly grateful for.

The Brewers weekend? Well, that new Chorizo guy debuting in the sausage races was pretty exciting stuff. I kid, I kid. They had a couple big wins against the Reds with some solid contributions from the guys acquired in the Carlos Lee trade.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve noticed an inordinate amount of people landing on this blog via Google searches for “Joe Mauer’s girlfriend,” “Chelsea Cooley” and “Joe Mauer Miss America.” While we had yet to come through with anything more substantial than a few best week ever mentions, we now have something of visual nature to share with you guys.

Thanks to Jamie Mottram at Mister Irrelevant/AOL’s Sports Bloggers Live, we bring you Ms. Joe Mauer.

Now that we’ve delivered the goods, please don’t neglect us. The sweetness will continue.

Over 90 games into the season and we’re in the dog days of baseball (as well as summer). Some superfans have not missed a game all season. To you we say get a life. But rather, congrats. You have either put up with a Brewers team that was once swept by the aweful Pittsburg Pirates, or a Twins crew who started the season 1-5.

Those of us from the western side of the St. Croix river are used to negativity. With a 51-40 record we still get upset. Any Brewer fan would rejoice with such an impressive feat. Rather, Minnesota fans know that with the outfield pieced together with guys like Jason Tyner, Nick Punto, and Michael Cuddyer, the good times can’t keep rolling. It’s nice now — we can see the starting outfield for when “Carl Pohlad Field” opens in 2010, but it’s not a starting outfield for 2006.

The Brew crew again toy with their fans’ emotions as usual, floating near .500 all season. The longest streak all year was four games. Followed by a 5 game skid. Can’t get too mad but can’t get excited either. Maybe there is one thing to get excited about, as star ace Ben Sheets returns Monday against the Pirates. One quality start every five games though? Not enough. With Carlos Lee and Torii Hunter soon becoming either a Yankee or a Met, we can look forward to football season right around the corner.

Ughhh! Should we?

Posted by The Mayor

Better late than never.

In a week where much of the only real sports activity was concentrated around a game that doesn’t matter much at all, at least one Minnesota Twin received his due justice: Francisco Liriano. After being snubbed by Ozzie Guillen and idiotic fans in the “Last Vote,” Mr. Liriano made it onto that AL All-Star roster. Sure he had to fly in at the last second from the Dominican Republic and didn’t even get out of the bullpen in the game. But the man at least got to be where he belonged.

We salute you Mr. Liriano. Now go out and keep pitching near perfection the rest of the season.

On Sunday night, the lineups for the 2006 mid-summer classic were finally announced. Whether you care to watch the All-Star game or not, the fact remains that the starting lineups are nothing more than a battle of popularity and home attendance, with this year’s results being the greatest example of that problem in recent memory.

It’s not clear what the best voting system might be, but there’s got to be some changes to prevent things like this:

• Fan Offense #1: Not voting Joe Mauer as the starting catcher for the American League. ‘Pudge’ Rodriguez is a guy I respect — a hard-working veteran who’s had a great career — but he’s not the player he was five years ago and even if he was, he still wouldn’t be putting up the numbers Mauer is right now. The league leader in batting, and hottest player over the past month, should not sitting on the bench. Shame, shame.
• Fan Offense #2: Not voting Carlos Lee as an NL starter. While this situation isn’t as ludicious as the previous one, there’s still a strong argument to be made here. Jason Bay and Carlos Beltran are both having fantastic seasons, but their numbers aren’t quite as spectacular as Mr. Lee’s 25 home runs and 61 RBIs. I could get into which player is more important to their team’s offense, but I’ll leave it to the empirical for now.
• Fan Offense #3 Ozzie Guillen’s Offense: Not choosing Francisco Liriano as a pitcher for the AL team. Is there even an argument against a 9-1 record and 1.99 ERA? Luckily this situation can still be salavaged, as Liriano is up for the All-Star game’s Final Vote, a nifty little promotion that allows the fans to vote the final reserve for each team. Com’on kids, get over to MLB.com and make up for the Mauer situation.

And my suggestion for the All-Star voting system flaws? Since it’s too time-consuming, difficult, and offensive to qualify fans’ baseball intelligence, I would simply change the system to allow the fans to vote a starting line-up’s worth of players, but put the starting lineup decisions on the All-Star teams’ respective managers. I know, that doesn’t account for sanity of guys like Mr. Guillen, but it’s a start.

Posted by Eric — I’ll be back on Wednesday