Mauled by Cats

I’ll probably be a bit shorter tonight than usual for several reasons: one, I’ve got drivers’ ed this weekend so I need to be up far earlier than I’m used to tomorrow; two, the Twins were slaughtered again tonight which is never fun to write about, and lastly, three, there were far less positives to write about tonight than the Wednesday blow out.

Ironically, the margin of victory was the same: 18-10 tonight compared to 16-8 on Wednesday, but tonight’s game was a lot less close because the Twins needed to put up six in the bottom of the ninth to get to ten runs. Minus those, it was a 14-run Barrie lead, and it was altogether unpretty.

The Baycats put up four runs each in four innings – pretty unbelievable, actually. They just kept coming. Coach Calcagni betrayed quite a bit of frustration after the game, inviting the press to ‘put something intelligent in [his] mouth’ in our stories, and lamenting about the deficiencies of the starters, the offense, and well, everything else in between.

He also acknowledged that he hasn’t been playing with a full deck, due to the different absences, injuries and so on that have kept various Twins’ players away over the last little while. Tonight was no exception as they used a handle of junior call-ups. One of them, someone Hurley, worked a few innings of relief and wasn’t altogether bad, despite giving up a 4-spot.

Ryan Asis – in his first game back in a little while – smacked a two-run homer to cash Greg Densem early in the game. At the time, it halved Barrie’s lead to 4-2 and it looked like we might have a ballgame for a while (as it did on Wednesday night, too) but obviously that didn’t materialize.

Alarmingly, Densem went down to injury – he was nailed in the head sliding into third after he advanced on a throwing error to first when Asis hit into a fielder’s choice. He was down a while and I thought it might have been something really serious – like a dislocated body part – at the time, but coach C described it as a ‘mild concussion’ after the game. Of course, no one wants to underestimate concussions – just look at Aaron Hill last year – and it will be a while yet before we get a firm prognosis on Densem.

Mike McGillvray as a bit shaky tonight – he gave up four in the first to put the Twins in a huge hole, and he only lasted four innings. Coach C specifically mentioned starters failing to give the team innings in his post game media chat, so we know his outing didn’t get him far in the coaching staff’s eyes.

Darryl Pui had another good game in right field tonight – he hosed a guy at second who was trying to turn a hit off the wall into a double, and he wasn’t half-bad out of the lead off spot. Coach C mentioned putting him in centre field after the game, and Lord knows he would be an asset to the team no matter where he plays in the outfield.

Anyways, that’s all I have for tonight. The Maple Leafs are in town tomorrow and who knows, maybe the Battle of the GTA will import some fans from Toronto and it’ll be a lively, spirited night at the ballpark. Check back for some post-game bloggage tomorrow!