On a Chilly Saturday...

The Twins were edged on Saturday night by the Kitchener Panthers – the final score was 6-5, and, mercifully, it was a bit more exciting than the Friday game. I’ve put off writing my game stories until tomorrow or so, and I don’t have my notes in front of me, nor do I care to go get them, so I’ll see what I remember.

The big story – I think – was that the Twins were a hell of a lot more aggressive on the basepaths than I have ever seen them be. By any standard, they were very aggressive. A couple of double steals; a straight steal of third; a steal of second to put the tying run in scoring position with two out in the bottom of the eighth. Matt Calcagni – who just joined the team after being released by a Northern League squad – had a really great at-bat in I think the fifth or so. He wound up striking out, but he fouled off about four or five pitches with a full count. Funny thing is, there were guys on first and second and they ran on each full count pitch, so they got their work in. And despite the strike out, the double steal was successful!

Coach Calcagni told us afterwards that as a team they want to be a bit more aggressive on the basepaths, and that the steals were called by him. I don’t think they lost any baserunners to over-aggression last night, so he certainly picked his spots. There will be some more precise comments from him about that part of the game in my story, whenever it is eventually written.

In terms of pitching, this time Brian Speck came out of the’ pen to do some long-relief work – he picked up Benson Merritt, who was pretty mediocre. As I remember it, both guys walked far too many batters. Anyways, this was a case of Speck being sent to the ‘pen to work out whatever issues kept him from being dominant as a starter. On the balance, he was fine – he certainly kept the Twins in the game, but the Panthers put up a crooked number on him late in the game to give themselves some breathing room, and obviously that wound up being the difference.

Another pitcher who really impressed me was Adam Zorzit – he worked a single inning of relief, and he has great stuff. It doesn’t break ten to twelve inches the way Mike McGilvray’s stuff does, but it buzzes and is pretty electric. He picked up the save in their first ever game in Hamilton, and even though I haven’t seen a lot of the Twins’ pen, I have to think I would be pretty comfortable putting him in for most save opportunities. When it’s up, I’ll take a look at tonight’s boxscore and see if he was put in to protect the one run lead, and now that I think of it I may as well check some of their previous wins and see what his role has been. If he isn’t the closer, the closer is pretty good – I’ll say that much!

To look at some long-term prognosis stuff: the Twins, having won a make-up game tonight in Oshawa by a count of 3-2, sit at 5-6. Not ideal, but far above anything that could have reasonably been expected of an expansion club. A few people have told me that they think the record is what it is because it’s a really young team that just needs to grow into hanging with some of the teams that have been together for years and years, and I think that theory may have some truth to it, as far as accounting for the actual wins and losses goes. Coach C said – and this will be in either the game piece or something else (more on that later) – he’s thrilled with where the team is, and if I were in his position I would probably feel the same. Baseball being baseball, as long as you know you can hang with anyone in the league – and the Twins now know that – it’s all about executing once you get into a short playoff series.

Anyways, we’ve been talking about some vague journalistic plans for my coverage of the team for a while now, and they’ve sort of materialized: we’re hoping, subject to executive approval, to run an insert in the programs given out at games with a feature piece (written by me, of course!) about the success of opening day/the arrival of the Twins in Mississauga/the results thus far/some kind of encouraging spin on the future and a feature player profile on Ryan Assis. I’ve always liked his story – because he left the BayCats specifically to play for his hometown team – and I finally got to talk to him after the Saturday game. The hope (at least on my end) is to turn that insert into a regularly changing feature – probably more general pieces about the overall direction of the team, organizational news and so on, and then one or two player profiles per issue.

I think that’s all I have to say. I’m not sure when I’ll be back on the beat – two weeks, maybe? I’ll see about contacting coach C to get enough material to do game pieces for the away ones I miss. I’ll probably blog mid-week or something with some Blue Jays material and misc. Twins news/comments!