"I don't feel as if I know you, you take up all my time..." -Oasis, "Hello"
Who is this team? Last night's route of the Royals looked nothing like the team that just had their asses handed to them by the Toronto freaking Blue Jays and the Detroit "oh has the season started?" Tigers. In baseball there will almost always be a difference in how a team performs between the road and home match-ups, but the difference we've seen in this team is borderline ridiculous. The only other team in baseball still with aspiriations for October that's more than three games under .500 on the road is the White Sox...and thank the baseball gods for that! (I could count the Dogers and the Diamondbacks, but that division winner may not win half of their games anyway...I threw them out on a technicality. And because it sounds better.)
I'm not quite sure what was up with the formatting of the game thread last night, but that's not something I'll dwell too much on; what I want to dwell on is the fact that the Twins did what they were supposed to do last night by doing what they were capable of doing to a team like Kansas City: taking them apart.
There were a lot of things I was happy to see: Justin Morneau's 23rd homer, Carlos Gomez's full-speed catch in left-center field to rob David DeJesus, Denard Span's three-hit performance, a solid start by Nick Blackburn and scoreless relief performances from Dennys Reyes and Jesse Crain. But none of those things made me happier than this one simple fact:
We won the game.
And as such, thanks to the see-saw nature of the year, we're back within a game of first place. I know, I know, I can scarcely believe it either after that road trip...but it's true. Check this out: If the Twins beat the Royals again tonight, and the White Sox fall to the Jays and Roy Halladay...
I'm just going to let that hang.