Late Night Thoughts...

and most of 'em aren't necessarily about the Twins. But they are almost all somewhat related to baseball.

Cliff Lee
Anyone else following what is going on in Cleveland's spring training? Cliff Lee showed up at camp seemingly begging for a long-term deal. Unfortunately, he chose the exact same time to really suck. His ERA this spring is 12.42. He's given up 26 runs and 37 hits in 16.2 innings. Add that performance to the sudden desperation for a long-term deal, and I can't help but wonder if someone might not be completely healthy.

I suspect some crabby-pants might point out to me the eerily similarities between Lee and Scott Baker. But before you do, you should not one important difference. Which is that I'm perfectly capable of living in denial concerning my own team.

The Best a Man Can Get
Gawd, I loved these commercials. Honestly, take 60 seconds and watch it. Was there ever a better montage of the ideal 80s male than this commercial? He gets the girl, hugs his dad, cradles his infant son and strides with the astronauts. I remember getting pumped up every time we would see these, and we saw them a lot because they were a Sunday afternoon staple. It STILL makes me want to shave.



To Morrow is a Week Too Late
The announcement yesterday that Seattle will move Brandon Morrow back from the rotation to the bullpen to be the closer was probably the right move for that franchise, but criminy did it screw me up.

We'll start with the fact that I drafted David Aardsma in my roto draft yesterday afternoon for just $1, because it looked like he would be closer. We'll add that I did not draft Morrow, who will now be a devastating closer for something like $11 for another team. And we can further add that until Friday I owned Morrow for just $8 in the same league. I threw him back because he looked like he was going to be a injured and somewhat iffy starter for Seattle.

And finally, I had a section in this week's Dugout Splinters surrounding Aardsma and those were due to the Twins last night. I heard the news minutes before I was going to send it and had to rewrite the section.

The kicker is that Morrow and the Mariners had decided this a week ago. They just hadn't told anyone.

That's Why I Love this Girl
Last night The Voice of Reason is watching TV and asks "I thought the Twins opener that we were going to was on the 6th."
"It is," I replied.
"I thought that was Monday - the first day of the season?" she queried.
"It is."
"But I just saw something saying my Phils were playing on the 5th," she stated, still baffled.
"Well, that's because the Phils play the season opening game that's on Sunday ni....."
I didn't need to finish. I wasn't two words into that sentence before I saw the light go on, her eyes grow wide, a smile start to grow and a feeling of civic pride practically burst right out of her seams. And then I watched as last October visited yet again.
And finally, the smile opened and spoke in the smallest, happiest voice - one usually only heard from children.
"Yeay."

Tweeting
I'll go into this with a litte more detail soon, but I've just set up a baseball only twitter that I plan to update way too much during the regular season. If you want to witness the uneven and unseemly beginning of it, you can sign up at http://twitter.com/twinsgeek.