JUNE 12, 2009 -- MINNESOTA 7, CHICAGO (NL) 4

The Twins quite literally owned Wrigley Field on Friday afternoon, not only beating the hometown Cubs but out-cheering them in the stands. There was certainly a festive air in the stadium with more-than-audible chants of support for Joe Mauer and company overpowering any plaints of fans rooting for the home team. The only point of the game in which the home fans were noticable was when they were booing their hearts out at Milton Bradley, whose Puntoesque Patheticness extended as much to mental gaffes than merely physical blunders. The Cubs are certainly far from contending at this point, but with Ron Gardenhire's horrid record at so-called "hallowed" playing grounds -- Yankee Stadium, Fenway Park -- it was somewhat surprising to see the Twins win a game at Wrigley. Kevin Slowey did good enough to improve to an astounding 9-2 on the season, and then the bullpen carousel took over, as the Twins used five relievers to get the final nine outs of the game.

Let's start with the consistently overmanaged bullpen. Joe Nathan got the save in the ninth inning, but let's face it -- I don't think there's too many people out there, much less baseball players, who can't get three outs before giving up three runs. If I were commissioner of baseball for a day, I think the first thing that I would do is alter the save rule. I think it should be tossed out altogether, as it has now evolved to the point where managers dictate their "closer's" workload around that statistic. Ron Gardenhire is pretty good at ignoring other statistics -- for what reason, besides utter stupidity, can you explain his decision to bat Carlos Gomez and Matt Tolbert in the leadoff position the previous two days in Oakland? Statistics like batting average and on-base percentage (both beyond pitiful in both cases) would indicate that both Gomez and Tolbert suck to an extreme. But apparently Ron Gardenhire doesn't care about stats for those guys. Yet when it comes to Joe Nathan, Gardenhire falls back on the crutch that is the save rule.

There are three ways to get a save in the rule book: 1) pitch at least one full inning after entering the game with no more than a three-run lead and finish the game; 2) enter a ballgame with the tying run at the plate or on-deck (this means that, with the bases loaded, a pitcher can get a save with a five-run lead) and finish the game; or 3) pitch three full innings and finish the game, no matter the score. The third stipulation I would toss out the door altogehter, as those saves are usually picked up by long relievers in blowout victories in which the starter struggled, and there rarely were times of real stress by the pitcher who got the "save." I remember in 1996 when the Twins beat the Tigers in a memorable 24-11 rout; a guy named Greg Hansell, if I remember correctly, got a save in that game by the three-inning save rule -- the team won by thirteen runs. No doubt this part of the rule was reasonable at the time in which the save rule was drafted (in the late 1960s), as relievers back then were expected to go multiple innings at a time, and the "bullpen" consisted of two or three pitchers. It wasn't unusual for Al Worthington or Ron Perranoski, for instance, to go two or three innings for a save.

As for the other parts of the rule, there is an inherent contradiction at play. While giving a reliever a save in a five-run win might be a little extreme, I do agree with it, in that having the tying run in the on-deck circle poses an immediate threat and there isn't much room for error. But when a pitcher comes into a game with a three-run lead (as Joe Nathan did on Friday) and retires the side in order, not once does the tying run even come to the on-deck circle. If I were commissioner, I would amend the save rule by shorten the three-run rule, thus making a two-run lead at the start of an inning being the largest margin possible for gaining a save. With a two-run lead, the tying run is always at least on-deck, and this would be consistent with the second part of the rule which stipulates that the tying run must be at least on-deck.

That being said, when a team has a three-run lead in the last inning, managers should view that as a comfortable enough lead to rest your best pitcher. Or, more importantly, the manager should use his best pitcher when the situation calls for a rally to be extinguished. However, Ron Gardenhire prefers to rely on the save rule and by imaginary standards of modern-day management of a team's bullpen ace. These standards dictate that one's closer should work the ninth inning and the ninth inning alone, and only in a desperate emergency should a closer be asked to do anything more than work either in save opportunities or in non-save opportunities in which the pitcher is asked to get some "much needed work" in because of a lack of save chances. A perfect situation reared its head on Friday and Ron Gardenhire mismanaged it again for the zillionth time in his career. The Twins had a 6-3 lead in the eighth inning and the Cubs had two runners on and two out with the dangerous Derrek Lee at the plate representing the tying run. Instead of using Joe Nathan in a big spot, Ron Gardenhire brought in Matt Guerrier to face the Cubs' clean-up hitter. That's Matt Guerrier, folks, he of the Matt Guerrier Special, he of the "we lost the division last season solely because of Matt Guerrier," he of the hanging-curveball-bashed-560-feet reliever. This is what's crazy about it: in a perfect world, Gardenhire would have had Guerrier get out of the eighth and then had Joe Nathan come on in the ninth with a 3-run lead and get three outs and never have to face the tying run. In essence, he's calling on Matt Guerrier to get the most important out of the game -- now, on what planet does that make sense? You're not paying Joe Nathan $12 million a season for nothing. He's your best reliever in the bullpen -- use him in the situations in which you need your best bullpen arm, not because of some statistical qualification. Fortunately for the Twins, Guerrier only let one of his inherited runners to score, and Jason Kubel's home run in the top of the ninth made it a three-run cushion for Nathan to pick up the cheap save in the ninth.

Anthony Swarzak might be starting for the last time in the bigs for a while on Saturday. He got off to a good start in his first two outings for the Twins, but has struggled in his last two, especially on Monday night in Oakland, when he appeared erratic and could not hold a three-run lead for more than two outs. He faces the Cubs on Saturday against Rich Harden, who's once again fresh off the DL. Harden, always plagued by injuries in his career, has been dominant when healthy, but let's see if the droves of Twins fans in attendance can buoy the team to another victory.