JULY 12, 2009 -- MINNESOTA 13, CHICAGO 7

The Twins have their hitting shoes on against Mark Buehrle on Sunday, hitting three home runs off the All-Star and knocking him out after four innings. With an 8-1 lead, you'd like to think you're on cruise control, but with the Twins, no lead is safe. Sure enough, Scott Baker gives up a three-run home run to Jim Thome and gives way to the bullpen in the seventh inning. The biggest out of the game was gotten by Matt Guerrier, who induced a pop-up off the bat of the dangerous Jermaine Dye to leave the bases loaded with the score 8-5. Guerrier's first half of the season has really been stellar, as he's not really collapsed as held steady for the Twins. Had Guerrier replicated his second half of 2008 in the first half, the Twins wouldn't be near .500, but of course there's always a silver lining. Guerrier and Mijares have been doing to job fine, but aside from that the Twins still don't have anybody else in that bullpen that can bridge the gap to Joe Nathan. The Luis Ayala experiment was a disaster (did anyone see that the Florida Marlins were crazy enough to bring this guy back to the majors -- I feel bad for those in Miami right about now) and Sean Henn and/or Brian Duensing have been brutal. R.A. Dickey's role was gradually getting more important but has struggled of late and appears to be back in his long-relief role, and for however many times Ron Gardenhire will try, I don't have any confidence that Bobby Keppel will continue to get batters out consistently. That being said, Guerrier and Mijares will be supremely overworked in the second half, and you can expect the same thing to happen this year than last. The only difference is that the division likely won't be at stake, since the Twins will probably fade by August, but expect many more Matt Guerrier Specials in the later months of the season. I can guarantee that.


Speaking of people in The Doghouse, Carlos Gomez had a great game on Sunday, hitting a three-run home run off Buehrle in the third inning and driving in a career-high five runs on Sunday. Does it do anything to get Gomez out of The Doghouse? Not at all. First off, wipe that shit grin off your face -- that's a start. You had arguably the game of your life and your average is still .235. The way Gomez carries himself is a cross between a gangster rapper and a fifteen year old kid; either way it's as unprofessional as it gets. There's a fine line between confidence and stupidity, and unfortunately with Gomez it's the latter of the two. There's a lot of people who keep saying that Gomez is going to be a star in this league, and I continue to doubt that highly. He may have the talent to one day become a serviceable player, but the attributes that need the most honing are his maturity and his instincts, and these are qualities that you've got to earn playing everyday. To put Gomez in a major-league lineup everyday is killing your team. Send him down to Double-A where he belongs and let him get to know the game, because right now he's playing baseball with a set of blinders on. He has no knowledge of what the game is, and his demeanor reflects that. He's never going to learn that kind of stuff playing in the majors and being constantly overmatched.


While we're on the subject of being overmatched, the Twins stupidly made a roster move Monday that will be official on Friday when the Twins resume play after the All-Star break against the Texas Rangers. They sent down Matt Tolbert and called up Alexi Casilla -- why I'm not quite sure. That's kind of like taking a moldy ham sandwich, throwing out the ham, and putting a turd between the two pieces of moldy bread -- it's definitely not an upgrade. Frankly I don't understand the move because I don't know which of the two players is actually worse. Casilla has absolutely no business being on a major league roster; after the Twins called him up after his first demotion he actually played worse than he had earlier in the season. Matt Tolbert's skills are almost identical to Casilla -- terrible offensively, average to below average defensively. Take your pick -- do you want a moldy ham sandwich or a moldy turd sandwich?

ASK HOWIE

There are no games until Friday as I mentioned before, and I would like to fill the gap by asking my readers to submit their questions to me so I can have a sort of "reader's mail" segment at the Minnesota Twins Re-Education Center. Ask me anything, whether it relates to the Twins, baseball in general, the apiary world, Eno, anything you want. I'd like the segment to be posted later on this week, by Thursday perhaps, so get e-mail me your questions to eisenhowermcsteele@gmail.com. Leave your name and your home city in the email, please. I look forward to it!