Hitting the Foul Pole

Well, that was a nice little vacation.  We here at hitting the foul pole decided to take most of the winter off, rather than provide you with regular, but probably sub-par content.  We’re back starting today.  As you all know, the Twins open up the 2011 season in Canada when Pavano faces Ricky Romero at 6:07 (07?! WTF) at the RogersCentre (centre?! WTF) in Toronto.

I’ve been reading recaps from the handful of games that took place yesterday and for most of the winning teams, the phrase “according to plan” was in the recap somewhere.  That got me thinking, what should the Twins “plan” be to win the game today (and win the division).  Last year, Pavano was relied upon to pitch deep into the ballgame, so one would assume that getting him into the 7th is a major part of the plan. That goes for probably everyone on the staff, but having the Kevin Slowey insurance blanket will be nice if someone flames out.  Another thing that was supposed to be part of last year’s plan was Span getting on base, that didn’t happen too often in 2010.  I think we need to see Span dramatically raise his OBP from last year and get it back into his 2008-09 range.  I think he is capable of doing that, Over the Baggy did a nice write up looking for the root of his problem in 2010. I think everyone knows how the rest of the plan is suppose to work.  Get guys on base for Mauer-Morneau-Young (and maybe Cuddyer and Kubel) and they drive them in.  That part of the plan is pretty simple. Even with Span’s problems we scored plenty of runs last year.

The next step is keeping everyone healthy.  Losing Morneau last year didn’t hurt us nearly as much as I would have thought.  However, that doesn’t mean I want it to happen again.  Some of the more injury prone guys need to be given their fair share (or maybe more) days off early on, so that they can be 100% for the stretch run. It also helps that there are a lot of off days in April.

What else do the Twins need to do to be successful this season? I know I’m not breaking any ground with “get on base” and “stay healthy” but when it comes down to it, the formula for winning isn’t that complicated.  Welcome back to HTFP and we hope to have a great season.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 1st, 2011 at 8:01 am and is filed under Opinion, State of the Team, The Blogosphere Demands It. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.