lineups in a moment

1. Ben Revere, CF
2. Darin Mastroianni, RF
3. Joe Mauer, 1B
4. Josh Willingham, LF
5. Justin Morneau, DH
6. Trevor Plouffe, 3B
7. Ryan Doumit, C
8. Brian Dozier, SS
9. Alexi Casilla, 2B

Pitching, Brian Duensing

Mauer for both

Not yet noon and already 91 degrees out.

This took some cojones. I love it!...

http://sandiego.padres.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?c_id=sd&content_id=23042581&topic_id=17807232

Give me Willingham for both..

That was great!

So I'll take Willingham for both today.

Morneau for both today.

I will take Revere today. I think he's gonna steal two bases today.

carroll-P2C

How bad was that umpire on that play? Is it a new rule for umpires to just call a player out without asking to see the ball?

But like you said, quite the ballsy move. With two outs that is taking a big time risk. But of course they are the Padres, what is there to lose?

Nice to see Ben Sheets pitching again. He is making his 2012 MLB debut for the Braves this afternoon.

He has only pitched 20 games since 2008 (all in 2010), so its nice to see him back on the bump.

Dunce laboring big time to get out of the 1st.

Three hits, one walk, one run, and just one out. And Dunce has thrown 24 pitches already. Not a great way to start the inning.

Of course the one out Dunce had was a strikeout of Reddick, a left-handed hitter.

Now Dunce had Norris 0-2, then throws 4 straight balls and walks home another run. Another crooked number for the A's.

35 pitches still in the 1st.

I'm convinced we are the worst team in history when our pitchers are ahead 0-2. I've been harping on this for years. If you don't have a strikeout pitch 0-2 doesn't mean much.

For a guy like Liriano though who can strike guys out it makes perfect sense. And you've seen the results: when Frankie gets ahead of hitters he is dominant. When he struggles to get ahead he is the head case that drives us nuts.

Well that inning helped your theory. I think Dunce had three batters 0-2 (Weeks, Gomes, Norris) and all three reached that inning.

A groundout from a lefty (shocker) and Dunce finally gets out of the 1st. That half inning almost lasted 30 minutes and Dunce threw 41 pitches.

And here's the thing, not every guy needs to be like Liriano or a Cliff Lee or a Halladay and have ridiculous strikeout totals. But if you get ahead of a guy 0-2 it shouldn't be a monumental task to get the guy out. Baker isn't a dominant strikeout pitcher by any means but he COULD strike a guy out when he needed to. Blackburn, Pavano, Duensing, DeVries, Walters etc don't have that ability.

Well its not just about getting strikeouts, but being up 0-2 should lead to pop outs, weak grounders, things of that nature. Reaching after being 0-2 should be seldom, not three times in one inning.

Twins catch a big break there. Should have been an inning ending GIDP, but a throwing error from Parker leads to no outs and Masty scores the Twins first run.

Fluffy flies out, so the Twins get one of those two back. Now Dunce needs a very quick zero.