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Walk
Ground Out
Strikeout (Swinging)
Strikeout (Swinging)
Strikeout (Swinging)
Strikeout (Looking)
Single
Single
Strikeout (Swinging)
Strikeout (Swinging)
Strikeout (Swinging)
Ground Out
Double
Strikeout (Swinging)
Strikeout (Looking)
Ground Out

Santana's overall line (7 IP, 7 H, 2 ER, 1 BB, 11 SO) was impressive enough, but even more encouraging is how strong he finished. If he can simply get rolling immediately at some point, rather than feeling his way through the first few innings, he'll be right back where he was last year. If you ignore the first inning of each of Santana's starts, here is his pitching line for the season:

  IP     H     R     ER     BB     SO     HR
10.0     6     1      1      1     16      0

Incidentally, hearing Jon Miller and Joe Morgan gush over Santana was a very nice change of pace from hearing Dick Bremer and Bert Blyleven gush over Santana. I found the Sunday Night Baseball broadcast unusually tolerable. Of course, my favorite part of the broadcast was Morgan's random happy birthday wish to the son of a non-famous person no one has ever heard of in the sixth inning. It is a weekly occurrence, but last night's was particularly enjoyable because it seemed to catch Miller a little bit off-guard.

The timing of Silva's injury is particularly hard to handle. If he had gone down with a week left in spring training, the Twins could have bumped Lohse into the third spot, let Mays fill in for him in the fourth spot, and made an organizational decision on what to do when they needed a fifth starter (they skipped that spot the first time through the rotation). Instead, they got one good start from Silva and now have to scramble to fill his spot in the rotation, which was shown by the team calling up Dave Gassner, rather than Scott Baker or J.D. Durbin.

With several early off days and what they thought was five starters ready to go, I think it is clear that the Twins decided to send Baker and Durbin down to the minors with the idea that they would each get at least a couple months' worth of seasoning. Rather than stray from that plan now that a sudden injury has come up one week into the season, Gassner gets the call. It's not necessarily a bad thing -- I am all for sticking to plans despite adversity -- but the team may have planned differently had they discovered that Silva needed major surgery three weeks ago.

While he pitched in relief this weekend, Mays still has yet to make a start since the middle of the 2003 season, so at the very least he may struggle initially. If that happens and Lohse continues to stink, the starting rotation could go from being a major strength to a major mess in the span of a week. It's a shame too, because I was looking forward to seeing whether or not Silva could repeat his 2004 performance in his second year as a full-time starting pitcher (I was on record as saying he would).

I expect the team to give shots to Gassner, Matt Guerrier (who is basically a right-handed version of Gassner), and Terry Mulholland (who is basically an elderly version of Gassner) over the next month or two, but if Silva is truly out for the majority of the season, a legitimate prospect with enough "stuff" to be a successful long-term answer will eventually get a chance. Who knows, if Baker is the one to get the call and he ends up pitching well, the team could be even stronger down the stretch if Silva returns from the disabled list at some point. (And yes, that was my lame attempt at optimism.)

Matthew LeCroy looked extremely rough at first base, but no one is counting on him to be Keith Hernandez over there as long as Morneau returns fairly soon. The most concerning thing to me about the defense continues to be Ron Gardenhire playing Shannon Stewart in left field over Lew Ford. The ball that bounced out of Stewart's glove as he dove for the catch Friday night? Ford may not have made the catch either, but the fact that there is even some doubt is what bugs me about the situation.

I am amused by how everyone in Chicago hopped back on to the "small ball" bandwagon once the White Sox won a couple games in a row. The fact is that Chicago hit five home runs in the two games they won this series and scored seven of their 13 runs in those games on homers, regardless of how much lip service people feel compelled to give Scott Podsednik for running really fast a couple times. Just because Ozzie Guillen keeps saying something over and over doesn't make it so. With that said, the Twins may want to work a little bit on their bunt defense.

I would say something sarcastic about Timo Perez batting fifth Saturday night, while Aaron Rowand, A.J. Pierzynski, Joe Crede, and Juan Uribe hit behind him, but he homered off Brad Radke in the seventh inning. So instead I'll just shut up.