By Steve Friendt

With the injury bug biting the Twins bullpen for the first time during the regular season, the team responded by laying the preverbal egg this afternoon. The Twins didn’t have Jose Mijares( 15 day DL) or Pat Nesheck(cortisone shot) today and it really hurt them. It didn’t help that the Twins left 11 runners on base and they were 3 for 10 with runners in scoring position. All that aside, the Twins have gotten good pitching performances from their new closer Jon Rauch, and set up man Matt Guerrier. The teams offensive production has been OK despite not really getting on track yet. They’re generating a lot of base runners and showing a lot of patience at bat, making the opposing pitchers throw a lot of extra pitches. Starting pitching has been OK for the Twins, except for today, but I’m not too worried about Carl Pavano. He got in trouble in the 2nd and couldn’t recover. Sometimes all it takes is one bad pitch, and for Pavano that pitch was a 3 and 2 sinker to Alberto Callaspo that didn’t sink. It was just one of those days( I hope). As the Twins try to get into rhythm, I think that they are right on track. You don’t win the division in 2 weeks, and in a 162 game season they’ll be a few “downs” mixed in there with your “ups”. Let’s hope that there are a lot more “ups” than “downs”.