Welcome to Minnesota's Opening Day! We can only hope it goes as well for the Twins as our Opening Day did for us. The one thing we have going for us is that it's a day game; we'll take anything we can get at this point. Brett Anderson will take the mound, facing off against Carl Pavano.
The Twins will be missing their second baseman, Tsuyoshi Nishioka; he broke his leg on a hard slide by Nick Swisher in yesterday's contest. The A's will look to Brett Anderson as he tries to better his performance from Saturday. Anderson earned a no-decision last week against the Mariners, and struggled with the same problem Cahill did in his first start; way, way too many pitches, and not enough strikes. If he can repeat Cahill's performance from yesterday's game, we'll be just fine.
It's not too early to think about making up some ground on the Rangers; the A's were buried early behind the strength of a 6-0 Rangers' start to the season. Meanwhile, the A's have gone 2-4 on the first week of the season, and looked pretty terrible doing it.
Lineups:
The Minnesota Twins (I dislike writing out all of their names, since I distinctly remember key hits up and down this lineup against our pitching staff.)
Span, CF
Mauer, C
Morneau, 1B
Young, LF
Cuddyer, RF
Thome, DH
Valencia, 3B
Hughes, 2B
Casilla, SS
I have the A's lineups, courtesy of Jane Lee, whom I like a lot better than SB Nation's lineup widget:
Your 2011 Oakland Athletics:
Crisp, CF
Barton, 1B
DeJesus, RF
CompliantPork, LF
Matsui, DH
Suzuki, C
Ellis, 2B
Kouzmanoff, 3B
Pennington, SS
I still have no idea how Mark Ellis is in the lineup; the latest reports I heard involved him driving from Toronto to Minnesota because of his inner ear issue. But he's here, and so are we, so:
LET'S GO OAK-LAND!
