#-1: Lynx (Last Week: -1). Ah, the luxury of depending on, even taking for granted, an excellent local sports team. Friday's 22-point dick-smack of San Antonio and Sunday's 18-point rout of Seattle (both at home) made it nine wins in a row. They have extended their league-best record in the WNBA. And the team has not lost in over a month.
Don't know what else is there to say. I've noticed that Lindsay Whalen has led the squad in scoring in many games this year when I didn't notice her doing that last year. If that's the case, she is a legitimate contender for regular season Most Valuable Player. So why have I kept the Lynx at -1? Well, frankly, this is getting too good to be true. The club, in particular its starting five, has been injury-free (the only that got benched for some time is Seimone Augustus, and Monica Wright stepped in and regularly, like, dropped 20 a game in her absence), and that can't hold up. The other reason I'm putting the team at -1 only is because, since I can't decide depending on how this team is doing, I look at how the team below the Lynx is doing, and thought it more appropriate they're -2 instead of -1, dictating that the Lynx is -1 and not 0.
Oh yeah -- this week they travel to San Antonio, host Washington, and visit Chicago.
#-2: Twins (Last Week: -2). So basically this week the Twinks are 3-0 against Houston and 0-4 against Kansas City. It's been a rollercoaster ride with this ballclub this week. As they were getting swept by K.C. -- at home no less, including a pair of 7-2 scores -- I thought I had seen enough and thought it was time for Ron Gardenhire to be let go -- not because he was the problem, but because it was beyond time to do something, even something nonsensical. But then my angst was alleviated because the worst team in Major League Baseball, Houston, came in and promptly choked away leads late in games on its way to getting swept (although the losses were by, respectively, one, two and one run).
Gardenhire wanted to see if his team could add the momentum from sweeping Astros with the frustration over getting swept by the Royals and play with a little more fire as they began a three-game series in Kansas City last night. That didn't happen; Kevin Correia gave up six runs in the second inning, and then Ryan Pressly was shaken down for seven runs in the six and seventh innings, as Jeremy Guthrie -- fucking Jeremy Guthrie!!! -- got a complete-game shutout and struck out seven Twinks as they got fucking crushed 13-0. The Royals are now 11-3 vs. the Twinks for the season. The Royals!!!
Alright, I should calm down a bit at this point. It's simplistic to say that the Royals are doing it right while the Twins are doing it wrong. They are, now, but don't forget they haven't been to the postseason in, like, thirty years and haven't even sniffed a .500 season in almost a decade. As bad as they've been the past three years, our team's recent track record runs laps around the Royals'. Kansas City's trade of Wil Myers, possibly the best hitting prospect ready for the big leagues, to the Bay Rays for Pitchers James Shields and Wade Davis, has been seen as a swindle for Tampa, but it's brought some much-needed stability to the starting rotation. And even though when I saw the Royals when I vacationed in K.C. a couple months ago they looked punchless, it appears as if the lineup is getting into a hitting groove.
The bottom line is is that the Royals may finally have turned the corner; they might not be a playoff team this year, but things are finally looking up. That is what the Twins know they have to do to revive this moribund franchise. Can they get there? They at least know it might not happen for almost 30 years, which is how long Kansas City has been on the bottom of the dung heap. That gives the Twinks a lot of leeway, right?
One other thing: I've said a lot about where this franchise's place is. This screening week has put in sharp relief that the Twinks are, right now, better than the Astros but worse than the Royals. That seems to be the conclusion you can take from these games about the state of these three organizations.
This week: They finish two more in Kansas City, have a day off Thursday, then play a four-game series in the South side of Chicago against the White Sox; it begins Friday with a doubleheader, brought about in part because of a rainout April 19. They then begin an eight-game homestand battling Cleveland on Monday.
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