It is no longer enough to talk about Delmon Young as the Twins' leader in runs batted in. Today, he's seventh in the American League in RBI.

On Sunday, he passed Torii Hunter, Evan Longoria and Mark Teixeira, who have 68, 83 and 94 plate appearances more than Delmon. He is on the heels of Carlos Quentin, Paul Konerko and Josh Hamilton.

If you had dared mention Delmon in the same sentence with those guys at the start of the season -- or even a couple of months ago -- someone would have started singing this song in response to your silliness, if they were being polite.

But there's hardly a meaningful offensive statistic in which Delmon isn't sparkling right now.

RBI: Team leader. Slugging percentage: Trails only Morneau and Thome. Average: Behind Morneau, Valencia's 66 at-bats and Pavano's 3-for-6. Extra-base hits: Trails only Morneau.

You get the idea.

And he is trying not to be as impressed with his success as we are. According to one of Sunday's game reports -- the one from St. Paul -- Delmon replied to a question about his offensive prowess by saying: "I don't really too much care as long as we win. Any real questions?"

I kinda sorta think that Delmon is happier about stuff than he let on. The Garza-Bartlett for Young-Harris trade has been poked with sharp sticks and kneed in the groin more often than not since it was made in November 2007. People even stomped the trade because of the minor-league reliever -- Eddie Morlan -- who was included. Future stud, some argued.

Anyone wondered about Eddie Morlan lately? If you have, he's pitching for the Montgomery Biscuits of the Southern League and playing Class AA ball for the fourth year in a row.

Trades, as Andy MacPhail used to say, are judged as snapshots in time. The Rays looked pretty good in the group photos from the first two seasons afterward; Delmon is looking excellent this season, all the more with Jason Bartlett putting up numbers this season that would make a Twins fan wonder why Nick Punto wasn't being given more of a chance at shortstop.

(Anyone wondering about Brendan Harris? He's hitting .190 with a .317 slugging percentage at Rochester.)

In good measure because of Delmon's prowess, the Twins kept from running in place this weekend, moving with 1 1/2 games of first place instead of staying at 3 1/2 back as a result of Sunday's exciting victory.

Concerns about the Triangle of Uncertainty -- Blackburn, Slowey and Baker -- could be deferred publicly for a day in the aftermath of a jump-around and smack-your-pal victory. You can bet that behind the scenes, the decisions-makers were deconstructing and reconstructing Nick Blackburn's mediocre outing, comparing it to Kevin Slowey's terrible one from Thursday and lighting a candle of hope for Scott Baker's start against Cleveland tonight.

In the meantime, fans could be giddy. It was one of those games that made strangers talk to each other. Me and Ms. Baseball-219 were returning some videos Sunday night and I mentioned to the guy behind us in the Redbox line that it was cool to see the '87 World Series t-shirt he was wearing.

"Thanks," he said. "Too bad they didn't win today."

"They did," we said.

"They did," the guy behind him added.

"No $#!+?" t-shirt guy said.

Got out the Crackberry, showed him the score and everyone went home happy.