Josh Willingham is back in the lineup today as the Twins try to avoid losing a third straight game to the Rangers. Already 1-7 on this 10-game road trip, the Twins are trying to avoid making a bad trip a total disaster.
Denard Span is back in the lineup today against righthander Ryan Dempster.
A report out of L.A. had the Dodgers approaching the Twins about Justin Morneau before engaging the Red Sox about the megadeal involving Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford, Josh Beckett and Nick Punto.
A source told me before the July 31 deadline that the Dodgers had Morneau on their second tier of first base interests because of concerns about Morneau's health history. So I'm not sure they tried that hard in July. Things must be different now, because the Dodgers appear desperate enough to take on other big contracts.
About 20 percent of the country is watching this game on Fox. Most of the country will get the Atlanta-San Francisco matchup.
By the way, the Twins made another international signing earlier this month. They signed Taiwanese righthander Chih-Wei Hu, a 18-year old righthander whose fastball reaches the low 90's and mixes in a decent curveball and change up. I learned of the signing about two weeks ago but wanted to get some background on him. He's supposed to have pretty good control and has a chance to be a starter.
Twins (51-74)
1. Denard Span, CF
2. Ben Revere, RF
3. Joe Mauer, C
4. Josh Willingham, LF
5. Justin Morneau, 1B
6. Ryan Doumit, C
7. Trevor Plouffe, 3B
8. Jamey Carroll, 2B
9. Pedro Florimon, SS
