I'm thoroughly convinced that no one has ever looked this fetching while throwing out the trash with zebra slippers on their feet and a towel wrapped around their head. And for some reason I suddenly have the urge to recycle.

After reading this great story about Caron Butler attending the birthday party of a fan, I'll settle for nothing less than Johan Santana showing up at my house wearing a party hat on January 3.

Longtime AG.com reader Thayer Rasmussen has made it to the final 10 players at the World Poker Tour's Mandalay Bay Poker Championship. We chatted over instant messenger late Wednesday night, with Thayer telling me that he knocked Patrik Antonius and reigning World Series of Poker Main Event winner Jamie Gold out of the tournament.

His run of sending big names home continued yesterday, as Thayer knocked three-time WSOP bracelet winner John Juanda out in 12th place.

(Proof that reading this blog makes you a good poker player.)
Thayer began yesterday in the middle of the field, but went on a huge run late last night, knocking players out in 16th, 15th, 14th, and 12th place before the tournament ended for the day with 10 players remaining. He currently sits second in chips with 685,000, which is just 13,000 off the chip leader. Two big names are left in Barry Greenstein (375,000) and Chau Giang (318,000), but Thayer is in great position to make a name for himself in the poker world. The winner receives $768,775.

The Official Twins Beat Writer of AG.com, LaVelle E. Neal III of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, shows how he earned that status with an excellent article on the pitcher who makes his big-league debut tonight, Kevin Slowey. LEN3 also has an interesting theory about Batgirl's recent "retirement."

When he's not producing the videos at NBCSports.com, Matt Casey also provides some of the links you see here each week. For instance, yesterday he gleefully passed along this amazing video showing the "Running of the Urinals":


In addition to having the unenviable task of making me look and sound presentable on video, Matt also runs his own blog and recently wrote his first column for NBCSports.com, in which he breaks down where each team stands through one-third of the season.

According to her husband, Official Fantasy Girl of AG.com candidate Jenna Fischer is "doing okay" after fracturing her back a couple weeks ago. Meanwhile, former OFGoAG.com Elisha Cuthbert is apparently set to join Fischer in the married ranks.

If the Official Fantasy Girl of AG.com had a "45-and-over" division, the titleholder would look like this.

Following in the footsteps of Pat Neshek, Gilbert Arenas, Curt Schilling, and Curtis Granderson, Kevin Youkilis is now blogging. Oh, and amazingly so is Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe, who Tony Kornheiser dubbed the "quintessential American sportswriter." Somewhere in Outoftouchville, Patrick Reusse is freaking out.

Add "growing a beard" to the incredibly long list of things that Joe Mauer does much better than me.

I wore my "More Cowbell" t-shirt in last week's "Gleeman Report" for NBCSports.com and no one scolded me, but for some reason I chickened out when it came to sporting my "Pedro Lacks Political Experience" t-shirt in this week's video. Instead, I put on a button-down thing with a collar on it and talked about pitching prospects, including Matt Garza.

Reason No. 1,853,089 why cultural differences and speaking through a translator are amusing: Daisuke Matsuzaka blamed some of his recent struggles on poor sleeping conditions on the road, but declined to discuss what changes he plans to make with his routine. According to the Boston Herald:

Matsuzaka told reporters he may have come up with a solution for the next road trip. He did not wish to share it, Japanese reporters said, because he preferred not to have people wondering or imagining how he looked while he slept.

How very thoughtful (or incredibly weird) of him.

I attended a little league game last night that was played by 11- and 12-year-olds, and included the losing team holding a lengthy "player's only meeting" in the dugout after getting blown out. Seriously, they kicked the manager out and the no-door session lasted over five minutes. I don't really have a point, but I felt the need to share that. I'm amazed that no one tested positive for performance enhancing drugs or fired their agent before the game.

If ever you've wanted to see my mom prominently featured in a show about fantasy baseball, check out NBCSports.com's "Fantasy Fix" from Thursday. When I wasn't talking to co-hosts Gregg Rosenthal and Tiffany Simons about my mom, we had David Pinto of Baseball Musings as a guest on Tuesday's show and Al Yellon of Bleed Cubbie Blue as a guest on Thursday's show.

Sadly, we can't all produce well-written, informative, interesting, topical blog entries like this one.

Free Tom the Treeman!

Two new blogs that are worth checking out: The Game of Baseball and Minnesota Sports Track.

If you've ever wanted to ask me a question and have it answered here, check out yesterday's entry. There were nearly 100 questions left in the comments section yesterday and I received another three dozen or so via e-mail, so I'll leave the floor open through the weekend.

This isn't actually a link and it's probably of little interest to anyone except me, but I'll bore you with it anyway: AG.com's May readership was up 19.6 percent compared to last May. On a related note, this blog should surpass three million total visitors at some point next week. The entry you're reading right now is No. 1,231 in the nearly five-year history of this site, which means the average entry has been read by a little over 2,400 people.

That may not seem like much, but the average daily readership during the first six months of this blog's existence was 90, 107, 135, 147, 213, and 252. AG.com averaged just 390 readers per day for the first year and didn't surpass a 1,000-visitor daily average until the second year. After starting this site way back in August of 2002, it took 30 months to reach one million visitors. From there, it took another 17 months to amass the second million.

The two-million mark was cracked last June, which means it will have taken almost exactly 12 months to rack up the third million. Whether or not those readership numbers are impressive depends almost entirely upon what you're comparing them to, but I've long since passed the point of being amazed. Of course, I never imagined that I'd be approaching my five-year blogging anniversary either. As always, thanks for reading.

This worked pretty well when we tried it the first time back in January, so let's try it again. With the Twins off today and the weekend coming up, I'd like to once again open the floor up for questions. If you have something to ask me on any (somewhat reasonable) topic, please post it in the comments section or e-mail it to me. I'll go through the questions and then answer them here at some point next week. I'm certainly open to answering Twins-related questions, but don't feel that you're limited to that subject.

In fact, the first time we tried this there were more than enough questions to split my responses into two entries, with one devoted to "baseball questions" and one devoted to "random questions." In other words, not everything has to be about Johan Santana and Nick Punto. If there's some pressing issue that you want my opinion on or some random thing that you've been wondering about me or this blog, fire away. Think of it as a low-tech version of ESPN.com's chat sessions.

And ... go!

The Twins haven't learned from their mistakes enough to actually stop making the same mistakes, but they've at least learned to get them over with more quickly. After waiting until mid-June to get rid of Tony Batista and Juan Castro last season, the Twins cut bait on Sidney Ponson in mid-May and demoted Ramon Ortiz to the bullpen yesterday. Not giving a pair of washed-up veterans $4.1 million and 17 starts to post a predictable 6.22 ERA would have been better, but at least it's "only" the end of May.

Thanks in large part to the horrible all-around play of Batista and Castro, it took the Twins until the 68th game of last season to even their record at .500 following a poor start. This time around Ponson and Ortiz helped put the Twins in another early hole, but they've managed to climb out enough to stand at .500 after 50 games. Again, not making poor decisions that give the rest of the division a head start would be much preferred, but at least there are four months left with which to make up ground.

How much did giving 17 starts to Ponson and Ortiz hurt the team? It's tough to say for certain, but a rough estimate is possible. On the most basic level, the Twins went 6-11 in their starts. If you assume that they would have managed a .500 record if those same starts had been made by Scott Baker, Kevin Slowey, and Matt Garza, then going with Ponson and Ortiz cost 2-3 wins. If you assume that Baker, Slowey, and Garza would have won more than half the time, then 4-5 games were lost.

Beyond that, by paying them $4.1 million the Twins devoted about six percent of their payroll to Ponson and Ortiz. It's difficult to say how much of an impact spending $4 million to improve the team elsewhere would have had, but certainly having another capable bat in the lineup at third base or designated hitter would have been helpful. Twins third basemen have combined for the third-worst production in the league at .226/.308/.328, while the DHs have been fourth-worst at .256/.342/.384.

While it's impossible to pin down specific numbers or players at this point, it's clear that spending $4 million to sign or trade for even a run-of-the-mill bat at those spots could have easily led to a multi-game improvement over the course of an entire year. Add it all up and the decision to go with Ponson and Ortiz will likely end up costing the Twins at least 3-5 games and perhaps as many as 6-8 wins by season's end.

There's an argument to be made that keeping Baker, Slowey, and Garza at Triple-A while Ponson and Ortiz lost games will end up helping the team in the long term because of service-time issues. However, there's little argument to be made for it being a positive right now and that was clear from the beginning. As I wrote back in February when it first became clear that Ponson and Ortiz would be filling two-fifths of the rotation, for once I'd like to see the Twins simply put the best team on the field:

Trust the talent you have regardless of when it was born, spend what little money you have available to fill legitimate holes on the roster instead of buying expensive, mediocre insurance for spots you don't need it at, and go to war with the best possible group in place. If the AL Central is as tough as I expect it to be this year--with perhaps four of the 10 best teams in baseball--the Twins will need every win they can get from Opening Day to Game 162 in order to make it back to the playoffs.

Opening the season with Silva, Ortiz, and Ponson in Minnesota and Garza, Baker, Perkins, and Slowey in Rochester might be a lot of things--and might not prove to be a season-killing mistake--but putting the best team on the field isn't one of them.

Getting rid of Ponson and demoting Ortiz in favor of Slowey or Garza while the team evens its record at .500 represents something of a clean slate, but the Twins are still looking up at three teams in the division and will have to make up at least five games to grab a playoff spot. It's nice that the mistakes have been realized and dealt with more quickly, but perhaps next time the Twins can try things without making the mistakes, period. As for this time, let's hope Baker, Slowey, and Garza can dig fast.