I haven't written a whole lot about basketball here lately, in large part because the Wolves frustrate me so much, but the NBA draft has always interested me a great deal and the various Kevin Garnett trade rumors currently swirling around make tonight's proceedings even more intriguing than usual. When it comes to ways he's ruined the team, Kevin McHale's draft record takes a clear backseat to overpaying mediocre players and coughing up draft picks in trades that weren't favorable to begin with.

With that said, after strongly disagreeing with McHale's first-round picks in the past two drafts, I have very little confidence in his ability to make the "correct" decisions tonight. In 2005, when the Wolves used the 14th overall pick on Rashad McCants, I wanted them to draft Danny Granger instead. Last year, when they picked sixth and ended up with Randy Foye, I felt that Brandon Roy was a significantly better option.

The jury is still very much out on all four of those players, but there's little doubt (in my mind, at least) that the team's long-term outlook would be much brighter with Roy and Granger right now. My point here isn't to brag, because preferring Roy and Granger didn't take a genius, but rather to suggest that whether it's signing players to long-term contracts, pulling off trades, or using draft picks, McHale's decisions often look iffy right away and get worse as time goes on.

Given that the Wolves own the No. 7 pick and are rumored to potentially be acquiring several more first rounders if Garnett is traded, the prospect of McHale gutting the team and attempting to rebuild things almost entirely through his drafting ability is extremely scary. Despite that, I'm going to post my annual wish list for the draft in the hopes that McHale will grab the guy I want for once (or at least avoid the guys I don't want). If I were running the Wolves, here's what the top of my draft board would look like:

1. Greg Oden, Ohio State
2. Kevin Durant, Texas
3. Mike Conley, Ohio State
4. Al Horford, Florida
5. Brandon Wright, North Carolina
6. Corey Brewer, Florida
7. Yi Jianlian, China
8. Thaddeus Young, Georgia Tech
9. Jeff Green, Georgetown
10. Javaris Crittenton, Georgia Tech
11. Julian Wright, Kansas
12. Al Thornton, Florida State

Horford is seemingly the consensus No. 3 guy, but I'm a big believer in the importance of point guards and Conley looks like a potential stud. A Conley-Foye backcourt would be significantly undersized, but I have questions about Foye's ability to play point guard and he's not good enough to justify bypassing the best available player simply because he plays the same position. Wright has seen his stock dip recently, but he represents the most upside once you get past Oden, Durant, Conley, and Horford.

I'm skeptical about Brewer's offensive potential, but he figures to be an asset defensively from Day 1. Jianlian is the ultimate boom-or-bust flier pick and there's something to be said for going that route with a team that needs a miracle, but it's likely a non-issue given that he hasn't named the Wolves as a team he'd like to play for. I'm higher than most on the Georgia Tech duo of Young and Crittenton, and perhaps a bit lower than most on Green.

Among ESPN.com's top dozen draft prospects, the two I'd like to see the Wolves avoid are Joakim Noah and Spencer Hawes. I don't think Noah has enough offensive skills to be a star and the Wolves shouldn't be targeting a high-energy role player with a top-10 pick. Hawes' lack of rebounding ability is a major red flag for a seven-footer and he strikes me as someone who isn't particularly well-suited for a league that's quickly moving away from unathletic big men.

Between a possible Garnett trade with a so-so return and McHale's questionable drafting I'm guessing that things won't go the way I'd like them to for the Wolves over the next 24 hours, but whatever does happen tonight should be very interesting.

My air-conditioning suddenly stopped working yesterday afternoon--the unit still appears to be running, but no air is coming through any vents--so I've spent the past 12 hours or so sitting in an 80-degree house. Between that and the Twins' ugly loss to the Blue Jays, I'm far too sweaty and annoyed to blog, although I was tempted to shoot some video of what the scene at my new house looks like right now. It's really quite pathetic, but probably best left to the imagination (plus, I had to conserve my energy).

In addition to me sweating like Albert Brooks in Broadcast News while sitting on (and sticking to) new leather furniture, there are a dozen half-empty bottles of water strewn every few feet and the constant hum of a cheap oscillating fan provides just enough breeze to remind me how miserable I am every four seconds. Oh, and I busted out in 53rd place in a 1,000-person poker tournament when ace-king didn't improve against a pair of 10s, so I narrowly missed making several thousand dollars too.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go sweat myself to sleep (or death, either works at this point).

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The boys from Nick & Nick's Twins Blog have planned a "get-together" to watch Saturday afternoon's game against the Tigers. I'll be there, along with Nick Nelson, Nick Mosvick, and what is likely to be several other Twins bloggers (if you fit that description and plan to come, let me know and I'll add your name to the list). The first blogger-sponsored get-together of the season was a lot of fun, so if you're interested in attending No. 2--I'm told there will be air-conditioning!--here are the details:

Who: Gleeman, Nelson, Mosvick, and various other bloggers, blog readers, and Twins fans.

What: Eat, drink, be merry, watch baseball.

Where: Park Tavern in St. Louis Park (3401 Louisiana Avenue South, to be exact).

When: Saturday, June 30, at 2:30 p.m.

It's real tough, because you have to do everything out there.

- Johan Santana, June 24, 2007

Johan Santana was a one-man gang last week against the Mets, tossing a complete-game shutout while drawing a walk and smacking a stand-up double off Jorge Sosa. He continued the Babe Ruth impression yesterday afternoon, holding the Marlins to one earned run over six innings while launching an RBI triple off Byung-Hyun Kim. With Nick Punto on first base in the second inning, Santana squared around to bunt before pulling the bat back and yanking a ball into right-center field.

According to Ron Gardenhire:

I told him before he went to plate, "We're going to bunt." But I said, "If he runs, then you're going to swing." I meant, "When we steal second, you're going to swing." But he saw it as, "OK, if he runs, I'm swinging." He saw him running and he whacked.

Punto scored easily to put the Twins up 2-1 as the ball flew over right fielder Jeremy Hermida's head and Santana cruised into third base with a stand-up triple before coming around on Jason Bartlett's sacrifice fly to make it a 3-1 game. Santana officially went 0-for-2 in his final two trips to the plate, but his fourth-inning ground ball actually led to runs when Aaron Boone hit Punto with the throw on a would-be force out at second base and the ball skipped into left field.

Santana reached third base again, but strayed too far on a Jeff Cirillo ground ball and was tagged out after a brief, manic rundown that eschewed the base path. While perhaps not the world's greatest baserunner--although he made pretty good time around the bases and didn't pass out following the triple--Santana pushed his career hitting line to .258/.281/.322 in 32 plate appearances. To put that in some context, here's how Santana's career numbers compare to some of his teammates:

                     AVG      OBP      SLG      OPS     IsoP     IsoD
Nick Punto          .253     .322     .333     .655     .080     .069
Luis Rodriguez      .241     .316     .337     .653     .096     .075
Jason Tyner         .272     .310     .315     .625     .043     .043
Johan Santana       .258     .281     .322     .603     .064     .023

Not only has Santana shown 50 percent more power than Jason Tyner during their respective careers, he's sporting a higher batting average than Punto and Luis Rodriguez, who were half of yesterday's infield and combined on a play that turned a would-be double play into an unearned run. Among pitchers with at least 30 plate appearances, Santana's .603 OPS ranks second in Twins history behind only Luis Tiant, who amazingly batted .406 during his lone season in Minnesota:

                     OPS
Luis Tiant          .955
Johan Santana       .603
Camilo Pascual      .546
Jim Kaat            .514
Dave Boswell        .504

Santana joins Dave Boswell, Jim Kaat, Mudcat Grant, Jim Perry, Jack Kralick, Camilo Pascual, and Mike Fornieles as the only pitchers in Twins history to hit a triple, becoming the first member of the pitching staff to hit a three-bagger since the designated hitter came into play in 1973. Brewers catcher Johnny Estrada is the all-time leader in plate appearances without a triple, batting 1,970 times without once doing what Santana did yesterday. Funny game, that baseball.

Some other notes from the weekend ...

Jason Kubel went 5-for-8 with two doubles and two walks during the three-game series, giving him a .265/.324/.480 hitting line with five homers and eight doubles over the past 30 games. Kubel has quietly been one of the team's best hitters since early May, yet Gardenhire continues to bench him regularly in favor of both Tyner (.271/.320/.322) and Lew Ford (.247/.304/.342). And why? Because as Gardenhire said Friday, "Lew and Tyner are both playing well."

Kubel began Friday's game on the bench so that Ford and his .728 career OPS against left-handers could start against Scott Olsen. With the Twins down 4-2 in the eighth inning, Kubel came off the bench to deliver a pinch-hit double down the left-field line off Armando Benitez. Kubel came around to score the game-tying run on the play when the Marlins' defense essentially played the double into a homer, but only after Justin Morneau bruised his right lung on a nasty collision at the plate:


Morneau won the battle by scoring, but lost the war by coughing up blood afterward. He remains in a Florida hospital while the rest of the team flew back to Minnesota and there's no timetable for his return. I'm not thrilled with third-base coach Scott Ullger's decision to wave Morneau home on the play, but Ullger putting runners in bad spots is certainly nothing new. After being an awful hitting coach for nearly a decade, Ullger lost that job and is in his second season as an awful third-base coach.

To make matters worse, Morneau's injury was wasted when Juan Rincon served up what turned out to be a game-winner homer to Hanley Ramirez moments later. Rincon had bucked his recent trend of horrible pitching by tossing a 1-2-3 seventh inning and got two outs when Gardenhire decided to leave him in for the eighth inning, but allowed a homer in his third straight appearance and tied a career-high with five long balls in just 25.2 innings this season.

With Morneau stuck in the hospital, Joe Mauer launched two homers yesterday after coming into the game with one long ball in 183 plate appearances. After batting .347/.429/.507 last season, Mauer is now up to .319/.409/.488 this year despite a 4-for-26 (.154) slump upon returning from the disabled list earlier this month. While not on pace to defend his batting title, given the decrease in league-wide offense Mauer has essentially been exactly as effective as he was in 2006.

Santana uncharacteristically struck out just one batter in his shutout win over the Mets, but followed that up yesterday with his usual eight strikeouts in six innings. For all the misguided talk of Santana not being on top of his game, he ranks fifth among AL pitchers with a 2.83 ERA and has held opponents to a .218 batting average with a 114-to-27 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 108 innings. Through 16 starts in his previous three seasons as a full-time starter, Santana had ERAs of 2.75, 3.78, and 4.38.

With Luis Castillo getting yesterday off to rest his sore legs, Rodriguez got the start and went 0-for-3 while making the aforementioned throwing error at third base. He once looked like a decent utility player, but Rodriguez is now incapable of playing shortstop, doesn't look especially solid at second base or third base, and is hitting .179/.273/.244 after batting .235/.315/.322 last season. With Punto recently demoted to his rightful place as a utility man, what purpose does Rodriguez serve, exactly?

Torii Hunter lined a single into center field leading off the second inning Saturday, at which point Alfredo Amezaga overaggressively played it into a "triple" as the ball skipped past him and to the wall. The play brought back memories of Hunter misplaying a similar Mark Kotsay hit into an inside-the-park homer during last year's ALDS. Hunter went 6-for-14 during the series to raise his batting average back up to .306 after a one-day stop at .299.

By winning back-to-back road series against the Mets and Marlins, the Twins improved to 38-35, which is the same record they held through 73 games last season. The big difference is that 38-35 put them 11 games behind the Tigers last year, while this time around it "only" sets them 6.5 games back of Detroit.