Missing Herb Carneal

Herb Carneal was the radio voice of the Minnesota Twins for more than 40 years. Over the last few weeks of listening to radio play-by-play on XM and on the Twins flagship ESPNRadio 1500 Twin Cities/St Paul or whatever it is called now...we simply miss the ease with which Carneal called games.

Because we were in the car for the last few innings of the game last night -- a game where Frankie Liriano shined by the way -- we had a chance to listen to the Tigers Radio Network on XM...and it was good. Better than our own Dazzle Dan Gladden and John Gordon by a mile.

There was a time when Gordon's "touch'em all" was like sweet music to our ears and now...we couldn't be more bored with the bit. The Tiger's radio team just sounded like a professional broadcast team. And when Gordon and Gladden are doing their thing, we can't say that about them. It only gets worse when Jack Morris enters the booth. If you can't watch the Twins on TV -- listening on the radio is painful and almost not worth it. So yeah...we are missing Herb Carneal today.

Mauer, Morneau, and Hardy need a nickname

The M & M boys was already taken, but the Twins tried that as a nickname for Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau. J.J. Hardy is now a Twin and we need to come up with a nickname for all three of those guys. The Twins won 5-3 last night and all members of the (insert nickname here) hit home runs.

We will come up with something as the day goes along. For now we are happy that the Twins are in the win column and all three studs hit bombs.

Jason Frasor entering Twins closer mix?

The season hasn't started yet, but the understatement of the 2010 so far is "the Twins will miss Joe Nathan."

Jason Frasor of the Blue Jays is the latest pitcher to be mentioned as a potential replacement for Nathan. Ron Mahay signed with the Twins yesterday and they will try to figure out where (if at all) Mahay can once again try to fit into this stable of Twins pitchers. All the other guys in the Twins bullpen and maybe even Francisco Liriano are still in contention as well.

We actually wouldn't mind seeing Frasor in a Twins uniform, as long as the Twins don't have to give up too much to get him. During our championship fantasy baseball runs, we've picked up and dropped Jason Frasor more often than we've picked up and dropped Jason Kubel over the the five years.

We think Frasor could be productive in a closer-by-committee role. And let's all be honest with ourselves -- that is most likely what the Twins are going to be looking at this season no matter who they bring in here.