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Surprised? A Little Bit, I Guess
If you haven't been paying attention, you've been missing a strange, maddening, encouraging, teetering-on-the-brink-of-disaster one day, triumphing-over-adversity the next, almost wholly improbable stretch of baseball from the Minnesota Twins.
The Twins season to date doesn't really add up, and they're certainly not going about their business the way past teams have. Yet, somehow, every time they get knocked down they seem to find a way to get back up. Bitch all you want about whatever you want (and there's been plenty to bitch about), but you have to give the Twins this much: they're battlers, as evidenced most recently in the just concluded four-game split with the Yankees --three one-run games, all sorts of lead changes, and the by now expected assortment of weird plays.
Obviously nobody expected the Central to be such an undistinguished muddle, and just as surely very, very few people expected the Twins to be a half-game out in the first week of June. Still, it's probably not really such a surprise that the Twins would be three games over .500 at this point. The real surprise has been how inconsistent --and even awful-- the other clubs have been. As erratic as the Twins have been, they've been almost a model of consistency relative to the rest of the division.
I guess it's also been something of a surprise how the Twins have gotten to where they're at. Is anybody else sort of taken aback to realize that, among American League teams, Minnesota is now trailing only Boston, Detroit, and Texas in runs scored, this despite the fact that the club is still next to last in homeruns? Is anybody else surprised that the Twins are 18-9 against the Central, easily the best mark in the division?
I'm not terribly surprised by all the runs the Twins have given up (274 --only Detroit, Texas, and Seattle have surrendered more), so much as by the manner in which they've given them up. I think most of us figured going in that the starting pitching would be a sketchy proposition, and we've mostly been proven right, even as I'd argue that, Boof notwithstanding, the starters have done a pretty damn good job of keeping the team in games.
This is a bit of an aside, but here's a stat I can't quite get my head around: Nick Blackburn has a WHIP (walk plus hits per innings pitched) of 1.38; Boof's at 1.40, and Livan Hernandez is at a ridiculous 1.52. Boof leads the starters in strikeouts, and there's not a huge disparity in homers allowed --Hernandez, in fact, has surrended one more. So what's the problem with the Boofster? Situational pitching, I suppose, Boof's inability to work his way out of jams and avoid innings that snowball; a bad inning followed by several good innings, followed by another bad inning; in a word, inconsistency. Translation: Boof's problems are mental as much as they are mechanical, and, at the very least, he'll be a much-needed warm body in the pen.
God knows his presence will be welcomed by the other guys slumped on the bench down the leftfield line. Because the bullpen absolutely got killed in May. Some of this was almost certainly a product of being overworked (an obvious concern in the second month of the season, particularly with so many question marks), but the numbers really were alarming. In the 27 May games in which the bullpen appeared, relievers allowed runs in 19 of those (and that doesn't take into account inherited runs they allowed to score). For the month the pen pitched 97 innings in those 27 games, giving up 106 hits, 46 walks, and 46 runs. Beyond Guerrier and Nathan, there really isn't a guy left in the pen that inspires supreme confidence, or even tenuous confidence.
The obvious remedy to this, or the only way to keep the pen from further implosion (hard as that is to imagine) as the summer wears on, is for the starters to settle in and start grinding out more innings. There are at least tentative indications that these guys --Baker, Blackburn, Slowey, certainly Hernandez, and possibly Perkins-- are making progress toward that goal. The guys with the bats in their hands have showed that if the pitching staff can at least keep the game close, they'll keep hacking and battling until the last pitch.
The other early concern, of course, has been the defense, but --and I may be in a bit of denial here-- I really do expect that to work itself out. I've been sort of amazed by what a stabilizing presence Alexi Casilla has been both in the field and at the plate. He doesn't look anything like the guy we saw last year, and he was scuffling at Rochester before the desperation call-up. So while it's possible that he'll regress, I'm cautiously optimistic that he's here to stay, and is finally ready to deliver on the promise he showed when he was the Twins' minor league player of the year a couple seasons ago.
I'll say the same thing today that I said on opening night: This is a fun team to watch, and consistently fun, which is saying something when it comes to Major League baseball in the 21st century. And with both Cleveland and Detroit struggling to maintain any sort of positive momentum, and Chicago threatening to any day now get swallowed up by the spontaneous human combustion of its manager, the division that was widely regarded as the best in baseball a few months ago could actually go to a team that wins 88 games.
And, hey, just possibly the Twins --a club that has at times been as frustrating and disappointing as any in recent memory, yet which has nonetheless managed to creep within a half game of the division lead-- could be that team, even if that notion still seems somehow utterly ludicrous.
Finally, I'll leave you with these mind bogglers: Justin Morneau leads the Twins with 109 total bases, the exact same number that Cristian Guzman now has for the Washington Nationals. And in 88 at bats with Pittsburgh, Luis Rivas has as many homeruns (three) as Delmon Young, Joe Mauer, and Michael Cuddyer combined.
I Can't Believe I Watched the Whole Thing: That's Why They Play Nine, You Communists, Part Two
As I sat staring vacantly at the TV in the ninth inning of last night's Kansas City-Minnesota game, I had another of my brief, increasingly pathetic revelations. My God, I said to my dog, This really is my life.
Which is something I find myself saying to my dog with alarming frequency of late.
I'd been sitting there for almost three hours. The sound on the television was muted and I was listening to some mournful Armenian blowing narcotic tendrils of fog through an instrument called a duduk. I'd eaten entirely too much candy, almost all of it the sort of novelty garbage that is created expressly for abject convenience store consumers like myself --DOTS Elements, for instance (Fire/Cinnamon, Water/Green Tea, Earth/Pomegranate, Air/Wintergreen). Or Twizzlers Rainbow Twists. Or Life Savers Fruit Splosions Gummies ("Made with real fruit juice"). Good stuff, all of it, but probably best savored in moderation.
There was really no good reason for me to still be sitting on the couch as the game went into the ninth inning. The Royals had an 8-3 lead and seemed well on their way to ending a nine-game losing streak. It had been a pretty miserable game all around, and somebody who had anything whatsoever else to do with their evening would have turned off the television (or at the very least turned the channel) after Delmon Young made two errors and the Royals scored three runs in the bottom of the fourth. Livan Hernandez was getting rocked, and would leave after the sixth, having surrendered thirteen hits and eight runs (six of them earned).
I can't even pretend that I was still watching with anything approaching hope or expectation. No, the sad truth is that I was simply (or not so simply) unable to move. I think it's safe to say that I was in a sugar-induced stupor, and I was aware that I could no longer feel my right arm and that I was chanting --as I so often chant when I am watching a baseball game in a sort of empirical blackout-- "Hey batta, batta, batta. Hey, batta, batta."
On some level, then, I was also apparently aware that the Twins were batting in the ninth inning, and so I watched with zero enthusiasm or even real interest as Michael Cuddyer went down swinging for the first out against KC reliever Ramon Ramirez. I watched as Jason Kubel singled and the beleaguered Delmon Young whiffed for the second out.
What in the world would I do with the rest of my night? I wondered.
Kubel made his way to second on a wild pitch, and Mike Lamb singled, scoring Kubel. It was still 8-4, Royals, but at least, I thought, the Twins were going to go down swinging. Bully for them.
Brendon Harris singled, moving Lamb to second, and then Carlos Gomez chopped one through the infeld, scoring Lamb. 8-5, Royals. Nice little two-out rally, I thought.
Joel Peralta was brought in to relieve Ramirez. Ron Gardenhire countered by sending up Craig Monroe to pinch hit for Alexi Casilla. Monroe took three balls and then managed to work the count full. And then he somehow managed to turn on a pitch and hit it over the left field fence to tie the game.
And then Denys Reyes and Jesse Crain somehow managed to get through the bottom of the ninth without allowing a run.
And then Justin Morneau somehow managed to hit Peralta's first pitch of the tenth for another homer, and the Twins were somehow, suddenly, up 9-8.
And then Joe Nathan, fresh off his first blown save of the season, somehow managed to retire the Royals in order in the bottom of the inning and the Twins had another win.
And then I'll be damned if I didn't eat some more candy and immediately wonder, What in the world will I do with the rest of my night?
And then it occurred to me (baseball and sleeplessness having once again conspired to kindle my spiritual lunacy), Perhaps I might finally get around to baptizing my dog.
What Fresh Hell Is This?
Sidney Ponson?
Come on, seriously: Sidney Ponson?
You have to be kidding me.
Truly, there is very, very little that could give me more displeasure than seeing that fat Aruban hump toss a complete game gem in the Metrodome.
My displeasure wouldn't be much diminished even if he had been wearing a Minnesota uniform.
(Here's an aside from the Department of Incredulity: You all surely know that Sir Sidney Ponson was knighted in 2003 by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands. Still, though, that fact continues to boggle my mind, and I must confess that I didn't even know that the Netherlands had a Queen, let alone a Queen named Beatrix. A year after being knighted, of course, Ponson slugged an Aruban judge and spent eleven days in jail. Five years later he should have been out of baseball and working in an Aruban Arby's; but, no, there he was, the human grease trap, once again making a hazardous waste dump of the pitching mound and throwing a complete game against the Minnesota Twins, the team for which, in 2007, he posted a 2-5 record with a 6.93 ERA. Sometimes baseball sucks so much it can make you throw up your microwave burritos.)
As for the Twins, well, fellow fans, things aren't exactly looking cheery for the local nine of late.
You all want to get your panties in a bunch about Delmon Young? Come on. We've got a whole lot of big problems that are a whole lot bigger than Delmon Young. Has he been a disappointment? Sure, but why pick on the new kid when there are so many of the old kids (Michael Cuddyer and Jason Kubel, for starters) deserving of your ire? The bottom of the order is --just as I feared-- even worse than last year's bottom of the order.
It seems like every day there's another mangled or broken thumb or finger, and there are an awful lot of guys on that pitching staff of late who would look right at home in a Sid Ponson mask (the 2004-2007 model).
For years we've been spoon fed a party line that insisted the Twins played the game the right way. Something about that always struck me as 80% unreconstituted horseshit, but I'll be damned if this current outfit hasn't gone and kicked in the additional 20% and made me almost miss Tom Kelly. The defense and the bullpen --regarded as the strength of the team throughout the Gardenhire era-- have been mostly brutal, and night after night we've been subjected to fundamental lapses that would give even a Legion coach fits.
Right now this team is next to last in the AL in homeruns, first in homeruns allowed, 12th in OBP, last in walks, and next to last in fielding percentage. They have a leadoff hitter who's fifth in the league in strikeouts, ahead of Richie Sexson. All of those numbers would sure as hell seem to be a recipe for disaster.
Yet somehow the Twins are hanging in there at .500 and holding on to second place in the Central. If they're going to maintain even a .500 pace, however, they for damn sure are going to have to stumble across some good news that's a whole lot better than the bad news they've been running into on an almost daily basis.
Guts and Small Ball
Francisco Liriano was almost as disappointing as Nelson Liriano. There has been a disquieting wave of injuries—to Michael Cuddyer, Kevin Slowey, Adam Everett, Scott Baker, Nick Punto, and, most depressingly, to Pat Neshek.
The offense has been erratic; the power and team on base percentage alarming. Up and down the lineup the new additions—and there are scads of new additions—have been underperforming at the plate. The bullpen has been as shaky as it's been in years, and seems ill equipped to absorb the Neshek blow.
On paper, certainly, the Twins appear to be a team with all sorts of concerns, and so far almost any close scrutiny of the stats would seem to bear that out.
And yet—at this point, at least—every team should have such concerns.
The question, of course, is how the hell are the Twins doing it? How the hell do they even hang with a team like the Red Sox, let alone take three-of-four from the most powerful, most multi-dimensionally talented team in the universe? How has a team that has allowed more runs than it has scored, and that is thirteenth out of fourteen AL teams in both homeruns and OBP, managed to grind its way to twenty wins and first place in the Central?
That's a damn good question, and I'm not sure I have an answer for you. It might well be a fluke. The Twins have handled the Central so far (at a 13-8 clip), and they've been pretty dominant at home (14-7). Where things get a bit worrisome is in the team's numbers with runners in scoring position (.311 BA, .371 OBP, and .452 SLG) and runners in scoring position with two outs (.315, .376, and .420). In a freakish season (or in the case of a freakishly good hitter), an individual might sustain those sorts of numbers over 162 games, but you pretty much expect that they'll eventually level out for the team and be more reflective of their overall performance, which so far hasn't been terrific, to say the least. A small ball team in today's American League pretty much has to have a dominant pitching staff. They certainly can't expect to lead the league in homers allowed and live to drink champagne in the post season.
The Minnesota pitching staff, from the starters to the bullpen, has been gutsy. It's been crafty. It's battled and pitched in and out of jams and, on the nights the Twins have won, generally been just good enough. There hasn't, though, been the domination we came to expect from Johan Santana every five days, and, in recent years, from the back end of the pen. Joe Nathan has been (mostly) his usual stout self, but with Neshek sidelined there's a level of pressure—and right now it sort of still feels like desperation—that we're unaccustomed to feeling in the late innings. Is anyone yet feeling entirely comfortable with any of our seventh- and eighth-inning options? If we're going to have to start extending guys like Rincon, Reyes, and Crain (all of whom have battled arm problems) what kind of trouble are we potentially looking at or asking for?
I fully realize that at this point that's just typical neurosis, but given what's transpired thus far it also sort of feels like unpardonable gratitude, so like everybody else I'll just wait and see and hope.
The division has obviously been a bit of a mystery in the early going, and everybody seems to be battling some problem or another. I've said previously that I think the Detroit Tigers are facing a constellation of problems that are going to bedevil them the rest of the way, and I still believe that. They obviously have the potential to put up outrageous offensive numbers, but they've been up and down, and their starting pitching has been putting them in a hole night after night; if I'm not mistaken, twelve of their sixteen wins have been come-from-behind affairs, and that shit will wear on even the best offense.
The White Sox? Can't stand them, and I expect them to be as erratic as their manager all season (if Ozzie doesn't get fired).
The team that's been lurking in the weeds for the first six weeks—and, actually, they've just started lumbering ashore and shaking off the milfoil—is the Cleveland Indians. As exciting and unexpected as the Twins' performance has been, am I alone in feeling more than a little bit queasy about the fact that, even after taking three-of-four from Boston, our local nine still finds itself with just a game-and-a-half cushion?
Finally, for all of us Jason Kubel fans—and there must be at least a couple dozen of us out here—is it time to shut up and accept that our pet project is entering Rich Becker territory? I suspect we may have no choice if Craig Monroe continues to energize the team with his offense and take away Kubel's at bats. And after watching Monroe the last week I'm prepared to admit that I was probably wrong about him, provided, of course, that he continues to prove me wrong. Which, since I really am a fan, would make me nothing but happy.
That's Why They Play Nine, You Communists: Meet Your First Place Minnesota Twins
I'm not a fair weather fan. Honest to God, I'm not.
Seriously.
I'm not.
This season, however, I am trying very hard not to let the game eat me alive. I'm also trying very hard not to allow the game to eat up so damn much of my time. It's a hard habit to break, though, and so far it's been a rough balancing act. I was in New York for a week --the Yankees were out of town, but I did get out to Shea to see the Mets-- and I had promised myself that while I was out of town I would limit myself to a brief perusal of the boxscores each morning. No Baseball Tonight. No channel surfing. No sitting in front of a computer tracking the Twins on the internet.
I didn't do so well on that last one, but it really could have been a whole lot worse.
I was at Shea the night Morneau hit his grand slam to put the Twins up 5-0 at Texas. They flashed that bright bit of news on the scoreboard. It seemed like fifteen minutes later I looked up there again and saw that the score was suddenly 5-5.
I should have kept that night in mind on Sunday afternoon, when I turned off the game after the first inning --with Boof and the Twins down 6-0-- and headed off to the May Day festivities at Powderhorn Park. Throughout the afternoon, whenever I saw somebody wearing any sort of sports apparel (rare, this), I'd ask them if they'd heard a score for the Twins game. I got a lot of blank stares and shrugs. Eventually I encountered an old fellow sitting on a blanket, wearing a Twins cap, and listening to a transistor radio.
"Do you have a Twins score for me?" I asked.
The guy scowled. "They were getting killed," he said. "I turned it off."
It was a beautiful day to be outside, even without baseball, and even though I was surrounded by thousands of communists and hippies (just kidding, comrades; like millions of other people, if I could really believe in the things I think I believe in I could be one of you, just as long as you didn't ask me to ride around on one of those Dr. Seuss bikes or forsake Mountain Dew and Twizzlers).
At any rate, it was wonderful to come home, call up the ESPN page on the computer, and discover that the Twins had come back to knock off the Tigers.
And if you're paying enough attention that you're paying attention to me and my blather (which means, obviously, that you're paying way too much attention), then you know that our local nine has now won five straight at home and moved into first place in the Central, a division that is suddenly --at least through the season's first month-- locked up in a pleasant and almost inexplicable parity scrum.
I like this Twins team. Right from the get-go I thought they were going to be fun to watch for the long haul, won-loss column be damned. And they haven't disappointed me so far. Do they look or feel like a first-place team to me? No, honestly, I can't say that they do. Not yet, at any rate. But neither do any of the other teams in the Central at the moment.
This is crazy, I'm sure, but I'm ready to write off the Tigers. A month isn't a large enough sample size, I know, but this is a team with some serious problems, a blockbuster roster with a severe identity crisis. They seem to have a different problem every night, and I don't think that bodes well for either them or for Jim Leyland's sanity. Only three teams in the AL have scored more runs than Detroit, but only one (Texas) has given up more runs --the Tigers have surrendered 174 runs, 44 more than the Twins. And all those runs Detroit has scored have come in bursts; they've also been shutout four times, and scored just one run on four other occasions (true to their schizoid nature, they've also scored ten or more runs four times). The starting pitching has been miserable. The bullpen is worse than it's looked --even though it looked plenty shaky against the Twins. The defense is sketchy, and has been made even worse by Leyland's insistence on playing guys out of position.
There have been plenty of encouraging things about the Twins performance thus far, but this is by far the most encouraging number to me, particularly given the insane unbalanced schedule: they're now 12-6 against the Central. Detroit is an astounding 4-12, and everyone else is hanging around .500.
I've also been encouraged by the starting pitching, the Liriano debacle notwithstanding. Livan has been Livan; living large and dangerous, and fun to watch when he's spotting his fastball [sic] and working in that outrageous 60-mph shazam special. I know I made the Ramon Ortiz comparison early on, but the difference here is that even when Hernandez has been mediocre in his career he's always been a freakishly healthy innings eater.
Most surprising to me has been the poise of Bonser, Scott Baker, and Nick "The Milkman's Mauer" Blackburn. You saw it from Bonser on Sunday; after getting nicked and knocked around in the first --and throwing, what? 48 pitches?-- he managed to gut out five more shutout innings (without walking anybody) and get the game to the bullpen. Baker and Blackburn have done the same thing time and again. Even at their worst they've all pitched; they just keep making adjustments and mixing their pitches and grinding, and it was a huge thing for the offense to come back on Sunday and hold up their end of the deal. For the most part the entire rotation has been performing like crafty veterans, and that was a whole hell of a lot more than anybody expected back in March.
The starting pitching may yet be the serious concern we all thought it would be --particularly if injuries become even more of a factor-- but right now the more obvious worry is the offense, and that seems to me to be one thing the Twins could reasonably address. I worry about an American League team with an on base percentage of .310 and a slugging percentage of .374, and a team with the second fewest runs scored in the league. I worry about a team whose one and two hitters are tied for the team lead in strikeouts.
Carlos Gomez is worth the price of admission. He's serious fun to watch, and, at 22, promises to be even more fun to watch in the years to come. When he gets on base he might already be one of the most exciting players ever to wear a Twins uniform. Despite being a pretty crummy bunter, he's on a pace to obliterate the team record for bunt hits in a season. But, fun and exciting as he is, Gomez is not a leadoff hitter. A guy with 26 strikeouts, three walks, and a .297 OBP is not a leadoff hitter, particularly when he's generally being followed by a guy --Brendan Harris-- with 26 strikeouts, six walks, and a .315 OBP. This is just basic baseball logic, and you'd think it would be more widely accepted by now.
What do you think the over and under is on Gomez's 2008 OBP? I'd be delighted --and surprised-- if he cracks .325.
This is the third year in a row I've harped about this, and maybe the problem here is that it just makes too much logical sense, but Joe Mauer should be leading off for the Twins. Every night. I know he just seems to be getting comfortable in the three hole, but tough shit. That sort of thing is hogwash anyway. If a guy can really hit, he can hit anywhere in the lineup. Mauer now has a .396 OBP; he doesn't strikeout much, has pretty good wheels, is one of the most fundamentally solid baserunners on the club, and he's not yet --and may never be-- a consistent middle-of-the-order run producer. What he would be, though, is a damn good leadoff hitter. He already leads the team in runs scored batting in the two and three spots.
So, dammit, move him up. Start there, move Gomez down to ninth, and he'll still have Mauer batting behind him every time he's on base and wreaking havoc. Go ahead and bat Harris second if you want --I can't think of anybody else, other than Mauer, who's suited for that slot-- and why not toss Jason Kubel into the three hole and see if he can get some better pitches to hit (and learn to be a lot more selective)?
Watching the Chicago series last week, I was a little bit astonished by how incredulous Dick Bremer and Bert Blyleven were by the fact that Nick Swisher, with his .220 batting average, was leading off for the White Sox. They couldn't believe it. How long, they wondered, would Ozzie Guillen persist in this folly? Never once did they mention Swisher's walk totals, runs scored, or on base percentage (23, 20, and .354 as of this moment).
It amazes me that so many apparently serious fans of the game --and so many people within baseball organizations (including managers)-- still don't seem to get it.
Why not try to assemble a fucking batting order that actually makes baseball sense and is designed to maximize production?
Why the hell not?
What do you have to lose besides games?
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