Month: September 2013
GameChat – Blue Jays @ Twins, 6:10 pm
I’ve been so wrapped up in college football today, I almost forgot there was a Twins game tonight.
It’s “Deckstravaganza” at Target Field tonight and there are a number of famous, infamous and notorious Twins social media types enjoying the game from the Budweiser roof deck at the ballpark.
I’m not sure what that has to do with the game itself, but I hope they are all having a good time.
P.S. Per the Strib’s LaVelle E. Neal III’s pre-game blog post, Kernels’ hitting coach Tommy Watkins has joined the Twins’ coaching staff for September. Tommy’s a great guy and it’s terrific that he’s getting this opportunity! – JC
BLUE JAYS |
@ |
TWINS |
Reyes, SS | Presley, CF | |
Kawasaki, 2B | Mastroianni, RF | |
Encarnacion, DH | Dozier, 2B | |
Lind, 1B | Willingham, DH | |
Lawrie, 3B | Plouffe, 3B | |
Sierra, RF | Arcia, LF | |
Arencibia, C | Colabello, 1B | |
Gose, CF | Pinto, C | |
Pillar, LF | Florimon, SS | |
_Happ, P | _Correia, P |
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E | |
Toronto | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 11 | 15 | 1 |
Minnesota | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 11 | 0 |
That was a game that started badly and never got better.
Talk to Contact Episode 51
Episode 51 of the Twins baseball podcast, Talk To Contact (@TalkToContact), is now available for download via iTunes or by clicking here.
The Minor League season has ended for all of the Twins MiLB affiliates except for the Rochester Red Wings. We take a look at some standout seasons and team reviews around the Twins system. We also spend a good deal of time discussing Aaron Hicks’ role in 2014 and the possible leadership void left in the wake of Justin Morneau’s trade to Pittsburgh.
84 minutes of cantankerous babble.
You can follow Cody on Twitter (@NoDakTwinsFan) or read his writing at NoDakTwinsFan, and you can find Paul on Twitter (@BaseballPirate) and read his writing at PuckettsPond.com!
If you enjoy our podcast, please take a couple extra minutes and rate and review us on iTunes(ratings and reviews have magical iTunes powers).
GameChat – Jays @ Twins, 7:10pm
Now, according to the latest Twins radio commercials, begins the “rhyming home series” which includes the Jays, A’s and Rays… of course the Angels have a makeup game in there too but we won’t worry about that if the media guys don’t.
In case you missed it, Joe Mauer has had a return of concussion symptoms which prompted a great post from JC this morning which a) you should read and b) I totally agree with. Joe Mauer should just sit the rest of the season, go home to his girls and get ready to bang it in Feb. There just isn’t enough of this season left to make any justification for the attempt to come back now.
For tonight’s game, I am really intrigued to see RA Dickey back in Minnesota – I was definitely sad to see him go, was ecstatic to see him do well and now I am really curious to see what he does here in Target Field. Let’s go boys!
Toronto |
@ |
Minnesota |
Reyes, SS | Presley, CF | |
Davis, R, LF | Thomas, C, RF | |
Encarnacion, DH | Dozier, 2B | |
Lind, 1B | Willingham, DH | |
Lawrie, 3B | Plouffe, 3B | |
Sierra, RF | Arcia, LF | |
Goins, 2B | Colabello, 1B | |
Gose, CF | Pinto, C | |
Thole, C | Florimon, SS | |
Dickey, P | Pelfrey, P |
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E | |
Toronto | 1 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 7 | 2 |
Minnesota | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 5 | 10 | 2 |
I’m not really sure what happened, but Mike Pelfrey struggled early and despite a valiant effort in the late innigns, the Twins could not overcome an early 5 run deficit. Back at it on Saturday evening.
-ERP
Shut Down Joe Mauer. Now.
It occurs to me that since I’ve been a little preoccupied with writing about the Cedar Rapids Kernels the past five months, I have written very little about the Minnesota Twins.
Now that the Kernels’ season has come to a close, I’m going to try to remedy that situation and I’m going to begin by posing a question to the Twns’ front office: Why the heck have you not announced that you are shutting Joe Mauer down for the season?
I mean it. Shut Joe Mauer down and do it right frigging now!
I know he wants to play. I know he wants to put on the gear and get behind the plate again this season. I know he doesn’t like sitting and watching his team mates play (and frankly, many days, the rest of us aren’t enjoying it much either).
I don’t care. He is not (or at least he shouldn’t be) the one calling the shots.
Check out these quotes that Star-Tribune beat reporter LaVelle E. Neal III attributed to Mauer in Neal’s blog post Thursday:
“I start feeling symptoms when I start to get my heart rate up,” Mauer said between workouts at Target Field on Thursday.
Mauer is determined to return to the Twins lineup before the end of the regular season – but he has to wait until the symptoms go away for good.
“This process has been a little longer than I hoped,” Mauer said.
Tell me that doesn’t sound like something we might have heard Justin Morneau say during the summer of 2010.
That summer, Jerry Crasnick of ESPN.com authored a piece on the concussions of Morneau and Jason Bay, and quoted another former member of the Twins, Corey Koskie, extensively. This quote from Koskie should resound with Twins fans who think Mauer should return to the field for any part of what’s left of this third straight lost season:
Koskie doesn’t profess to know everything about concussions, but he’s compiled a list of “do’s” and “don’ts.” He advises any athlete with concussion symptoms to consult a doctor with no vested interest in the player’s return to the field. His blood pressure also spikes when he reads a news story that Player X suffered a “mild” concussion in the line of duty.
“That’s a pet peeve of mine,” Koskie said. “The brain is the most important organ in the body. You’d never hear somebody say, ‘This guy just had a minor heart attack. He should be able to play in two days.’ ”
When Morneau caught a knee to the helmet in Toronto three years ago, he was hitting .345 and had an OPS of 1.055. Last week he was traded for two guys 99% of us had never heard of.
Look, I’ve got plans to attend a Twins game a week from Saturday (assuming I survive the #GrandDrunkRailroad pregame festivities) and I’d like to see Mauer play. I don’t care if he doesn’t hit home runs, I appreciate what he does with a bat and he’s almost certainly going to be enshrined in Cooperstown someday. I want to see him play any chance I can get.
But Justin Morneau’s career path was just as promising as Joe Mauer’s three seasons ago and a concussion that was originally thought to be minor robbed Twins fans of getting to see him at his best in his prime… not to mention robbing us of the opportunity to see what difference he might have made in a couple of Twins’ postseason appearances in 2010 and 2011.
I want to see the Twins improve in 2014 and I want to see them return to contention in 2015 and beyond. The Twins organization has a number of very good prospects who will be arriving by then.
But if prospects like Miguel Sano or Byron Buxton had been concussed with three or four weeks left in their seasons, is there any way the Twins WOULDN’T just shut them down immediately rather than try to get them back on the field for a couple weeks at the end of the season, even if it might involve minor league postseason games?
There is no way they would take that kind of risk with such critical assets.
After all, the chances of the Minnesota Twins returning to relevancy in the next few years depend on a healthy Miguel Sano and a healthy Byron Buxton.
They also depend on a healthy Joe Mauer.
And the remaining games on the Twins’ schedule are every bit as meaningless as minor league games are, at this point. They simply do not matter at all, except for the purpose of evaluating players with an eye toward what, if any, roles they should play on a future Twins roster.
The Twins need to find out if Josmil Pinto and Chris Herrmann can handle catching at the Major League level. They need to find out if Chris Colabello and Chris Parmelee can hit Major League pitching well enough to take over at first base.
There may be a legitimate question as to what position Joe Mauer should play in the future, but there is absolutely no question concerning whether he’ll have a role somewhere – unless he tries to return too soon from his concussion and spends an offseason dealing with symptoms the way Morneau did leading up to 2011.
If the Twins’ brass ask Mauer if he wants to continue to work toward getting back on the field this season, of course he’s going to say, “yes.” He’s a competitor and you would expect no other answer.
That’s why the question shouldn’t even be asked.
The Twins should simply tell Mauer his season is over and he should focus on being ready to take the field when pitchers and catchers report to spring training in February.
Doing otherwise is illogical and perhaps even irresponsible.
– JC
More planning for Baseball Off-season Distraction
JOIN OUR PRIVATE PRO FOOTBALL GROUP!
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Group Name: Tackle Bunnies
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THANKS AND ENJOY THE OFF-SEASON!
GameChat – Twins @ Astros #3, 1:10pm
Our final game against Houston for the year and we have the opportunity to make it a clean sweep… I think that would be fun, don’t you?
Speaking of fun – this video clip of Mastro’s catch made MLB highlights today and it is pretty darn funny. Thanks to Josh Roenicke for the belt…
Minnesota |
@ |
Houston |
Presley, CF | Villar, SS | |
Mastroianni, LF | Altuve, 2B | |
Dozier, 2B | Crowe, LF | |
Doumit, DH | Wallace, 3B | |
Plouffe, 3B | Carter, 1B | |
Arcia, RF | Krauss, DH | |
Colabello, 1B | Barnes, B, CF | |
Herrmann, C, C | Hoes, RF | |
Florimon, SS | Pagnozzi, C | |
Hendriks, P | Lyles, P |
|
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
R |
H |
E |
Minnesota |
0 |
0 |
3 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
1 |
5 |
7 |
1 |
Houston |
3 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
6 |
12 |
0 |
well that was a lot more frustrating than I care to admit. I must still care about whether we win or lose…
GameChat – Twins @ Astros #2, 7:10pm
Vote for Pedro! Pedro Hernandez takes the hill for the Twins tonight opposite Jarred Parker. If three people show up and join us in the GameChat tonight there might be more people in the GameChat than people at Minute Maid Park.
Not a ton of Twins news to report today, but there was a brief journalist spat on Twitter regarding the story of Mark Hamburger signing with the Twins earlier this weekend. So there’s that.
Go Twins!
Minnesota |
@ |
Houston |
Presley, CF | Grossman, DH | |
Mastroianni, LF | Altuve, 2B | |
Dozier, 2B | Crowe, LF | |
Willingham, DH | Carter, 1B | |
Plouffe, 3B | Wallace, 3B | |
Colabello, 1B | Hoes, RF | |
Arcia, RF | Barnes, B, CF | |
Pinto, C | Villar, SS | |
Florimon, SS | Clark, C, C | |
Hernandez, P, P | Cosart, P |
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | R | H | E | |
Minnesota | 2 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 9 | 16 | 1 |
Houston | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 10 | 1 |
That win took longer than it should have. It’s not often that Perk blows a 3 run lead in the 9th inning.
In the end, a win is a win, no matter how long it takes.
Trevor Plouffe had a home run and four hits. Josmil Pinto had four hits, too, including a key double in the 12th inning.
But I’m going to award the BOD to Darin Mastroianni, who’s double, also in the 12th inning, drove in two runs. – JC
Several Kernels Shooting for Two Rings in Two Years
In baseball’s postseason, “every single pitch is so important; every at-bat, no matter what inning.”
That was Cedar Rapids Kernels third baseman Travis Harrison talking after Monday’s regular season finale about the playoffs, which start for the Kernels Wednesday night in Davenport against the Quad Cities River Bandits.
Harrison knows what he’s talking about, too. He was a member of the rookie level Elizabethton Twins team that won the Appalachian League a year ago.
Elizabethton won two “best-of-three games” series to claim the league title last year, but Harrison and his teammates will need to do that much this year just to earn a berth in the Midwest League Championship Series as the representative of the league’s Western Division.
If they can best the River Bandits in the first best-of-three series, they’ll take on the survivor of a similar series between Clinton and Beloit in another best-of-three challenge. The Championship Series between the Eastern and Western Division representatives is a best-of-five games series that will decide who wears the Midwest League crown for 2013.
Cedar Rapids has not worn that crown since 1994 and has not qualified for the league Championship Series since 1997.
The Kernels finished the 2013 season with an 88-50 record overall. They secured a playoff spot with a second place finish in the first half of their season with a 40-28 record and then improved to a 48-22 record to finish first in the Western Division in the second half of the season.
Their 88 wins equals the most wins for a Cedar Rapids team since joining the Midwest League in 1962. To provide context, if applied to a Major League team’s 162 schedule, the Kernels’ winning percentage would have them on pace to win 103 games.
This playoff thing may be relatively new to Kernels fans, who haven’t seen their team play in the postseason since 2010, but almost half the Kernels’ current roster were with the Appalachian League Champions in Elizabethton a year ago.
In addition to Harrison, infielders Niko Goodrum and Jorge Polanco, outfielders Max Kepler and Adam Brett Walker, catcher Bo Altobelli and pitchers Brett Lee, Jose Berrios, and Hudson Boyd all saw playoff action with Elizabethton. Mason Melotakis, Dallas Gallant and Michael Quesada were also members of that Championship team during the course of the 2012 season.
Melotakis made two postseason appearances with the Beloit Snappers’ Midwest League playoff team at the end of 2012.
A number of other players that spent time with the Kernels this season, including Byron Buxton and Dalton Hicks, were also members of the champions from “E’town”. Hicks hit a walk-off grand slam home run in the 12th inning of the deciding game of the championship series.
Walker believes the postseason experience he and his teammates are getting is part of their development. “Going out there and having a series where everything’s on the line. I think it’s pretty important. It’s an exciting feeling to be able to get that experience.”
With a smile, Walker added, “I know if you get in the big leagues it’s going to be a little bit different.”
It has been a long season for the Kernels players, especially those such as Harrison and Walker, who have both been a part of the Kernels since Opening Day, 138 games ago.
That doesn’t matter, according to Harrison. “The playoffs are totally different. You just have to grind it out. If you’re sore, it just goes away. You’ve got so much adrenaline, you’re just ready to go. It’s a good time.”
Quesada believes the Kernels are ready. “We’ve got all the confidence in the world, especially after last year. We’ve got the pitching, got the hitting. It’s all ready to come together at one time.”
Walker remembers that championship feeling and is ready for more. “We know what it feels like. It’s a really great feeling to be able to go out there and win a championship.”
Harrison perhaps summed up the feelings best. “First two years, two rings. That would be pretty cool.”
– JC
GameChat – Twins @ Houston, 1:05pm
Sorry – game actually starts at 1:10..
So I’m back to the cooler climes of Minnesota…. and really glad about it. I still can’t believe I was actually in Arlington during part of the series and still wasn’t able to get over to a game but this was a whirlwind trip and just wasn’t able to get over there..
That being said, I did have friends (all these Minnesotans in Texas in August and September is goofy) at the Rangers series and one is doing the reverse trip that we did and is headed to the Houston game today.. I’ll gladly watch on TV from my 64 degree home. LOL However, it doesn’t appear that the Twins let the southern heat get to them in Arlington so I think they can take Houston on.
But while we are talking about Texas series, how on earth did we manage to take the series from the Rangers?? Looking at this lineup, I feel a little bit like I’m at Spring Training and having to go back to check the lineup card repeatedly because I don’t know the names..
Happy Labor Day every one!
Minnesota |
@ |
Houston |
Presley, CF | Grossman, LF | |
Mastroianni, RF | Altuve, 2B | |
Dozier, 2B | Castro, Ja, C | |
Willingham, DH | Dominguez, 3B | |
Plouffe, 3B | Carter, 1B | |
Herrmann, C, C | Crowe, RF | |
Colabello, 1B | Barnes, B, CF | |
Thomas, C, LF | Hoes, DH | |
Florimon, SS | Villar, SS | |
Albers, A, P | Clemens, P |
Minnesota | ||||||||||||
Houston |
Well that was certainly a come-from-behind win I didn’t expect…
Albers had a horrible start and they ended up bringing in Swarzak right away. The boys managed to start putting some runs on the board (three home runs even) and kept the game closer than you would have guessed at the start – and actually tied it up in the 8th. (we won’t talk about the defense really suffering today..)
I wasn’t sure what to expect at that point and figured a tie was going to end up being a long battle.. Turns out Colabello was having none of that. I’ll take a grand slam in the top of the 9th to break a tie any day! AND it earns him today’s BOD!