Author Archives: Jim Crikket

GameChat – Twins @ Rays #4, 12:40, FSN & am1500

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Looking to avoid getting swept out of St. Petersburg, Gardy has apparently decided the trick is to have the strongest pinch hitting options on his bench and filled out the line up card accordingly. I suppose his options are somewhat limited, though, since reports are that the flu bug has now bitten Justin Morneau. Denard Span is apparently being rewarded for his big day at the plate yesterday with a day off today, as well.

In other news (the Pioneer-Press’ Kelsie Smith was a tweeting machine this morning), Joe Nathan met with Gardy and pitching coach Rick Anderson after last night’s meltdown and the triumvirate concluded that perhaps Joe should pitch in less critical situations while he finds the old magic. That leaves the closer spot to Matt Capps. While that’s who I thought should have had the job all along, he hasn’t exactly shut the Rays down the last couple of games, either.

Gardy also apparently hinted at more changes in the bullpen. Hard throwing righthander Jim Hoey is likely to be brought up. He has a 1-0 record in Rochester, with 8 Ks and only 1 walk in his 6 2/3 innings of work spread over four appearances. Gardy and Anderson told Hoey to work on an offspeed pitch when they sent him down near the end of spring training, in favor of keeping Jeff Manship. I don’t know whether Hoey has found an offspeed pitch or has just been blowing his 98 mph heat past AAA hitters, but it sounds like we’re about to find out.

I argued in favor of keeping Hoey out of spring training, in addition to giving Capps the closer job to start the season, so obviously Gardy is starting to realize he should just do what I say. If that trend continues, clearly the Twins should start turning things around very soon!

Of course, one way the Twins could choose to deal with the dilemma of who to have protect 1-2 run leads in the 9th inning would be to have bigger leads in the 9th. That would require hitting more and scoring more runs. Which brings us back around to today’s… interesting… lineup. Maybe this group will rack up a dozen runs or so. Stranger things have happened.

– JC

TWINS @ RAYS
Tolbert, 2B Fuld, DH
Casilla, A, SS Damon, LF
Kubel, RF Upton, B, CF
Thome, DH Lopez, F, 3B
Young, D, LF Shoppach, C
Cuddyer, 1B Zobrist, RF
Valencia, 3B Rodriguez, S, 2B
Holm, C Johnson, D, 1B
Repko, CF Johnson, E, SS
Duensing, P Hellickson, P

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 R H E
Minnesota 0 0 0 1 3 0 0 0 0 4 9 0
Tampa Bay 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 2 8 1

That, ladies and gentlemen, is what we in the business refer to as a “win”. It’s been a while, so it’s understandable if some folks don’t remember what those are.

The new pairing of Glen Perkins as the set up man for closer Matt Capps got the job done as they preserved the two run lead they were handed following another very nice performance by a Twins starting pitcher. Brian Duensing went seven strong innings. He struck out 5 and spaced out seven hits and a couple of walks. For that performance, Brian earns an assortment of baked goods (although, Brian, if someone hands you cookies, you might want to check them closely… some of those things have been getting dumped in ovens and on floors lately).

The Twins’ much-maligned outfield defense stepped up today, too. It should be interesting to watch for Web Gems tonight since Jason Repko had a terrific diving catch and Delmon Young contributed as well.

But on the strength of a couple of great plays deep in right field AND an opposite field home run, the GameChat crew awarded today’s Boyfriend of the Day award to Jason Kubel! Way to go KUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUBE (keep this up and you may get out of jamar’s doghouse by the All Star break!).

Jason Kubel

 

Adventures In Extreme Makeover, Blogging Style

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We all can relate to this, I’m sure. You’re at a party or at the office and the topic of someone’s recent… shall we say… makeover… comes up. Then someone (hopefully not you, but hey, it happens) says something clever about the new [insert “clothes”, “facelift”, “tummytuck”, or whatever has been “made over”] and then everyone realizes it might have been said a little bit too loud and that the recently “madeover” person heard the comment. Now, this can go one of two ways, depending on the particular personalities of the parties involved.

Feelings could be hurt, harsh words could be exchanged, friendships could be ruined… or the person could take the comment in the spirit it was intended, everyone can have a good laugh, maybe make a new friend and, if you’re really lucky, maybe you find out the person who made the comment is in the business of doing “makeovers” and you learn something that helps you improve your appearance!

“What does this have to do with the Twins?” you ask. Well, nothing. This post is entirely about this blog. (That loud clicking noise you hear is 150 people simultaneaously exiting this site.)

Those of you who have been stopping by for a while are aware (I hope) that we’ve been undergoing a few cosmetic changes over the past couple of months. It started with a change in “theme” (that’s a fancy blogging term for the look and style of the site). We chose EvoLve. It has a ton of customization options, it’s generally easy on the eyes, it made transitioning from our old theme almost completely painless and, best of all, it was free.

We also found a new blogroll plugin that lets us list the most recently updated Twins blogs, rather than just listing them all alphabetically. (The downside to this is that K-bro’s Baseball Blog and Curve for a Strike will notice a significant drop in “hits” as I used to click those sites several times a day to find out which blogs had been updated recently… sorry k-bro and Topper).

Which brings us to the final (for now anyway) cosmetic enhancement here at Knuckleballs… our new banner. Funny story how that came about…

You may remember this post that CapitalBabs put up a while back about a cool “What baseball team should I root for?” flowchart developed by Paul Caputo over at Interpretation By Design. It’s one of the most clever things I’ve seen in a long time. In fact, it’s so clever, you probably saw it posted and linked to by several blogs, tweets, etc. Actually, there were so many of us linking to their site that all the hits crashed their site!

I’m certain there wasn’t much humorous about that to the folks at IBD at the time, but as tends to be the case, passage of time allows for those involved to reflect on the event and smile a bit (if not quite laugh, perhaps). And that’s what Paul did recently. He put up a post on the site about what had happened and how so many sites had said such great things about the flowchart and how much he appreciated all of that. Here, let me paste a paragraph from that post:

I’ll admit that it was a thrill to see something I created shared so extensively. Because the Internet mob tends to deal in extremes, the words “genius” and “hilarious” were thrown around next to my name on Twitter and on various blogs (trust me, I have screen captures of all of them). Though some of the nicest comments came from a site that uses both type on a curve and Comic Sans in its banner, so I’m a little conflicted.

Yes, he was referring to us in that last sentence.

Now… those of you who haven’t yet started your own blogs may not be aware of this, but a funny thing happens when someone links to your site… you get a “pingback”. I’m sure really popular sites get a ton of those, but here at Knuckleballs it’s enough of a rarity that we notice. We also click the link to see who’s linking to us. And we read what they say about us.

I have to be honest here… while I recognized the reference to “type on a curve”, I have NO idea what Comic Sans is. But I’m bright enough to recognize that Paul wasn’t a fan of the use of either in our banner.

Obligatory Picture of Joe Mauer's Swing

Normally, I’m one of those “I don’t give a hoot what you think” kind of people. Most of you know that if you told me you didn’t like our banner, I’d respond with some sort of smartass retort that would clearly communicate that I don’t give a hoot what you think. But this was a guy who runs a blog about web design and stuff. I mean… I wouldn’t care what any of you thought about the way I swing a baseball bat, either, but if Joe Mauer told me I’m doing it wrong, I’d listen (probably, anyway) or I would at least try to explain to Joe WHY I swing the way I do (“Joe, I know you don’t have this issue, but I’ve got a 38 inch waist I have to get the bat around.”)

So I did leave a comment on Paul’s post, letting him know WHY we used the “type on a curve” (after all, STRAIGHT text on a site named for a pitch that changes direction several times on its way to the plate just seemed wrong). Having done so, I merrily went on my way.

Well Paul responded, both in a follow up comment and in a personal email. He explained that the references to the type styles we used were a bit of a running joke over at IBD and he apologized for his snarky (his word, not mine) reference to our banner. This is where, like with our friends at the party from the opening paragraph, things could have gone one of two ways. If we really took ourselves seriously around here, I could have lashed out at Paul (“you may know web design but I bet you pitch like a girl!”) and things might have deteriorated from there. But as you all know, we really don’t take ourselves all that seriously… and I assured Paul such was the case.

Actually, I did a bit more than that. In an email back to him, I mentioned that he was welcome to take a swing (note clever baseball reference) at improving our banner.

A few hours later, our new banner came back to me in an email from Paul.

I admit I wasn’t really expecting him to take me up on my offer/request, any more than I would expect Mauer to take an interest in correcting my swing. These people are professionals, after all.

I love the banner. I’m grateful and I’m honored that the guy who came up with that website-crashing flowchart (or as it has become known over at Interpretation By Design, the “Information Design Example That Shall Not Be Named”) thought enough of our blog to design a new banner for us.

But… in the back of my mind, part of me wonders if he did it just because he really was so offended by the type on a curve and Comic Sans font (or our dominant use of the color red in the old banner… which, as it turns out, is also not a recommended thing to do. Who knew?). In the end, though, it really doesn’t matter.

What matters is that we’ve made a new friend (even if he is a Phillies fan). Thank you, Paul!

– JC

Twins History Lesson: Slow Starts Aren’t Fatal

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You’re frustrated. I’m frustrated. The players, no doubt, are frustrated. Sitting 3-6 through the first three series of the season will cause that kind of thing.

The pitching has been a bit inconsistent, but compared to the hitting, the guys who make their livings throwing the ball are looking pretty darn good. But the bats… where, oh where, are the bats? If any team needed to build a giant pyre to burn their assbats, it’s this team. The guys performing the best on this team are, by any normal standards, doing just “OK”. The rest of the team has flat out stunk.

So what are we to do? Do we panic? Do we fire the manager? Do we trade everyone we can get anything for and release the rest? Do we swap rosters with Rochester?

No, to all of the above, of course.

It’s fine to be frustrated and concerned. It’s also fair to point out those players we have every reason to expect better performances out of. But it’s a bit premature to worry too much. It’s not like starting slow has always predicted ultimate defeat for this organization.

If you’re frustrated now, tell me how would you feel if the Twins had started the season by dropping two of three in Oakland and then did the same thing in the opening home series of the season to the Angels. And then, instead of improving, what if your Twins followed those two series by getting swept by the Mariners and dropping the first two games of a return series in Anaheim to stand 2-9 after the first 11 games? Time to fold up the tents, I suppose?

How would you feel if your leadoff hitter was hitting .032 through 11 games… just slightly worse than the .125 you were getting out of cleanup hitter? What if your Twins had been shutout three times in their first 10 games? Admit it… you’d be thinking about a panic attack, right?

That kinda makes this little 3-6 start seem not so bad, by comparison, doesn’t it?

Well you kids in the crowd may not remember the year I’m referring to, but the Twins of 1991 did indeed get off to an even rockier start than our guys are this season… though I’m not sure you’ll hear Dan Gladden bring up that .032 start to his 1991 season during a radio broadcast. Dazzle didn’t get his first hit until the fifth game of the season and went 7 more games before getting the next. That’s a slow start.

Yet, by the end of the season, Gladden and his team mates were doing some celebrating and the Twins had a nice shiny trophy for their trophy case.

So go ahead…be frustrated… be concerned… urge the team toward improved performance… but don’t give up. There’s still a little bit of the season left to play.

– JC

GameChat – A’s @ Twins #3, 1:10, FSN & am1500

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Today’s game wraps up the Twins’ third series of the season and I think it’s about dang time they WON one of these things.

In the rubber match, fans at Target Field will apparently get to see #5 stationed at second base. I guess you can’t blame Gardy for trying pretty much anything he possibly can to maximize his offense. Here’s what you see when you look at the Twins’ offensive stats:

Joe Mauer’s batting average is .231, exactly the same as his slugging percentage. Yes, that means he doesn’t have any extra base hits at all, yet.

Alexi Casilla is hitting .188 and has an OBP (on-base pct + slugging pct) of just .548. That’s pretty bad, even for the light-hitting Lexi.

But before we get too anxious to run Casilla out of town, look at who’s BEHIND him in terms of offensive output:

Justin Morneau .185 BA ./500 OBP, Delmon Young .179/.421, Danny Valencia .148/.492, Jim Thome .143/.536, and Michael Cuddyer .125/.347.

Denard Span (.290/.772) and Jason Kubel (.308/.679) aren’t going to be found anywhere near the top of the American League leaders in offensive categories, but those two are looking downright Killebrew-like compared to their team mates, at this point.

I don’t suggest any of us panic over this bit of team-wide impotence (after all, who among us hasn’t had a little “performance anxiety” at some point in our past… and I bet most of us didn’t have 40,000 people watching us at the time), but I mention these stats really just to point out that it’s pretty amazing this team has managed to win three games!

If the pitching keeps doing their jobs, this team could get really hot when the team finally has a bonfire to burn all the assbats!

There’s no “Sunday B Team Lineup” today, folks. I say let the beatings commence!

A’s @ TWINS
DeJesus, D, CF Span, CF
Barton, D, 1B Mauer, C
Willingham, LF Morneau, 1B
Matsui, H, DH Thome, DH
Sweeney, R, RF Young, D, LF
Ellis, M, 2B Kubel, RF
Kouzmanoff, 3B Cuddyer, 2B
Powell, C Valencia, 3B
Pennington, SS Casilla, A, SS
McCarthy, P Baker, S, P

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 R H E
Oakland 0 0 0 1 0 4 0 0 0 5 9 0
Minnesota 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 3 10 0

Another tough loss, dropping our guys to 3-6 on the season. I do hope these players remember that games in April count in the standings just as much as games in September.

Not a lot to get enthused about in this game, although Justin Morneau did get a few hits. But the big news was Jim Thome’s 8th inning home run. It traveled an estimated 444 feet and cleared the “batters eye” in dead center field. That’s a wallop, boys and girls!

Yes, it was Jimmer’s 590th career home run, but MOST importantly, it made a winner out of Jessica S in our “First Twins HR of the season in Target Field” contest. Jessica got her guess in early (she was the 6th person to enter the contest) and totally nailed it with her prediction that Jim Thome would hit the first Twins TF home run of the season on April 10 in the 8th inning.

Jessica and a guest will be getting two tickets to the April 26 Twins game with the visiting Tampa Bay Rays. She may be sitting about 444 feet away from home plate, but lets hope we don’t have to wait until the 26th for the next Twins home run!

I didn’t count up exactly how many entries we had in the contest, but I’m guessing it was 25 or more. Not bad for our lil ole blog here. Thank you to all who entered and to all of you who continue to visit us here at Knuckleballs regularly!

– JC

GameChat – A’s @ Twins #2, 6:10, FSN & am1500

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I’m not really sure which, if any, of the Knuckleballs crew will be around tonight (I know I won’t be) for the game, but here are the lineups and I’ll load up the GameChat as well.

And if you haven’t entered the HR contest yet (see the immediate prior post), it’s not too late!

A’s @ TWINS
Crisp, CF   Span, CF
Barton, D, 1B   Mauer, C
DeJesus, D, RF   Morneau, 1B
Willingham, LF   Young, D, LF
Matsui, H, DH   Cuddyer, RF
Suzuki, K, C   Kubel, DH
Ellis, M, 2B   Valencia, 3B
Kouzmanoff, 3B   Hughes, L, 2B
Pennington, SS   Casilla, A, SS
Gonzalez, G, P   Blackburn, P

 

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 R H E
Oakland 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 6 0
Minnesota 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 5 2

 

Win Twins Tickets Here!

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That headline got your attention, didn’t it? Nothing like giving away stuff to bring in the eyeballs.

Well it’s true. We’ve got a pair of tickets to the Twins/Rays game on Tuesday, April 26, to give away. You see, the good folks @MinnesotaTwins announced back on April 5 via Twitter that the team had a special deal for their Twitter followers. A link was provided that would take you to a special page on the Twins web site where followers could order tickets at a discount for the April 26 contest. Which I did.

As it turns out, however, I’m not going to be within even a couple hundred miles of Target Field that night… maybe not even within 1,000 miles.

So let’s give these things away. Now, mind you, these are not exactly “premium seating”. You’ll be sitting in the RF grandstand, but you WILL be sitting with a bunch of other people who got tickets because they (or someone they know) follows @MinnesotaTwins via Twitter… so it should be a ton of people who will be staring at their phones throughout the game, just like you. And these are free, dangit, don’t be so picky!

So here’s the contest…

Tell us which Twin will be the first among his team mates to hit a home run at Target Field this season. Tell us who, and then for tiebreaking purposes, tell us which game first tie breaker), and which inning (second tiebreaker).

UPDATE: If we still end up with a tie, the winner will be the person who entered their pick earliest.

Because we need some time to get the tickets to you, we need to limit this to the A’s and Royals series… so if none of our guys have hit a HR during those games, we’ll just pull a name randomly from everyone who entered the contest. We’ll do likewise if the hitter who actually goes yard first wasn’t predicted by anyone.

Leave your guess in the comments section of this post (or any subsequent Knuckleballs post… we don’t get so many comments that we can’t keep track).

Good luck!

– JC

UPDATE: We have a winner!!! Jessica S nailed it on the nose with her prediction of Jim Thome on April 10th, in the 8th inning! Congratulations, Jessica… we’ll be in touch about getting the tickets to you! – JC

Flipping The @MinnesotaTwins The Bird

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Some of you may still recall my rant a week or so ago about the absurd, insane, unfair, and downright indefensible blackout rules that prevent me (and all of my fellow Iowans) from watching Twins (and Brewers and Cardinals and Royals and Cubs and White Sox) games online. I mentioned somewhere in that rant that this would be my 51st and final year as a Twins fan if the rules don’t change by next year… which I know they almost certainly won’t do.

Many of you, I’m sure, believed that vow to be nothing more than an emotional (over)reaction to a situation that has, after all, existed for years and that I would eventually calm down and remain a lifelong loyal Twins fan. It’s a fair assumption.

It’s also going to prove to be an erroneous assumption. I’m going to burn all of my Twins gear… 3 jerseys, 3 Spring Training sport shirts, at least 3 caps, and more t-shirts than I can count… on Opening Day 2012 if the Twins still insist on including Eastern Iowa in their “protected home market”, despite FSN not bothering to do what it takes to actually get carried on a local cable provider.

In fact, I’ve already chosen the team I plan on devoting my fandom to, in place of the Twins. I’ll be trading in my navy and red for the black and orange of the Baltimore Orioles.

As a matter of fact, thanks to those absurd, insane, unfair, and downright indefensible blackout rules, I’ve actually already watched more Orioles baseball than I have of the Twins.

And I gotta say… I’m loving this year’s Orioles team.

I expected them to be better than they have been in several years. In fact, in my “offbeat predictions” post last week, one of the limbs I went out on was to predict the O’s would finish second in the AL East this year. That was before Baltimore went on to win their first four games of the season, with a sweep of the Rays down in St. Petersburg and before the Red Sox lost their first six (and counting) games of the season!

As you may be able to tell, I’m actually getting excited for this team. The “veteran” sluggers they brought in to shore up their offense haven’t even started hitting yet. Vlad Guerrero finally hit his first HR of the season tonight, Derrek Lee has just one (as of the 5th inning of Thursday’s game, which I’m watching as I write this), and Mark Reynolds still hasn’t gone yard. (It seems the Twins aren’t the only team yet to get much thunder out of the heart of their batting order.)

JJ Hardy in his (and my) new colors

But Brian Robers has been hot and good old “number 2 in your program and number 1 in your hearts” JJ Hardy has been a double machine. He may only have three hits on the season, but they’ve all been two-baggers. And the young starting rotation has really done a nice job so far.

It’s actually kind of fun to root for a young-ish team on the rise (hopefully), that’s been built by former Twin GM Andy MacPhail and is being managed brilliantly by Buck Showalter. Only the Twins, among AL teams, had a better record from August through the end of the regular season last year than the Orioles did.

As an Orioles fan, I still get to vehemently root against the F’ing Yankees and the East Coast Bitch Sox.

Of course, the BEST part about becoming an Orioles fan is that I get to actually watch them play every game. OK… not EVERY game… for example, later this month when they host the Twins, I WON’T be able to watch those games (thanks to the absurd, insane, unfair, and downright indefensible blackout rules).

But there’s a chance I’ll be in Baltimore the last week of April and they’re hosting the Red Sox for three games that week, so there’s a very real possibility that I’ll actually be watching my first regular season MLB game in Camden Yards, instead of Target Field, this season.

I’ve even started checking out some of the Orioles blogs (scouting the future competition, you might say). There don’t seem to be nearly as many as the umpteen million Twins blogs around so I think maybe that’s a lineup that could use me!

And with that.. YESSSSSSSSS Adam Jones just tied the Tigers 4-4 in the sixth with his first HR of the season!

I wonder if there’s a song I need to learn. Ah well… until I find out, I’ll just stick with…

~You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant~

– JC

GameChat – Twins @ Yankees #3, 6:05, FSN & am1500

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Dare we ask for two in a row? Let’s dare, shall we?

The Twins send ‘Stache to the mound to face the Evil Empire, for whom he once pitched (no, I don’t mean he only pitched for them one time in the four years he was under contract to them… but as Yankee fans would tell you, it really wasn’t a lot more than that).

Pavano gets his lil buddy, sweet Drew Butera, catching him tonight so he’ll have to figure out a way to win without Joe Mauer’s bat in the lineup.

By the way, if you haven’t yet checked out the blog of new mlb.com Twins beat writer Rhett Bollinger, now might be a good time to do that. In tonight’s post, he touches on the “personal catcher” thing.

Speaking of blogs and guys not in the lineup tonight, you should head on over to Babes Love Baseball to enter the the contest they’ve got going, up until Jim Thome hits HR # 590. They’re giving away one of the TwinsCentric “Mashin’ Taters” t-shirts and all you have to do to enter is post a comment… and I know you all know how to make comments!

You also won’t find Derek Jeter’s name in the Yankees’ lineup tonight. Either Girardi and Gardy decided together not to play either manager’s designated “saint” or, more likely, Jeter became so unnerved by the sound of the collective screams of “Sit Down Bitch!!!!” that reverberated across America from thousands of former Batlings (OK, maybe not thousands, but I bet there were at least a dozen of us) as he swung through a Joe Nathan fastball to end last night’s game, that he’s curled up in a fetal position somewhere in the bowels of Yankee Mausoleum and needs a day to recover.

With that, here’s the list of guys who ARE in the lineup tonight:

TWINS @ YANKEES
Span, CF Gardner, LF
Nishioka, 2B Granderson, CF
Young, D, LF Teixeira, 1B
Morneau, 1B Rodriguez, A, DH
Kubel, DH Cano, 2B
Cuddyer, RF Swisher, RF
Valencia, 3B Chavez, Er, 3B
Butera, C Nunez, E, SS
Casilla, A, SS Molina, C
Pavano, P Garcia, F, P

Game postponed tonight. No make up date announced yet. If this had happened in Minnesota, there would be loud howls about Target Field not having a retractable roof.

Let’s hope for better weather Thursday.

– JC

Just Keepin’ It Real

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Wow, that game last night was kinda fun… the way it ended anyway. Not so much the first seven innings, but in Big Boy League, they play nine (or in this case, 10) and it was great to see our guys show some backbone and scratch out a W in the Bronx.

And it’s fine that we were all giddy last night… including the players, if some of their Tweets are any indication.

But today brings another game and the reality that not too much should be read in to that win. Just as I’d caution people not to think Monday’s loss was an indication that the season is going in the toilet or that the Yankees will continue to forever dominate the Twins, let’s not jump to the conclusion that last night’s win gets King Kong off the Twins’ backs, either.

As our old friend Nuke LaLoosh so profoundly stated, “Winning is like, you know, better than losing!” But as the Twins learned last season, pulling off one come-from-behind win over the Evil Empire in that Mausoleum in Bronx (and seriously, that’s all the better Yankee fans can do in terms of showing up for a ballgame? I don’t care what the weather was… that’s a joke. They call themselves baseball fans?) does not, in itself, constitute a reversal of a trend.

I have to kind of like the pitching matchups for the next two games and I’ve held the minority view that the Twins bullpen is actually better than the Yankees’ overall, despite how “vaunted” it is by the media (especially the YES network broadcasters, apparently). I mean really… how many fans would have been screaming for the heads of Bill Smith, Ron Gardenhire, and/or pitching coach Rick Anderson if the Twins would have left Ft. Myers with Luis Ayala in the bullpen (again)?

But we can debate pitching and middle infielding until we’re all out of breath (or our typing fingers fall off) and it really won’t matter in the long run. Yes, the starting pitchers need to stop giving up early gopher balls. Yes, Casilla and Nishioka need to step up their games a bit.

It's time for Mauer, Morneau, Cuddyer and Thome to show up

But no matter what anyone else does, this team’s fortunes are going to be tied to how the heart of the batting order performs with the bat and, so far, they flat out haven’t performed well. If and when Joe Mauer, Justin Morneau, Delmon Young, Michael Cuddyer and Jim Thome start hitting with some consistent authority, this team will win a lot of baseball games. It’s really that simple.

At this point, none of those guys has been able to accumulate as much as a .150 batting average. Yes, I know BA isn’t the be-all and end-all of offensive statistics, but I think it’s safe to say that if you aren’t hitting above .150, chances are none of your other fancy in-depth sabremetric offensive stats are going to be looking too good either.

If all people want to fret about is whether your middle infield or 4th and 5th starters or middle relievers are performing up to standards, then everyone is missing the giant elephant in the room. It’s only five games in to the season, but the problem right at this moment is not the middle infield… it’s the heart of the batting order.

Pardon me for continuing to channel my inner Nuke today, but it’s time for the studs on this team to start announcing their presence with some authority.

– JC

GameChat – Twins @ Yankees #2, 6:05, FSN & am1500

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Over the noon hour today, I was catching up on my reading over at Joe Posnanski’s blog and came across something I feel compelled to share with everyone as we wait for our guys to prepare to do battle with the Evil Empire once again.

In one of Posnanski’s recent posts, he paraphrased something the late, great Buck O’Neil said a few years back and while the subject of the discussion was the ability (or rather the perceived lack thereof) of the Kansas City Royals to compete with the Yankees, if you can’t draw some parallels to the Twins’ situation right now, then you really just aren’t paying attention. You can (and should) read the entire post by clicking here, but let me paste a couple of the more pertinent paragraphs, too. The background is regarding a panel that Posnanski participated on in Kansas City a while back.

So that’s what we were talking about on the panel — the Royals utter inability to compete with the Yankees — when suddenly Buck O’Neil raised his hand. He was in the crowd, and he stood up, and here’s what he said: “OF COURSE we can beat the Yankees.” Everybody in the room stopped, because that’s what Buck’s voice did to a room. I don’t have his words memorized, but he said something like this:

“OF COURSE we can beat the Yankees. It’s not even a question. The Yankees can only play nine players at a time. They can’t sign all the good players out there and play them. They can’t use more than one pitcher at a time. They can’t play two shortstops or three center fielders. They have nine guys, we have nine guys. They might be able to get nine more expensive guys, but that doesn’t mean they get nine BETTER guys.

“Baseball is the fairest game in the world. It doesn’t matter if the other guy is bigger than you or taller than you or stronger than you or faster than you. The only thing that matters is who plays the game better. I’m sick of excuses. People say we can’t beat the Yankees. That’s ridiculous. We beat the Yankees before when we had players like George Brett and Frank White and Amos Otis and Willie Wilson and Hal McRae. Yeah. We just need to find the players and develop them into good players. If we don’t do that, it’s not the Yankees fault.”

Were truer words ever spoken? Sure we can (and forever will) hold Bud Selig and his co-conspirators accountable for fostering an environment that tilts the playing field in the Yankees’ favor year after year, but in the end, someone with the Twins organization simply needs to stand up and say, “enough is enough!” If we don’t do that, it’s not the Yankees fault.

There’s another paragraph I want to share… it’s about the genuine dislike that the old Royals teams of the late 70s held for the Yankees.

Then the Royals came to town, and from 1976 to 1980 they had a rivalry with the Yankees that matches anything in baseball history. Four times in five years, they faced each other in best-of-five playoff series to determine the American League pennant. “I hated the Yankees,” George Brett said. “I mean that sincerely. I HATED those guys.” One series ended on the famous home run of Yankee Chris Chambliss. Another ended with Kansas City’s Fred Patek in the dugout, his face red with tears. The only Royals victory of the four was clinched when Brett turned on a neck-high fastball from Goose Gossage. There were fights, there were titanic performances, there were famous moments like when Cliff Johnson threatened to fight Kansas City’s spiritual leader Hal McRae before one game, to which McRae replied: “I don’t fight extra men.”

THAT is the attitude I’ve been waiting for years to see our Twins have toward the Yankees. Where is it? I don’t know if anyone has an answer to that question, but until someone finds it, I’m not sure the Twins will ever conquer the Evil Empire.

– JC

With that, here are tonight’s lineups. No Morneau tonight for the Twins. Let’s go chew up and spit out some Captain Cheeseburger!:

TWINS @ YANKEES
Span, CF Jeter, SS
Nishioka, 2B Swisher, RF
Mauer, C Teixeira, 1B
Young, D, LF Rodriguez, A, 3B
Cuddyer, 1B Cano, 2B
Kubel, DH Posada, DH
Valencia, 3B Martin, C
Repko, RF Jones, An, LF
Casilla, A, SS Granderson, CF
Duensing, P Sabathia, P

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 R H E
Minnesota 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 0 1 5 7 0
NY Yankees 3 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 6 0

I really don’t know what to say about this game other than the right team came out on top!

I do have to laugh a bit at the thought of the Steinbrenners avoiding eye contact with GM Brian Cashman as Rafael Soriano, the pitcher they overruled Cashman on and forced him to sign, totally crashed and burned. The rest of the Yankees “vaunted” bullpen didn’t exactly have Soriano’s back, though, either. The sight of Nick Swisher stumble/falling/diving for DY’s bases-clearing bloop double to right field was pretty funny, too. He kinda makes me glad to have Delmon in our outfield.

It was great that our guys once again didn’t let that immediate 4-run deficit kill their spirit (though, seriously, can we stop spotting the Yankees four runs every damn game… please?), but it was pretty tough to really come up with an offensive nominee for Boyfriend of the Day. Brian Duensing took a page out of Scott Baker’s book last night and hung in there after a rough start to the game. So Young and Duensing get some honorable mention for BOD (along with honorable honorable mention to Rafael Soriano, without who’s effort the comeback would not have been possible).

But in the end, it was just too tough to come up with just one relief pitcher to bestow tonight’s BOD upon. Matt Capps pitched not one, but TWO, perfect innings, on a mere 16 pitches. And our old friend Twitchy McXanax (aka Joe Nathan) sure looked like his old self out there nailing down the game with a perfect 9th inning. So for your combined efforts, Matt and Joe, you are our first co-BODs of the season.

Matt Capps
Joe Nathan