Oooops. Spent too long at Menards shopping for the yard work supplies I need but can’t actually do because it’s raining. But that’s ok because it’s on rain delay anyway… Not sure how long this will last because it’s really kind of unpleasant out there. Cold & damp and probably matches the mood of players & fans alike in Twins Territory right now.
NOTE: today’s broadcast is on Fox9 – forgot to include that in the post title!
Today’s #Twins game vs. the #Royals is officially postponed. Will be made up on June 30 at 12:10 p.m. 2nd game at 6:10 p.m.
I think most Twins fans had limited expectations for 2012, but this is getting ridiculous.
The theory was… with the health of Justin Morneau, Joe Mauer, Denard Span and Scott Baker uncertain, we had to keep expectations in check. But if all of those players proved healthy, the team could surprise some people. Of course, not all of those players proved healthy as Scott Baker never made it to the starting gate before undergoing season-ending surgery. But the others have not only been healthy, but quite productive, thank-you-very-much.
The pitching has been a disaster, plain and simple.
In situations like this, it’s tough to come up with reasonable solutions. As manager Ron Gardenhire told the media the other day, it’s not like they can just go out and buy more pitching at this point. They have to hope the guys they have do a better job.
But the Twins’ problems on the field are starting to have an effect off the field… in particular, in the stands. Target Field has about 40,000 seats and this week barely 3/4 of those seats have had fans’ butts in them. That means not only lower ticket sales, but fewer hot dogs, beers and jerseys being sold. That’s not good news when it happens toward the end of a season that doesn’t go particularly well. When it happens before May Day, it’s got the potential to be disastrous for an organization.
If there are no reasonable solutions, however, what’s a front office to do? It really only leaves one option… consider UNreasonable solutions.
I’ve said many times that I believe baseball managers, like football and basketball coaches, get too much credit for their teams’ success and too much blame for the failures. It’s a basic truth of professional and major college sports. Another truth in big time sports is that, whether right or wrong, it’s easier to make a change in management than it is to make all the roster changes that are called for.
Would Terry Ryan really do it though? Would he fire Ron Gardenhire?
He may have no choice.
Ron Gardenhire and Tom Brunansky (photo: Jim Crikket)
Gardy has his supporters and his detractors. Many people question his strategies… his fondness for (some might call it an obsession with) “scrappy” ballplayers who “get after it.” Others point to the success his Twins teams have had over the past decade… the Division titles won with arguably marginal talent. Others point to the postseason failures.
But none of that really matters right now. This decision… if it’s to be made… would not be about Ron Gardenhire’s basebally smarts or lack thereof. At this point, it would be a business decision for Terry Ryan and the Twins ownership, pure and simple.
The Twins front office wants to win, of course. They are competitive, by nature, and that means they want to beat the competition. But does that mean winning baseball games or making more money? Some people seem to think that Twins ownership only cares about the latter, but that’s absurd. Even if that’s true, now that they have their new stadium, the two are intractably intertwined. The Twins can’t beat the competition in the financial competition if they don’t also beat them on the field.
Fans are telling the Twins, loud and clear, that as nice as Target Field is, they won’t fill the stadium to watch bad baseball… frustrating baseball… consistently losing baseball. If that’s the kind of baseball the Twins are going to play, changes must be made… and probably sooner rather than later. If only 30,000 fans are coming to games at the end of April, how many are going to be coming through the turnstiles in August and September?
But would a change in the manager’s office mean more wins? Maybe… maybe not… but it would do one thing for certain and that’s generate discussion… generate renewed interest. Whether they agree or disagree with the decision, fans would pay attention… they’d tune in to see IF it makes a difference.
And that’s a factor Terry Ryan may not be able to ignore much longer. Major League Baseball history is littered with fired managers who didn’t suddenly get stupid, but found themselves fired… or “reassigned other duties”… anyway. It’s a cruel fact of Big League life that Ron Gardenhire may be on the brink of finding out about first hand.
All of which begs the question, if Gardy’s days are becoming numbered with the Twins, who would… or should… Terry Ryan replace him with?
When a manager loses his gig mid season, often the replacement is someone within the organization… usually the bench coach or maybe whoever is managing the organization’s AAA affiliate. But if this really would be primarily a business decision, would putting Steve Liddle or Gene Glynn in charge fire up the fan base enough to keep their interest? I have my doubts.
Who would make people start paying attention again, even if the chances of the Twins climbing back in to contention are all but gone?
I’ve had a hunch that the Twins have been kind of grooming Tom Brunansky to take over down the road at some point, but he hasn’t even managed a full-season minor league affiliate yet (he’s Rochester’s hitting coach this season). He would be someone the fans would recognize and would have credibility in the clubhouse, but it’s hard for me to imagine the Twins trusting him in the manager’s chair this soon.
So who would they hire?
I don’t have any answers to that question, yet. But it’s probably time to start sorting through potential candidates.
It’s a good bet that Terry Ryan has already started doing just that.
By now y’all have probably heard about the trouble Delmon got himself into… If you haven’t, you really should sign up for twitter or something and/or you have my sympathies because you have a really really busy life.
The reports thus far have Mr. Young pulling a Mel Gibson in NY – a drunken altercation with a Jewish gentleman that have authorities considering hate crime charges in addition to assault charges. Who knows what the end result of such discussions will be but my only comment will be that I’m glad this event didn’t happen while he was wearing a Twins jersey. Is that selfish? probably. Don’t care, it’s still the truth.
So tonight let’s concentrate on the guys who actually ARE on our team and see what they can do. For the record, Willy is still on paternity leave so we have Revere starting again tonight. Not sure what the move will be but he’ll have to be back tomorrow and there will have to be a corresponding roster move.. I admit that I’m curious. In the category of He’s BA-aack! is Doumit. Good to see. Also have to admit that my little brain went to a funny place… Pavano is pitching – he clearly still wants “other” when given the choice between whomever and Mauer. I don’t actually have a problem with that, it’s just something I noticed and may or may not be true… Whatever contributes to wins is fine with me so as long as management is ok with it and it works in whatever system they are trying to put in place, whatever.. If it doesn’t contribute to wins than we have hella bigger problems to worry about.
After a while, you just want to type, “they did it again,” and let it go at that. Starting pitcher wasn’t good enough (in this case Justin Morneau’s first inning error didn’t exactly set a positive tone and ended up costing a run), hitters scored enough runs to win, but pitchers found a way to give up just enough runs to avoid getting a W. Oh, and the umpiring sucked again, but what else is new?
The Twins will have a couple of tough decisions to make soon. Josh Willingham should be rejoining the team very shortly and if reports that the Twins are indeed trying to sign former Tiger Brandon Inge are true, it means two of the current Twins will need to come off the active roster. But which two? Honestly… to my mind, there’s no shortage of guys who have no room to bitch if they find themselves on the outside looking in, but most of them are pitchers. UPDATE: The Twins announced after the game that Ben Revere had been optioned back to Rochester to make room for Willingham’s return from paternity leave. I guess it makes as much sense as anything, given that they still aren’t likely to play either Revere or Willy in RF and Revere still needs to play every day.
I just have a tough time right now getting all worked up about this guy or that guy not “deserving” to lose his job.
Arguably, most players on a team that’s won only five games at this point in the season deserve exactly that. – JC
“Thank God that stretch of scheduling is over. Things are bound to turn around now that our guys get to play some ball against a team that can’t seem to get out of its own way.”
Here in Iowa, I seem to be hearing something akin to that comment in stereo… both from Twins fans to my north and Royals fans to the south.
Slugerrr
The Royals just recently managed to halt a 12-game losing streak and while the Twins didn’t let things get that consistently out of hand, it wasn’t for lack of trying on their part. They’ve played poorly enough that it COULD have happened. As a matter of fact, while the Twins were letting the Red Sox sweep them out of their own ballpark, the Royals have put together a small (extremely small) winning streak… having won their most recent pair of games over Cleveland.
But the Twins have home field advantage this weekend, right? Well… they’ll play the games at Target Field, but that may not be an advantage. The Royals have a 5-4 road record this season. That’s right, all five of their wins have come on the road. They’re 0-10 in front of their hometown fan(s).
Like the Twins, the Landed Gentry are having a few health issues with their rotation. Tonight’s starting pitcher, left-hander Everett Teaford, has been the team’s long reliever, but he’s standing in for fellow lefty Danny Duffy, who’s dealing with “minor elbow tightness.” Duffy should be damn glad he’s with the Royals and not the Twins. If the Twins’ crack medical staff came up with that as a preliminary diagnosis, it would probably turn out to be a malady that would eventually require amputation.
Pitching hasn’t really been the big problem for the Royals, however. In fact, most of their staff have stat lines that Gardy and pitching coach Rick Anderson can only drool over. No, so far, the Royals’ biggest problem has been that they’ve got a roster of position players who have a reputation for being, “promising, good young hitters,” but many of them have thus far only demonstrated that they are indeed young.
Alex Gordon, Mitch Maier and Eric Hosmer all wish they could start hitting the ball as well as Alexi Casilla does. Think about that.
Other Stuff
I’ve been traveling for work most of this week, so I’ve been a little out of touch, but there are a couple of other items I want to touch on this morning.
The Tigers have released Brandon Inge after handing his 3B position to Miguel Cabrera and the experiment of converting Inge to a second baseman made Cabrera look good as a third baseman, by comparison. Of course, Inge hasn’t helped his cause by hitting almost nothing.
The Twins are reportedly having discussions about whether they should look in to bringing him aboard. The Tigers are on the hook for everything above that portion of his salary equal to the pro-rated MLB minimum salary, so financially it wouldn’t be a hit. The theory seems to be that it would also send a message to Danny Valencia.
But what would that message be? “Wake up tomorrow in Rochester, Danny, because your position here isn’t guaranteed. We can find guys who can’t hit and can’t field pretty much anywhere and, unlike you, some of them have lots of tatoos.”? Look, I’ve never been the biggest Valencia fan, so I’m not averse to finding a replacement. I’d just kind of prefer that it be someone… hmmm, what’s the word I’m looking for here?… GOOD?
The Twins do need to do something and do it soon. I’m not generally one to call for action just for the sake of appearing to take action, but sometimes the local fan base does need to be assured that the front office has noticed that things suck on the field. And based on the number of empty seats in Target Field already this season, the Twins may fast be approaching that point. By the end of last season, fans demonstrated that they won’t pay a bunch of money to go to Target Field to watch bad baseball. They already seem to be making the same statement even before the end of the first month of the season this year.
Over at Twins Daily, in case you’ve missed it, they’ve begun an “Adopt a Prospect” program where members are encouraged to “adopt” one Twins minor league prospect and regularly post updates on that player’s activities and performance. It’s really a very cool way to recognize the hard work these young players put in, most of the time for very… very… little pay. They all have a Big League dream, but that road is long and hard and not terribly rewarding except for the lucky few who reach the top.
If you haven’t already adopted a prospect, there’s still time and a lot of hard working players still available. But even if that’s not something you feel inclined to do, you should still stop by the thread and read up on the 60+ players that have been adopted already.
Because I know you’re curious… I’ve adopted infielder James Beresford, currently with the AA New Britain Rock Cats. James is another player out of the Twins’ Australian pipeline.
Finally, if these troubling times make you yearn for memories from a better time in Twins history, it’s not yet too late to enter our “100,000th Visitor Contest,” with a chance to win a very nice framed Kirby Puckett memento. Just give us your guess as to when you think visitor number 100,000 to our site will be stopping by.
That’s enough for this morning… let’s hope the Twins get the ship righted a bit over the weekend and that May is much better for our guys than April has been.
This is a reminder post for a couple of opportunities for Knuckleballers to participate in! Afterall, it’s an off-day (much necessary for both team & fans) so what else do you have to do? It’s not like we have lives, right?
First, don’t forget to put in your guesses to win this amazing collectible memorial for Kirby Puckett. I’ll happily ship it to you if you win! We are coming up on the big 100,000 visitor mark far more quickly than I would ever have guessed.
See the original post to submit your vote so that we have all the contest guesses in one place!
AND we can’t forget to go support Lindsay in the MLB FanCave! Having her there has definitely given us all sorts of entertaining moments in Twins games that are somewhat lacking in that particular feature lately. Gotta love the bullpen doing the shark thing just to say hi to her during games!
First things first – we extend our heartiest congratulations to Josh Willingham and his family on their newest addition! Per twitter earlier today:
Congrats to #Twins OF Josh Willingham and his wife Ginger on the birth of son #3. Rogan Jaynes born at 1:39 pm. 8 lbs, 6 oz, 21 inches.
Given the paternity leave that Josh is taking to spend time with the youngest Willy Jr, we are granted the pleasure of the return of Ben Revere. Also according to twitter today, he’s been told that his length of stay is completely unknown – could be three days, could be the season. I’m curious to know what the will do when Josh comes back..
At any rate, do I think Revere is the key to beating the BoSox? yeegods, no. But whatever the key to beating them is, I hope the boys figure it out tonight. I really don’t relish the thought of being swept at home, especially by the Sox and I most definitely don’t really want to watch it.. I hope someone is able to do something about that.
The Twins starting pitcher struggled to miss bats and even get outs, giving up six runs in the first three innings as the Twins found themselves in a deep hole. The bullpen did a good job and the bats finally woke up… and fell just short of the win.
Tonight’s failed starting pitcher was Liam Hendriks. Anthony Swarzak, Glen Perkins and Jared Burton kept the game from getting totally out of hand and the Twins put together a big inning, scoring five run in the 6th. But they left runners in scoring position that inning and again in the ninth. Was the third base coaching extremely conservative? Yes. But the bottom line is that players failed to deliver when it was needed.
That completed the Red Sox sweep.
Chris Parmelee was beaned by a 93 mph fastball, but after a few scary minutes, walked off the field. He’ll be reevaluated on Thursday.
Thursday is an off day, by the way… so the Twins shouldn’t lose another game at least until Friday. Then again, if it’s possible for a team to find a way to lose a game on an off day, this team will figure out how to do it.
An interesting note… paid attendance was just 32,254… for a game with the Red Sox. Ouch. – JC
Wow, those BoSox boys are lucky as blazes to be in Minnesota today.. what a fantastically gorgeous day to play baseball!! I’m really jealous of my friends who are enjoying that beautiful view in Target Field tonight.
That being said, there is some interesting news for the pregame tonight.
A) Ben Revere is on the way to Minnesota to fill in for Willy who will leave for paternity leave tomorrow for the birth of his 3rd son. Our sincerest congratulations to Josh & his family! The maximum paternity leave is 3 days so Willy will be back sooner rather than later.
B) This will be Blackburn’s return after a long rest.. Whether he’s ready or not seems to be somewhat under debate since he’s on a limited pitch count. I was called “negative” for pointing out that given his history when in long rest situations, he’ll likely overthrow the first 30 pitches or so which means his sinker won’t sink – which also means to me that he’ll only start getting comfortable right about the time they are going to start looking to pull him out. Oh well, let’s just hope that it’s a good outing because our bullpen could sure use it.
I’m hoping for a better game than last night – or at least a better ending.
I didn’t see or listen to any of the game… and I’m really glad.
It seems this team has some pitching issues… who knew? (OK… we ALL knew.)
By the way, have I mentioned what a GREAT idea it wasn’t to make sure we got this start out of Blackburn, even though it cost the Twins Luke Hughes to get those 3 innings? Oh yeah… I have. – JC
We’ve been trying to come up with a way to celebrate the landmark visitor and tried to find out if we could determine who that lucky person was going to be… yeah we aren’t that technologically savvy. But we still wanted to celebrate hitting the mark so…
It’s time for another Knuckleballs contest!
We have a gorgeous prize available – a framed Kirby Puckett memorial that was donated by my brother (HUGE Puckett fan).
Hopefully, that whets your appetite to play along! So here’s what we’re going to do.
You can see the current visitor count at the top right-hand column of the main page. You can even get a good summary of the visit history if you click on it.
Next, I’m looking for three pieces of information for you to offer:
A) The DAY you think we’ll hit 100,000.
B) The HOUR you think is the likely time to hit.
and lastly, the tie-breaker
C) Where in the world you think that visitor is going to log in from.
I can guarantee you that we never thought this was a mark we would hit when we started.. just wasn’t something that even occurred to us. But here we are and we hope you guys get to celebrate with us!
I always look forward to when the Red Sox come to town.. mostly because I can’t help giggling at Youk’s batting stance. I find myself wondering each and every time what a lifetime series of batting coaches said to him and if any of them have any hair left…
At any rate, let’s hope the Twins can pull together the defense and hitting and give Marquis as good an opportunity for a win as they did last time.
That’s the kind of loss that just leaves you frustrated. You get a leadoff runner on 3B in the 8th with 3-4-5 coming up and you don’t get him across the plate. Then you give up a HR in the top of 9. I guess if there’s a silver lining, it was seeing Danny Valencia with a HR of his own, along with some good glove work at 3B. Denard Span and Jamey Carroll turned in some web gems of their own, so I guess there is that.
Tuesday brings the return of Nick Blackburn. From what I could tell, the Red Sox really ARE as bad as their results have been lately, so there’s still some hope for a win or two this week. – JC
When the Twins demoted former General Manager Bill Smith and put Terry Ryan back in charge last fall, one of the first issues the fans and media raised with Ryan was with regard to the medical staff and, in particular, how mismanagement had resulted in some really poor use of the Disabled List. Ryan indicated there would be changes to how things were done, but, in the end, made no staffing changes in that area.
Early on this season, it’s hard to see evidence of improvement. In fact, this past week, we have seen evidence that the Twins are just as capable of screwing up DL decisions as they were a year ago and this time it cost them a ballplayer.
Starting pitcher Nick Blackburn left the game on Saturday, April 14, when he experienced “cramping” in his pitching shoulder during the 6th inning. The next day, Ryan reported that Blackburn had undergone an MRI that was “normal,” and that Blackburn felt, “OK… stiff.”
Jason Marquis was being reactivated so the Twins had the luxury of giving Blackburn an extra day or two of rest. But, of course, that’s not what they did. They wanted to have him throw a bit to make sure the shoulder was “OK.” Then, they wanted him to throw a full bullpen session on Sunday to REALLY make sure he was “OK.”
After all of that, they announced Blackburn would take the mound for a start this Thursday, April 26… twelve days after he left the game during his last start. [CORRECTION: Blackburn will start TUESDAY, 10 days after his last start. The point remains, the Twins will get one more start out of him than they would have had he been put on the DL – JC]
It will be nice to get Nick back, of course. But that’s only part of the story.
When Marquis rejoined the team in New York, the Twins had to make room for him on their roster. They chose not to put Blackburn on the 15-day Disabled List, but instead designated infielder Luke Hughes for assignment, knowing full well it was likely that Hughes had demonstrated enough ability to swing a baseball bat that he’d be claimed by another MLB team.
Ultimately, that’s exactly what happened. Hughes was claimed by the Oakland Athletics over the weekend.
What did the Twins benefit from losing Hughes? Blackburn gets a start on ThursdayTuesday instead of having to wait THREEFIVE more days to make his next start.
Look, Luke Hughes is not likely to become an All Star infielder in Oakland. With Brian Dozier knocking on the door in Rochester, maybe Hughes’ days with the Twins were numbered anyway. But by mismanaging yet another medical issue, the team essentially gave away a Major League level infielder so that Nick Blackburn could pitch after resting his shoulder 1210 days instead of 15 days.
Oh, and by the way, the Twins medics still have no friggin’ clue what caused Blackburn’s shoulder to “cramp” in the first place.
In the mean time, the team has two starting infielders, Danny Valencia and Alexi Casilla, who have been completely and utterly lost at the plate (both have an OPS under .520). No, Hughes hadn’t done anything yet to indicate he might do better, but then he’d only gotten to the plate 11 times in the four games in which he’d seen action.
My point isn’t to suggest that Luke Hughes was too good to lose… but he was too good to lose simply because the Twins still haven’t figured out how to manage their medical situation and use the Disabled List appropriately.
Terry Ryan, you still have some work to do on that score.
