You know what? Winning baseball games is FUN! I hope the boys remember that. Today was a good day – Correia gave it up a couple times but he showed signs of returning to the workhorse guy we had in April. It really was a relief to have a starter at least go 6 innings again! Just for not sucking, I decided to grant Correia a beer on the house. It is Miller Park after all.
I’m granting a beer to Ryan Doumit for actually knocking in the winning RBI, Parmelee for the Homerun and an RBI and to Pedro Florimon for going 2 for 4. (Can you tell that I’m trying to encourage them to keep this kind of activity up?)
ALSO getting a beer on the house is the umpiring Crew Chief – for overruling that idiot Angel Hernandez on yet another absolutely ridiculous bad call. Thank heaven that someone can see even if it took a video review.
But after a bit of discussion which I think we only did for the fun of it, today’s BOD went to Joe Mauer – again – for getting 3 Runs (our entire lead) and in general being awesome at the plate with a Homerun and 2 Walks. Keep it up, Big Man. – CB
Episode 39 of the Twins baseball podcast, Talk To Contact (@TalkToContact), is now available for download via iTunes or by clicking here.
The trifecta of bad “beer”
Cody and Eric must hate themselves, because there is not other reason they would be watching bad baseball and drinking bad beers. But alas, here they are, for another week, with another bad team, and more Twins banter.
This week they cover the Twins news, do a lenghty look at the Twins regulars now that the season is 25% of the way over, and they decide that Joe Mauer and the bullpen are the only things going well for the Twins (ummm duh!).
The round out the podcast with FOUR bad beers, their bored, tipsy, silly friend Tricia, and as always, a trip around the league.
Ninety-nine minutes of audio pleasure.
You can follow Cody on Twitter (@NoDakTwinsFan) or read his writing at NoDakTwinsFan. You can follow Paul on Twitter (@BaseballPirate) or read his writing at Puckett’s Pond. And of course, you can find me on Twitter (@ERolfPleiss) and read my writing here at Knuckleballs!
Episode 38 of the Twins baseball podcast, Talk To Contact (@TalkToContact), is now available for download via iTunes or by clicking here.
Dalton Hicks
This week Cody and Eric dive into the poor pitching management of Ron Gardenhire, Joe Mauer‘s hit-streak amid a season filled with strike-outs, and then we discuss the possibility of seeing Kyle Gibson in a Twins uniform and the outside shot of a 6-man rotation in Minnesota.
We name our Twins hitters and pitchers of the week, and then go Down on the Pond and talk about Low-A Cedar Rapids Kernals first basemen Dalton Hicks.
We finish up the podcast talking about beers from Europe and making a trip Around the League (including a fabulous Korean bat flip).
Only an hour of fun this week, but we’ll be back next week with a special patriotic Talk to Contact in honor of Memorial Day.
You can follow Cody on Twitter (@NoDakTwinsFan) or read his writing at NoDakTwinsFan. You can follow Paul on Twitter (@BaseballPirate) or read his writing at Puckett’s Pond. And of course, you can find me on Twitter (@ERolfPleiss) and read my writing here at Knuckleballs!
So JC & I had an entertaining lunch today before going our separate ways – me off to more family stops & more shopping (sheesh) and he, off to the game. Let’s hope that since the weather is not nearly as nice as yesterday, hopefully the baseball will actually be better. It’s still sunny but significantly cooler and a LOT windier. I’m curious as to whether that will effect the game. Let’s hope Worley has great stuff tonight since I think our bullpen could use the break – but I’m not holding my breath.
I’ll be in and out (honestly still trying to take advantage of what outside weather we have to try to catch up to the months of backlog on yard work) but don’t leave if I don’t answer right away – I’ll be back!
YAY! They certainly did a better job at giving JC a reason to want to come back to MN later on this season. And the game was entertaining enough that I didn’t fall asleep in the 7th inning! This is also a good measure of a baseball game for me lately.
At any rate, it’s amazing the kind of win you can get when the top – heart of the order is getting on base or clearing a base with every AB. Mauer, Morneau, Doumit and Dozier all seemed to come through at the right moment tonight. And then Burton came in for a ground-breaking appearance in his recover/rehab/return but had told Gardy he felt good and could give him an inning – given our bullpen right now, that was VERY GOOD and he nailed down the save at the end. It was a good game with some great effort all around.
And just because in our discussions, we couldn’t really decide which was better: Mauer’s 3 Runs (+some) or Morneau’s 3 RBI but eventually we decided to give the BOD to Mauer just because he was really making it work tonight and that IBB just went to prove that the Orioles pitching really didn’t want to give him yet another opportunity. So Mauer is BOD!
I’m finally posting my first GameChat of the season, and I’ll be around for at least part of the game! The MLB At Bat app told me the Twins won last night, so here’s hoping for more of the same this evening. CapitalBabs and her other half will be in attendance at the game, and while it’s not especially warm, it is sunny, so perhaps it won’t be bitterly cold?
Babs here – yay for seeing live baseball!! Yes, it was chilly at the ballpark tonight AND we were on the first base side which always seems to be about 5 degrees cooler than the 3rd base side. At any rate, Andrew and I both dressed appropriately so we were just fine to sit and enjoy some baseball without losing any major or minor appendages.. I’m hoping that I was able to grab some decent pictures of all the new guys to add to our gallery since there are so many we don’t have yet! I sure had plenty of time since the pace of the pitching tonight resembled a Yankees game.
But what a game! I’m not sure who this team is with all the offense but it does make it a lot more fun to watch. Lineup switched around a bit tonight and Dozier was leading off – guess what, that worked out WELL. He had a good night and I like seeing the effort. The switch to 2nd base has been good for him and I see a very positive future for that.
Also looking good tonight – most of the time – was Florimon. That boy has some incredible throws across the diamond tonight and if he can work on the butterfingers thing he has going a bit, I’m excited to see him improve.
Pelfrey looked good but slow – I have a hard time with slow. But any game where pitching isn’t a major weakness, I’ll call good. Swarzak looked really good – wish he could have gotten the 4 inning save but not today.
However, once again, the offensive show was really ignited and sustained by Joe Mauer. A second consecutive 4 hit game, this one with 3 RBI. It’s great to have fans cheering him when he comes up to bat again. Tonight, he’s our BOD!
With one bad first inning on Tuesday night, the Twins fell from a first place tie atop the AL Central Division in to sole possession of next-to-last place.
Such is life in the second week of a six-month-long Major League Baseball season.
The Twins sit at .500 with a 4-4 record after winning their first two series of the season from Detroit and Baltimore, both of which were postseason participants a year ago. The latter series was also on the road. That ain’t bad.
The losses the past two games in Kansas City have been a bit hard to stomach, of course. Blowing a one-run lead and wasting a pretty fair performance by pitcher Kevin Correia (at least through his first seven innings) was galling on Monday and the five-run bottom of the first that the Twins coughed up to the Royals Tuesday night was way too reminiscent of the kind of starts the Twins endured last year from their rotation.
But, on balance, things could be a lot worse, right?
After all, the Twins have put together this .500 start while most of their best hitters have gotten off to what you’d have to be generous to call mediocre starts.
The Twins have three hitters with batting averages above .300 at this point and you’d have to add all of those three players’ plate appearances together to match the number of times the team’s regular position players have come to the plate. When Eduardo Escobar, Pedro Florimon and Wilkin Ramirez are leading your team’s offense, you know you aren’t hitting (in this case, literally) on all cylinders yet.
Josh Willingham
Josh Willingham is off to a productive start, however. He’s hitting .280 with a couple of doubles and a couple of dingers. We’ll take that from the Hammer all year long. Chris Parmelee and Trevor Plouffe haven’t been great, but haven’t been awful either. Justin Morneau and Joe Mauer have not gotten off to great starts, so you have to figure the offense will improve as those two begin to warm up.
So things could be worse, offensively. Don’t believe me? Just imagine if Manager Ron Gardenhire had decided to plug Brian Dozier and his .174 On-base percentage in to the #2 spot of the order.
Then there’s the pitching. We’ve known all along that this team is going to live or die based on what kind of pitching they get.
Glen Perkins
Most of the good news is in the bullpen. Glen Perkins, Jared Burton, Ryan Pressly and Josh Roenicke, as a group, have not yet surrendered a run, earned or otherwise. They have 14 strikeouts (and seven walks) in 15 innings of combined work. Anthony Swarzak and Brian Duensing have also contributed positively out of the pen.
The results from the rotation members have been mixed. But, as with most things in life, it’s all relative. Compared to what we grew accustomed to seeing a year ago, maybe it hasn’t been all that bad.
Kevin Correia isn’t striking anyone out, but nobody really thought he would. What he has done is induce 23 ground outs and taken his team through the first seven innings of each of his starts. I think we’d take that all year long if we could get it.
There have been some encouraging innings out of some of the other rotation members, as well, but we need to see improvement there. That improvement could potentially start when Scott Diamond comes off the Disabled List in a couple of days.
Still, considering that the Twins pitchers are sixth in the American League in team ERA and their hitters are 12th in both batting average and OPS, you’d almost have to say it’s the team’s pitching that has them even as high as .500 at this point. Who would have expected that?
These champion Twins are (maybe) the next crop of Twins draftees.
Major League’s amateur draft came into existence in 1965. Since that time the Twins have drafted thousands of players. Many of those players failed to reach the Big Leagues. Some of the players that eventually made it to The Show ended up never playing for the Twins. Of the players the Twins drafted, the ten players to accumulate the most value (judged by Wins Above Replacement, WAR) in a Twins uniform were Kirby Puckett, Bert Blyleven, Brad Radke, Joe Mauer, Chuck Knoblauch, Kent Hrbek, Frank Viola, Gary Gaetti, Torii Hunter, and Dave Goltz.
Kirby Puckett (48.2 WAR) – 1st round – 3rd overall – 1982 – Triton College (River Grove, IL)
Bert Blyleven (46.3) – 3rd round – 55th overall – 1969 – Santiago HS (Garden Grove, CA)
It certainly takes some time for players to accumulate enough playing time, even at elite performance levels, to produce the career WAR totals that would put a player on this list. Joe Mauer, drafted in 2001, is the only player on this list that remains active and with the Twins (Torii Hunter is active and playing for the division rival Detroit Tigers), and if he can remain healthy for a couple more seasons he should find himself on top of this list before his current contract expires.
The Twins have been in Minnesota for more than 50 years, but seven of the players on this top ten list were all drafted within the 15 year period betwee 1978 and 1993. Unsurprisingly, these players contributed to some of the best Teams in Twins history. If the Twins are to return to success in the near future, successful drafting will be a big part of their reappearance at the top of the standings.
Episode 30 of the Twins baseball podcast, Talk To Contact (@TalkToContact), is now available for download via iTunes or by clicking here.
This week on Talk to Contact Paul and Eric (And Cody Christie) talk about the future of Joe Mauer, and the 25-Man roster on Opening Day. They then bring in Cody Christie to talk about prospect Rory Rhodes, Eddie Guardado, and the rest to the stories around Major League Baseball. Join us for two hours of fun!
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, which help Samuel Deduno limit his walks).
Episode 27 of the Twins baseball podcast, Talk To Contact (@TalkToContact), is now available for download via iTunes or by clicking here.
Eric and Paul discuss the Twins news of the week, ranging from the Oswaldo Arcia injury, the CF competition, Joe Mauer‘s twins to the Baseball Prospectus prospect rankings. They are joined this week by Kristen Brown (kbrobaseball.blogspot.com) to talk about spring training, voodoo paper dolls and being a female sports writer in a male dominated world. After K-Bro the twins take a closer look at Gary Gaetti‘s time in Minnesota, and Deolis Guerra‘s future with the organization before getting into the world of beer and stolen sausages.
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, which buy us beers).
You may have heard the announcement already – it came out last night.
Our hometown boy, THE Minnesota Twin – yeah, you know who I mean, the newlywed Joe Mauer, announced that he and his new wife, Maddie, are expecting. Congratulations are in order, of course. But here’s the kicker: they are having TWINS.
No, seriously. That girl has some major league talent of her own to get this going – practically a storybook setup. (one that you would find ridiculous, unbelievable and too much of a stretch to make it good writing.) Good for them! (of course, it’s good for them but not exactly something on my wish list – twins are twice the work of one, I hear 🙂 )
Of course, this kind of makes me wonder what this team puts in the water… I can’t list all the twin births that have occurred in families of this team but my impression is that it’s far above the actual average. Could this be a symptom of having Twins on the mind too much?? [starts thinking very hard: singles, singles, singles..]
