WordPress automatically updated on me and my theme reset. While I get to fixing that check out this picture of Jim Thome hitting his 490 foot home run on Sunday. The best part is Delmon Young’s face.
Watch it again and again and again…
Is Sid Hartman right?
Besides sharing my random thoughts, opinions and made up stories about the Twins I also like to call out so called “professional journalists” (which I of course am not) for saying stupid things.
This morning I saw a tweet from @BringMN reading that Sid Hartman says the “Twins have no hope” (link to video). He’s also quoted as saying that they need to play .800 ball in order to make the playoffs which won’t happen (The Twins not playing .800 ball the rest of the season is probably the only thing I agree with).
Granted, any Twins fan knows it’s been a rough season so far. Besides the insane amount of injuries they’ve been dealing with they’ve also had spells where they just weren’t playing “Twins baseball” which led them to being 16.5 games out on June 1st. Now as the month of June closes they are only 8 games out of 1st.
8 Games. Was it not just 2 seasons ago that the Twins were still 12-13 games back in August and still won the division? What about the last decade of “Gardy ball” has caused so many people to give up so quickly? Is it the 6 AL Central titles? Is it the Cy Young winner, the MVPs, the Manager of the year, the Hall of Famer that make people give up so easily on the Twins?
This is the game of baseball, where the clock doesn’t run out and the phrase “crazier things have happened” is always true. It’s why it’s my favorite game. There are over 80 more games to be played and The Twins are known for not going away easily. The hurdles may be higher (a bullpen that struggles to get outs being the highest hurdle to jump) but another AL Central title is within reach.
I will admit that the Twins probably overachieved a bit in June given the amount of injuries they’ve faced, but with Perkins and Nathan coming back strong and Kubel, Span & Young back soon there’s no reason not to believe the Twins will make yet another 2nd half run and end up back in the ALDS.
Maybe I’m the crazy one? What do you think?
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A Championship Caliber team
I read a couple days ago that Jim Leyland said, with a lot of our guys that have been out on the DL this season coming back, The Twins will be a championship caliber team. Leyland has obviously been around the league for a minute or two so it’s hard to dismiss anything he says.
Are you seeing what he’s seeing? The Twins who have been missing 5 of their starting 9 plus the most powerful pinch hitter in the league have won 9 out of their last 11 games. You take a team that has that kind of momentum and over the next couple weeks give them 2 MVPS, their best hitter this season, a sure hall of famer and their Japanese phenom off season signing back, it’s hard to argue Jim Leyland’s point.
That said, the Twins have some tough decisions with all of those guys coming back. Dusty Hughes was already taken off the 40 man roster but what other guys could be on their way back to Rochester soon?
Let’s take a look…
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The Case for Ben Revere
Based off plays like the one above (exhibit A), the fact that he’s hitting major league pitching and the fact that he’s gotten on Gardy’s (Santa’s) nice list, I don’t think Ben Revere will find himself back down in Rochester anytime soon.
It makes sense that Gardy likes him. Revere has been playing stellar defense (exhibit B), has great speed (exhibit C) and is coming through with some big hits (exhibit D). The only problem is we’re getting close to having a healthy Mauer, Morneau, Thome, Kubel & Span back and it could prove difficult to find him playing time.
With that, what do we have a lot of and what do we have very few of? The answer is, we have a lot of outfielders that can contribute on a daily basis (Young, Span, Cuddyer, Repko, Kubel & Revere) and we have very few guys in the bullpen that can get guys out (our $7.5mil closer anyone?).
So, what do we do? Though I like him, I think Delmon Young could be the odd guy out. He’s having a tough year but has a lot of upside and could get us a solid bullpen arm and a prospect or two in a trade. I think the Twins are still considering all of their options with Kevin Slowey as well. He could get us another bullpen arm and a prospect. If the deals present themselves, the Twins could be the ones making a killing in trade deals this July instead of selling off everyone like so many people have talked about since early May.
With this afternoon’s win, the Twins are only 9 games out of 1st in the AL Central, won 8 of their last 10, and anyone who has paid attention over the last decade of Gardy ball knows that 10 games isn’t that much to come back from, especially in early/mid June.
What do you think?
Posted in Ben Revere, Delmon Young, Kevin Slowey, Minnesota Twins
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If you don’t have anything nice to say…
Like everyone’s mother teaches them, since I haven’t had much nice to say, I haven’t been saying anything at all.
As I write this, the Twins hold a Major League worst record fo 12-26. Things have gone from a poor start to a spiraling out of control season of sadness.
As I rode the elevator down to get breakfast this morning another random employee, a Royals fan, noticed my Twins hat and asked “So… what’s going on with the Twins?“. He’s a nice guy so I just shook my head and in the 40 seconds it took to ride down to the 1st floor I spewed out all of the reasons we know but won’t add together to explain why the Twins are where they are.
Free agency:
• The Twins lost almost every productive part of their bullpen to free agency. As much as I would have liked to see Guerrier or Fuentes back in 2011 the Twins were fiscally responsible in not overpaying any of those guys with a long-term contract.
Injuries:
• Joe Nathan & Justin Morneau – coming back from major injuries, we hoped for better but knew it could take some time for them to work their way back to the top of their game.
• Joe Mauer, Justin Morneau, Michael Cuddyer & Delmon Young all missed a lot of time in Spring Training that caused the heart of the Twins’ lineup to get off to a slow start.
• Joe Mauer, Justin Morneau, Delmon Young & Jim Thome have all missed significant time. I’d hate to see the number of wins we’d have (or wouldn’t have) if it weren’t for Denard Span & Jason Kubel.
Underperforming:
• Carl Pavano & Francisco Liriano – both have shown signs of brilliance this season but the majority of their starts have gone from promising to a complete nightmare all because of a few pitches they don’t locate with.
• Matt Capps – Like the title of the post says, if you don’t have anything nice to say…
All of this to say the Twins aren’t an awful team, and despite their record, are not the worst team in baseball. While the opening of Target Field and the long-term signing of Joe Mauer has created many new “fans”, it’s also created that many more nay-sayers and fair weather fans, and uneducated ones at that.
I’ll end this post the same way I ended the conversation with Mr. elevator Royals fan…
“I’m not giving up on them and, come the end of the season, I will not be surprised if they’re in the thick of a pennant race...”
Neshek headed west
I just read this succession of tweets that say Pat Neshek is now a member of of the San Diego Padres. An interesting way to read about this.
I’ve been thinking about doing another post on the Twins and their Twitter usage and I think the sparked the preface of that post. Players posting information on transactions and players responding to that news in a public forum. As a fan, I like the transparency, but I can imagine that the front office of the Twins might soon be creating/updating their Twitter/Social Networking policy.
For now I guess all we (Twins’ fans) can do is wait for the rest of the details of this transaction to come out so we can figure out how we feel about it.
Posted in Denard Span, Michael Cuddyer, Pat Neshek, San Diego Padres, Twitter
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Spring Training Quotes
“If Pavano is the Opening Day starter and you think I’m not going to have Mauer in the lineup, you can kiss my ass“ – Ron Gardenhire on who will be catching Pavano opening day
“We’ll make a new language, the two of us“ – Tsuyoshi Nishioka on the Japanese to English to Spanish language barrier with Alexi Casilla
Also, what’s with making a wart on Michael Cuddyer’s foot public knowledge? They couldn’t have just called it “turf toe” like Delmon Young has or maybe said he stepped on a nail? While, as a Twins fan, I appreciate knowing why a player might not be playing, I don’t need to know things that specific.
I’m looking forward to tonight’s 1st spring game. We’ll get our first sample of Nishioka, get to see what kind of shape Neshek’s velocity is in and also check out a few off season bullpen pickups (Diamond, Hughes & Bazardo).
Morneau done for good? Making the best of a worst possible scenario
You may have read all of the unfounded conjecture from many blogs and articles about the health of Justin Morneau. From the Twins and Justin we’ve heard he’s doing well and is on track with his workouts to come into spring training at 100% so that’s what I believe.
But, given the “I have nothing to write about so I’ll make something up” articles that guys from the Strib/Pi-Press and blogs that regurgitate their crap come up with, coupled with another major story in baseball right now suffering from the same kind of thing, I had an idea. Not just an idea, but a way out there crazy “what if?” scenario kind of idea.
It’s an insane “this would never happen and because of the implications I hope it doesn’t but it’d make the situation quite a bit easier to swallow as a Twins fan” idea. I’ll keep it short and to the point. Let me know what you think.
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Pretend for a minute that the worst case scenario happens and, God forbid, he is never able to play baseball again (a la our beloved Corey Coskie) and after an attempted come back this year he retires. We suddenly have a an opening at 1st base and a big chunk of payroll freed up.In a city a few states south and coming off yet another career year, Albert Pujols hits free agency and, like Cliff Lee, decides to turn down the Yankees/Red Sox and sign with a team with heart and integrity, not just money. While it would be quite a stretch financially for the Twins, they decide to put in a bid just, mmm mmm mmm for the smell of it… and he accepts. Next thing you know we have the best left handed and right handed hitters in the game on the same team batting one after the other in the lineup.How crazy/amazing/fun would that be?
——–
Of course, this will never ever happen because…
- Justin Morneau, by all accounts, is healthy and ready to kick ass and chew bubble gum and he just so happens to be out of bubble gum. And…
- Albert Pujols will most likely sign with the Cardinals in the off season before he even hits free agency and spend the rest of his career with a red bird on his jersey.
It’s fun to dream/mess with the Cardinal’s fans/poke fun at “writers” though huh?
Inbox: Proving the press doesn’t know any more than we do
Earlier this week I saw @kellythesier tweet, asking for questions for the latest Inbox on Twinsbaseball.com so I decided to submit a question (the first one answered in the article) to do a test.
Beyond the loads of fame Kelly answering my question will no doubt bring me, I’ve had the theory that, at least concerning the Twins, the press does not have any more info than the club chooses to make public. This is contrary to what some writers would like you to believe and while I think Kelly does a fine job for twinsbaseball.com, (and this is no slight against her) she proved my point.
I asked a question about having 6 guys for a 5 man rotation and if she had any “insider” information to give us fans. The answer, as you can read for yourself is just a restating my question as a statement.
Beyond getting some kind of twisted joy out of knowing that a fan who blogs every so often from Kansas has the same intel and access to info as someone who is paid to cover the team it makes me happy to know that the Twins continue to be a classy organization.
What does that mean? It means that the way they operate is they don’t deal with the media while figuring out internal matters. It shows in the latest Inbox and it showed even more last year at this time when the Twins were working out the long term contract with Joe Mauer. Almost daily you’d hear writers, who are easy to point out but not worth naming,
All this, despite the tone of this post, is why I like a writer like Kelly. She doesn’t pretend to have info on matters that she doesn’t have info on. She answers questions and writes articles to the best of her knowledge and reports things as the Twins release them to the media/public (same thing) rather than making up stories just get a few page views.
Posted in Joe Mauer, kelly thesier, Minnesota Twins
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Adios Punto, you will be missed.
*Joe & Nick had a falling out which was the real reason the Twins declined Punto’s option and allowed him to sign with another team for a mere $700,000
Today I read that my good friend Nick Punto signed a 1 year contract with the St Louis Cardinals. After 7 years the Twins had to let him go, for reasons I understand, but it still sucks to see one of my favorite ball players heading to a different team.
The good news is he’s going to a good team that can compete and he’s only a few hours down I-70 if I want to go see him, Pujols and the rest of the Cardinals.
Rather than talk about the sadness that is Punto leaving here are a few links to leave the naysayers quiet as the best defensive utility guy in the game travels down to make a new home in St Louis.
- Punto throws out Austin Jackson at home
- Punto steals a hit from Coco Crisp
- Punto barehands it and gets an out
Punto isn’t known for his bat but his work with the glove is undeniable.
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