A Modest Proposal

I don’t know why there isn’t more talk of moving Lew Ford into the leadoff spot. At this stage of his career Shannon Stewart is no longer a prototypical leadoff guy; he’s pretty clearly lost his wheels and isn’t much of a threat to steal a base or beat out a groundball, both areas where Ford seems to excel.

Lew also does a good job of taking and fouling off pitches, and he drew more walks (67) last year than Stewart has in any of the last six seasons –sixty-seven, in fact, is Stewart’s career high. Stewart does have a career on base percentage of .370, which isn’t bad, but in 642 career at bats Ford’s OBP is now .383.

The problem, of course, is that Stewart’s also probably not the ideal guy to bat second, and the Twins haven’t had a guy uniquely suited to that role in years. Hard as it is to believe, Stewart’s still only thirty-one years old, albeit a creaky thirty-one. Even so, his production has been mostly wasted in the leadoff spot in his time with Minnesota, and though he was injured for a big chunk of last year he hasn’t scored 100 runs in either of the last two seasons.

Joe Mauer has been talked about for the two spot (that’s if –knock wood, help me Jesus– the flare-up with his knee isn’t serious), and he’d probably be pretty productive there; but do you really want Mauer sacrificing and hitting behind the runner and doing all the thankless grunt work that is expected of your two hitter? I don’t, no, not particularly. I’d much rather see him in the three spot where he belongs.

Which leaves Stewart as the most logical candidate at two, presuming Jason Bartlett doesn’t earn the starting shortstop job. I say get Lew and Stew as many at bats as possible over the course of the season, let them both set the table for Mauer, Morneau, and Hunter et al, and take your chances.

Regardless of what Ron Gardenhire decides to do, you really do have to figure this team will score more runs than last year’s model, which went through way too many maddening stretches where they couldn’t put up any crooked numbers and the pitching had to carry them. Based on what I saw and read all last year I guess I was sort of surprised to not see Brad Radke’s name on the tough losses leader board in the latest edition of The Bill James Handbook

Yet even with plenty of reasons to be more optimistic about the team’s offense, you figure things will balance out a bit with the pitching staff. They could lead the AL in earned run average again, but I think that might be asking a bit much in the way of repeat performance, even though, yes, they do have everybody back (including, presumably, Joe Mays) and I expect Kyle Lohse to show radical improvement from last year (I’ll have more on Lohse a bit later).