Lord Have Mercy

I’m not even going to bother to try to reconstruct the haywire play-by-play from the last four games. I was intending to go back over the game logs at some point tonight, but the prospect is frankly just too exhausting at the moment. All I know for sure is that I saw more variations of ugly than you’re likely to see this side of the Deliverance wrap party. Somebody out there will know how many times the Twins had the bases loaded over that stretch, and how many runs they managed to get out of those situations. I’ll just take a wild stab for the hell of it: the Twins had the bases loaded twenty-five times and scored one run. I think that’s right.

This I do know, though, because all I have to do is look at the boxscores: Four games, thirty-seven hits, fifteen walks, thirty-eight runners left on base, nine double plays hit into, eleven runs scored, and a 1-3 record. Folks, I know it’s a difficult game, but it’s hard to do what the Twins have been doing (or hard to not do what the Twins haven’t been doing?). Something like that.

Look on the bright side, though. Seriously, have you looked at the pitching numbers for Johan Santana specifically, and the pitching staff in general? Johan has now struck-out thirty-seven batters while walking two. Those are Dennis Eckersley numbers, from when Eckersley was a reliever. It’s unreal. And it’s not just Santana. The entire staff has walked sixteen and struck-out ninety-four. Juan Rincon’s strikeouts to innings pitched ratio has got to be inching up there close to Santana territory. (Okay, I just looked: Rincon’s K/9 –15.00– is actually better than Santana’s –13.50.)

I don’t know how to explain all the home runs Johan’s given up so far, other than just to remember that it’s still early, he was lousy for the first month or so last year, and the league’s got a much better idea of how he operates. There’s also the Joe Mauer factor. Henry Blanco was a very good signal caller, and the pitchers raved about him all last season. I don’t know how long it’ll take Mauer to get a good handle on the batters around the league, and maybe right now they’re calling most of the pitches from the dugout. I don’t think so, though. All I know is that if you could throw back half the homers Twins starters have allowed –and there have been a lot of two- and three-run shots– we wouldn’t even be talking about all those stranded runners and double plays.

Well, we’d probably still be talking about them, or bitching about them, but we’d pretty much be nit-picking. I’m not going to do too much bitching tonight, however, consternated as I am, because I got an earful all night from my pal Jumbo, and I know only too well how tiresome it is to listen to somebody piss and moan. I actually got up and switched seats in the middle innings because I’d had enough of his bellowing. I’m sure you’ll hear all about it on Friday.

Tomorrow I’ll give you the rundown on the tunes that escort each of the Twins from the on-deck circle to home plate, most of them personal selections. I’ll also, finally, assign an artist and a title to that damn song they played for Cristian Guzman the last couple years he was here. I think you know the one. I’m pretty sure, in fact, that you could hum it right now.