If we ain’t bums, we’ll certainly do ’til some real bums come along.
–Bugs Baer
If a tree falls in the woods….
What is the sound of one hand clapping?
If you can’t say nothin’ nice….
God only knows….
Words seriously fail me, but I’m going to try to thrash a few out of the brush this morning regardless.
I’m going to attempt to explain what I think went wrong with this Twins team this season, and I think it’s pretty simple, really, when you look at it closely and objectively enough.
I think it’s just this simple: uncharacteristically for this organization, the Twins started pushing the panic button too early. After committing to Jason Bartlett as the opening day shortstop coming out of spring training, and going into a season of the highest expectations, Minnesota’s coaching staff seemed fidgety from the get-go, and the players clearly picked up on that negative energy.
The Twins sent Bartlett packing to Rochester after barely six weeks, which was a trial that was ridiculously brief considering how much rope they’ve been willing to extend to equal or lesser players in recent years. It was also ridiculous when you realize that the Twins were 24-16 at the time. Since they sent Bartlett back to Triple A on May 20th they’ve gone 31-37.
This isn’t all about Bartlett, of course, but it’s about the message the Twins sent went they made the move so early. To a lesser extent they’ve also spent the whole season jerking around other players like Michael Cuddyer, Luis Rivas, and Justin Morneau, and they’ve just flat out done too much tinkering –with the line-up, the batting order, the infield rotation.
What happened to Ron Gardenhire’s old mantra about backing his guys and having faith in the players he throws out there? There have been precious few expressions of that faith this year, as evidenced most glaringly when the Twins manager refused to put out the little brush fire that Torii Hunter started in the clubhouse by questioning the toughness of unnamed –but clearly recognizable– young players on the team. Not only did Gardy make no attempt to extinguish that fire, he actually fanned it with his own comments, which created an obxious cold war situation –at the very least– in the clubhouse.
You can bitch all you want about Terry Ryan failing to make a move to help the team at the trade deadline, but let’s be realistic; there wasn’t a move out there that represented an acceptable risk/reward ratio.
And you can bemoan the loss of Corey Koskie, or even –God forbid– Cristian Guzman and Doug Mientkiewicz. That argument, even allowing for such bunk as clubhouse intangibles, doesn’t wash either. None of those guys has done a damn thing this year. Koskie has been –big surprise– injury prone, and I’d don’t recall anyone mentioning that he suffered his most serious injury (against the Twins) on one of the stupidest baserunning plays I’ve ever seen, attempting to advance from first to second on a routine fly ball to Torii Hunter. To date Koskie’s had just 189 at-bats for Toronto, with a .249 batting average, seven homeruns, and eighteen RBI. I’m sure you’ve had a chance to see what Guzman and Mientkiewicz have done.
If you really want to look at this thing in a cold, clear-eyed manner, you’d see that this year’s version, at least on paper, is unquestionable improved at catcher, first base, and second base. I’d call shortstop and third a wash, although the entire team defense has been noticeably sloppier than any time in recent memory.
As I pointed out earlier, Justin Morneau as a bust has been pretty damn good so far as busts go. Barring injury he will, as I also predicted, lead the team in homeruns, RBI, and slugging percentage. He hasn’t been Roger Maris, but neither has he been Mientkiewicz.
If you really want culprits –and culpability– for the failures of this season to date you have to look at the team’s core of veteran players, the guys who were deemed so solid that the team could afford to gamble a bit on the unproven players in the line-up. That would be Hunter, Jacque Jones, and Shannon Stewart, most prominently, who have been merely adequate, if not mediocre, at the plate, and have, at least from the available evidence, provided negligible leadership in the clubhouse.
Johan Santana has not come close to being the Santana of 2004, but he, and most of the rest of the pitchers, have more than held up their end of the deal, give or take some of the creaky rollercoaster cars in the bullpen. You could argue pretty convincingly that one-through-five this is the most consistent Twins rotation in the last four years, despite which they have one win among them since the All-Star break. Yesterday Kyle Lohse –who now has a 4.38 ERA– pitched the team’s fifth straight quality start in a stretch in which the Twins are 1-4.
This was a team that was deemed good enough to win the World Series by all manner of experts and idiots, and the responsibilities for its failure lie exclusively behind the clubhouse doors. It’s been unseemly the way some of these guys have publicly begged Ryan to go out and get them some help, as if this were the 1998 version of the Twins rather than a team that had won three straight Central Division titles.
Note to the Chicago White Sox: the Twins want their DNA back.
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