While I’m waiting on Uncle Jumbo I’ll pose this question: Have there been any Dick Such sightings in or around the Metrodome lately? Because I’m really struggling to understand the Twins’ 5.44 ERA and the abysmal performances of Brad Radke, Carlos Silva, and Kyle Lohse.
It’s not such a struggle, really, to understand the Lohse situation, although I do wonder when the last time was that a guy making four million dollars a year got sent to the minor leagues? As Ron Gardenhire has pointed out, that’s a seriously old-school baseball move.
Lohse, of course, has been a perpetual mystery. At the Hot Stove League banquet a couple years ago umpire Tim Tschida went out of his way to mention what terrific stuff Lohse had, and intimated that he might have the best pure stuff on the Twins staff.
When Lohse first made the rotation he was pretty much exclusively a fastball-slider pitcher, but at some point he started messing around with a curveball and the occasional change-up. He doesn’t exactly seem to be a deep thinker, or even much of a student of hitters, as I’ve seen him make the same mistake to the same batter time and again. Lohse has always struck me as a nice, soft-spoken guy, but he also clearly has a stubborn streak coupled with some deep-seated insecurities, which can be a lethal approach for a professional athlete. He’s also spent way too much time dinking around with his approach.
It’s possible, I suppose, that he’s simply never actually had an approach, which would explain the schizoid nature of his performances the last several years. At various times he’s scrapped the slider, then scrapped the curveball, only to have both pitches reappear at unpredictable times.
No less an authority than Bert Blyleven has praised Lohse’s curveball, but it’s a pitch that requires confidence, and the willingness to shrug off the occasional mistake that gets punished. It’s clear at this point that Lohse makes way too many mistakes, and doesn’t respond well psychologically to punishment.
He’s being punished in a big way right now, and it remains to be seen how the demotion will affect him (or even if he’ll accept it at all). Lohse is still just 27 years old, and he already has 107 decisions in the Major Leagues (a 51-56 career record, with a 4.90 ERA). The really sad part of this whole saga is that there was a time not all that long ago –before he once again beat the Twins in arbitration and his confidence disappeared– when he had real trade value.
He sure as hell doesn’t have much trade value now.
The positive in all this is that every kid growing up following a pro ball team should have a player to root for with a name like Boof Bonser.
Seriously, is that not the best name in Twins history? (And this is a team that’s had some damn good names.)
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