I don’t feel like trying to figure it out, so maybe someone else can tell me: what was the last date the Twins gained a game on the White Sox? It’s been at least nine games, right?
A long time, at any rate, considering how well the Twins have been playing. And the encouraging thing about the last couple days is that Minnesota’s pitching almost completely shut down the Devil Rays until the last few ugly innings of the last game of the series, and this was after Tampa Bay scored twenty-eight runs in sweeping the Yankees.
And then the red hot White Sox go into Tampa Bay and lose two straight. Tonight the Rays hit just about everybody the Sox threw out there, with the exception of Damaso Marte, who almost certainly should be given the closer’s job over the shaky Takatsu. It was also especially nice to see Chicago lose a one-run game for a change, and on a walk-off homerun.
Jose Contreras was wild as shit again tonight (big surprise, that), and has now walked twenty-one batters (while striking out thirty) in thirty-nine and two-thirds innings pitched. Despite which the guy inexplicably has a 3.18 ERA and .197 batting average against. Suggestion to opposing hitters: make the overpaid bozo throw strikes. In the couple games I’ve seen Contreras pitch this year he should have walked a minimum of ten, but guys kept going up there and flailing at stuff nowhere close to the strike zone.
The other encouraging recent sign that the White Sox have thus far been lucky beyond reasonable expectations was Jon Garland’s lousy performance in Toronto on Saturday, in a game in which he lasted just five-and-two-thirds innings and gave up six earned runs (and still managed to pick up the victory and run his record to 6-0). The whole damn team should have headed to the nearest off-track betting parlor and laid heavy money on Giacomo.
These are all the sorts of things that make you think maybe the genie has gone back into the bottle on the Southside. Then again, given the weirdness of those three straight up-and-down series in Tampa Bay, perhaps the Sox are just as likely to reel off another winning streak.
One last thing: I’ve finally made up my mind on the ugliest player in Twins history. I should mention that I’ve decided to be sporting by limiting the pool to guys I actually had a chance to watch play, some of whose physical flaws –more chins than the Hong Kong phone book, for instance, examples of which have been so relatively common as to be disqualifying as a sole criteria– I actually had a chance to…umm, appreciate up close. I gave David West strong consideration, and would certainly rank his physical structure (or utter lack of physical structure) as among the worst in the annals of the team. David West, I can assure you, made Matthew Lecroy look like Jack La Lanne.
The guy I finally settled on, however, is Scott Klingenbeck, a man who demonstrated every time he waddled to the mound that life is not the only thing that is nasty, brutish, and short. Check out those career numbers, by the way, and, please, somebody do the noble thing and shell out the five bucks to sponsor his Baseball Reference page.
Perhaps you have other ideas regarding the most unsightly Twin, or an all-time unsightly Twins team. I do feel, however, that eligible candidates should represent some combination of a generally displeasing physical appearance and utter ugly incompetence on the field. But that’s just me. Maybe someone comes to mind who was just so damn ugly that you feel compelled to disqualify any and all statistical accomplishments, however rarefied. I’ll confess that I can’t bring myself to feel strongly enough about this to argue with you either way.
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