Those were some of the most rinky-dink baseball games we’re likely to see all year (knock wood). Thank God, at any rate, that we’ve seen the last of the Devil Rays and that convention center/monster truck pit they call a baseball stadium.
Seriously, can you recall a series that contained more serious weirdness than that one? Hard as it is to believe, it was actually worse than the previous Tampa Bay series. Lousy (and just plain funny) base running, crap defense, poor situational hitting, infield hits galore, and balls hit into the rafters and catwalks.
The whole ugly mess obscured the fact that the Twins are facing some potentially serious questions. Joe Nathan, for one. Or Jesse Crain, for another. A batting order that has some glaring holes and still doesn’t seem like it’s structured for maximum efficiency. Maybe that’s a perception thing, resulting from the fact that when the top and bottom of the order guys produce, the middle of the lineup hitters seem to disappear, and vice versa. Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau stranded fourteen runners between them tonight, and Mauer actually looked human (all too human) several different times in the series, both at and behind the plate.
Luis Castillo’s approach is entertaining, but someone needs to tell him that there are times (with runners in scoring position and less than one out, for instance) when what is called for is a line drive or, god forbid, a fly ball, rather than a ground ball to the infield.
It’s been an oddly rubber-legged season so far, that’s for sure, and much shakier than the team’s record would seem to indicate.
This might be the most alarming stat in the early going: after blowing his first save of the season last night, Joe Nathan now has the same WHIP (walks + hits/innings pitched) as Sidney Ponson: 1.80. If you don’t know what that means, I can assure you that it’s not good. Nathan has pitched 13-and-a-third innings and has surrendered 19 hits and five walks. He’s clearly laboring, and one unfortunate result of that –besides the ugly lines he’s been putting up– is that he’s throwing way too many pitches.
The silver lining in Tampa Bay is that Pat Neshek looks increasingly like he’s got the stuff and the composure to do what he does for the long haul, and Glen Perkins has looked more and more comfortable with every outing.
Nothing’s going to get any easier in the next couple weeks, but what would really be nice right now is a stretch of top-to-bottom consistency like we saw in the second half last year.
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