Less than a week before the MLB trading deadline, the Twins are not only eight and a half games out of first place, but fourth in the wild card race behind Cleveland, Seattle, and the resurgent Yankees. Proponents of getting a desperately needed bat or two to make a late-season run always point to the quality personnel already on the squad: Santana, Morneau, Mauer, Nathan, Hunter, Neshek, etc. There are two problems with this. The talent gap between the marquee guys and the rest of the ballclub is much greater than most teams, and certainly so compared to the teams contesting the Twins for that wild card spot (which also include Toronto, who would be tied with Minnesota with a victory tonight). Put bluntly, this team has no depth.
And incredibly green pitching. Say the Twins did miraculously manage to score a post-season berth. How do you line up your rotation for the ALDS? Santana, and then Bonser, and then Silva? Is that really going to beat the Red Sox/Angels/Tigers/Indians? But inexperienced pitching isn’t as big of an issue as the dirty secret that has plagued this year’s edition of the Twins: shoddy fundamentals. The team’s base running has often been atrocious, and a story in today’s Strib made note of how frequently players have failed in sacrifice bunt situations. Although the Twins’ fielding percentage is 4th best in all of baseball, the 34 unearned runs they’ve allowed is strictly middle of the pack (7th in the AL, 14th overall), not keeping to the standard set by this franchise over the past decade.
All of the cheerleaders want Terry Ryan to trade some of his surplus pitching for a capable hitter or two. I’m all for that, so long as we’re not renting a player and the bat(s) we get are going to be around for the next 2-3 years minimum. But let’s repeat for emphasis: Any moves designed to make a last-ditch effort to secure a championship in 2007 are fools’ errands. This team simply isn’t ready for its close-up this season.
The NFL training camp season is likewise upon us, and in this football crazy area that’s big news. I’ll confess to not being much of a pigskin adherent, although I did play in high school and acknowledge that of all the team sports it is best suited for television. It is comical, however, to read the big blowout in today’s Strib and count all the ways they try to paint a pretty face, under the guise of objective analysis, on the notion that this team is trying to compete without anyone even remotely ready to be their quarterback. Did anyone else watch Tavaris Jackson’s two starts last year–after the then-rook openly and rightly conceded he wasn’t ready? This is a kid two years removed from Division I-AA. Good luck with that. I’m not really qualified to parse X’s and O’s and can do little better than regurgitate conventional wisdom about the squad–the hope rests with the running game and the left side of the O line, plus the beefy dudes who share a last name in the middle of the D line–except for one thought: Why not try Mewelde Moore as a receiver? As the team’s punt returner, he clearly is expected to have good hands and to function well in the open field. And I always liked Moore during his stints in the backfield–he’s shifty and smart, with good physical instincts and reflexes as a runner. I understand that he is either dreadfully injury-prone or a bit of a wuss, depending on how much you want to knock his character. But the Vikes’ receiving corps isn’t exactly top-notch and what’s the harm of giving him some reps and seeing how he pans out on the flank?
Finally there is the brouhaha over Tim Donaghy. My wonderfully hoops-centric readers have already been all over this one, ranging from Andy B’s fire-alert alarm to Patrick’s declaration of boredom over the whole scandal. I confess to an irresponsible sense of ennui. Yeah, I know that the integrity of my favorite sport has certainly been placed in jeopardy, and that those who have an animus toward the NBA–the style of play is too boring, the players are too thuggish, etc–will use this as further evidence that pro b-ball isn’t worth their time. And I’m not minimizing the potential damage that can be wrought if refs other than Donaghy get fingered, or, god forbid, some players or coaches.
But what I keep coming back to is, what am I supposed to do or say in reaction here? I would argue that the person with the most power to respond to the situation, NBA commish David Stern, has demonstrated a long history of staunch–to the point of extreme–vigilance to shoring up the image and integrity of the game, especially with respect to casual fans and new markets, which is precisely where the Donaghy scandal can cause the most damage. And yesterday, Stern labelled this the “worst situation” in his 20+ year tenure. In other words, adding my outrage isn’t going to make Stern any more determined to flip over every rock in every nook and cranny and impose the harshest penalties he can muster in order to not only eradicate this undeniable blotch on the history of the league, but serve notice and implement policies to ensure that it won’t ever happen again. Put it this way: Is Donaghy a bigger scandal than steroids in baseball (and football and cycling and…)? Are NBA players more “thuggish” than football players, or is that line of thinking just a wee bit tinged with race? No, this is bad for the NBA, but it is not like I’m going to stop watching the game or feel like the league has deceived me for all my years of fandom. From what we know now, nobody knew about this (a la steroids in baseball) and happily looked the other way. And now that it is out in the open, well, Donaghy just has to be happy that it isn’t the Puritan days and Stern isn’t the leader of the town, or he would be burned at the stake, without any of his fingernails.
Andy B cited a typically riveting column by ESPN Sports Guy Bill Simmons. Now Simmons happens to be my favorite sportswriter on the planet, and I do think his citing of Donaghy’s participation in the pivotal Game Three of the Spurs–Suns series, which everyone sort of knew was the real NBA Finals this season, is the gravest evidence for hoops junkies like myself that we need to take this thing seriously, that it may have fundamentally altered the course of the 2006-07 season. And while it does not approach the 1919 Black Sox scandal for pervasive and conclusive fixing of the results, whenever the stench of scandal can taint the crowning of a champion, it is a terrible thing. I’ll wait and see how much it can be demonstrated that Donaghy threw that contest to the Spurs, but even if the evidence is minimal, the stench remains. It is not, however, strong enough to drive me away from my addiction to pro hoops and I am thankful that the commish is on the warpath so I can look forward to the upcoming season relatively confident that the cancer has been removed.
One last thing about Simmons. He makes a couple of good points–I too think the refs should be paid far more money and be held to a tougher standard, with more turnover of bad officials. And I also think they ought to rely heavily on the precious few great refs when it comes to the last couple of rounds of the series. I am less enamored with his desire to make the playoffs less of a East versus West so the stronger conference isn’t penalized and the fans aren’t robbed from saving the best match-up for last. If the conferences are to have any integrity, you need to match them up for the final (and by the way, that’s the way football and baseball have always done it, despite periods of longstanding disparity in talent). And lastly, there is the caveat that, as is often the case, the virtues and vices in Simmons’ style are often from the same root. The guy is a provincial fan, who treasures being part of a local community of like-minded folks who live and die for their team. Boston will always be his first love. So sure, right now in Simmons’ three favorite team sports, Boston has the perennially contending Patriots and Red Sox and the woeful Celtics. Of course he’s going to be down on the NBA. He tried to kindle something with the Clippers a couple years ago after he moved to LA (remember the paeans to Sam Cassell, a player upon whom he was strangely silent this year, eh?), but in many respects the Clips and the Lakers were as desultory as the Celtics this season. Taking meaningful passion for a team out of Simmons’s arsenal is tying one hand behind his back, which is why he tried to compensate by slobbering all over Kevin Durant this NCAA season, in the hopes and expectation that Durant would end up a Celtic. If the Celtics do manage to contend for a crown this season and find themselves representing the inferior Eastern Conference in the finals, I suspect you won’t hear as much from Simmons about Tim Donaghy, the terrible playoff system, or the horrible state of the NBA.
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