The Rake Magazine

Category: Sports

  • What, They Don't Have Advance Scouts In The National League?

    I love Torii Hunter. He’s a genuinely fine character, and he had a tremendous game last night against the Diamondbacks. But, my God, why would anybody in their right mind throw Hunter a strike, let alone a hanging breaking ball?

    The man is up there to swing the bat, and he’s not exactly what I guess I’ll call particular, if you know what I’m saying, and I think you do.

    He’s also an entertaining and frequently confounding spazz on the base paths, and though everybody seems to want to give him credit for stealing a run on pure hustle last night, it might be worth pointing out that he could just as easily have been out twice. He certainly gave Arizona two perfectly good opportunities to nail his ass, and they simply couldn’t get the job done.

    Having to watch the Twins in Arizona the next two nights gives me an opportunity to recycle one of my enduring gripes about the game. This is a slightly edited version of something I wrote last year, but it’s as relevant as ever:

    One of the most reliable atrocities in Major League baseball is the wholly inexcusable batting stance of Arizona’s Craig Counsell. There have been some terrible batting stances over the years, but there has never been a stance that was such an affront to the dignity of the game as Counsell’s baroque sideshow. The man looks like a hemorhaging egret at the plate, and it takes every ounce in my diminishing reserves of self-restraint to keep me from removing my shirt, climbing over the railing, and tackling Counsell in the on-deck circle.

    I’m not going to do that, and I’d discourage even the drunkest among you from doing that, even though I will nonetheless continue to insist that I –or the drunkest among you– would nonetheless be providing a tremendous public service if we were to do so.

    That’s not our job, though. That is the job of Bud Selig, and the fact that Counsell has been allowed to continue to insult baseball fans everywhere –and to provide such a terrible example to young players all over the country– with his ridiculous stance is just one more example of Selig’s miserable failure as a commissioner. Forget about steroids, for God’s sake, if Selig is truly interested in preserving the integrity of the game he professes to love he would ban Counsell for life until he repents and learns to stand at the plate like a reasonably normal human being.

    It would be one thing is there was a single shred of evidence that Counsell’s stance was at all efficacious, but no such evidence exists. This scrawny little stain on the game is a career .265 hitter, with a whopping total of 17 homeruns in over 2000 at bats. So he’s clearly not up there to hit; Counsell’s vogueing, is what he’s doing, and his stance is obviously just a mediocrity’s desperate attempt to get attention. Why he’s not quick-pitched every time he goes into his spastic contortions is beyond me. A few judiciously placed fastballs in the ribs would put an end to his nonsense in a hurry.

    I hope you will join me in condemning this terrible man and the damage he is doing to the game’s increasingly fragile aesthetics. Write to the commissioner. Boo Counsell every time he comes to the plate. Boycott the Arizona Diamondbacks until they do the right thing and give the man the walking papers he so richly deserves. But please, I’m begging you, do something. I can’t stand it anymore.

  • Is The Glass Half Full Or Half Empty?

    Each of the Twins three Division titles has been sort of strange, and in almost exactly the same regard. Every year the team confounds expectations every which way, and still finds a way to win.

    I don’t know why I expected this year would be any different, but I know I wasn’t alone. I watch a lot of baseball games, and listen to the rest, and maybe this is just the hyper-critical reaction of a fan who has seen too many games and been spoiled by all those titles, but this team just doesn’t seem like it should be as good as it is.

    Why is that, do you suppose? It’s certainly not because the Twins aren’t as good as they seem, because “good as they seem” doesn’t mean a damn thing in baseball. The numbers speak for themselves.

    The thing is this, I think: once again, as so often in recent years, the Twins have had to improvise to a degree that is both characteristic and uncharacteristic of winning teams. After all the hullaballoo coming out of spring training, the original starting shortstop is back in Rochester, replaced by a mix-and-match combination of journeymen. The starting second baseman –no real surprise here– has been supplanted by whichever journeyman isn’t playing short on any given day. The third baseman has been alternately dismal, encouraging, and erratic, and still doesn’t have numbers a major league third baseman should be proud of. The guy at first base continues to be snakebit, missed a big chunk of time after getting hit in the head, and was in a freefall before he got briefly shelved again by a bone spur in his elbow. The phenom catcher has also had a hard time staying in the lineup.

    Last year’s team, of course, also battled through injuries. Nothing you can do about that, as the old salts will tell you. No, but it’s the production of the guys who have not been injured that continues to puzzle. In 2004 the Twins didn’t have a single player with thirty homeruns, and nobody with either 100 RBI or runs scored. Shit, no regular hit .300. That seems highly unusual for a team that won 92 games and the division, particularly in this day and age.

    The Twins appear to be on a similiar course so far this season. Shannon Stewart leads the team in homeruns with eight, and is on a pace to possibly score 100 runs. It sure seemed for awhile that Justin Morneau was going to easily hit thirty homers and get that monkey off Minnesota’s back, but that’s no longer the lock it once was, and even twenty might be a stretch.

    The story, of course, is the pitching, which has been even better this year than last. The Twins lead the majors in ERA and fewest runs allowed, and they’ve got an unreal strike out-to-walks ratio. The starters have been tremendous, and the bullpen has been even better.

    Minnesota’s giving up fewer than four runs a game, and the magic number to win baseball games has been at four runs for several years now. The Twins definitely need that slim margin, because their offense seems determined to just squeak by.

    Consider this, though: Kyle Lohse has the highest ERA on the entire staff, at a more than respectable 4.25. Both Carlos Silva and Joe Mays have lower ERAs than Johan Santana and Brad Radke.

    The strange thing is that the White Sox have been a virtual carbon copy of the Twins, which was pretty much their stated goal coming out of spring training. They’ve scored almost the same number of runs as the Twins (as of a couple days ago Minnesota had actually scored more), and are second in the majors in team ERA.

    One of these teams is going to either have to step it up offensively or go out and get a banger for the middle of the lineup. Chicago seems far more likely to adopt the latter strategy, but if past performance is any indication they’ll accomplish nothing by doing so. They can’t very well find a way to swing trades for Carl Everett or Roberto Alomar again this year. The more plausible scenario –and it’s hard to say, really, how plausible this is– is that Frank Thomas comes back and gives the White Sox just enough offense to put them over the top.

  • Break In The Action

    I’m headed out of town for a brief spell. I’ll be back early next week.

    This seems as good a time as any for a breather, since we seem to be basically recycling plotlines the last several days.

    I’ll leave you with some fine links to explore (and I’d encourage you to investigate the links over there to the left as well):

    Strange Baseball Injuries

    Nineteenth-Century Base Ball Pictures on the World Wide Web

    SABR’s Triple Plays Site

    Peter Schilling’s excellent round-up of new baseball books at Mudville Magazine

  • With Apologies To Jumbo, The Day Off Was Sort Of Nice

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    I don’t know about you, but I spent the day not watching baseball. I did tune in briefly to the end of the White Sox game tonight, but what I saw was not encouraging. I saw a tough and resiliant team which is, at least at the moment, showing why it’s the best –and certainly the most improved– club in the Central.

    The Sox comeback against Anaheim was a classic small-ball rally, and if you’re not already sick of hearing about small ball in connection with the Central, I’m pretty sure you will be –we all will be– before everything’s said and done. The difference between the White Sox and Twins right now is that the strategy involved represents a deliberate organizational approach on Chicago’s part.

    Trailing the Angels 4-3 in the ninth (after Ozzie Guillen left Mark Buehrle out there in the top of the inning to cough up a 3-2 lead –with an assist from Damaso Marte), pinch hitter Willie Harris walked and swiped second. Joe Crede followed with another walk, and Scott Podsednik sacrificed the runners. Carl Everett, pinch hitting for Tadahito Iguchi, then struck out against Scott Shields.

    Yet with two outs, Timo Perez, who replaced Frank Thomas at DH after Thomas left the game in the seventh with a hip flexor, lined a two-run single to left for the game winner. Thomas, of course, was in the line-up for the first time since last July.

    We’ve seen the Twins stage comebacks like this occasionally this year, but after managing just eight hits over the last two games in Toronto, it’s becoming apparent that right now they’re a small-ball team –and not a very good one– out of necessity rather than design. More than half of their line-up is not truly capable of executing fundamentally on a day-to-day basis, but they’ve also so far proved incapable of tossing up crooked numbers with any regularity.

    If the 2005 Twins are going to be anything more than a splendid pitching staff and an underperforming offense, they’re going to need the guys in the middle of the order to start delivering some extra base hits and hitting some home runs. If it comes down to scrambling for runs and playing station-to-station baseball, the White Sox –who do also have some guys who can hit the long ball with consistency– will run away with the Central. All those one-run games they’ve won are something of an oddity, but they’re also a sign that they’re doing some things right.

  • Uncle Jumbo's Playground

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    –Illustration by James Dankert

    It’s my older brother Rich’s 25th wedding anniversary this weekend, and his wife’s family is throwing a big party for the special occasion. There are almost certainly no two words in tandem that I hate more than “special occasion.”

    My brother and his wife may be the only couple on the planet that had a chow mein buffet at their wedding reception, which was, at least from a purely personal standpoint, a recipe for disaster. Thanks to the wonders of videotape I’ll have to relive that night for the rest of my life. That tape gets dragged out at every family gathering, and has been widely and irresponsibly pirated and disseminated. I don’t doubt you could find a copy on eBay right this moment. What you’d see –or what you may already have seen– if you got your hands on that humiliating document is yours truly, shirtless and listing noticeably, playing a tambourine with the world’s worst cover band as it sleepwalks through songs by such execrable outfits as the Little River Band and Pablo Cruise. A little later on in the tape you’ll see me –inexplicably wearing a sombrero– passed out with my face in a plate of chow mein.

    I’m sure I’ll get another chance to revisit that otherwise wholly lost night this weekend, provided the Celica can make the trip to Blooming Void without incident, and I’m almost hoping it can’t. I’m sure I’ll also have to accompany my mother to the cemetery to visit the old man’s grave. We’ll have the same argument we have every time we go out there, and my mother will muster an increasingly unconvincing imitation of bereavement. The source of our disagreement is my father’s tombstone, on which my mother had had inscribed beneath his name the word “Papa,” a term that was, I’m absolutely certain, never once uttered in connection with my old man.

    I won’t be able to resist pointing out to my mother, as I’ve been pointing out to her for eleven years, “Nobody called him Papa.”

    “Everybody called him Papa,” she’ll say, and then we’ll argue a bit about it, and then she’ll have her breakdown. It never fails, and at this point I have to imagine that the old man would get a pretty good kick out of the whole scene.

    I’m also pretty sure –weather permitting– that I’ll get a chance to thrash my nephews in Whiffleball, which is something that never fails to give me enjoyment. Even when they were so little they could barely swing the damn bat I never took mercy on them, and by now they’re so scarred by the ass-whippings I’ve administered over the years that my domination is almost purely psychological. Almost. Even if they were chippy, strapping lads I’d still kick their asses. I am unquestionably one of the world’s greatest Whiffleball players.

    I should be able to catch at least parts of the next couple Twins games on the radio, and I’ll probably get a little time to camp out on my mother’s couch to take in some of the TV broadcasts. It’s an absolute disgrace that there’s no game on Memorial Day, of course. What the hell’s up with that nonsense? I’ll be back home by Monday, and what am I supposed to do with a day off? Sit around my apartment listening to John Philip Sousa records and doing crossword puzzles? I’ll be good and damned if I know, to be perfectly honest with you. I’m afraid things could get very messy.

    I’m sure there are plenty of yahoos who are giddy as school girls about tonight’s 7-2 win in Toronto (not to mention Chicago’s 6-2 loss to Texas). Good for them.

    Sure, it’s nice to have shaved a couple games off Chicago’s lead in the last week, but I can’t get too excited about a victory in which the Twins rapped sixteen hits and stranded eleven runners. I also don’t much like to see the leadoff hitter tied for the club lead in home runs, and leading the team in total bases. I will say this: if it wasn’t for Stewart and the bench scrubs on this team right now, the Twins would be in deep shit.

    And speaking of bench scrubs, did anyone else hear Dan Gladden say tonight that Nick Punto was going to be “a force on this team for years to come”?

    A force? For years to come? Nick Punto? I don’t know, maybe we’re already in deep shit.

  • Objects In The Rearview Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear

    The bad news is that the Twins aren’t scoring many runs. The good news is that neither are the White Sox. As I mentioned the other day, the Central race looks increasingly like it’s going to come down to which team’s pitching can carry it the longest.

    There is, of course, always the possibility that the offense that everyone –myself included– thought was going to be much improved this year will finally get rolling, but after three seasons (and two months) of this frustrating one-step-forward, two-steps-back routine for virtually every hitter in the Minnesota line-up, I’m not going to hold my breath.

    Anybody out there still remember Richard Stanley Such, Tom Kelly’s erstwhile valet/pitching coach? Remember how Twins pitchers during Such’s looooong tenure in Minnesota never seemed to a) develop, or b) be able to sustain any consistency?

    I used to waste a lot of time and energy bitching about Dick Such, and puzzling over Kelly’s maddening loyalty to the man. I remember one ex-Twin telling me how Such’s trips to the mound used to consist of such helpful advice as, “Throw strikes. You’re pissing off the manager.”

    Such had his defenders, although they were fewer as time went on. Their main argument was generally, “He can’t throw the ball for these guys.” One look at the man’s career numbers as a Major League pitcher made that point all too clear.

    Since Rick Anderson has been installed as Such’s replacement, the Twins have demonstrated remarkable pitching improvement almost across the board. Maybe, of course, that has a lot to do with the fact that the organization is simply producing better pitchers for Anderson to work with. Or, just possibly, perhaps Anderson really does know what he’s doing. The reality is probably a combination of those two factors.

    I guess I’m just wondering if maybe right now we might be looking at some correlation between the dark ages when Minnesota’s pitching routinely posted team ERAs that were among the worst in the league, and the team’s current extended offensive malaise.

    Like I said, I’m just wondering. That’s all.

  • A Vulture With A Wicked Curveball

    Tonight Jesse Crain picked up his fourth win of the season out of the bullpen, and it looks like he’s on his way to eventually supplanting Juan Rincon as the main set-up man for Joe Nathan. He’s also looking like pretty good insurance for Nathan in the event that disaster strikes.

    I love Crain enough to risk ruining his season (if not his career) by praising him in a (semi-) public forum. The guy throws in the mid-nineties and has a dynamite curveball, and though I expect the strikeouts will eventually start to come for him, so far he’s gotten the job done by getting opposing hitters to swing the bats. He’s also the one Twin most consistently willing to pitch hard up and in and drive batters off the plate, and it’s fun to watch his already crafty approach to each at-bat. I also like his unflappable demeanor. He’s the stone-faced straight man to Nathan, whose wincing, sighing, and lip-fluttering whinnying always makes me sort of nervous. Nathan’s a monster, but I’m not sure there’s a closer in the major leagues who displays such anxious body language on the mound.

    It would be nice if the Twins offense could sustain a little consistency from top to bottom, but they’ve been maddening in exactly the same regard in each of the previous three seasons. There never seems to be a time when everybody in the line-up is running hot at the same time, and there have been far too many nights when everybody pretty much looks futile against mediocrities like Scott Elarton. This is still a team that’s going to go as far as its pitching will carry it, and the same seems to be true of both Chicago and Cleveland.

    Tonight at least they managed to come through with a bunch of big two-out (and two-strike) hits, and I know that most stat wonks like to pooh-pooh the idea of clutch hitting, but, dammit, I know what I see, and Lew Ford has been clutch in so many key situations already this year that I have a hard time attributing it to nothing but situations and luck. Ford seems to have a knack for bearing down and getting a good swing in the tight spots of games, and I have to think it has something to do with the same curious mental makeup that makes him such a genuine and endearing character in the clubhouse.

    I suppose the sort of encouraging thing about the last couple nights is that both teams have pretty much emptied out their bullpens, and if anything Eric Wedge has spent even more bullets. I think any time the Twins can come through the back end of the rotation with a 1-1 record you’ve gotta feel pretty good, although wasting a decent Kyle Lohse performance certainly qualifies as a major waste at this point.

    Now, of course, the series comes down to which team’s starters can do the most to give their bullpens a breather in the next couple games. Which gives me an opportunity to say how much I like the revamped batting order Gardenhire has cobbled together. Between Stewart, Mauer, and Ford, you’ve got your three most selective guys getting guaranteed at-bats in the first inning, which gives the Twins a chance to force opposing pitchers to work deep counts and throw a lot of pitches. I wish I felt like some of the guys in the middle of the order were actually paying close attention to these at-bats, but most of the time lately it sure as hell doesn’t look like they are.

  • Uncle Jumbo's Playground

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    –Illustration by James Dankert

    Fridays aren’t gonna work for me. I’m not a writer, dammit. I can’t be expected to drag my ass home from the day job (and I do mean drag my ass; some days it feels like I’m hauling a Volkswagon Beetle behind me), watch a baseball game, and then sit down and grind out some nonsense simply because Zellar feels like taking the day off and making merry.

    Sometimes I feel like making merry myself, even if I do have a substantially different definition of what that phrase means than the average person. Last night, for instance: I didn’t feel up to venturing out to the Dome, so I hunkered down at home with a twelve-pack of Milwaukee’s Best (truly the best beer-bang for your buck when you’re pinching pennies) and a bag of Cheetos, which I enjoy because they stain the shit out of my face, hands, and clothes and when I finish a bag I look like I’ve actually been doing hard labor in some kind of mine. I also ate some pork and beans (mixed with Ken Davis barbecue sauce) cold and right out of the can. I like to imagine that I might be one of the last people in America –other than, perhaps, a few rare old-school hobos, if in fact there remain any such characters in existence– who still eats pork and beans out of the can.

    What, some people occasionally wonder, does any of this have to do with baseball? And my answer is: everything. The game is all about ritual and routine, and I have as many –if different– rituals as a fan as I ever did as a player. Being a baseball fan should not be a passive activity, and it’s not an appropriate activity for the self-conscious. Athletes always talk about being in “the zone,” and even as a spectator the game is only truly excruciating or enjoyable to me if I can manage to find my way into a zone of oblivion all my own. Maybe that’s why I prefer sitting at home and watching on television to putting up with the aggravations and distractions of a crowd at the ballpark. When I actually go to a game, someone or something is always intruding on my oblivion, and these intrusions are often incredibly hostile. I also don’t wish to have my responses and behavior choreographed by anything other than what happens on the field.

    Some people –many people– can’t stand to have their ballpark “experience” ruined by the behavior of a genuine fan, but that’s not my problem. When people object to my behavior at a game –and this happens all the time– it’s inevitably out of concern for the kids around me. One of the most pathetic fallacies in the world is that baseball is all about the kids. That’s nonsense. Unless a kid knows how to keep score, define the infield fly rule, and pay attention, parents or guardians have no business bringing them to a baseball game. Anybody who’s had to sit around a gaggle of squirming brats at the Dome recognizes that most kids would rather be somewhere else. Most of the time they’d rather be standing in line at the concession stands or running up the aisle to the bathroom.

    I’ve been booed mercilessly on a number of occasions for wrestling a foul ball away from some kid (or pack of feral kids), and when this has happened I can tell you in all honesty that I’ve never felt anything but exultant. I’ve caught maybe a dozen balls over the years, and, truth be told, they don’t mean anything to me at this point, but I’ll still wade into the throng out of principle. I can see all sorts of lessons in this for the kids: Life’s not fair. Respect your elders. It’s a dog-eat-dog world and little dogs should stay the hell out of the way of the big dogs. The sturdier animal gets the foul ball. Shut your mouth and watch the game or go to Camp Snoopy where you belong. Don’t mess with Jumbo.

    I can’t find much to bitch about regarding last night’s game. I love watching Carlos Silva pitch, and his performance last night was a thing of beauty. It’s easy to forget that this is a big guy who’s supposedly pitching with a messed-up knee.

    I still don’t much like the offense of this team, and worry about the strength of the bench over the long haul. If you’re one of these people who seriously believes that Nick Punto or Juan Castro are the answers to any question worth asking, the odds aren’t very good that we’re ever going to be able to have a civilized discourse.

    Because Silva was so great last night we can try to forget about the fact that the Twins stranded eleven runners, and Torii Hunter (.237 BA, .314 OBP, .396 SLG) grounded into two double plays with the bases loaded, and is now 0-8 with the bags packed for the season. This is a guy who right now is a serious candidate for the most overrated player in all of baseball.

    The futility of the entire team with the bases loaded (9-51 for a .176 BA) is ridiculous, and might be either a pure fluke or a sign that the Twins just aren’t a very disciplined team. Right now I’d say it’s probably a little bit of both.

  • Cue The Meatloaf

    “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad” would be an appropriate, if obnoxious, theme song for Ron Gardenhire’s Twins, for this or any season. The mantra in the Minnesota clubhouse during Gardenhire’s tenure has always been, “We’re just trying to win each series. The rest will take care of itself.”

    That’s a decent, ambitious goal for a baseball team. A .660 winning percentage should be more than enough to easily win any division. The 2004 Cardinals played .648 ball and led the majors with 105 wins. The White Sox, of course, are playing at an unreal .707 clip so far this year, and no one really expects them to be able to keep that up. The Twins current .590 winning percentage is better than they finished last year, and would have been good enough to win three divisions in ’04; still, barring a complete Chicago collapse they’ll probably have to crank it up a notch, or at the very least keep rolling at their present pace to close ground on the Sox.

    Thanks once again to the weird schedule, Minnesota and Chicago won’t meet again until August, and the two teams will play their remaining thirteen games against each other in the season’s final two months (including seven games in September).

    The last couple games of the Toronto series were encouraging on all sorts of levels. The team bounced back from Johan Santana’s discouraging (and almost shocking) outing on Tuesday, and got a decent start from Kyle Lohse on Wednesday, and a spectacular start out of Joe Mays today. Juan Rincon and Joe Nathan appear to have suffered no lingering effects from their shaky outings in last Friday’s eleven-inning train wreck against Texas.

    Michael Cuddyer continued his May resurrection, going four-for-seven with three RBIs in the last couple games (and raising his batting average to .274). Two of those RBIs came on his bases-loaded double off Gustavo Chacin in the sixth inning of today’s 4-0 victory in the series finale. The thirteen-pitch battle that resulted in that double was one of the great at-bats you’ll ever see (Cuddyer fouled off eight two-strike pitches, including one long, high blast that just hooked foul down the leftfield line), and was all the more significant given the Twins futility with the bases loaded so far this year.

    “I saw all of his pitches in that at-bat,” Cuddyer said afterwards. “I saw some of them several times, in fact. I was just trying to stay back, get a good swing, and try to drive the ball. In an at-bat like that, after a while you stop trying to guess and just try to see each pitch. In the back of my mind, though, I knew he’d thrown me a change-up my previous time up, and I hadn’t seen it yet. It turned out that was the pitch I eventually hit, but by then, of course, I was no longer really looking for it.”

    Finally, to return to Meatloaf for a moment, I’d like to give you a heads up that I’ve started to assemble my All-Time Fat Bastard team, and I welcome early suggestions for worthy candidates.

  • Human, All Too Human

    Okay, let’s add one more to that list of truths we hold self-evident: keep the fraggin’ ball in the damn park.

    I suppose it was inevitable that Johan Santana would eventually run into a little patch like this, but what’s been sort of disturbing is how hard he’s getting hit. The Blue Jays had four doubles and two home runs tonight, and though you’ll read and hear all sorts of quotes about command and location tomorrow, take that stuff with a grain of salt. Those are just the standard lines after a lousy game.

    Granted, Santana was obviously getting his fastball up in the first inning, but in the past he’s consistently shown he can get away with that as long as he has his other pitches (particularly that change-up) in his back pocket and can keep the hitters guessing. They’re obviously doing a pretty good job of guessing of late, and I think this may be a little case of over-confidence on Santana’s part. When you’re essentially bulletproof for as long as he was, it’s easy to think you can get away with aggressive pitching. He’s a smart guy, though, and just as long as he’s not dealing with a tired arm or something more bothersome, I’ve no doubt he’ll make the necessary adjustments and figure out what opposing hitters have figured out about him, which is really, of course, what pitching boils down to.

    Though only a     couple particularly meddlesome and odious characters have been brazen (or cruel) enough to call it to my attention, don’t think for a minute I’m not well aware of what has happened to Jacque Jones –for the second year in a row, I might add– since I came to the conclusion –for the second year in a row, I might add– that he had finally turned the corner.

    You can scroll down to the April 27th entry and see for yourself. On that date Jones was batting .393, with all sorts of unexpected peripheral production. In the seventeen games since I once again crawled out on a limb and handed Jones a saw, he has gone 11-for-55 and his average has dropped to .295.

    I swear some of these guys like nothing better than to make me look like a complete fool. And, believe me, I’m fully aware that I don’t much need their help.