The Rake Magazine

Category: Twins

  • A Couple Small Steps In The Right Direction

    It’s always nice when you’re scuffling to get some wins from the back end of your rotation. It would be even nicer at this point to see the Twins start putting together some big innings and throwing some crooked numbers on the board to give the pitching staff a little breather, but I’m not about to complain.

    Already people are starting to trot out the usual discouraging math that purportedly demonstrates how seemingly impossible it is for the Twins to catch the White Sox. You know what I’m talking about; you see this sort of thing every year about this time, particularly when one team is maintaining a blistering pace. It always involves daunting long-range projections –if the White Sox fall off to a .500 pace the rest of the way, for instance, the Twins would have to play at some unreal clip to catch them.

    We’ve been on both ends of this sort of speculation in recent years, and should know by now that baseball is more than anything else a game of one- and two-week stretches. Even in late June a big lead can evaporate in a hurry. How long, for instance, did it take for the White Sox to stretch their lead from three-and-a-half games to nine games? Not very long. And why was that? Because while the Twins were going 2-8 during that period, the Sox were going 8-2.

    I’m certainly not overly optimistic, but I do think Chicago is long overdue for a couple bad stretches, and if the Twins are going to capitalize they’re going to have to put together some 8-2 runs of their own. Wins from Kyle Lohse and Joe Mays are a good way to get one of those going, as are ten games against the Royals and the Devil Rays between now and the All Star break.

    I think the stretch leading up to the break is crucial. The Twins are going to have to whittle Chicago’s lead in half –at least– because the rest of July after the All Star game looks pretty brutal, at least on paper. Minnesota will close out July with series against Anaheim, Baltimore, Detroit, New York, and Boston, and the last eleven of those games are on the road. Chicago, meanwhile, will have four games with Cleveland, three with Detroit, and three with Kansas City.

    Perhaps this is nothing but a coincidence, but does anyone else find it strange that seven of Torii Hunter’s team-leading fourteen homers have come in seventeen games against National League teams, while it’s taken him 55 games against AL opponents to hit his other seven? You’d certainly think the NL teams would have the same scouting reports, but I sure as hell can’t remember seeing very many AL pitchers throw Hunter so many fastballs right down the middle of the plate. Does this say something about some difference in pitching philosophy between the two leagues? I have absolutely no idea, of course. Maybe Torii’s just hitting his stride and it’s all been a fluke matter of timing.

    It looks like the problem with the comments, by the way, has been ironed out. Apologies for the snafu.

  • Uncle Jumbo's Playground

    uncle jumbo-7.jpg

    –Illustration by James Dankert

    Last night was a train wreck all around. I drove down to my old home town, Blooming Void, to attend my 25th high school reunion. To be perfectly honest with you, I’m not quite sure what I was thinking.

    When I got home from work I tried without much success to prime myself for the experience by taking a shower, blasting REO Speedwagon’s “Riding the Storm Out,” and running an electric shaver over my face while eating Captain Crunch out of a one gallon plastic ice cream bucket.

    I have no business going to a high school reunion. The whole notion of a reunion implies that the reunited were, in fact, once united, that there was some sort of a union to begin with. I have known no unions. I was one of those bulky specters that haunt every high school hallway, I suppose. I did play baseball, but baseball at Blooming Void was right up there with the ham radio club (of which I was also a member) in terms of status or attention.

    Blooming Void is a small town, despite which I would have a hard time identifying more than a handful of people from my senior class in the high school yearbook. Being naturally awkward and anti-social, I had few friends, and none of us were big on doing things. We mostly sat in our bedrooms or drove around in our cars making inane small talk on our CB radios (Jumbo’s handle: Hair of the Dog).

    South of Lakeville I pretty much lost my resolve, and more or less made up my mind to avoid the reunion altogether. I’ve had quite enough disappointment and trauma in my life of late (thank you, Twins, thank you so very much).

    When I got to Blooming Void I drove around town aimlessly for awhile (there is, really, no other way to drive around Blooming Void). I drove past the Elks Club, site of the reunion, perhaps a dozen times, listening to the Twins game on the radio. I told myself that if the Twins managed to take a three-run lead I would go to the reunion and celebrate in a desultory fashion.

    By the sixth inning I was sitting at the bar in Glum’s, my favorite local watering hole, watching the game on the TV. The bartender was some vaguely familiar character, and he kept trying to make small talk with me. At one point he observed, “I think you were the first guy I ever heard make an armpit fart.” I guess, if nothing else, that’s a little something I can hang my hat on.

    You probably saw the game, or listened to it. There was nothing to celebrate, nothing at all. Still, I sat there at the bar until the bitter end, drinking beer and eating Slim Jim after Slim Jim. I must have spent $20 on Slim Jims.

    I ended up heaped on my mother’s living room couch at 1:30, nursing a sour headache. If you spend more than an hour in my mother’s house there is one phrase you are virtually guaranteed to hear, and that phrase is “What’s that smell?” I was awakened by those words at 6:30 this morning, squawked repeatededly from, first, the top of the stairs, then the kitchen, and, finally, inches in front of my face.

    As my eyes slowly focused I saw my mother looming there above me. From the look on her face she could have been scrutinizing a mysterious and particularly disgusting species of insect.

    “Good Lord, look at you,” she said. “Remind me: have you always been such a mess?”

  • Desperate Times Require Desperate Measures, Or Whatever That Old Line Of Nonsense Is

    Look, there’s not a bigger Tom Brunansky fan in all of Twins Territory, but this team’s in trouble and in dire need of some pop in the middle infield.

    So, as much as it pains me to say this, I think it might be time for Andy MacPhail to pull the trigger on that long-rumored Bruno for Tommy Herr trade. Herr could be just the guy to light a fire under this ballclub.

    Also, bad news, I’m afraid, for the lonely bachelors out there: Baseball knowledge will not help you pick up girls.

  • No Mas

    Okay, honest to God, that’s just about enough of this nonsense. I believe we’ve reached the point where the bump in the road has officially turned into a rut, and it’s damn hard to explain what’s happening to this team right now.

    This is one of those times where you could point your finger in just about any direction in the Minnesota clubhouse and you’d be looking at somebody deserving of a share of the blame for this stretch of sustained wretchedness. It’s especially painful to be reminded of what a miserable game and utter waste of time baseball can be.

    Under the happiest of circumstances baseball requires a ridiculous time commitment from the serious fan –a game like tonight’s, for instance: let’s say you got down to the Dome at five o’clock for the virtuous Admission Possible picnic; then you sat through nine excruciating innings in which the Twins managed just five hits and two runs against Detroit’s Jeremy Bonderman, and Kyle Lohse got the snot knocked out of him by the Tigers.

    It was an ugly game all around, a well-rounded exercise in futility, yet dispatched in a mercifully brief two hours and thirty-eight minutes. Still, that’s almost five hours carved out of your life right there. By the time you got to your car, negotiated your way out of downtown, and got home it was probably 10:30. Presumably you worked today as well, and it was a weeknight.

    If you’re a serious fan, though, you likely tuned into Baseball Tonight or checked out the internet when you got home to see how the White Sox did (they won again, of course, behind another splendid performance from Jon Garland, stretching their lead in the Central to a truly dispiriting nine games).

    So: You just buried seven or eight hours of your day in a hole in the ground; you’ll never get a single minute of any of those hours back, and, with the exception of the pleasant and inspiring prelude of the Admission Possible event, you don’t have a single fond memory to show for your evening.

    You can’t even begin to imagine how exhausting this sort of thing must be for the players, who got to the ballpark hours before you did and had to drive home through deserted streets long after you departed. You’d think, though, that it must be very exhausting.

    And you certainly hope they’re as tired of it as you are.

  • Seriously, That Should Have Never Happened Either

    A few things:

    That ugly business in the first inning has happened way too many times now to be dismissed as a mere fluke, but how the hell do you explain it? Beats the shit out of me.

    You know how many times the Twins have scored four or fewer runs now this year? I do, I think. Thirty. That’s ridiculous, and isn’t going to get them deep in the playoffs any time soon. I’m not quite sure how moving Justin Morneau down to sixth in the order is going to help the team score more runs. Seems to me that with Torii Hunter riding out one of his hot streaks you’d want to take advantage of that by letting Morneau hit either in front of or behind him.

    Also, the more I see of J.C. Romero the more I’m starting to understand why Ron Gardenhire has been turning to Terry Mulholland as his bullpen lefty in close ball games. That’s not saying much, of course.

    Finally, check out John Bonnes’ Twins Territory for a great event for a great cause. The date is Tuesday, June 21 (Twins vs. Tigers at the Dome), and the proceeds go to Admission Possible, an organization that helps low-income kids gain admittance to college. A recent update is here. And you can buy your tickets directly here. I’ll be there, and it sounds like lots of other people much more interesting than me will be there as well.

  • Seriously, That Should Never Have Happened

    It’s really that simple. One guy should not ever have the opportunity to hit three home runs off one pitcher in the same game. It’s just wrong, and stupid, particularly in a close game. I don’t care who the hitter is, or who’s on the mound. And never mind that Radke was allowed to hit and go out for one more inning.

    You would think, though, that when a guy already has five homers off your pitching staff in the series, not to mention two in the game in question, that you’d at the very least alter your approach. You might even think about radically altering your approach. I might, anyway, but of course I’m not a Major League pitcher or manager, so what the hell do I really know?

    I don’t doubt that players have hit three home runs in a game off one pitcher on many other occasions –actually, I do doubt that, but I’m sure its happened. I’m pretty sure, though, that it doesn’t happen with any frequency in close ball games, and I certainly can’t find a way to justify its occurrence under any circumstances.

    The weird thing to me is how inevitable it seemed at the time. I don’t know about you, but I knew –I’m not shitting you, I knew— Choi was going to hit that third home run against Radke yesterday. Even Radke seemed resigned to the fact; I can’t see any other explanation for why he threw the pitch he threw in that situation.

    Baseball really is a damn strange game, that’s all there is to it.

  • Uncle Jumbo's Playground

    uncle jumbo-7.jpg

    –Illustration by James Dankert

    Forgive me if you’ve heard this story before. I am a man of such unvarying moods and routine that it’s inevitable I’m going to repeat myself from time to time. I’m afraid I just don’t have an inexhaustible –however exhausting– store of life experiences that anyone in their right mind would classify as fresh material.

    Before I repeat myself, however, I want to point out that I –quite generously, I thought– offered to cover Zellar’s ass while he was off gallivanting around (and what kind of a baseball fan, I wanted to know, takes a vacation during the season, and when the Yankees are coming to town, no less?). No chance, I was told. Such an arrangement would have required Zellar to give me his precious access passwords, which he apparently thought would be an invitation for all manner of what he called “negative shenanigans.”

    If there’s one thing Twins Territory needs, I say, it’s more negative shenanigans. But who am I? Nobody, apparently. Not apparently, apparently. Nobody.

    Also, before I repeat myself, can someone with more smoldering brain cells than I have explain to me why Terry Mulholland was on the mound in the ninth inning of a tie game? Can anyone explain to me how this team can go from hitting the ball all over the place one moment to extended periods of collective and abject futility the next? Or how about this: what the hell?

    Anyway, years ago, many years ago, after I moved to the Twin Cities following my storied junior college baseball career in Kansas, I was living in Dinkytown and still harboring a dream of making the University of Minnesota team as a walk-on. I never actually did anything about this dream, of course, primarily because I could never quite manage to get myself enrolled in the damn college. There was too much paperwork, too much standing in line, too many places to drink cheap beer.

    I was also a complete moron, and my junior college transcripts read like so many completely inexplicable personal declarations: “I, C, C, D. I, D, I, C.” I piled up more incompletes in my two years in Kansas than I did doubles.

    My Dinkytown exile dragged on for years. Eventually those years added up to a decade, and then some. Everyone I might, however dishonestly, consider a friend, or even an acquaintance, eventually graduated and moved out into the real world. They got decent jobs, married, had kids.

    One afternoon I was doing my laundry –which I did every other month whether it was strictly necessary or not– in a campus laundromat when I had the terrible revelation that everyone else in the place was at least ten years my junior. There was, actually, one woman who was clearly older than me, and she was also clearly out of her mind.

    I guess I had a nervous breakdown. This was, of course, during the off-season, so I had absolutely no anchor. I ended up moving back to Blooming Void to live with my mother, which only made me crazier, drunker, and more malnourished. Every evening my mother and I would watch the Wheel of Fortune and gamble. We would ante with a buck at the beginning of the puzzle, and add a dollar with each spin of the wheel. The first person to guess the correct answer won the pot. I took hundreds of dollars from my mother that winter. She was quite possibly the most inept Wheel of Fortune player of all time, and I was merciless.

    Eventually my brother, Rich, staged an intervention, and talked me into seeing a therapist, a Dr. Grabow. Grabow was an imposter, I’m sure, but entertaining nonetheless. He would have me keep a journal of my daily activities, which I was to share with him on my visits.

    On one such visit, I recall, Grabow read to me from my own journal as I squirmed in an uncomfortable chair: “Ate a pot pie, took a nap. Ate a pot pie, took a nap. Did the crossword puzzle. Went to bed.”

    “You understand, of course, that this is not a journal?” Grabow said. “I am reminded of an old New Yorker cartoon that depicts the purported diary of a dog’s life. Certainly there are things you are leaving out.”

    There certainly were not, other than the Wheel of Fortune business, which I had no intention of sharing with the doctor.

    Another time Grabow asked me if I had any hobbies, and rejected my answer of “patty melts.” Eventually, for obvious reasons, we parted ways. I moved back to the Twin Cities when the baseball season started again, and settled back into the parking lot racket.

    Then, a few years later, completely out of the blue, I received a call from Dr. Grabow. It seems he was starting a company that would produce “non-traditional greeting cards, for dysfunctional families.”

    “This seems like something you might really be able to tap into,” Grabow said to me. Basically, he explained to me, these would be cards for people who had a difficult time finding anything in the Hallmark store that was suitable for their unique situation or occasion. These cards would say things like, “I know you’re not really my dad, but you live with my mom and I’m trying to make an effort to get along with you, so happy birthday anyway.”

    Some of the categories will give you a pretty good idea of what Grabow was up to: “You Drink Too Much.” “Lesbian Miss You.” “Troubled Marriage.” “Abusive Mother.” “Financial Hardship.” “Absentee Father.” “I Know It Doesn’t Look Good.”

    I don’t imagine I have to tell you how much I liked the sound of that last one.

    “Dr. Grabow,” I said, “You’ve come to the right man.”

    Shit, it really was a dream job –for about eight months, anyway, until I stopped getting paid and Grabow cleared out the office one night and disappeared.

    I was disappointed, of course, but disappointment comes easily to me, and, like I said, I always knew Grabow was an imposter.

  • 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