What the hell? This is what we’ve been waiting twenty months for?
Here’s the lead from CNN: "Illegal steroids have been in widespread use in Major League Baseball
for more than a decade and used by some of the game’s top stars, former
Sen. George Mitchell said in releasing a report Thursday."
Excuse me while I pick my jaw up off the floor.
Here’s what I’d like to know: Since when are the New York Yankees in any position to play hardball with the Twins? Given the pitching situation in New York, and given the fact that this is a team that is now in the (for them) desperate position of playing second-fiddle to the Red Sox, would you not think that the Twins should have all the leverage in a deal for Johan Santana?
You have to imagine that the new Yankee regime would be willing to pull out all the stops to get Santana, and if they’re not, they for damn sure should be, or fuck ’em.
There are all sorts of reasons to be wary about any deal with either New York or Boston. Because of the high profiles of the two east coast Goliaths, their prospects tend to be over-hyped in comparison to those of almost any other team. What do you really know about Phil Hughes or Jacoby Ellsbury? Or how about Melky Cabrera?
My guess is probably not enough. Ellsbury was dynamite in the postseason, and we heard the Hughes hype all last season. But what sort of players are they? Relatively young players, which means relatively unproven players. Based on his minor league numbers, Hughes looks like he could become a dominant pitcher. He’s a big kid, long and lean. I like him, but as with any 21-year-old pitcher I’d be concerned about injuries, at least until I get more of a chance to watch him pitch.
I’ll admit that Ellsbury is the guy I’d most like to see included in a deal with the Red Sox, but that’s based almost entirely on his performance in the playoffs. The guy is a burner, seems to know how to get on base, and he looks like a more-than-solid outfielder. Despite the power he flashed in the postseason, however, there isn’t much in his minor league record to indicate he’s going to be a reliable home run threat. He’s also 24 years old.
I don’t want Melky Cabrera, I know that much. And I don’t want Coco Crisp.
The main virtues of the other guys whose names have been floating around is that they are –at least for the time being– cheap. And, of course, they have potential. It would be nice, however, if the Twins could get at least one guy included in a Santana package who is something of a proven commodity.
That may not happen. Nothing may happen. And I’d certainly rather see nothing happen than watch the Twins knuckle under to Hank Steinbrenner’s demands. I hope that won’t happen, and I don’t think that will happen. I’m pretty sure Bill Smith knows he’s in the driver’s seat.
The dream scenario, I think, would be for the Mets to swoop in and steal some thunder from both the Yankees and the Sox, but for that to happen I’m pretty sure they’re going to have to be willing to cough up Jose Reyes.
That’s a deal I’d love to see happen.
As far as the Tampa Bay trade, I’ll just say I like it just fine, even if the Twins are now back out there trying to convince somebody to give them a pitcher with Garza’s potential. In the meantime, I’ll take Delmon Young and his purported baggage, and I’ll wager that before Torii’s three years into his contract with the Angels Bill Smith is going to look like a genius. It’s not easy for me to forget all those years I watched Torii flailing at fastballs in the dirt and up in his eyes, and, defensive magnificence aside, he was a long time delivering on his promise. The money the Angels threw at him is insane.
All the same, I’ll miss Hunter. He was a good guy, always accessible and good for a quote. I don’t know that I buy the notion that he was some sort of clubhouse leader, but I do know that with both Hunter and Santana gone, Minnesota’s clubhouse will have a huge charisma void.
And, finally, speaking of a charisma void: what the hell is up with Carlos Silva? I haven’t even heard much in the way of rumors surrounding The Jackal.
How’d you like to see this coming at you?
If last night was any indication, either I’ve severely overestimated C.C. Sabathia or Eric Wedge way overused him during the season. Over 240 innings in a year is a lot these days. (Santana pitched 219 this year.)
Last night (and in game one of the Boston series) he just wasn’t sharp at all. Zellar opined that it was because he was just tired…and he’s not in very good shape to start with. Over 290 pounds is a lot of weight to move around. About 90 pounds more than Johan has to heft with each pitch.
Sabathia did go 4-1 against the Twins this year, though, while Santana was 0-5 against the Indians.
I’d still take Grady Sizemore for Mauer in a heartbeat though.
I was in the ticket sales office for the new Twins ballpark a few weeks ago. Actually, it must have been more than a few weeks ago because the Twins hadn’t yet given up and fallen off the pennant chase earth.
On their big screen TV was a replay of the previous night’s game with Cleveland and Grady Sizemore was batting. I have a soft spot for Grady Sizemore for a couple of reasons. I was visiting a friend in Cleveland a few years ago and we went to Jacobs Field (a lovely park) and I happened to be there when Sizemore played his first game for the Indians. He got a couple of hits, I recall, and made a nice play in the outfield. Reason two: he’s a hell of a player.
I mentioned to the Twins receptionist that I sure wish the Twins had someone like Sizemore instead of Joe Mauer. It was all I could do to keep her from throwing me down the elevator shaft.
But, as they say in baseball, “You can look it up.” Sizemore is at least twice as productive…and he plays every day.
I say we offer both Mauer and Cuddyer to Cleveland for Sizemore. I’m sure the response we’d get from the Clevelands would be quite amusing…along the lines of “What are you smoking, and where can I get some?” But who knows, maybe they’ll be smoking something and agree to the deal.
Oh yeah, did I mention that I’d also trade Santana for C.C. Sabathia?
Is anybody still paying attention?
Some of us, of course, can’t help ourselves. Some of us actually watched that game tonight.
And some game, huh? I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a game end on a dropped pop-up to the second baseman. That there qualifies as tee-ball heroics.
Still, the Twins did come back after Nathan blew the save. Michael Cuddyer did hit a home run to tie the game. And Ian Kinsler did drop Jason Bartlett’s pop-up to give Minnesota the win.
But still, again, what the hell? Why is Ron Gardenhire still handing Juan Rincon the ball in close games? Why doesn’t Justin Morneau hit home runs anymore? What’s wrong with Joe Mauer? How could Johan Santana have lost twelve games? How is it possible that virtually every single key guy from last year –with the exception of Torii Hunter and Joe Nathan– could decline in performance? How is that catching for the Twins has become the baseball version of drumming for Spinal Tap?
And now Ron Gardenhire is purportedly musing aloud about opening next season with Nick Punto as his everyday second baseman? Great. I’m pretty sure Luis Rivas is out there somewhere and available, and he’s still only 28 years old.
I really don’t get it. The entire second half –shit, the entire season— has been a series of infuriating streaks: four wins, three losses, five wins, four losses, five losses, three wins, five wins, four losses, six losses, three wins, four losses.
Yet I just keep watching, because at this time of year it’s hard-wired in me how quickly the darkness begins to descend when that heavy black curtain is finally drawn on the season and winter begins its relentless march. It hurts. It still hurts, every year. It’s a terrible withdrawal, and a brutal disruption of routine at exactly the time of year when a comfortable routine is exactly what I need. So I’ll hold onto that routine as long as possible, and every day I’ll continue to hope that I’ll see something I haven’t seen before.
At this point I’ll even be plenty happy to see something I have seen before. A well-played game, for instance, or a Justin Morneau home run.
How was your lovely Labor Day weekend?
Mine? Horseshit, but thanks for asking.
Though it pains me to admit this, and though I should be ashamed of myself, I spent the weekend watching baseball.
Over at On the Ball, Britt Robson, David Brauer, and I discuss the disappointing season to date. Go over there and chime in if you feel so inclined.
I’ve got Little Jimmy Scott crooning from the stereo and that’s never a particularly good sign, at least so far as mood barometers go.
At this point I’m not fool enough to say that’s it, but I nonetheless can’t deny that I’m mighty tempted to say that’s it, even as I’ve been mighty tempted to say that’s it for several months now.
Yet every time I’ve been mighty tempted to say that’s it, this weird, baffling, infuriating team has done something to make me regret, at least momentarily, my lack of faith.
The truth, of course, is that this team really has done very little –at least as a team, and in any kind of a sustained way– to encourage any real investment of faith or hope.
It kills me that the Twins have now lost four times this season to that goofy slop slinger Paul Byrd. It kills me that Carlos Silva reverted to his spring training form at the worst possible time. Nights like this, in fact, with summer waning and the crickets winding down, it all sort of kills me.
That triple play, though, that did not kill me. I don’t care what the circumstances, or which team hits into or turns it, I love a triple play. And that one tonight –a picture-perfect 5-4-3, around-the-horn job– looked so easy that it really makes you wonder why you don’t see one of the damn things all the time. Yet somehow the triple play remains almost as rare as a player hitting for the cycle.
What the hell happened to the toughest division in baseball?
In trading Luis Castillo and otherwise standing pat, Terry Ryan gave every indication that the Twins were ready to throw in the towel on the 2007 season, and the Tigers and Indians have responded by rolling over and playing dead.
And now a team that was facing a nine-and-a-half game deficit on July 23 –a team that has scored fewer than four runs twelve times since the All Star break, a team that’s scored more than four just five times, a team that is 12-10 in the second half– has managed to shave five games off a lead that a month ago Detroit and Cleveland seemed perfectly willing to swap back and forth the rest of the season.
What’s gonna happen when Brian Buscher and Rondell White finally catch fire?
Seriously, how did we get here?
Jason Tyner, forced into regular duty and the leadoff spot, has a higher second-half OBP than Justin Morneau, Torii Hunter, and Joe Mauer, and a higher slugging percentage than Hunter and Mauer.
Johan Santana is 1-3 with a 3.82 ERA since the break. Santana now has nine losses. His previous high in a Major League season was seven, and in his entire professional career going back to the minors he lost eight just once. He’d never before lost nine, anywhere.
After Scott Baker’s gem this afternoon, the Twins have been involved in twelve shutouts this season, and have been on the losing end nine times.
Detroit and Cleveland have been floundering, sure, but the Twins have been able to whittle away at that lead thanks almost entirely to their pitching. The bullpen –with the painful exception of Juan Rincon– has been mostly excellent, and the starters have been pitching exactly like a bunch of guys who expect to get nothing in the way of run support.
That can’t be easy (it sure has hell hasn’t looked easy), and maybe one of these days it’ll light a fire under the offense. At the very least the events of the last ten days have made Ryan’s grease-fire-sale tactics at the trading deadline look all the more ill-advised.
If this shit keeps up I’m going to initiate a class action lawsuit against the Twins on behalf of all the whiplash victims in Twins Territory.
I go away for a week on the heels of a nice little rebound series against the Angels (the Twins had won the first two games when I hit the road for a cabin in Vermont), and the next time I had an opportunity to look they’d dropped five straight.
That was bad news.
On my way back they turned around and won the last two games of the Cleveland series.
That was good news, and when I finally got a chance to investigate further I discovered that while the Twins were going 8-8 in the first two-and-a-half weeks out of the break, Detroit was going 8-10 and losing four in a row, while Cleveland was 8-9 and losing three-of-four to Boston and two-of-three to the Twins. Which meant that as I was getting settled back in at my sweltering apartment in south Minneapolis, Minnesota was seven games back in the Central, having finally, almost miraculously, managed to pick up two games in the standings in two days.
That was more good news, no?
And now the Royals –against whom the Twins have thirteen remaining games– are coming to town for four games. That would have been good news a couple months ago, but at the moment it could go either way. The Royals are vastly improved, and have now won four straight and nine-of-sixteen since the break. They’re also 3-2 against the Twins thus far.
The rest of the way the Twins will face division opponents 35 times (besides the aforementioned thirteen against KC, they have ten games vs. Cleveland, and six against both Detroit and Chicago). They’re 16-21 against Central clubs to this point, so obviously they’re going to have to perform a whole lot better.
More bad news: the Twins have averaged just 3.38 runs a game since the break. Despite being respectable (and in many instances more than respectable) the starting pitchers are 4-7 during that same stretch –Matt Garza, for instance, has a 1.96 ERA in three starts, but has an 0-2 record to show for it.
And as of this moment –with the trade deadline clock approaching the 24-hour mark– there has been no solid indication that any sort of move is imminent.
And that also is bad news, because with the exception of Justin Morneau, Luis Castillo, and (egad!) Jason Tyner, the Twins offense has been brutal. Torii Hunter is hitting just .224 in the second half, and even Joe Mauer is struggling to the point where it might be time to start talking about a sophomore slump.
I’ve been out of commission for a week, so I haven’t yet caught up on any of the local scuttlebutt, but I can’t conceive of anything short of a blockbuster trade that would either raise my blood pressure or significantly improve the Twins’ chances the rest of the way.
And pretty tough, all things considered. On the heels of losing three straight to the first-place Tigers, Michael Cuddyer, who was 11-for-21 coming out of the break, goes on the DL, and the Twins come right back and take two straight from the West-leading Angels.
Post break: four straight wins, three straight losses, two straight wins. The pitching staff has given up more than three runs just twice in nine games.
I’m done trying to figure it out, frankly.
The Detroit series was painful, and pretty much everybody –myself included– was ready to write off the team and the season. It still doesn’t look good, of course, but you have to admire the way the Twins have responded, and, regardless of whether Terry Ryan makes any moves, I don’t think this is a team that’s going to roll over.
I’m headed out of town for a week, and likely won’t have much chance to check in from the road, but if the opportunity presents itself I’ll throw up a post.