Category: Twins

Damn, I love Sidney Ponson.

I’ve always been a fan of the big man, and nobody was happier than I was to see the Twins swoop in and snag one of the huge Hot Stove League bargains, but after today’s stellar start (and –yeah, yeah– the Real Deal had to come in and blow up Souffle Sid’s masterpiece) I’m guessing that Jim Leyland is going to have a tough time choosing between Santana and Ponson when it comes time to name his All Star Game starter.

I say Sid is a lock –a freaking lock, I’m telling you– to win 18 games. Minimum.

Carlos Silva’s performance against Pittsburgh today (3.1 IP, 11 hits, nine earned runs) should make Ron Gardenhire’s decision a whole lot easier. The Twins love Silva, and he’s a first-rate clubhouse character, but given the way he’s pitched this spring, and the way he pitched in what was clearly a make-or-break game for him this afternoon, there is no way the Twins can give him a spot in the starting rotation.

The question is what the hell do you do with him? That’s a tough question, particularly given the fact that the Twins picked up Silva’s option (for $4.3 million) in the off-season.

Although it goes against the organization’s general philosophy, it sure seems like Alexi Casilla, the kid the Twins nabbed from the Angels in exchange for J.C. Romero, deserves a spot on the roster when the team breaks camp at the end of the month.

As much as Terry Ryan and company might want Casilla to play every day at Rochester, the 22-year-old shortstop/second baseman is exactly the kind of player the Twins could use right now, and would seem to have a clear advantage over Luis Rodriguez, except for the fact that Rodriquez has played some third base and Nick Punto is hobbled at the moment and hasn’t had a good spring. Casilla, though, is a switch hitter and a speedster of the sort the Twins haven’t had in a while (he’s six-for-six in stolen base attempts this spring, and had fifty SBs –in sixty attempts– between Fort Myers and New Britain last year). He can spell either Jason Bartlett or Luis Castillo (and Castillo is a notoriously creaky character who’s almost certain to come up lame at some point in the season). The wild card in all this, of course, is Jeff Cirillo, who will likely split time at DH and can play anywhere in the infield in a pinch.

It looks like the Twins will do the predictable thing and send Casilla to Triple A, but I’ll also wager that he won’t be there for long.

The battle for slots in the starting rotation has been interesting all along, but with the struggles of Carlos Silva and the strong performances from Boof Bonser, Matt Garza, and Glen Perkins (at least until he scuffled a bit in his last outing), it looks like more of a horse race all the time. Ramon Ortiz has nailed down a spot following Santana, but the other three positions are still apparently up for grabs. I’m supposing the Twins will go ahead and give Sidney Ponson a chance to pitch himself out of the rotation, and Silva, despite his awful spring, will probably get a shot as well, but I don’t see how you could decide between Bonser and Garza for the fifth spot. Hell, a decent argument could be made that either of them should be the third starter.

What say you?

It has been called to my attention that another baseball season is almost upon us and it has been more than five months since I updated this site.

Shame on me.

Shame, shame, shame on me.

Here I am, though, and here I will be –I swear on the Baseball Encyclopedia— on a regular basis throughout the season. I’m emboldened to make that claim because I now have Britt Robson to kick my ass when it needs kicking (which is, and will be, often), and also to bring a more level-headed approach to the proceedings when I get inordinately despondent or hysterical.

I’m just now putting the finishing touches on some baseball stuff for our April issue (which will be in the racks on March 26th) but I’ve set the immodest goal of updating Warning Track Power every game day during the season.

In the meantime I’ll be scrolling through spring training box scores, digging through a stack of annuals and season previews, and also browsing around for more blogs to add to the sidebar. If you have any suggestions, send them along.

For now I’ll leave you with this: Sidney Ponson has long been one of my least favorite Major League players, and if his fat ass is in the starting rotation come April 2nd, I’m going to be in a very dark mood right out of the blocks.

Holy Moses, this Liriano kid looks like he might be for real.

I’m going to be out of commission for a stretch, and I intend to spend some time during this hiatus trying to uncover another team in recent (or ancient memory) that had two such dominant lefties in its rotation. Ordinarily a handful of teams would come to mind, but I’m a bit brain-fogged at the moment and am drawing blanks.

Help me out if you feel so inclined, and spare me the arduous task of digging through my shelves full of baseball reference books.

Also, before I go, here’s a plug for a virtuous event coming up at the Metrodome:

On Monday, July 31, as the Twins take on the Texas Rangers at the Dome, YouthCARE (Youth for Cultural Appreciation & Racial Equality) will be hosting a bit of a fundraising bash to honor and celebrate the kids that make YouthCARE’s programs exceptional.

This event will take place at the Metrodome on Monday, with a pre-game celebration beginning at 4:30 p.m., and a 7:10 scheduled game time. Highlights of the evening include: appearances by Tony Oliva, Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, and St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman; reserved lower level seats; a catered dinner; a silent auction, and more. Tickets are available for $40. All contributions up to $10,000 will be matched by the Thornburg Charitable Foundation.

YouthCARE is a Twin Cities based nonprofit organization with a successful thirty-two year history of directing leadership development, multi-cultural, and educational programs and services for urban youth, 7-18 years old. YouthCare programs are designed to help youth develop the skills necessary to succeed in a multicultural community; encourage understanding, self-respect, and appreciation and respect for others; help youth make a successful transition from adolescence to adulthood; and provide opportunities for disadvantaged youth and youth of color to gain leadership skills.

For more information, to purchase tickets, or to learn more about YouthCARE’s programs, go to www.YouthCAREmn.org.

For the last several weeks I’d been staring at decidedly long odds and almost liking what I saw. The math didn’t look very good, but it was starting to look like there was at least a possibility that it actually might eventually add up.

The Twins had played an unreal stretch of baseball. The pitching had come around (for the most part), the team was scoring runs, and there didn’t seem to be much chance of any extended losing streaks with Johan Santana and Francisco Liriano anchoring the rotation.

Then outfielders starting dropping like Dome doubles, and all of a sudden guys like Rondell White, who supposedly has a bum shoulder and was hitting .235 in a rehab assignment in Rochester, and Jason Tyner and Josh Rabe, two other Rochester outfielders with little or no Major League experience, were being forced into duty.

The team has continued to win, but at this point the margin for error is mighty slim. Last week Terry Ryan was talking about bolstering the pitching staff for a second-half push, but now what will happen? What are the Twins going to be looking for on the trade market, and what do they have to offer? Anybody have any creative ideas?

One thing is for certain: Minnesota has to pretty much kick the shit out of its division rivals the rest of the way to have any chance at a wildcard spot. At this point splits aren’t going to gain them any ground, and there’s already that embarrassing 12-21 record against Central teams to consider. Throw out those numbers and the Twins have gone 39-19 against everybody else.

It also would help, of course, if the team could bottle a little of its home magic (where they’re 34-11) for the road (17-29).

There have been so many amazing and gratifying things about the performance of the Twins over the last month. Most of them have been plenty well documented, but it’s still pretty mindblowing (and mindboggling) all the same.

The truth, of course, is that the Twins really should have five All Stars –Francisco Liriano, Justin Morneau, and Joe Nathan should all be joining Joe Mauer and Johan Santana in Pittsburgh. Nathan is the only guy whose snub isn’t a complete injustice.

And great as Mauer has been, and as wondrous as he is to watch, the offensive MVP of the team at this point has to be Morneau. It’s hard to argue with twenty-two homeruns and seventy-one runs batted in. I’m too lazy to dig around for the stats myself, but I’d love to see the number of his homeruns and RBI that have given the Twins the lead or come with two outs.

Mauer, frankly, is something of a mystery to me. Maybe it’s just a fluke, or maybe he needs to be moved to somewhere else in the batting order, but I can’t for the life of me understand how a guy with a .391 batting average, .458 on base percentage, and .546 slugging percentage –hitting in the three hole every night– is fourth on the team in RBI and tied for fourth (with Morneau) in runs scored.

Johan Santana had a 6.35 earned run average after the season opener, and then proceeded to lower his ERA in nine straight starts. From May 17-28 he suffered a little hiccup –during that span he went from an ERA of 3.23 to 3.47– but since then he has lowered it again in six consecutive starts.

When you consider that Santana’s ERA stood at 5.71 on April 15, and is now at an American League-leading 2.59, it’s pretty astonishing. The guy has shaved more than three runs off his earned run average in two-and-a-half months.

This is pretty telling, from Jayson Stark at ESPN:

Normally, it’s not quite we-interrupt-this-program news when a DH hits a home run. But when Twins DH Jason Kubel homered June 13, that was a major development.

Why? Because it was the first home run all year by any Twins starting DH. Michael Cuddyer homered, while pinch-hitting for the DH, on April 19. But it took a mind-boggling 63 games for a starting DH to make a trot. Which caused loyal reader Kris Breuing to wonder if that set some kind of record for “DH wimpiness.”

Turns out: Did it ever.

According to Elias, that’s the most consecutive homerless games by any team’s starting DHs since the invention of DH-ness in 1973. The old record was held by…the Twins (who needed 47 games in 1990). Elsewhere in the division, White Sox starting DHs (i.e. Jim Thome) hit 21 homers before Twins DHs hit any.

Jim Souhan pretty much nailed it.

And you know all of this, but it bears repeating nonetheless:

The Twins have now won fourteen out of fifteen, and six straight. Nine straight wins at home. Six straight series wins. 12-2 in interleague play.

Francisco Liriano is 8-1, with four straight wins.

Joe Mauer’s five hits last night –and nine in the last two games– raised his Major League best batting average to .389 and gave him one hundred hits in sixty-eight games.

Meanwhile, the five teams in the mighty AL Central have won seventeen straight games, and all three clubs at the top of the division are 10-1 in their last eleven.

It would be discouraging if it wasn’t so damn amazing and so much fun to watch.

Also, how do you explain the Tigers, who limped in at 71-91 in 2005? They’re 53-25 so far in 2006, and have won fifteen of their last seventeen. Kenny Rogers, who gave the Twins the same sort of boost in 2003, is 10-3 with a 3.44 ERA. The guy has now won at least ten games in a season fourteen times in his career.

All five of Detroit’s starting pitchers have ERAs under four, and the team has six guys on a pace to hit at least twenty homeruns.

Like I said, and like people all over the place are saying, it’s absolutely amazing.

The Hidden Ball trick (from the fabulous Retrosheet), via The Hardball Times.

Check out Frank Crosetti’s impressive run from 1936 to 1940.

The Twins, by the way, have been victimized three times.