The Rake Magazine

Tag: Livan Hernandez

  • Livan's Last Start For Awhile? And The Rockets Get Artest

    Those of you who claim to have known the Twins would be playing for first place on the next-to-last night in July, please stop lying.

    Other commitments prevented me from going down to the Dome for Slowey’s shutout on Monday and the marvelous manufacture of five runs in the fifth en route to a 6-5 win on Tuesday. But tonight was the Twins’ opportunity to move ahead of the Pale Hose, and for veteran hurler Livan Hernandez to quiet the horde hollaring for him to be replaced in the rotation by Francisco Liriano. I’ve got some sentiment on behalf of Hernandez. First of all, through the first six weeks of the season, he went 6-1 with a 3.90 ERA, enabling pitching coach Rick Anderson to sort through his youngsters with a little more patience knowing that he had a veteran stopper on the mound to prevent things from going too far off track. That by itself made Hernandez a better investment than Sidney Ponson and Russ Ortiz combined the previous season. Second, although Hernandez has been increasingly hit harder, he’s been eating a lot of innings–he’s got 143 and 2/3, with Nick Blackburn’s 127 next-most and the rest of the starters not yet at 100. That means if the Twins stay in the pennant race and need to tax their young arms, they may be able to do so (with the possible exception of Blackburn) without worrying about blowing them out. Glen Perkins has never pitched more than 132 innings in a season at any level and Blackburn’s career high is 160. Baker has gone 190 and between Rochester and Minnesota last year, Slowey reached 200. With 55 games left to play for the five-man rotation and hopes that they’d average at least six innings per start, that’s an extra 66 innings apiece (if they each start 11 times). Baker and Slowey can handle it, Perkins, maybe. But without Livan’s 144 (minus 1/3), a bunch of pitchers in their mid-20s get pushed, and the odds of arm injuries rise.

    Hernandez gets by on guile, not a bad role model for a bunch of hurlers without mediocre stuff (with the exception of Perkins). I know I enjoyed watching him befuddle the young Diamondbacks when I went to the Dome late last month. Plus, on a more personal level, as a blogger on the back side of middle age, I’ve got some empathy for an aging guy trying to wheedle his way along in a young man’s game. And a part of me resents picking up my latest Sports Illustrated and reading:

    Whether because of an egregious error in evaluating Livan Hernandez or decisions of a financial nature, the Twins have continued to start Hernandez (a 5.31 ERA and fewer than a strikeout every two innings, despite his 10-7 record through Sunday) even as Liriano (10 straight victories) destroys Triple A hitters in the International League. According to Baseball Prospectus’s projections, replacing Hernandez with Liriano would save the Twins 15 to 20 runs down the stretch, making them two games better in a division race that may well be decided by less than that.

    Well then, there you go: Put a bullet into Livan and ship him off to the glue factory and you might win a pennant. Because the bean counters figure 15 to 20 runs, which by their pythagoreardon berenguergringo formula comes out to two games.

    Yeah, I personally resent it, but I also get the Baseball Prospectus yearbook every spring and have come to admire their scholarship, not least because they are often accurate. I was hoping to catch them badly underestimating one of the Twins pitchers who have come through for the club this season, but their thumbnail sketches of Slowey, Baker, Perkins and Blackburn are all pretty solid.

    More to the point, Hernandez got shellacked tonight: 5 runs, 9 hits and 2 walks in 4 innings’ work. The Dome has been his saving grace (he was 8-1 at home before tonight) and he’s generally been able to battle back from a wretched inning to put together a little mow-through-the-order rhythm. But not tonight. Carlos Quentin crushed a pitch for a line drive homer to left center in the first inning, then cleared the bases with a three-run double (again to left center) in the 4th, prompting manager Ron Gardenhire to say "he was missing [with his pitches] but mostly to one guy."

    Except that seven of the other eight guys in the White Sox lineup also got hits off Livan in those 4 innings, and none of them were cheap. He pitched out of a couple of jams to hold it to just 5 runs, and his ERA–at 3.90 in May, remember–is now 5.48, and his 6-1 record has slipped to 10-8. Despite the fact that I think Liriano remains an extreme injury risk (unless they have done wonders with his mechanics down on the farm) and should be traded now, while his perceived value is still pretty high, it is hard not to endorse the notion that he should be brought up and thrown into the rotation if he’s not going to be dealt, and that Hernandez should slide into the roles of long relief and informal pitching coach.

    Most of the time after a game, I listen to what Gardy has to say and then split. But tonight, I thought it would be instructive to get Hernandez’s reaction to getting shelled at a particularly delicate moment regarding his near-future role on the squad. I waited patiently while the cluster of beat writers asked him all sorts of questions, all the while ignoring the elephant in the room. They asked him about Quentin. They noted that he seemed to get upset with some of the ump’s calls and wanted to know if that were true. They asked if the size of the crowd–over 42,000, the largest non-opening day crowd since the final day of the 2006 season–affected his performance. Hernandez was unyielding, saying he made a couple of bad pitches to Quentin, that he doesn’t get nervous, that he wasn’t frustrated, etc.

    Here was a guy who everybody knows is going to get yanked from the rotation sooner rather than later unless things change, soon and dramatically, in his favor. He just crapped out and reporters were asking if it was because of the size of the crowd! So I stepped in it. "You’ve heard all the talk about Liriano I’m sure. Did that have any effect on you mentally as you pitched tonight?" I asked. He looked daggers into my eyes, his mouth somewhere between a sneer and a smirk, said something to the effect of, "Okay, that’s enough," and turned his back on the throng. Interview over.

    Now Hernandez doesn’t know me from Adam, so I get his pique at some new guy jumping his case. The question would have been better coming from someone else (and perhaps then would have been more elegantly worded). But the question had to come from somebody. And by turning his back on us, Hernandez answered it.

    People who call Ron Artest crazy aren’t exactly lacking for anecdotal evidence. My favorite Artest moment was less than three weeks into the 2004-05 season, when he told his team that he wanted to take some time off to promote his new music record. Yeah, that sounds like a plan. Of course less than a week after that, he went up into the stands and started wailing on a guy who he (mistakenly) thought threw ice at him (it was another guy, of course), precipitating the largest, ugliest, fans-players brawl in NBA history. The domestic abuse and animal neglect charges, and the destroying of a television camera, etc, etc, are also on the books. But I give him a pass for getting into a confrontation with Pat Riley, one of the few times when I understood exactly what he was thinking.

    When he wants to be and the planets are alligned, Artest is also an incredible basketball player, especially on defense, where his stuck-on-overrevved motor can change the dynamic of a game. He epitomizes the phrase, "high risk, high reward." And now that the Houston Rockets have acquired him, I can’t imagine a better place for him. Houston is the armpit of America–hot, humid, oily, and unattractive, a huge city that alternately feel like a ceaseless warehouse district and a suburb on steroids. It’s a place without much of an identity–compare it to Dallas, Austin, San Antonio–but craving a winner. Having come from the political cowtown of Sa
    cramento, Artest will enjoy the upgrade in visibility and scale. More than that, he’ll love the chance to play for a winner (and the Rockets will win if Artest doesn’t flip out), and for coach Rick Adelman. According to a story today by the Houston Chronicle‘s fine beat writer, Jonathan Feigen, Artest florished in the 40 games he played under Adelman after being traded from Indiana to Sacramento, where Adelman coached before Houston. Artest was named to the All NBA first defensive team, and offered to donate his salary to the Kings if they kept Adelman (they didn’t). The fact that Ron Artest is happy with his coach is a great first building block, if such a thing is possible in the ever-changing world Artest inhabits. One of the reasons the Kings were willing to let him go for an apparent song–Feigen is reporting the compensation is Bobby Jackson, promising rookie forward Donte Green, next year’s top draft pick and another player yet to be named–is because he had begun berating himself for not opting out of his $7.4 million contract in Sacramento. Kings management wisely gauged that as rumblings from potentially damaging volcano, and peddled him forthwith.

    People have already started to wonder if Artest and shutdown forward Shane Battier are redundant talents. But if you like defense, that is akin to somebody wondering if an art collector’s Monet is now redundant because the collector just purchased a Renoir. No, while Battier and Artest are similar, and have overlapping strengths, the defense they can play together will only seem redundant to the opponents they are smothering.

    Of greater concern is how well Artest will mix with center Yao Ming. The men are polar opposites in terms of temperament. Yao is deferential, overrated on defense, and slow. Artest is egotistical and ball-hungry, overrated on offense and very quick. If they are both Rockets, I think they will move in different orbits. As a longtime Yao hater, I see all the ways Yao’s game could get under Artest’s skin, even as Yao is being accorded his usual global veneration, upping the resentment ante. And we won’t even go into all the ways Artest could be the problem.

    I am falling prey to the trite temptation to make trades for other ballclubs. I believe it is a trade that would make both participants at least co-favorites to win their respective conferences. It won’t happen for a boatload of reasons I won’t go into now (like the commercial power of Yao’s nationality), but it would be of enormous benefit to both teams: Send Yao, the expiring contract of Steve Francis, and a sign-and-trade deal with Dikembe Mutombo to make the sides match, all to Philadelphia in exchange for center Samuel Dalembert and a sign-and-trade contract for Andre Iguodala.

    Philly would have Yao to pair with Elton Brand on the front line, with Mutombo as a backup and Andre Miller still running the point, with emerging scorers like Thaddeus Young in the mix. That is a team that could make some serious noise in the East. Meanwhile, Houston would have a front line of Dalembert, Artest and Battier, with Luis Scola and Carl Landry if you needed to get bigger at the 4, and a backcourt of Iguodala and T-Mac swinging with Rafer Alston at the point. And that is a team that would sit beside the Hornets and the Lakers as monster conference contenders.

    Even if they stand pat, Houston is suddenly very much in the championship conversation. No team in basketball has quality muckers the likes of Artest, Battier, Scola, Landry and Chuck Hayes–that’s sweat equity by the gallon, and doesn’t even include your two superstars. And looking at San Antonio and Dallas right now, they’ll own Texas.

  • I Can't Believe I Watched the Whole Thing: That's Why They Play Nine, You Communists, Part Two

    AP Photo/Orlin Wagner

    As I sat staring vacantly at the TV in the ninth inning of last night’s Kansas City-Minnesota game, I had another of my brief, increasingly pathetic revelations. My God, I said to my dog, This really is my life.

    Which is something I find myself saying to my dog with alarming frequency of late.

    I’d been sitting there for almost three hours. The sound on the television was muted and I was listening to some mournful Armenian blowing narcotic tendrils of fog through an instrument called a duduk. I’d eaten entirely too much candy, almost all of it the sort of novelty garbage that is created expressly for abject convenience store consumers like myself –DOTS Elements, for instance (Fire/Cinnamon, Water/Green Tea, Earth/Pomegranate, Air/Wintergreen). Or Twizzlers Rainbow Twists. Or Life Savers Fruit Splosions Gummies ("Made with real fruit juice"). Good stuff, all of it, but probably best savored in moderation.

    There was really no good reason for me to still be sitting on the couch as the game went into the ninth inning. The Royals had an 8-3 lead and seemed well on their way to ending a nine-game losing streak. It had been a pretty miserable game all around, and somebody who had anything whatsoever else to do with their evening would have turned off the television (or at the very least turned the channel) after Delmon Young made two errors and the Royals scored three runs in the bottom of the fourth. Livan Hernandez was getting rocked, and would leave after the sixth, having surrendered thirteen hits and eight runs (six of them earned).

    I can’t even pretend that I was still watching with anything approaching hope or expectation. No, the sad truth is that I was simply (or not so simply) unable to move. I think it’s safe to say that I was in a sugar-induced stupor, and I was aware that I could no longer feel my right arm and that I was chanting –as I so often chant when I am watching a baseball game in a sort of empirical blackout– "Hey batta, batta, batta. Hey, batta, batta."

    On some level, then, I was also apparently aware that the Twins were batting in the ninth inning, and so I watched with zero enthusiasm or even real interest as Michael Cuddyer went down swinging for the first out against KC reliever Ramon Ramirez. I watched as Jason Kubel singled and the beleaguered Delmon Young whiffed for the second out.

    What in the world would I do with the rest of my night? I wondered.

    Kubel made his way to second on a wild pitch, and Mike Lamb singled, scoring Kubel. It was still 8-4, Royals, but at least, I thought, the Twins were going to go down swinging. Bully for them.

    Brendon Harris singled, moving Lamb to second, and then Carlos Gomez chopped one through the infeld, scoring Lamb. 8-5, Royals. Nice little two-out rally, I thought.

    Joel Peralta was brought in to relieve Ramirez. Ron Gardenhire countered by sending up Craig Monroe to pinch hit for Alexi Casilla. Monroe took three balls and then managed to work the count full. And then he somehow managed to turn on a pitch and hit it over the left field fence to tie the game.

    And then Denys Reyes and Jesse Crain somehow managed to get through the bottom of the ninth without allowing a run.

    And then Justin Morneau somehow managed to hit Peralta’s first pitch of the tenth for another homer, and the Twins were somehow, suddenly, up 9-8.

    And then Joe Nathan, fresh off his first blown save of the season, somehow managed to retire the Royals in order in the bottom of the inning and the Twins had another win.

    And then I’ll be damned if I didn’t eat some more candy and immediately wonder, What in the world will I do with the rest of my night?

    And then it occurred to me (baseball and sleeplessness having once again conspired to kindle my spiritual lunacy), Perhaps I might finally get around to baptizing my dog.

  • Guts and Small Ball

    AP Photo by Jim Mone

    Francisco Liriano was almost as disappointing as Nelson Liriano. There has been a disquieting wave of injuries—to Michael Cuddyer, Kevin Slowey, Adam Everett, Scott Baker, Nick Punto, and, most depressingly, to Pat Neshek.

    The offense has been erratic; the power and team on base percentage alarming. Up and down the lineup the new additions—and there are scads of new additions—have been underperforming at the plate. The bullpen has been as shaky as it’s been in years, and seems ill equipped to absorb the Neshek blow.

    On paper, certainly, the Twins appear to be a team with all sorts of concerns, and so far almost any close scrutiny of the stats would seem to bear that out.

    And yet—at this point, at least—every team should have such concerns.

    The question, of course, is how the hell are the Twins doing it? How the hell do they even hang with a team like the Red Sox, let alone take three-of-four from the most powerful, most multi-dimensionally talented team in the universe? How has a team that has allowed more runs than it has scored, and that is thirteenth out of fourteen AL teams in both homeruns and OBP, managed to grind its way to twenty wins and first place in the Central?

    That’s a damn good question, and I’m not sure I have an answer for you. It might well be a fluke. The Twins have handled the Central so far (at a 13-8 clip), and they’ve been pretty dominant at home (14-7). Where things get a bit worrisome is in the team’s numbers with runners in scoring position (.311 BA, .371 OBP, and .452 SLG) and runners in scoring position with two outs (.315, .376, and .420). In a freakish season (or in the case of a freakishly good hitter), an individual might sustain those sorts of numbers over 162 games, but you pretty much expect that they’ll eventually level out for the team and be more reflective of their overall performance, which so far hasn’t been terrific, to say the least. A small ball team in today’s American League pretty much has to have a dominant pitching staff. They certainly can’t expect to lead the league in homers allowed and live to drink champagne in the post season.

    The Minnesota pitching staff, from the starters to the bullpen, has been gutsy. It’s been crafty. It’s battled and pitched in and out of jams and, on the nights the Twins have won, generally been just good enough. There hasn’t, though, been the domination we came to expect from Johan Santana every five days, and, in recent years, from the back end of the pen. Joe Nathan has been (mostly) his usual stout self, but with Neshek sidelined there’s a level of pressure—and right now it sort of still feels like desperation—that we’re unaccustomed to feeling in the late innings. Is anyone yet feeling entirely comfortable with any of our seventh- and eighth-inning options? If we’re going to have to start extending guys like Rincon, Reyes, and Crain (all of whom have battled arm problems) what kind of trouble are we potentially looking at or asking for?

    I fully realize that at this point that’s just typical neurosis, but given what’s transpired thus far it also sort of feels like unpardonable gratitude, so like everybody else I’ll just wait and see and hope.

    The division has obviously been a bit of a mystery in the early going, and everybody seems to be battling some problem or another. I’ve said previously that I think the Detroit Tigers are facing a constellation of problems that are going to bedevil them the rest of the way, and I still believe that. They obviously have the potential to put up outrageous offensive numbers, but they’ve been up and down, and their starting pitching has been putting them in a hole night after night; if I’m not mistaken, twelve of their sixteen wins have been come-from-behind affairs, and that shit will wear on even the best offense.

    The White Sox? Can’t stand them, and I expect them to be as erratic as their manager all season (if Ozzie doesn’t get fired).

    The team that’s been lurking in the weeds for the first six weeks—and, actually, they’ve just started lumbering ashore and shaking off the milfoil—is the Cleveland Indians. As exciting and unexpected as the Twins’ performance has been, am I alone in feeling more than a little bit queasy about the fact that, even after taking three-of-four from Boston, our local nine still finds itself with just a game-and-a-half cushion?

    Finally, for all of us Jason Kubel fans—and there must be at least a couple dozen of us out here—is it time to shut up and accept that our pet project is entering Rich Becker territory? I suspect we may have no choice if Craig Monroe continues to energize the team with his offense and take away Kubel’s at bats. And after watching Monroe the last week I’m prepared to admit that I was probably wrong about him, provided, of course, that he continues to prove me wrong. Which, since I really am a fan, would make me nothing but happy.