Gardy and I Can be like Two Peas in a Pod

I am a big Gardy critic. I like the guy but I disagree with many of his lineups he uses. That said, I like him more than most managers out there. Baseball managers (along with scouts) think differently than myself. I stick with numbers while they often times use gut instincts and skill sets. I firmly take an OBP guy over a speed guy at the top of the lineup any day of the week. A good example of a bad lineup is the Mets and Reyes at the top of their lineup. He never draws walks and holds an offense killing OBP. Sure he can steal, but he just doesn't get on base enough. Some might call me a "Moneyball" guy but I am more for the title of a Sabermetric guy. With that said I continue...

Gardy has done something that really irked me most of the season. His #2 hitters were out of place. He was batting #7-9 hitters there. He was putting guys in the 2 hole who just got out too much. This season, the Twins #2 hitters have had an OBP of .310. For comparison, Boston has had a .361 OBP from their second batter. This fact has had myself been begging for the Twins to quit putting poor OBP guys in the #2 hole. Most notably, Bartlett should have never batted second. When batting there he had a .301 OBP. Really quite poor. Seven of ten times at the plate Jason got out. That is an out that takes away at bats from the rest of the hitters that follow him. Mauer and Morneau would also have less runners on base every time they came to the plate.

Other notables inserted there include Castro and Rivas who have had sub .200 OBP there. Simply awful! Otherwise, a complete waste in the lineup. It is one thing to have a waste batting ninth, but a whole other mess when it is the player who gets the 2nd most plate appearances on the team.

Nick Punto is the only player that has helped bring up our team OBP up. He has had a .380 OBP when batting in the two hole, which is pretty good. That is good if he could keep it up, but with an OBP of .345 on the season and .340 last year he is bound to come back to his average numbers. Another point is that Punto doesn't play every day (like he should) and only plays against matchups that are more favorable than if he had to play every day. His numbers are likely to drop off a bit.

My wish of a worty #2 hitter was granted a few games ago. The player I had been begging for Gardy to move to 2nd in the lineup was put there. JOE MAUER! Joe Mauer is the perfect guy for the #2 spot. Sure he isn't as fast as a guy like Bartlett or Punto but he gets on base about 40% of the time! For every 10 plate appearance he commits 6 outs while our #2 hitters this season commited 7 outs. That provides more at bats for the hitters behind him as well as more baserunners.

Now if Mauer is at #2 you might wonder what happens to the #3 spot in the lineup. Well, in the game Mauer batted second, Ford was inserted at #3. This is a downgrade in terms of OBP and slugging, but I suspect that Ford's numbers will get a boost batting in front of Morneau. Therefore, the power remains there. Not only that, but our lineup becomes more effective in terms of left and right handed matchups. With a R-L-R-L lineup at 1-4, opposing teams cannot throw a left handed specialist to get out both Mauer and Morneau because Ford protects them. This provides better matchups for each of player and would improve all of their numbers across the board.

After the game he batted second, Mauer has skipped a few starts to rest. My dream lineup was effectively destroyed. Now I hope that when Mauer returns, so will the lineup with him at the #2 spot. I would not be surprised if Punto was inserted at #2 and Mauer at #3, but I would be let down a bit. Not as let down as if Castro was put there, but I would be let down. Hopefully Gardy will continue the Mauer @ #2 lineup I am hoping for. For now, all I can do is wait and beg...

Please Gardy PLEASE bat Mauer second!

Rincon Keeps on Distracting Me

Juan Rincon will appeal his suspension.

That is interesting to note. I was concerned he would not and in my eyes this would have given him a lot more reason to appear guilty. I doubt he will win his appeal, but some interesting news could come out of this since Rincon is the first player to appeal his suspension. We might get an idea of what it was that caused his positive test.

He just got the Twins out of the top of the ninth too :)

Bartlett Sent Down

Jason Bartlett was sent down to AAA. I would not have a huge problem with it if it weren't for the fact we have Juan Castro in his place. Juan Castro may turn out to be this year's Jose Offerman. Frightwig wrote a good piece on this very topic here. Check it out.

Rincon Poll

Juan Rincon
Guilty 2 (18%) Innocent 9 (81%) 11 Total votes

This poll is over. Rincon is back. Most think he is innocent. That said, I am curious as to why appeal talk has completely died out. It definately makes me more suspect to thinking he might have known what he was doing. But that is purely speculation.

At least he isn't Onterrio Smith

Rinconless Recap

Like Juan Rincon, I was absent for a time but am now back. Thinking about the Rincon suspension, I got to thinking if it actually cost the Twins any games. Sure it wore on the other guys' arms and could possibly cost us later indirectly, but to find out if Rincon's absence cost us any wins I thought a recap of the games he missed would give a good idea of how much the suspension hurt the Twins in the W-L column.

Of the nine games he missed, here are the games where Rincon could not have made a difference.

1. Game 1: Cleveland 4, Minnesota 2 With only runs scored by the Indians coming with 2 in both the first and second innings, the Rincon factor was zero.
2. Game 3: Cleveland 0, Minnesota 9 Radke went a complete game. They could have had me in the pen and won this one.
3. Game 4: Minnesota 7, Tampa 1 Santana did his best Radke impersonation, going for a complete game.
4. Game 5: Minnesota 8, Tampa 1 Lohse only went for five innings forcing us to use Baker, Crain, Romero, and Nathan. Each did a modest amount of pitching at best.
5. Game 6: Minnesota 9, Tampa 6 Mays threw a good game until the seventh inning when he gave up five runs. Mulholland came in for some work, followed by the right-handed duo of Crain and Nathan who worked for a second straight day.
6. Game 7: Minnesota 0, Baltimore 3 We couldn't score a run and the only person out of the bullpen was Matt Guerrier, who didnt give up only a hit in his inning of work.
7. Game 8: Minnesota 6, Baltimore 4 This one went into extra innings. I remember thinking that this might be the time for the Rincon void to be felt. I was wrong. Romero, Crain, and Nathan gave us enough to win in the 10th inning. Crain threw 21 pitches, the most of the three.

That makes seven games where we got away without having Rincon. That leaves two games to analyze.

1. Game 2: Cleveland 5, Minnesota 4In the ninth inning, switch-hitting catcher Jason Bard stepped up to the plate and hit a game winning homer off of soutpaw JC Romero. Rincon threw only 17 pitches that inning and Bard was only the second hitter he faced. What is interesting is that Bard has hit better against lefties in his career. The same goes for the next two hitters. Belliard and Crisp are better hitters against lefties. It is possible that Romero could have been pulled after facing one batter. While this is an interesting thought, there are three things that seem to outweigh the possibility that Romero would have been pulled before that homer was given up. First, Romero is effective against righties for a left. Second, Crain could have been brought in if we wanted a righty to pitch. Thirdly, Bard, Belliard, and Crisp are anything but threats to go yard. This is especially true for Bard. While the Rincon void might have hurt us, I tend to think that it did not.
2. Game 9: Minnesota 4, Baltimore 7 Johan Santana vs. Sidney Ponson looked like a gimme but somehow we lost. We were tied in the bottom of the eighth inning until we managed to give up three runs. Guerrier gave up two and Romero gave up one. You may look at that and see that the wear on the bullpen finally came to a head but that is not necessarily true. Only one run was earned. A pair of errors by Terry Tiffee gave the Orioles a couple of runs. With that said, one run was earned and it only took one run to beat us that game. Matt Guerrier wouldn't usually come into a game that was tied in the eighth inning normally. That would be Rincon time. He would have probably been used a couple of innings. Crain had been worked a lot, so Guerrier had to come into a tight game. Not having Rincon may have cost us a win in this one. It at least would have given us a better chance for us to score in extra innings.

So there you have it. Juan Rincon's suspension may have cost the Twins two games at most. Perhaps we would have lost neither. From my amatuer handicapping skills I estimate that there is about a 10% chance it cost us the win in game two and about a 60% that it cost us the win in game nine. Adding that up I find that the suspension cost us .7 games. Of course, we cannot get 7/10ths of a loss so rounding up the Twins lost one game due to the suspension of Juan Rincon. That isn't too bad. The bullpen held together quite well and proved why they are baseball's best. Now hopefully we don't miss the playoffs by one game.

The Future

Ladies and gentleman, we have seen the future of hitting and his name is Joe. Joe Mauer to be precise. He is the other piece of the two headed monster that will be destroying AL pitching for the next decade or so. The other half of course, is Justin Morneau. Mark my words, Justin Morneau will very soon be a top 20 hitter in the league. But Mauer, Mauer will be a superstar.

Superstar!? Superstar!? Yes, I said superstar. Even if he were to move to DH and never catch again, taking away part of his amazing defensive game, he will still be incredible. He basically missed all of last year, but those in the know consider him an established major leaguer. People don't worry about him playing poorly. The kid is too talented. Frankly, he is the best young talent to swing a bat in a very long time.

If you are not convinced, here is an interesting Stat from BP2005:

Joe Mauer is only the 18th player in the history of major league baseball to:

• Come to the plate 100 times in a season
• Bat .300 or better
• Have and isolated power of .200
• Be 21 or younger at the end of the season

This basically shows players who showed both talents in hitting for both average AND power at an extremely young age. Of the 17 players before Mauer to do this, 14 are in the Hall of Fame or headed there. I'm not talking about some pretty good players, but the best players to ever play the game. This is the list: Hank Aaron, Orlando Cepeda, Joe DiMaggio, Jimmie Foxx, Al Kaline, Mickey Mantle, Eddie Matthews, Willie McCovey, Mel Ott, Babe Ruth are all in Cooperstown. Ken Griffey Jr, Alex Rodriguez, and Albert Pujols are good bets to get in some day. Considering that Joe is a Catcher elevates his value even higher. When he is done, we could consider him the best catcher to play the game.

The 3 worst players of the 17 are Cesar Cedeno, Gregg Jefferies, and Hal Trosky. As BP puts it, "When Gregg Jeffries is the absolute worst player on your comp list, you're doing well."

I know its kind of early to start thinking about this so early in his young career but it isn't like this isn't expected from the #1 pick in the draft and the #1 prospect in baseball for the last couple of years.

Boy am I glad we took Joe and not Mark Prior.

How Sweep It Is -- Tampa Series Musings

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9		R	H	E
MIN (19-11)	0	0	2	0	0	4	2	0	1		9	11	0		Final
TAM (11-21)	0	0	0	0	1	0	5	0	0		6	9	0
W: J. Mays (2-1) L: D. Waechter (1-2) S: J. Nathan (9)

Sunday night just keeps on rolling. So do the Twins. The Twins completed the sweep of the lowly Tampa Bay Devil Rays today, a franchise with a lot of young talent who could be great in the future.... just not great yet. With guys like Upton and Kazmir I cannot help but think that they will be a pretty strong team in the future.

It just isn't very good right now.

The Twins are very good right now. Morneau was 4-4 today with a walk, triple, double, and single. Mauer had a homer, so together they hit for the cycle. Mauer's homer was pretty sweet because it silenced a heckler behind home plate. As Joe crossed home plate, the Tampa heckler bowed to Mauer in respect. The real story of the series was Justin Morneau, who has become our best offensive player.

In Morneau's last 5 games played he has 4 homers while going 9 for 18 at the plate. It is amazing to think that he is only 23 years old. He probably wont hit his prime for another five years.

The White Sux meanwhile, are winners of their last eight games so we have not gained ground during our recent four game winning streak. But there are good signs that Chicago's pitching is slowing down. Garland came down to Earth this week but was saved by their offense finally picking it up. Hernandez and Contreras will wilt in the summer heat and the Twins will take first place and not look back. To be honest, we should be in first by the end of May.

One last thing I need to make clear. Ron Gardenhire makes many many moves that irritate me, but I let it go. Hell, I am pretty happy when I see LeCroy come up to the plate against a lefty with the bases loaded. There is this one move that will have me becoming a rabid anti-Gardy Twins fan: Benching Morneau. Seriously it needs to stop. Hopefully he learned his lesson after he benched him (after two games with HRs before that) only to have Morneau come off the bench and hit yet another bleacher shot. There is no reason to put your best hitter next to Mike Redmond at the end of the bench unless he is injured. No excuse for it Gardy. I see this crap again and I may start an Al Newman for Manager campaign.

As a reminder for myself: I will probably write something on Liriano in the coming days, so look for that.

Rincon Claims Innocence

"I'm not a guy who takes supplements," he said. "I used to take fat burners. I'm not a guy who, every week, is looking to see what's going and what's new. I don't even take shakes.

Here is the article. If it asks for a password, use bugmenot

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

Well, I thought I would do a little post on stats. Basically this is the Twins in the AL leaderboards. This should condense looking for stats on your own. I will include some of the pointless categories (Batting Avg, Runs, RBI) and some of the meaningful ones (RC/27, OPS, K/BB). This is something I will do every so often and may change the format to different stats and rotate them. I am not sure yet. Here is the player, rank, and statistic:

BATTING

The Good:

• RC27: Jacque Jones, 5, 8.88
• SECA: Torii Hunter, 6, .429
• BB/K: Joe Mauer, 8, 1.15
• RBI: Torii Hunter, 19, 17
• SB: Torii Hunter, 2, 11
• Avg: Jacque Jones, 8, .347
• OBP: Jacque Jones, 3, .453 Joe Mauer, 8, .422
  
• SLG: Jacque Jones, 8, .573
• OPS: Jacque Jones, 5, 1.1018

The Bad:

• GDP: Jones, Cuddyer, 5, 4
• P/PA: Shannon Stewart, 94, 3.25
• BB/K: Lew Ford, 85, 0.27
• RC27: Mike Cuddyer, 89, 2.64
• OPS: Mike Cuddyer, 82, .641

PITCHING

The Good

• SV: Nathan, 2 ,8
• HLD: Rincon, 2, 6 Romero, 3, 5
• Win: Santana, 2, 4
• K: Santana, 1, 52
• QS: Santana, 3 , 4
• K/BB: Radke, 1, 23.00 Silva, 3, 11.00 Santana 4, 10.40
  
• G/F: Silva, 5, 2.19
• DIPS: Santana, 2, 2.47
• K/9: Santana, 1, 11.41

The Bad

• K/9: Silva, 51, 3.41
• H: Radke, 4, 46
• L: Radke, 8, 3

Thanks to Beaneball for the idea

Twins WIN! Twins WIN!

May 4, 2005

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9		R	H	E
Cleveland	0	1	0	2	0	1	0	0	1		5	13	1
Minnesota	0	1	3	0	0	0	0	0	0		4	13	0

YES! The Twins pulled out the biggest victory of the season today. I didn't think they had it in them, but with this, I have a feeling today we may have finally turned the corner. It was just one of those wins that was more than the sum of it's parts. We gave it 110% and got the win we needed. Don't mind the score, the Twins won today.

That is right, the Twins rid their 25 man roster of Corky Miller! We are calling up Tiffee too, so this is definitely a win-win situation for us. I know the Twins are eternally worried about Joe Mauer getting hurt, but to carry 4 catchers was insane. It cost us Mike Restovich, but at least it wont cost us any more free at bats. I am of course referring to Corky and his 1-51 hitting since the start of 2004. Yea that's right, 1 hit in 51 at bats. I know, it doesn't sound real does it? Holler for TwinsbyTim for that incredible stat by the way. Now we will have more than one legitimate option off of the bench and provide us more depth with our middle infield. Cuddyer could move around when Tiffee gets to play. This would provide a bat in the middle infield. Boy am I glad Corky is gone.

By the way, we really could have used Rincon in the 9th tonight.

Poll 2 Recap

Well, the second poll is in the books. Here are the results:
Torii Henderson How many bases will Torii steal this season?
20-29 0 (0%) 30-39 2 (25%) 40-49 3 (37%) 50-54 1 (12%) 55-59 1 (12%) 60-64 1 (12%) 65-89 0 (0%) 90+ He's unstoppable 0 (0%) 8 Total votes
It appears Torii's steal production drop off has lowered expectations a bit. Still, 3/4 people think he will steal at least 40 bases. 3/8 believe that he will steal over 50. I for one think he should have over 30, with a good shot at 40 steals if he stays healthy.

Juan Gone 10 Games

Juan Rincon did a bad bad thing.

Of all the people to test for positive for steroids, I wouldn't expect Juan Rincon. This recent suspension really made me look deeply at the current system, and Juan Rincon. I found there were two sides to take in this circumstance.

Side 1: Juan Rincon did steroids and was caught. He is the biggest name to be caught since the steroid testing program was initiated. The test doesn't lie. Neither do the numbers.

Year	Team	G	GS	W	L	SV	CG	SHO	IP	H	R	ER	HR	BB	K	ERA	WHIP	BAA
2001	MIN	4	0	0	0	0	0	0	5.2	7	5	4	1	5	4	6.35	2.12	.318
2002	MIN	10	3	0	2	0	0	0	28.2	44	23	20	5	9	21	6.28	1.85	.352
2003	MIN	58	0	5	6	0	0	0	85.2	74	38	35	5	38	63	3.68	1.31	.231
2004	MIN	77	0	11	6	2	0	0	82.0	52	27	24	5	32	106	2.63	1.02	.181
2005	MIN	12	0	2	1	0	0	0	12.0	9	3	3	0	5	15	2.25	1.17	.214
Career		161	3	18	15	2	0	0	214.0	186	96	86	16	89	209	3.62	1.29	.233

Juan Rincon, even in the minor leagues was never a big strikeout pitcher. The same held true in the major leagues. From 2001-2003 he pitched 120 innings and struck out 88 batters. That all changed after 2003. There was a big jump in his strikeouts per inning in 2004-2005. 121 Strikouts in 104 innings. This translates to a 1.16K/IP ratio since the start of 2004 while only a 0.73K/IP before that. That is a 59% increase in strikeout production. Relievers are the most likely pitchers to juice up due to the fact that they have to pitch on less rest and sometimes several days in a row. Rincon is no different. He has now been caught and will pay for cheating the game and the fans.

Side 2: Juan Rincon did not use steroids. He is a good pitcher who had the 3rd lowest batting average against since the start of 2004 because he is talented. Juan is talented, but in this case he is simply unlucky. The current system of testing is flawed in the fact that it catches guys not injecting themselves with anabolic steroids, but just taking the wrong supplement. Now, he isn't taking the wrong supplement because he didn't read the bottle. No, since the FDA does not regulate these over the counter supplements, the quality can be lower. The inconsistency from bottle to bottle can vary. One bottle may contain 0.0001% of the positive test inducing substance, while another bottle of the supplement may contain as much as 3% of the substance that gave Rincon his positive test. As far as stats go he will come back, as good as ever and prove what his body makes obvious, he was not taking steroids.


So there you have it. Two sides a person can take. I have yet to take one myself. It isn't an easy thing to do when it is a guy you enjoy cheering for. I do lean towards the side of non-guilt. Whether that is because of my head or because of my heart I cannot say.

There is rumored to be an appeal, something no other positive testing player has actually done. Let's all hope Juan Rincon turns out to be innocent.

Poll Recap

The Hunter poll will be coming down soon, but I still have yet to post the results on the first one, so here it goes:

Bert Do Bert's comments make you question his sobriety?
Yes 4 (66%) No 2 (33%) 6 Total votes


I guess 33% of people don't watch Bert at Twins games. I kid, I kid, I love Bert. He says something every night that both cracks me up and question his sobriety. I enjoy the job he does and hope he sticks around a long time. He also must get into the HOF.

Speak Of The Devil....

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9		R	H	E
LAA (14-11)	0	0	0	1	0	1	0	0	0		2	2	0		Final
MIN (15-9)	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1		1	4	1
W: B. Colon (4-2) L: J. Santana (4-1) S: F. Rodriguez (6)

I have been a bit, and will be a bit slow to post here since I have finals and whatnot, but I will try to post a few things.

Well, don't blame Lecroy and his bases loaded double play for this loss. Don't blame Gardy for keeping Joe Mauer on the bench most of the game. Don't blame Johan for giving up two solo shots. Don't blame Bartolo Colon and his great ground-ball-producing performance. Don't blame any of them.

Blame me.

When I start talking about Johan and his streak, what happens? He pitches a damn good game, but is outdueled 2-0 by the Angels. I totally jinxed him! Well maybe me and the metro area media. Oh, well it was fun while it lasted. I just wish he could have lost the record because he pitched poorly, not pitched well and received no run support.

That is just the way it goes in baseball though. Wins and losses can be quite flukey. Johan got a loss today while Corey Lidle got a win by giving up 5 runs in 5 1/3 innings. Now there is an overrated stat if there ever was one. Somehow people don't see that. It is the same people who picked Clemens over Johnson for the NL Cy Young last year.

Grant Balfour is out for the season. Now, this news is not getting the press it should be in my opinion. He is a very promising pitcher who would have served as a great right handed specialist out of our bullpen. The guy is just brutal against righties. We as Twins fans can count our blessings though since we still have Nathan, Rincon, Romero, and Crain to go to. The loss of Balfour will be much more noticeable if Rincon or Crain were to go down. Let's hope it doesn't.

Speaking of bullpen's, the Twins and Angels series showed off what is probably the two best bullpens in baseball. With Balfour we were no doubt better than theirs, but now the gap is a lot closer. I still think the Twins have the best bullpen in baseball overall, but the Angels have some great arms out there. In another year or two it will only get better considering all the young talent they have assembled. I fully expect both teams to win their divisions and maybe meet in the playoffs, thanks to their bullpens. Sorry Chicago fans, I just don't have faith in the Sux keeping up this great pitching. John Garland is bound to cool off sometime.