Twins Should Rest Mauer, Morneau, Span, etc...

It's over. It's been over for awhile now - and as of today it looks like Detroit might run away with the division. I suppose that's ok, seems like every 3 years or so they ride Justin Verlander/Miguel Cabrera to a division crown. The Twins can't win the division every year, right? Now that everyone's on the same page about "it" being over, the Twins should be shifting their attention to the off-season and, ultimately, to next season. There isn't much they can do right now to change up their personnel besides throwing people on waivers and hoping that someone bites. That said, they can take steps right now to make next year's team better and I think that starts with giving banged up guys like Mauer, Morneau and Co. some major rest during the last painful month of the regular season.

After spending 2 months on the DL to start the season, Joe Mauer hasn't looked his old self this season and coming into tonight, Mauer has a .287/.347/.349 hitting line through 285 PAs with only 14 of his 74 total hits going for extra bases (13 doubles, 1HR). One possible reason for his poor hitting could be that he has been playing a couple of different field positions than he's used to - but that's unlikely to account for much of it - especially for a guy who came into this year with a career .888 OPS. The more likely culprit for Mauer's poor season at the plate is that he isn't fully healed yet and though Mauer has made a valiant effort up until now to "grind it out" (his words), there isn't much point to it now so why not give the guy an extra month to heal up.

As for Justin Morneau, call it rust if you must but he's looked pretty terrible as well since coming back from the DL on August 12th. In the 9 games since then, he has only 5 hits in 37 PAs and he's walked 2 times against 7 strikeouts. Morneau has been belabored by injuries for well over a year now, why make the guy grind it out during a lost season when you can give him ample time off down the stretch and have him back next year closer to 100%.

It hardly stops with Mauer and Morneau. Just having both of those guys back near 100% would make a huge difference next year, no doubt about it. If I'm the Twins front office, I think about shutting down Denard Span and Scott Baker (and Blackburn) for the rest of the season as well. There is simply no point in trying to get these guys back because at this point, it is more beneficial for this team to lose games than it is for them to win games...

I'm not suggesting that this team purposely tank games, but why rush your star players back just so you can win a couple more games than you otherwise would have? I'm suggesting that the Twins should rest their ailing stars, maybe this team loses a bunch of games, but hey, they get a better draft pick next season. If that player ends up being important to this ballclub down the line, wouldn't it have been worth it? It's a convoluted way of looking at things I know, but it's a reality the Twins might as well embrace. At this point, there is no benefit to having Mauer, Morneau, D-Span, or Bake out on the field. Obviously the Twins aren't going to come out and say, "hey, we're gonna give the M&M boys 2-3 days off per week in September", but if they just did it, I would understand and even be in support of it. I want this team to be a contender in 2012 and I don't think I'm alone there and I think resting these semi-injured players gives them the best shot at that.

What's With the Over-Analyzing?

Ugh. Just when I thought things might be looking brighter for our beleaguered Twins, the bullpen blows back-to-back games and they lose yet another 1-run game, managing to score only 2 runs in yesterday's loss. What gives. Seriously. I dared to watch Saturday's game as it was the late game on the MLB Network and I was pleased until the 8th inning. The Twins had a 6-3 lead and only needed 6 more outs to secure the victory. Then:

Single
pitching change (Perkins for Nathan)
Single
pitching change (Capps for Perkins)
2-Run Double
Bunt-Single
Fielder Choice
Single
GRAND SLAM

Summary: 6 hits, 6 runs, 1 out recorded

Just like that the lead was gone. The culprit for this blown-lead was, once again, Matt Capps, who the Twins front-office IDIOTICALLY traded away THEIR BEST PROSPECT for last season. Capps is now worth -0.2 WAR this year while Wilson Ramos quietly has been having an absolutely stellar rookie season with the Washington Nationals, hitting .272/.347/.447 (1.1 WAR). I know, I know, I've mentioned this several times before, give it a rest, right? Ok, I'll move on...still makes me so mad when I think about it.

Alot of people on the big-box networks (ESPN, MLB Network) have said, "I don't understand why the Twins are so bad, they essentially have the same team as last year yet they are so much worse." This line of logic simply does not stand to reason:

A) The Twins have had a number of injuries this year that they did not have last year. So far the following players have spent time on the DL: Joe Mauer, Tsuyoshi Nishioka, Delmon Young, Jim Thome, Jason Repko, Jose Mijares, Glen Perkins, Kevin Slowey and I'm sure I've missed a couple of others.
B) The bullpen looks absolutely NOTHING like last year's bullpen. Last year the Twins had Jesse Crain, Jon Rauch, Matt Guerrier, and Brian Fuentes (for part of the year) and those are actually some decent relievers. Instead of letting Capps walk and signing a couple of those guys, they inexplicably decided to trade away a very good shortstop for a couple of mediocre relievers, move a starter to the bullpen and claim another also-ran off waivers. This strategy has, predictably, failed utterly as the Twins have Baseball's worst bullpen.
C) Because of the injuries and because of some ill-advised trades, the Twins middle-infield looks entirely different and folks, the 2B and SS positions are the two most important defensive positions on the baseball field. Last year the Twins had some excellent middle-infield defensive, even when Hardy and Hudson were out with injuries. This year it's been a circus, and that difference has shown up in pitcher ERAs.

More to the title of this piece, I was reading Parker Hageman's piece at Over The Baggy today in which he writes about an adjustment Matt Capps has made in his approach to left-handed hitters vs. right-handed hitters. As it turns out, Capps actually moves to the far left side of the pitching rubber when pitching to left-handed hitters. It really is a good piece, as Hageman's usually are, and it left me scratching my head. First the whole "pitching to contact" thing with Liriano, now this... As Hageman says in his piece, no one knows if this is an adjustment Capps has made on his own or whether it's something the coaching staff has tried to get him to do, but needless to say, the results have not been good at all.

What I want to know is 'why all the over-analyzing?' Capps pitched well for the Twins last year, so did Liriano...why make any adjustments to their approaches? "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." I think these guys are probably pressing enough as it is without having to think about making wholesale changes to their respective approaches to pitching. Let the pitchers pitch and try to find enough hitters who can hit...sometimes things really are simple and straight-forward.