Fence Sitters

Thanks to great performances by Ervin Santana, John Danks and Brian Duensing yesterday, the Twins find themselves 6 games behind 1st place with only 4 days remaining till the trade deadline...what is Bill Smith gonna do? So far I've heard rumors involving Denard Span and Michael Cuddyer, hopefully they are just that because the type of rumors I've heard (Span for Drew Storen/Ian Desmond) do not sound favorable for the Twins. As for me, I honestly do not care whether the Twins are sellers or not in the next few days. My only hope is that if they do move a few pieces, they get good value in return.

I think this past week has highlighted just how tall a task it is to gain ground in a division when there are three teams ahead of you. With the White Sox, Tigers and Indians all seemingly playing one another, there have been more than a few nights where at least one of those teams is guaranteed to win which puts pressure on the the Twins to win or fall even further behind. Fortunately the White Sox have put away division-leading Detroit the past couple of nights, but if they (the White Sox) get into the mix at the top, that will only further complicate the Twins struggle to get to the top.

We've been seeing some really positive things from Joe Mauer these past couple of days. Two nights ago Mauer hit a pinch-hit double in a come-from-behind Twins victory. Last night Mauer went 2-for-4 with his first homerun of the year and, not only that, his single was to the opposite field, a good sign that he is seeing the ball well. My dream scenario would be Mauer finding his power stroke while continuing to hit for average - and then Morneau returns in mid-August and immediately starts hitting...ok, maybe it's far-fetched, but if it happens it could make September pretty interesting.

Focusing the microscope a little on the Twins pitching staff...after going 17-9 with a 3.08/1.26 ERA/WHIP in June, the pitching staff as a whole has come back to earth in July, going 15-10 with a 4.47/1.36 ERA/WHIP. I'd love to try and spin this by saying something like, "but their xFIP this month is 2.50" but that is sadly untrue. The 4.47 ERA looks a lot more like April (4.88) and May's (4.87) than it does June which suggests to me that June was probably a little flukey. The Twins starters, in particular, are going to need to be a lot more consistent if they have any hope of reaching the playoffs. Francisco Liriano, Nick Blackburn and Brian Duensing have been the most inconsistent over the past few weeks, to the point where it almost impossible to predict how any one of the aforementioned pitchers is going to fare in any given start. To highlight that a bit, Twins starters had a 3.00 ERA in June and so far in July they have a 4.44 ERA...that's not going to cut it when you're chasing down 3 teams in your own division.

I guess I feel a little silly saying things like "if the Twins have any hope of winning the division". Realistically, they don't stand much of a chance. Baseball Prospectus publishes a playoff odds report every day and it is based off statistics that they run through simulator 1,000,000 times and today they have the Twins playoff chances at 5.0%. By comparison, the Tigers have a 62.4% chance and the White Sox have a 23.8% chance of making the playoff. So, like I said, unlikely...but hey, this season has been all about trying to keep the hope alive, so why stop now right?

Verlander'd

22 days into the month and this is only the 5th post of July here at TBS...our apologies. My excuse is that I was on vacation for awhile and while that one is pretty weak, Matt's excuse is that he has been busy spreading HUGE news...our very own Matt Larson will be a brand-new dad soon! Congratulations to him and to his wife Ali! That's very exciting stuff, can't wait to meet his new daughter, due sometime in mid-January.

After a nice 5-day break from humanity up in the North Woods of Wisconsin, I returned yesterday to a pleasant surprise...the Twins hadn't dropped in the standings! Yay. I didn't get to catch last night's game, but in reading the box score this morning, one thing was clear...the Twins got Verlander'd. 8 innings, 5 hits, 1 run, 9 strikeouts, 0 walks...looks like a Verlander line to me. With the loss last night, the Twins have now lost 10 straight games against the Tigers dating back to last year. If the Twins want to be in the AL Central race come Monday morning, they had better reverse this luck quickly, starting tonight against Max Scherzer. The Twins throw Brian Duensing out there tonight and Duensing has pitched well in July so far with 2 wins and a 2.01 ERA in 22.1 innings. Scherzer hasn't had very good luck against the Twins in his career with a 9.13 ERA in 4 career starts against our hometown team.

The Twins get Jason Kubel back tonight after an extended stint on the DL. Kubel was pretty much the Twins lone bright spot during the first two months of the season, hitting .310/.355/.465 with 30 RBIs in the first 52 games of the season. He hasn't played in a Major League game since May 30th when he went down with a foot injury. During his most recent 5-game rehab stint with Triple-A Rochester, Kubel 6 hits in 18 at-bats with a HR, 2 RBIs, 3 walks and 4 Ks. Hopefully he can provide a spark to an offense that has struggled lately, scoring 5 of more runs only twice in 9 games since the All-Star break. Kubel's activation means that Scott Baker, Denard Span and Justin Morneau (and Kevin Slowey) are the only Twins' players that remain on the disabled list. Baker is expected to be activated for a start tomorrow against the Tigers.

During the "critical 12-game stretch" to start the 2nd half, the Twins are 5-4 so far which isn't great, but it means they haven't lost any ground either. They are currently 6 games out of 1st with 64 games left to play. In order to get to 85 wins, which is how many I believe it will take to win the division this year, they need to go 39-25 (.609, 99-win pace)...not an impossible task,  but getting more difficult with each loss. To put it in perspective, the Tigers only need to go 33-31 (.515, 84-win pace) in their final 64 games to get to 85 wins. If Bill Smith decides to add a piece or two within the next 9 days, I'd like to see what we can get in the way of serviceable relievers. That said, my confidence in Smith to make a savvy trade or two is not very high. Hope is still alive though, Go Twins!

Getting Liriano Back on Track

As the Twins head into this crucial 12-game home stand that could very well make or break the season, it seems almost fitting that Francisco Liriano is starting the first game against the Royals. Liriano's season has paralleled the Twins' in many ways; he struggled mightily to begin the year but appeared to be completely locked in during May and most of June. Unlike the Twins, however, Liriano entered the All-Star break on a bit of a sour note, giving up five earned runs in two of his last three starts, included his last start vs Tampa where he struck out only four while walking the same amount. The control issues that he has struggled with all season seemed to have reaappeared, and out of the 91 pitches he threw, almost half were balls. Liriano's struggles earlier in the year were well documented on the Twins blogosphere, but I wanted to take another look at what he's done well and what he needs to do to get back on track and sustain his success. Scott Baker has emerged as the Twins' most dominant pitcher this season, but Liriano showed last year what he's capable of and will be a huge part of any stretch run that materializes (fingers crossed).

Liriano's ERA currently stands at 5.06, a lot of which is still fallout from his atrocious start to the season. He's been better than that, but not markedly better, with a 4.43 FIP and 4.26 xFIP. The decrease in strikeouts and uptick in walks are still holding him back significantly in this regard; in addition to a drop-off of nearly two K/9, he's walking more than two batters more. In the month of June, he posted a stellar 27:7 K:BB ratio, but he's walked almost the same number of batters in only two July starts. I don't have the savvy about pitching mechanics or the knowledge to dig deep into Pitch F/X to explain if he's somehow regressed mechanically or has changed his release point from what he was doing in June, but it's somewhat troubling that the control issues from earlier seem to be resurfacing. The whole "should Liriano pitch to contact" debate and the discussion of what that really means aside, Liriano certainly needs to avoid giving up as many free passes if he's going to regain his dominance, as he hasn't been able to compensate for wildness by missing more bats. It seems obvious, but it's true. To be fair, three less-than-great starts recently is still a small sample size and all pitchers have off nights, but it highlights the fact that Liriano hasn't been consistent, and thus not currently the pitcher that most Twins fans would trust at this point in the season to get a crucial win (I have to think that would be Baker, but feel free to disagree with me on that one).

Digging farther into the numbers, there are a few other things that stand out. On the positive side, Liriano's swinging strike percentage remains excellent at 12.2%. Liriano posted a 12.4% in the 2010 campaign, and is only surpassed by Michael Pineda this year (12.5%) in all of baseball. If he keeps this up, it's very possible that we'll see the strikeouts start to come around again. Contrary to last year though, and perhaps contributing to the lack of K's, is that his O-Swing percentage (percentage of swings generated on pitches outside the strike zone, or, in general, batters "chasing") is down from 34.4% last year to 27.9% this year. The effect that stat is really having though is purely speculative; for comparison, Liriano's 2006 mark was only 27.5% (although that year he did put up a stunningly awsome 16.4% swinging strike percentage). If I had to guess, I'd say that more batters this year seem to be laying off the slider, a fact which may be backed up by the fact that last year his slider was worth 19 runs above average, whereas this year it's only been worth 5.6. While still an effective pitch, this decrease in results from the slider, in turn, may be causing him to favor the changeup more (4% increase from last year). That said, I'm not sure that throwing the slider more is any sort of answer, I'm more just pointing out things I'm noticing in the numbers.

Lastly, I'll discuss the concept of keeping the ball on the ground. We've already seen that he's missing fewer bats and thus has been relying more on balls in play to get outs, so looking at what types of balls are being put in play is important. In general, the more ground balls the better for a pitcher. Even though ground balls have a higher BABIP that fly balls, the biggest thing is that ground balls can't leave the yard. Last year, Liriano posted a career-high 53.6% ground ball rate, and I think that that was a positive contributor to his success, particularly in the small amount of home runs he gave up. This season, his GB rate has fallen off to 47.9%, and my gut wants to tell me that this is somehow related to his decreased success. However, with Liriano, it's not quite that simple on a game-by-game basis. For someone like Nick Blackburn, who isn't able to generate many strikeouts, there's usually a pretty good correlation between getting more ground balls and quality starts. For Liriano, though, that surface-level analysis doesn't play out. Case in point: during the game against the Royals (which brought the pitch-to-contact debate to a head) Liriano generated 15 ground balls and only 3 fly balls. Some of those ground balls (6 in fact) just happened to find their way through the infield in the fourth inning. Conversely, during his no-hitter, Liriano generated 11 fly balls compared to only 9 grounders. On May 22nd versus Arizona, his ratio was even worse with 12 fly balls to 5 grounders, yet he escaped with only two earned runs. And lastly, on July 6th versus Tampa, his GB:FB ratio was 2:9 yet he surrendered 5 earned. All of this goes to say that as a season-long trend, it could be that less grounders might equal less success, but it's harder to make sense of that when you dig into individual examples.

I started this piece intending to pick out concrete things that Liriano needs to do to find more consistency and get his season back on the right path, but along the way I think I found more questions than answers. Does he need to throw more strikes? Does he need to throw the slider more often and more effectively? Does he need to generate more ground balls? He certainly needs to cut down on the walks, and if batters aren't chasing as many balls outside the zone, he may have to find a way to compensate for that to avoid walking batters and running up his pitch count. However, for Liriano, throwing more strikes shouldn't mean turning into Blackburn or Buerhle; it should mean finding good locations within the zone early in the count to set up his out pitches. Regarding throwing the slider more, I wouldn't suggest that's any sort of answer. The reason that he hasn't been throwing it as much could be that it hasn't been as effective - I'll have to come back to why exactly that is, but there has to be a reason. And regarding keeping the ball on the ground, well, that's a little more complicated than I thought but I still would generally suggest it's a good idea, if only to try to keep home runs in check. (Liriano's HR/FB rate last season was 6.3%, which was certainly a bit luck-driven, but generating grounders certainly contributed). All of this might just be a fancy way of saying "pitch better," and the haste with which I tried to get this out means I probably left plenty of gaps in my logic. But if Liriano can regain the excellent command he exhibited last year (and stretches of this year), it will go a long way towards helping him return to dominance. With an in-form Liriano and a healthy, consistent Scott Baker, the Twins will have a 1-2 punch that could push them into a playoff spot.

Ready for the Ride to Continue

Last night I actually watched the All-Star game. More precisely, I glanced up at the TV every once in awhile while playing games on my phone. It was boring...except the Timberlake interview which was decidedly awkward and amusing. I thought it was fitting that the respective leaders in the MVP-race for each league hit homeruns. The NL pitching dominated, though to be fair the AL was sans Sabathia, Price, Hernandez, Lester, etc. It's a shame that this game actually decides something. Oh well.

Now that the All-Star game is mercifully over, I'm looking forward to two things: a) Chris Berman being used strictly for Monday Night Football purposes and b) the 'second-half'. I think the Twins have a legitimate shot to make up for their horrible start and I'm excited to see how they play in these first few games post-All-Star-break. I'm excited for a 12-game homestand. I'm excited to see if Delmon Young can find his sea-legs again and help carry the load a little. I'm excited to see what happens if the Twins pull even closer to the Tigers and Indians by the end of the month. Yes, our beloved Twins are 6.5 games out of first, but the gap doesn't seem that large.

To quickly update the Twins injuries:

Scott Baker is in line to make his next start on Monday, July 18th against the Indians. His MRI last week showed only a minor flexor strain so hopefully he will be able to pick up right where he left off.

Delmon Young was activated and will start tomorrow against the Royals. He had a nice 9-game rehab stint at Triple-A, seeing 5 of his 9 hits (31 at-bats) go for extra bases including 2HRs.

Kevin Slowey threw 4.2 innings of scoreless baseball at Triple-A last Sunday with 3Ks and 1BB. He will pitch in one more rehab start coming up this week. According to Ron Gardenhire the Twins have no plans to call him up once he's ready, which really makes absolutely ZERO sense to me. At the very least he could be used in the bullpen and in my opinion, he deserves strong consideration for a rotation spot which would give the Twins the option of putting Brian Duensing in the bullpen as a left-handed specialist or long-reliever. Wasting Kevin Slowey's talent in Triple-A is just plain stupid.

Jason Kubel continues to rehab his injured foot and is probably still another 10-15 days away...and that's if things go well. He's expected to start in some rehab games at Fort Meyers here over the next few days, but there is no concrete rehab schedule at this point.

Denard Span will be meeting with doctors (perhaps today) in hopes of receiving clearance to start a rehab assignment. He ran the bases and worked out hard this past weekend and reported no symptoms. If cleared, he will probably need about 7-10 rehab games before he comes off the DL.

Update 12:03pm CDT: According to D-Span's twitter feed, he was cleared to begin a rehab assignment today, great news!

Justin Morneau is still on doctor-ordered post-surgery rest, but could resume light baseball activity here in the next week or so. His target for a return is mid-August, which may be slightly optimistic but, if true, could prove quite valuable to the Twins if they can stay in contention until then. Positive word from him is that his wrist has been feeling much better lately and continued rest will hopefully allow it to fully heal.

Whew, I think that's it in terms of injuries. Jim Thome has been dealing with a sprained toe, but it doesn't seem like anything a few days rest won't take care of. Injuries have been the main storyline for the Twins this season, but it looks like (fingers crossed) the Twins may finally be getting closer to "healthy" here in the next 2-3 weeks.

Some Interesting Reading Around the Twins Blogosphere (and elsewhere):

Nate Gilmore over at Puckett's Pond gave the Twins a first-half report card of sorts. I can't say I disagree with any of his marks.

Corey Ettinger put together an AL Central All-Star team with a little bit of justification for each selection. There aren't many Twins players in the bunch but then again, they haven't had that many stand-out players yet this season.

Nick Nelson wrote a good piece comparing this year's team to the 2003 Twins team that was in a similar situation at the All-Star break and went on to win the division. Hope seems to be running high again in Twins Territory and damn it, it feels good.

TT over at Granny Baseball is going through a series of posts explaining statistics. So far they've done BABIP, K/9 and IP. Nothing super in-depth here, but it's a nice primer for people looking to better their understanding of baseball statistics. What's odd about these posts is that Granny Baseball has been a very anti-sabermetrics blog...

The Common Man and Bill over at The Platoon Advantage had an interesting read about the number of players selected to the All-Star game.

And finally, Deadspin had a good read today about the 100 Worst Baseball Players of All-Time. It's interesting to see a lot of pretty good managers high on that list including Tommy Lasorda, Billy Martin and Ozzie Guillen. This is the first installment of the list.

24-12

Ahhh. Nothing like a series with the White Sox to make me feel good about the Twins heading into the All-Star break. I managed to watch 3 out of the 4 games this weekend and I have to say, I was generally impressed with what I saw. Living in Chicago, it's always interesting to me to hear what the White Sox announcers have to say about the Twins. One thing is for sure, the Twins are in the heads of the announcers, for sure, and perhaps even the entire White Sox team. After taking 3 of 4 over the weekend, the Twins have won 9 out of their last 10 against Chicago and 29 out their last 36. Sometimes I wish we could play the White Sox all the time, fortunately we get 19 games against them every year.

After playing to a 17-36 (.321, 52-win pace) record through the end of May, the Twins have turned around with a 24-12 (.667, 108-win pace) record since June 1st. They enter the All-Star break with a 41-48 record, sitting in 4th place, 6.5 games behind the division-leading Detroit Tigers. One year ago today, the Twins were sitting in 3rd place with a 46-42 record, 3.5 games behind division-leading Chicago...I'm just sayin' for as good as the memories are of last year's team are, they weren't in all that different of a situation than this year's version is. The difference is that this year's squad dug themselves a massive hole at the beginning of the season and last year's team had a slump in the middle of the season...it's all about perspective. I don't believe this team has 108-win talent, but I also believe they're way better than a 52-win pace. Hopefully this division continues to run mediocre and the Twins can have the final laugh when it's all over.

Being that I live in Chicago, I usually watch Twins v. White Sox games on Chicago television which inevitably means a run-in with Ken "Hawk" Harrelson, the play-by-play (and color) man for the White Sox. Generally he's irritating to listen to, but he's been in baseball for a LONG time and has a deep knowledge of the game, which I can appreciate. During one of the games over the weekend he said that in all of his years of baseball, he's never seen a team have as many injuries to key players as the Twins have had. Given that this team is still in contention...with everything they've gone through, I think Gardenhire and his coaching staff deserve some serious praise. It wasn't that long ago that this team was carting out a mostly Triple-A lineup on a nightly basis, and a lot of those guys are still up here and are contributing in big ways.

The Twins did some shuffling after yesterday's game, sending down Rene Tosoni and Rene Rivera to make room for Delmon Young and hot-hitting Trevor Plouffe. It's good to see Delmon back, especially considering how ugly his ankle injury looked initially. With him and Kubes out the outfield defense has been better, but I think we've missed their bats. As for Plouffe, my gut tells me that calling him up will end in disaster (and another eventual demotion), but I guess he's earned a shot with his bat. Where the Twins will find him playing time is a mystery, but he did kinda force their hand. Either way, I'm happy because a few months ago I purchased an ad for this blog on the Trevor Plouffe baseball-reference page so Plouffe = traffic, thanks Trevor!

Looking ahead to "2nd half", the Twins have 12 straight games (at home!!) against AL Central opponents starting with 4 against Kansas City. Starting on July 18th they will have 8 straight games against the Tigers and Indians, both of whom are in front of them in the standings. This will be a key stretch for the Twins and could mean the difference between whether the Twins are sellers or not. Congratulations to Michael Cuddyer on his All-Star selection, enjoy the break and GO TWINS!!

Capps Has Got to Go

On the face of things, the Twins have been playing pretty well lately. After a 6-game slide they've bounced back and have won 6 of their past 7 games and had it not been for a bullpen implosion against Milwaukee over the weekend we would be talking about a 7-game winning streak...and that's the face of things. When one turns the power up on the microscope, however, you see a team that is barely getting by, mostly because of a shaky back end of the bullpen. It hasn't been great all year, but things have really took a turn for the worse over the past 4 games and most of the blame lands squarely on Matt Capps' shoulders.

On Saturday, the Twins jumped out to a 7-0 lead over the Milwaukee Brewers and looked to be in cruise-mode en route to another victory. Carl Pavano wasn't lights out, but made it through 7 2/3rds innings giving up 3 earned runs, tipped his cap and handed it off to the bullpen to get the last 4 outs. Perkins came in and did his job striking out the only guy he faced. Capps came in with a 3-run lead to start the 9th inning, gave up three straight singles, got two outs and then gave up another double Nyjer Morgan and a single to George Kottaras to blow the game. Phil Dumatrait had to be called in to get the final out of the inning.

On Sunday the Twins got themselves into a donnybrook, with Nick Blackburn giving up 6 runs and Zack Greinke surrendering 5. The Twins also got the Brewer bullpen and held a 9-7 lead going into the top of the 9th. Gardenhire once again called on Capps to close the game and he proceeded to give up a lead-off single to Rickie Weeks, got Nyjer Morgan to ground into a fielder choice and, and gave up another single to Corey Hart. At this point, Gardy must have been steaming because with a 2-run lead, Capps had men at 1st and 2nd with only one-out and all-world hitter Prince Fielder strolling to the plate. Gardy decided to make a change calling on Glen Perkins who proceeded to strike out Fielder and pinch-hitter Casey McGehee to save the game and the day.

On Monday, suddenly-hot Brian Duensing threw a complete game shutout for our Twins as they cruised to a 7-0 victory. We were spared of any Capps meltdown for one day.

Last night, the Twins once again found themselves clinging to a small lead late in the game. Up 3-1 after getting to starter James Shields early in the game, Gardenhire maddeningly called on Capps once again to try and close out the victory. He must have immediately started kicking himself for making that choice as he watched Capps give up a lead-off bomb to B.J. Upton. Then a single Casey Kotchman. A fly-out, a line-out...could it be? No. A walk to Kelly Shoppach. Men at 1st and 2nd with 2-outs and a 1-run lead. Gardy had once again seen enough and once again called on Perkins to clean up Capps' mess, which he did on 3 pitches, getting Johnny Damon to ground out to short. Glen Perkins 2, Matt Capps 0.

As it stands at this very moment, the Twins are 7 games out of 1st place in the AL Central. After a game tonight to close out their series with the Rays, the Twins have 16-straight games against AL Central opponents beginning with a 4-game weekend set with their rivals from the Southside, the Chicago White Sox. If the Twins stand a chance at pulling off a miracle comeback in this division, they have got to be able to close games out when they have a lead in the 9th inning and right now, that means the Matt Capps has to be removed from the role. Right now they have two guys who are better options in the 9th, starting with Glen Perkins.

Glen Perkins has easily been the Twins most consistent reliever all season. After falling from grace and finding himself at Triple-A last year, Perkins has resurrected his career and is pitching as well as ever. Over his last 21 appearances, he's given up only 5 earned runs. He has a 32:11 K:BB ratio over 30.1 innings this year which is excellent and I think he has proven over the past 3 nights that he can get the job done when it matters. If there's a more pressure-packed situation than closing a game, it's closing a game when the guy who's supposed to be the closer can't do it.

Aside from Perkins, the case could be made that Joe Nathan deserves his old job back. Since coming back from the DL in late June, Nathan has thrown 5 innings of work surrendering one-run (the one run came in his first appearance off the DL) while striking out 5 against 0 walks. Not only that, his velocity is looking a whole lot more Nathan-like lately. Last night he threw 13 pitches, 9 of which we strikes. His fastball averaged 92.72mph and touched as high as 93.2mph. In the two seasons prior to Tommy John surgery, Nathan's fastball was averaging 93.6mph...earlier in the season Nathan was struggling to hit 91-92mph on the gun and now he's averaging almost 93mph...that's a good sign.

Either Perkins or Nathan would probably be a better option in the closer role at this point and I think either guy could succeed in the role. I have to imagine the Twins would love to get Nathan back in the closer role given that he is basically a very expensive set-up man right now. I'd be fine with either option, I just know Capps has to go. Every win is a precious commodity at this stage of the season and the Twins cannot afford to have a guy in the closer role who can't get the job done.

Nishioka's Struggles No Surprise

I'm going to quickly revisit something I wrote several months ago, shortly after the Twins' hasty exit from the playoffs last year. The entire piece can be found here. Here's the quote: 

"[...] re-upping with Hardy eats up a large portion of the off-season money the Twins have to spend, but as I've tried to lay out here, Hardy is the most important one to re-sign given his positional significance coupled with the potential difficulties of replacing him."

I wrote that on October 25th, 2010 and by now all of us are painfully familiar with what happened shortly thereafter. The Twins watched Orlando Hudson walk via free-agency. They traded Hardy to the Orioles for two less-than-mediocre relief "prospects", and they put all of their eggs into the Tsuyoshi Nishioka basket, paying the $5M posting fee to negotiate with the Japanese shortstop and ultimately signing him to a 3-year, $9M contract. Leading up to Spring Training, there was a lot of talk about how Yoshi would transition to Major League Baseball. Many of us bloggers actually managed to convince ourselves that a Nishioka-Casilla middle-infield battery would be pretty decent, at least defensively. Oh how I wish we had been right.

In February, I penned another piece that was inspired by something Phil Mackey had written about the number of Japanese players who had come over the the U.S. and had successful MLB careers. After reading that list I did some research, the results of which you can read here. At the risk of quoting myself too many times in my own piece, here was my conclusion. 

"I'm not trying to be Debbie Downer here, but the track record is undeniable. Aside from Ichiro, who possessed superior hitting and fielding skills prior to coming to the U.S., and Hideki Matsui, who was as great of a power hitter as Japan has ever seen, the overall crop of Japanese players has been disappointing. What's really scary to me is that some of these guys were .300+ hitters in Japan (K. Matsui, Iguchi, Iwamura) and couldn't crack .275 over here...Nishioka was only a .293 hitter in Japan (.287 career average before an unusually good 2010 seasons). Nishioka also didn't have much power in Japan (career .426 SLG%), though he is only 25, so he could develop that as he goes along. I hope it works out for young Nishi, but history suggests the road will be a tough one."

I also wrote (last self-quote, I promise):

"[...] aside from Ichiro, none of the players I covered won a Gold Glove in the U.S. despite the fact that a few of them won the award multiple times in Japan."

I know that Nishioka has only played in 19 Major League games for the Twins. I know this (sample-size alert!!). I also know that the bulk of those games have been after an extended absence due to a broken leg and that perhaps he is simply quite rusty from the long layoff. I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt for awhile. That said, history is not in Nishioka's favor and at some point, one runs out of excuses. What started out as an interesting departure from the norm for the Twins could prove to be one of their more ill-advised personnel decisions of the last decade. As Gleeman pointed out in his column today, JJ Hardy is hitting .307/.369/.547 with 11HRs and only 1 error in 50 games this season for the Orioles, while Nishioka has committed 6 errors in 19 total games (between 2B & SS) while hitting .197/.254/.242.

Nishioka deserves more time before being labeled a 'bust', probably the entirety of a season...but my hopes for him have never been high and he's done nothing so far to change my mind. Don't get me wrong, I love his attitude, I love that he really seems to care about what the fans think of him and I love his work ethic. That said, I fear that the Twins are blinded by the investment they've made in the 26-year-old to the point where they are probably unwilling to do the one thing that would help Nishioka out more than anything: send him down to Triple-A for awhile. A minor league assignment would take the pressure off of him and give him a chance to further-grasp the unique aspects of baseball on this side of the Pacific. If the Twins are going to make a move like that, the time would be now. If you wait any longer, you're too far into his contract. If you're Bill Smith and you decide that this season is a bust, why not try to develop him a little bit, re-tool the team in the off-season, and come back next year with guns blazing? It just makes sense.

Eight Steps Forward, Five Steps Back

After ripping off eight straight wins to climb back into the thick of the division race, the Twins lost the remaining two games in San Francisco and got swept at Miller Park (which, to be fair, has been the hardest place in baseball for road teams this season, with the Brewers owning a 29-11 record there). The previously sparkling pitching was nowhere to be found, by both the starters and the bullpen, and after scoring nine runs against the Giants last Tuesday night, the Twins proceeded to score that exact same number in the following five games. Frankly, they're lucky that the division deficit remains at nine games, as Cleveland and Detroit went 4-6 and 5-5 in their last ten, respectively.

The merry-go-round of injuries continues to spin as well, the latest casualty being Justin Morneau. To be honest, I think many of us thought he just had a minor wrist injury, and the fact that he was going to have neck surgery to fix a herniated disc caught me by surprise. Much like 2009 and 2010, it once again appears that Morneau is going to be on the DL for more time than he spends on the field. In addition, Delmon Young went to the DL with an ankle injury after getting it caught underneath the fence in left field, meaning that Rene Tosoni's latest stint at Rochester was a short-lived one. Denard Span is still having post-concussion symptoms that are eerily similar to Morneau's lingering problems, and there's no idea when he might be back, while Jason Kubel could return within a week. Jim Thome was back and contributed an RBI single in yesterday's game, but Mauer and Nishioka continue to struggle mightly after their return.

The Twins will limp back to Target Field for a series with the Dodgers, who haven't visited Minnesota since 2006. Off the field, the Dodgers are even more of a mess than they are on the field, having just filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, so hopefully that will have a demoralizing (rather than galvanizing) affect. Tonight's matchup will feature Nick Blackburn for the Twins, proud owner of a 3.15 ERA who has given up two earned runs or less in nine of his last ten starts. As odd as it sounds, Blackburn may be the pitcher the Twins would count on the most to right the ship at this point. Los Doyers counter with Chad Billingsley, who bounced back from a string of ugly outings with a one-run, six K performance against the Tigers in his last start. Billingsley can rack up the strikeouts at times but is also prone to issuing walks, so the Twins would be wise to adopt a patient approach. Tuesday's game will see Brian Duensing take on Ted Lilly in a lefty matchup, and Wednesday will feature Scott Baker, who took a step back in Milwaukee after his 10-strikeout gem versus the Rangers, and Dodgers rookie Rubby De La Rosa, who has a cannon for an arm but seems to have trouble finding the strike zone at points. Following the Dodgers series, the Twins will see the Brewers again, this time at Target Field.

This season has been quite the roller coaster, and although many fans aren't quite back to saying the Twins are out of it, the recent stretch of play has taken some of the luster out of what appeared to be a miraculous run back into the thick of the division race. Is "it" still "happening"? Is the glass half empty or half full? Nine games back with 86 to play looks more daunting than six or seven, but it's certainly better than 16.5. The Twins can no longer get back to .500 by the All-Star break, but this team has proven before that it truly isn't over until it's over and, at least eight steps forward and five steps back still equals three steps forward. The first step in going to be to snapping this five-game skid, and let's hope Blackburn is up to the task.

Random Twins Notes and a Word on Rivalries

It's tough to see the hometown team lose on a night in which the Indians and Tigers both won, but hey, there are gonna be bumps in the road and the Twins ran into a pitcher, in Vogelsong, who's been on a roll lately. The Twins didn't really help themselves out, committing three errors in the game and staying mostly silent at the plate, but Delmon Young and Michael Cuddyer continued their hot streaks with 2-hits each in the game. The Twins will have a tall task in the rubber match of the series this afternoon as they face two-time Cy Young Award winner Tim Lincecum. Lincecum has struggled of late so perhaps the Twins aren't getting the best version of him. The Twins will throw out left-hander Brian Duensing who has been pretty effective in June allowing only 5 earned runs over his last 16 innings of work. Duensing will need to continue to be on top of his game if the Twins are going to have a shot at winning this one.

Joe Nathan and Jim Thome are expected to be activated from the DL before the start of Friday's game against the Milwaukee Brewers. Nathan will likely be used as a set-up man right away, but it wouldn't surprise me one bit if he is the team's closer by season's end. Reports have been positive on Nathan especially concerning his velocity and control, both of which were concerns before he was placed on the DL. If he can prove effective, his presence could go a long way in improving the back-end of the Twins bullpen. As for Thome, it's hard to be that optimistic about the remainder of the season for him. Last year the Twins caught lightening in a bottle with Thome as he was healthy most of the season AND hit 25 dingers. This year has been the complete opposite as Thome has already seen the DL twice. I wouldn't be surprised if this is Thome's last season, and if he hits 7 or more homeruns to surpass the 600 mark, I can almost assure you this will be his last season. I'm rooting for the guy to stay healthy, but it's hard to know what to expect.

Justin Morneau and Denard Span both remain on the DL, but things are looking better for Morneau than they are for Span. Nick Nelson had a good piece yesterday on Span's situation and it doesn't sound good. In fact, it sounds a lot like Morneau's situation last season and at this point, Span and the Twins have no idea how long he is going to be out of the lineup. Morneau is supposed to have his soft cast removed tomorrow or Saturday and the thinking is that he might be able to resume baseball activities at some point shortly thereafter. I would guess that if Morneau's wrist is feeling better, he'll be put on some sort of rehab program that would last a week or so. Wrist injuries are notorious for sapping power hitters of their power, so there's no use in rushing Morneau back if his wrist isn't close to 100%.

Late last week I wrote a piece about realignment in baseball and how ridiculous the idea is. Today I was scanning my Facebook news feed when I came across the following exchange. It reminded me how great the rivalries in baseball are, especially among cross-town rivals, enjoy.

Realignment is Ridiculous

I was listening to Mike & Mike on ESPN radio this morning on my drive into work and they were talking about realignment in baseball and my blood started to boil. Greeny was floating his "idea" out there and it goes something like this:

* Get rid of divisions and instead have two 15-team leagues
* Every team in League A plays every team from League B for one 3 game series every year
* The rest of a team's games are spread out evenly against teams in their own league
* Have a rolling inter-league schedule to compensate for the odd number of teams in each league

His reason for realignment? "Fairness and equality." I'm sorry, but since when is "fairness" and "equality" the standard in professional sports?? And since when do we entertain the idea of altering divisions and leagues for the sake of a couple of teams who play in the AL East (Orioles & Blue Jays)?? This is ridiculous. First of all, baseball is INHERENTLY "unfair" because of the absence of a salary cap. Every individual ball club determines how much they want to spend on payroll. Realignment would only be a band-aid solution...and a bad one at that. Second, this isn't rec. league t-ball. This is pro sports, a land where fairness and equality don't matter. If you're a GM/Team President and you want your team to be better, bring in better scouts, pursue the bigger name free-agents, find a way to put butts in the seats; that is the name of the game afterall.

The Steinbrenners don't have more money than the other owners (ok, maybe they do, but all of the owners in baseball are multi-millionaires, billionaires, whatever), they simply choose to funnel more of their money into their baseball team and it pays off with winning ball clubs and world championships. If a team wants to go about it in a cheaper manner, they have the option of adopting a strategy similar to what the Tampa Bay Rays employ...advanced stats consultants, finding cutting edge methods to identify young talent, making savvy moves to bring in talent via free-agency and trades, etc. Just because the Orioles and Jays are stuck in a division that includes the Yankees and Red Sox doesn't mean we should try and fix it by realigning both leagues.

There really aren't many excuses for a low-payroll team in MLB. 1) You've got revenue-sharing in which large-market/high-payroll teams like the Yankees, Red Sox, Phillies, etc make payments to smaller market ball clubs. 2) The MLB draft favors teams who perform poorly and if you've got a team like the Royals who are near the bottom of the league every year, you can start to accumulate talent through the draft and build a ball club cheaply that way (as they have done). 3) Almost every team in baseball has some sort of TV deal these days which is another way to generate a lot of revenue. Blah, blah, blah.

I get tired of this "fairness" and "equality" BS. I remember when I was kid playing rec. league t-ball and my team would clearly lay a whupping on the other team and at the end of the game the coaches would say it was a "tie." I was beside myself, even at 6-years-old. In life as in baseball there are winners and losers...why our society feels the need the deny this reality is beyond me. If the Orioles and Jays want to compete in the AL East, I suggest they find creative ways to do so, either that or spend more money. It really is that simple. I don't care if it isn't fair, I don't care if it's not equal and I'm 100% against re-arranging the divisions in baseball so that teams like them have a better shot at making the playoffs.

/steps off soapbox
//resumes day

Series Preview: Twins vs White Sox

I was trying to get this out before the game last night, but the weather did me a favor and gave me a little extra time and one less game to write about, being that the make-up game won't be played during this series. We haven't done one of these in a while, but with the the hated White Sox coming to town I figured it would be a good time to take stock of where these two teams stand. Both have disappointed so far this season after being pegged again as the two main contenders in the division, but each have shown signs of life as of late and are playing much better baseball. The Twins come in as winners of 8 of their last 10, and the White Sox have won 9 of 13 after suffering a 13-4 beatdown against the Jays on May 29th. The Twins have owned the Sox over the last few years, and courtesy of mlb.com, I found out that the Twins are 26-7 against the White Sox since 2009. That's dominance.

What is perhaps most surprising about the Twins' recent run is that they've done it despite a revolving door of injuries. For a team that scored above five runs so few times even with a marginally healthy lineup earlier in the season, it's pretty impressive that they've averaged over five runs a game over this recent run with no Jason Kubel, no Joe Mauer, no Jim Thome, a completely ineffective (and recently DL'ed) Justin Morneau, and no Denard Span, who was put on the 7-day DL with symptoms from a mild concussion (now a word that strikes fear into the heart of Twins Territory). What's even better is that help should be on the way soon; Tsuyoshi Nishioka and Glen Perkins could be back as soon as today, and Mauer should be getting ever closer to his long-awaited return.

But perhaps the biggest contributor to the team's success has been the pitching. Over the last 14 days, the Twins rank second in the league in overall ERA, and their sparkling 1.45 bullpen ERA is the best mark in baseball. Only Matt Capps has allowed a run out of the bullpen in the month of June. For as much as the bullpen was maligned earlier in the season, they are finding a way to get it done recently. It's not perhaps as good as that underneath the surface, as the 3.80 FIP and 5.00 xFIP marks attest over that same span (as well as the .194 BABIP), but the biggest thing is that the patchwork relief corps is producing results on the field. The starting pitching has also been excellent, with Liriano flirting with a perfect game, Scott Baker twirling a complete-game gem against the Rangers, and Carl Pavano allowing only three runs in his last sixteen innings. Anthony Swarzak performed admirably in two spot starts, and despite his ugly outing in monsoon conditions on Friday, Brian Duensing's previous start before that had been eight solid innings against the Royals. Here's a look at how the pitching matchups stack up for this now rain-shortened series:

Game 1: Carl Pavano (3-5, 4.54 ERA/3.99 FIP) vs Gavin Floyd (6-5, 3.89 ERA/3.81 FIP)

With the rainout, Tuesday's starters were simply pushed to Wednesday. As I noted earlier, Pavano comes into this game off of a seven-inning start against the Indians in which he allowed only one run on seven hits and struck out three. After an atrocious stretch to open the season, Pavano has started to regain his 2010 form, keeping up a strong ground ball rate and limiting walks. His 3.48 K/9 is by far the lowest mark in the majors, but he's also managed to keep the free passes in check, with his 1.90 BB/9 rate also among the lowest in the league. Pavano doesn't have much of a split this season, but he's been slightly more effective versus lefties.

Gavin Floyd has been perhaps the best starter for the White Sox this year not named Philip Humber (whose .220 BABIP has to start catching up with him at some point). He's down almost a mile-and-a-half per hour on his average fastball velocity this season and his K/9 rate is down slightly from his last few seasons, but he's also posting the lowest BB/9 rate of his career. Floyd has struggled against the Twins in his career with a 5.27 ERA, particularly having trouble in starts in Minnesota, and has fared much better against right-handers than left-handers this season. Ordinarily this would work in the Twins' favor, but the current lineup is much more right-handed as of late in the absence of almost all their lefty mashers.


Game 2: Nick Blackburn (5-4, 3.47 ERA/4.60 FIP) vs Mark Buerhle (3.95 ERA/3.74 FIP)

Don't look for a lot of strikeouts in this one either, although to be fair Blackburn actually has the K/9 advantage in this matchup. Blackie's 4.99 K/9 mark is the highest of his career even if it's still below league average, and he's also inducing ground balls at a 52% clip, also a career high. He's leading Twins starters in ERA at 3.47 even if FIP hates his K/BB rate, and his xFIP is a very respectable 3.77. For the type of pitcher he is, he's doing everything he needs to do to be successful. In his last start against the Rangers he struck out six and induced 13 grounders versus only 7 fly balls, allowing four runs (two earned) on ten hits.

If there's one word to describe Mark Buerhle, it's consistency, and at this point you know basically what you're getting from him. Buerhle has never thrown less than 200 innings in a season in his entire career, and his recipe for success resembles Nick Blackburn's in a lot of ways. Both pitchers rely heavily on pitching to contact, although Blackburn has a better career ground ball rate (and significantly higher rate this season in particular). Buehrle's average fastball this season is 85.4(!) miles per hour, and he obviously needs to change speeds and have pinpoint control to be effective. In his last start, he earned the win against Oakland after going seven innings while striking out four and walking one.

Overall, both teams come into the series playing well. For the Twins, a big key for the pitchers will be to keep the ball in the yard, as the White Sox have homered in eleven straight games. Paul Konerko has been one of the AL's best hitters this season, Alexei Ramirez is leading AL shortstops in WAR with 3.0, and Carlos Quentin is showing a huge resurgence in his power with 17 home runs already. Pavano has been able to avoid the home run pretty well this season, allowing only seven, but Blackburn has been prone to the long ball, giving up a team-high 12 (tied with Scott Baker). In the game I saw on June 9th, Blackburn gave up two absolute moon shots to Josh Hamilton and Nelson Cruz, and the White Sox have similar ability to punish mistakes.

The Twins currently sit 10 games back behind the now-division-leading Tigers, and the White Sox sit 4.5 back. The Tigers and the Indians are currently playing each other, and with a few more wins the Twins have a chance to get their deficit down to single digits for the first time in quite a while. With another home series with the offensively-challenged Padres on the horizon, followed by the similarly-inept Giants, there's good reason to think the hot streak could continue. There's still obviously a long way to go, but with some key players soon to return from injury, the future is certainly looking brighter.

The Bat Shatters All-Star Team

As part of the Baseball Bloggers Alliance (BBA), each site gets the opportunity to vote on a few things every year and one of those things is the MLB All-Star game. My vote doesn't really count for anything more than any other person's but I think the BBA compiles all the votes from the blogs in the Alliance and, well, it gives people an idea of who the bloggers are voting for...I know, you're really excited right? I'll start with my National League picks, then do the American League, with a short blurb on why I made each selection. Enjoy.

NATIONAL LEAGUE

C - Brian McCann - Atlanta Braves
With Buster Posey out of the picture for the rest of this season, this selection becomes a bit of a no-brainer, though there are certainly other catchers who are contending for the starting catcher spot in the NL (Miguel Montero, Chris Ianetta, Yadier Molina to name a few). McCann has a .303/.374/.491 hitting-line coming into play today, making him the best offensive catcher in the NL and though defensively he is not the best, the fact that he leads NL catchers in HRs and RBIs makes up the difference.

1B - Prince Fielder - Milwaukee Brewers
This was a tough one because two guys, Prince and Joey Votto, are both playing at a very high level for contending teams. I give the edge to Fielder though because the dude's been all-world so far this season. Coming into today, he already has 19HRs, 58RBIs and a .303/.416/.622 hitting line. Since the middle of May, the Brewers have been on a tear and a lot of the credit belongs to Fielder, who has done a great job of anchoring the Brewers offense. What I've always liked about Fielder is that he swings his hardest every time, he runs his hardest every time and you can just sense the intensity with which he plays the game. I like to see that in an athlete and he doesn't disappoint.

Don't Give Up on Kubes

I'm really digging the Twins winning ways lately and the hopeful Twins fan in me is starting to have dreams of this team winning 25 out of 30 games and getting back into the division race. The realistic fan in me knows that's not likely. In the likelier scenario that the Twins are still "out of it" at the end of June, they'll likely become sellers and I'm here to beg that they consider re-signing Jason Kubel. Here is my case:

We're all familiar with the ups and down of Jason Kubel's career with the Twins. Kubes destroyed Minor League pitching for 4 years before getting a shot at the Bigs in 2004. He didn't disappoint, hitting .300/.358/.433 as a 22-year-old in 23 games with the Twins. That fall, he endured a serious knee injury which kept him out of baseball for the entire 2005 season, and while he re-emerged with the Twins in 2006, the results were nothing like before. Kubel struggled for a couple of seasons in 2006 and 2007 before putting it all together in 2008. In '08, he hit .272/.335/.471 with 20HRs and 78RBIs while seeing part-time action in the outfield. In 2009, he had his 'breakout' hitting .300/.369/.539 with 28HRs and 103 RBIs. In a contract-year last season, he only managed a .249 batting-average, but did surpass the 20 homerun plateau for the 3rd straight season while driving in 92 runs.

Last off-season, the Twins picked up a $5.25M option on Kubel which was a pretty good deal for them and a pretty good deal for Kubel as well, considering how little he did in 2010 to help himself out. At the beginning of this year, while almost everything and everyone fell apart around him, Kubel was spectacular hitting .310/.355/.465 with 5HR and 30RBI before landing on the DL with a sprained left foot on June 2nd. As we get closer to July, talk around the interwebs has increased about the likelihood of the Twins being sellers, and Kubel's name gets mentioned often, along with the likes of Michael Cuddyer, Kevin Slowey and Delmon Young. Let's take a look at other left-handed power hitters over the last three years:

Click to enlarge (props to fangraphs.com)

The graph is pretty small, so if you don't feel like clicking on it, I'll let you know what it says. To produce the graph I sorted by OFers with a qualified # of at-bats over the last three years. Then I sorted it further by hitters against right-handed pitching and then sorted it from highest to lowest OPS. Over the last three years, Kubel has the 11th highest OPS (.883), the 11th highest batting average and the 8th most HRs against right-handers...among all of the outfielders in baseball. You won't find his name on the WAR leaderboards, but that's because his defense is so atrocious. If he was strictly in a DH role, his value would increase. Without Thome next year, the Twins will likely have an opening at DH, a role Kubel is familiar with and could probably excel in.

I'm not trying to make it sound like Kubel is a superstar player. He's not. What I am trying to say is that Kubel, as a left-handed hitter with power, possesses an offensive skill-set that is not all that common in MLB, and is not easily replaceable if they trade him or let him go. Kubel has had some injury problems over the years, but for the past three season he's been a consistent producer and a valuable part of the Twins lineup. For a reasonable amount of money, say $5-$7M per over 3-5 years (Kubes is only 29) you could have yourself a very capable DH who gives you some flexibility to play him in the field if someone goes down with an injury. With the salaries of Michael Cuddyer and Joe Nathan coming off the books at the end of the season, $5-7M/year is a reasonable amount of money to spend on a guy who can hit with power from the left side of the plate.

Game of Adjustments

I will be glad when the NBA Playoffs are over. I mean come on, how long have they been going on now? A month? Two months? It's almost mid-June for crying out loud. I have nothing against basketball, but what I do have a problem with is ESPN's CONSTANT "coverage" of every game. From the moment one game ends to the time the next one begins it's nothing but basketball. Hello, there are 10-15 Major League Baseball games every day that we could talk about!? There are other sports! But I digress. It was during this wall-to-wall NBA playoff coverage that something caught my ear and made me think for a second. For those who don't follow the NBA, LeBron James scored only 8 points for the Heat in last night's game, which I believe was a career-low for him in the post-season. Last night's performance has caused people to question all sorts of things about him including his greatness as a player, his focus, his intensity and, ultimately, his eventual legacy. That got me thinking, why have we gotten to a point where the big picture is no longer important? One game changes how some people are viewing LeBron James?

Player X goes through a bad streak (Adam Dunn for example) and sports talk radio hosts starting talking about benching the guy. Albert Pujols has a slow start to the season and people start asking "is this the end for Albert?" Joe Mauer has an injury and people start demanding that the 28-year-old catcher change positions (myself included on that one). Jose Bautista blossoms into a power hitter and people immediately begin to question his integrity with accusations of steroid use. What happened to patience? What happened to taking into account a guy's entire track-record as a player before making sweeping judgements?

Take Adam Dunn for example. He's had a miserable go of it with the White Sox so far this year. Coming into play tonight he's hitting .176/.314/.309, he's struck out 80 times already this season and he's only hit 5 homeruns. This for a guy whose career hitting line is .248/.378/.514. The fact is that Adam Dunn has been one of the most consistent hitters in all of baseball for the better part of the last decade. His yearly homerun totals since 2004? 46,40,40,40,40,38,38. His yearly RBI totals? 102,101,92,106,100,105,103. There are very few players in baseball that are as consistent and yet the local media here in Chicago have been questioning not only the contract that Dunn signed, but also Dunn's abilities as a baseball player. Rarely is it mentioned that the guy had an appendectomy 2 weeks into the season. Few people have considered that this guy played every day in the field for the last 8 seasons and is now being asked to fill a role in which all he does is hit (DH). Even fewer people talk about the fact that Dunn changed leagues in coming to the White Sox and is now regularly facing pitchers whom he's never seen before. To top it off, no one is talking about the fact that teams are now playing a shift on him when he is at the plate, which was rarely, if ever, done prior to this season.

People who've been around baseball often say that "baseball is a game of adjustments." From my vantage point Adam Dunn has had a lot to adjust to...but in today's world it seems like everyone expects Dunn to make a seamless transition. And he's hardly the first or last example of this. Pujols is an even better example. People are going to question a guy who in 10 season put up numbers good enough to make him worthy of the Hall of Fame? Come on. I get the whole "what have you done for me lately" sentiment, but enough with the knee-jerk reactions and hair-trigger analyses. I know I'm just spitting into the wind with all of this, but I have a lot more respect for writers and sports commentators who put less stock in the day-to-day (or week-to-week as it were) and focus on the bigger picture. I feel like a lot of today's commentary, whether it be on sports, the economy, politics, etc, is fueled by impatience and short-sightedness.

Random Twins Stuff

Well, I made it. My wife and I bought our first house and closed at the end of April and then spent every evening of the next three weeks sanding, taping, painting, and moving. It was exhausting, but now it's all done and I can get back to the things I love to do, like writing about the Twins. I was able to very passively follow the Twins while this was all going on and I was just as happy to have the distraction since the team was playing so poorly. Happily as I've transitioned back in normal life, the Twins have started playing better. Thank you for bearing with this blog and thanks to Matt for picking up some of the slack. In news unrelated to the Twins, our very own Matt Larson was recently on Jeopardy! and not only was he on Jeopardy!, he managed to win his first round by $1. Congratulations Matt!

I'm not one to even bother reporting "site news" normally, but this is a little different. TheBatShatters recently joined the Baseball Bloggers Alliance which is a grouping of 298 (currently) baseball blogs. It's a pretty cool group, and you can expect to see a post or two now and again related to the BBA. If you want to check out their webpage, you can find it here. Well-known Twins blogger Seth Stohs (SethSpeaks) is the president of the Twins chapter of the BBA.

Odd and kinda scary news out of Twins camp this afternoon. It appears that Denard Span is suffering from some sort of vertigo or something that will keep him from playing for at least the next few days. ESPN1500 is reporting that D-Span is headed back to the Twin Cities to meet with doctors to try to figure out what is going on. What's odd is that it's likely not a concussion as D-Span was checked out for that recently following a collision at home plate during the series with KC. Unfortunately it's just another in a long line of injuries for the Twins who will now have to figure out a way of getting around the loss of their lead-off man for at least a couple of games.

Tsuyoshi Nishioka has begun a rehab assignment with the Fort Myers Miracle this week and it's been reported that he has been doing a lot of work with Paul Molitor on avoiding collisions at 2nd base. I wish I could find it, but I saw a pretty cool video on how they're trying to teach Nishioka the art of the jump throw. Basically they're tossing a beach ball at him while he makes throws to first, pretty clever idea if you ask me. Teammate and Twins superstar Joe Mauer has also started a rehab assignment of sorts with the Miracle and while he's not eligible to come off the DL until June 12th, it looks like things are headed in a positive direction (finally!) for Joe and I would expect to see him back with the Major League ballclub within a couple of weeks.

After the final two games of the series with the Indians, the Twins will start a 10-game homestand against the Rangers, White Sox and Padres and, in fact, 19 out of their next 25 games following the Indians series will be at Target Field. For a road-weary team this has got to be good news and it is giving me hope that maybe this team can go on a little run. Coming into play they are 11.5 games out, but with a couple of more wins tonight and tomorrow night they could cut that lead down to 9.5 and then you consider that there are still about 100 games left of the season and well...ok, let's not get carried away. Go Twins!

Now is the Time to Play it Smart

At 18-37, the Twins are effectively out of the race for the AL Central crown...this is not new news. They're 15.5 games behind Cleveland coming into play today and the astronomical win-loss record they would have to put together from this point forward to win even 90 games is on the edge of ridiculous (for those that are curious, they'd have to go 72-35 from here on out). Everyone and their mom around the interwebs is talking about how the Twins are likely going to be sellers come the trade deadline and while I don't disagree with that sentiment, it can not be said emphatically enough that now is the time for the Twins to be smart and play their cards right.

When you're a "seller" that means a) things haven't gone well for you this year and b)you're not expecting them to get better quickly enough to contend. In terms of getting a good deal, that leaves you at a disadvantage. When you're a seller, you're essentially trying to dump salary or perhaps get a load of prospects in return for a more valuable Major Leaguer. The one thing the Twins absolutely need to keep in mind throughout the next two months is that they have both Michael Cuddyer and Joe Nathan's salaries coming off the books at the end of the season. That's $21,750,000 in salary between those two players alone. In addition to that, Jason Kubel, Matt Capps, and Jim Thome's salaries are also expiring at the end of the season, good for another $15,400,000 off the payroll number. In total, that's $37,150,000 in salary coming off the books at the end of the season, which is about 33% of the current payroll figure ($113M). Granted, yes, you would have to replace those guys, but aside from Kubes you can probably pretty easily replace that production at a fraction of the cost.

So what's the point I'm trying to make? What I'm trying to highlight here is the fact that the Twins don't absolutely NEED to be sellers. Sure, it would be nice to get a couple of prospects for Kubel or Slowey, there isn't much debating that the farm system is in need of an influx in talent...but it isn't worth trading either player unless you're getting something decent in return. The Twins will have enough flexibility with the payroll at the end of this season to make a lot of changes, they don't need to make bad deals now to preemptively try and patch up the holes on a terrible team. The people in the Twins' front office need to be both shrewd and smart right now because for as bad as things look, there is no reason to panic.

I don't think there is much debate that the middle infield is of utmost concern for this team going into next season. That said, considering the investment that the Twins have made in Tsuyoshi Nishioka, it's unlikely that they will be in the market for a 2nd basemen in the off-season. Here's one option that's intriguing:

Kelly Johnson - 2B - Diamondbacks - 29-years-old
Johnson has had somewhat of a down year so far this season, but he owns a career .794 OPS and is a solid defensive 2nd-baseman as well. Johnson has legitimate 20-25HR power and though he does strikeout a lot, he has managed a career .347 OBP. Johnson is set to make $5.85M this season, but could probably be had for $6-$8M per and would be an immediate upgrade over any of the options the Twins currently have at 2nd base.

As for Shortstop, the Twins clearly have a need there. Here are some of the better options:

Jose Reyes - SS - Mets - 27-years-old
Though this is likely a long-shot for the Twins, it's at least worth mentioning that a shortstop of Reyes' caliber will likely be on the market at the end of this season (provided he doesn't re-sign before the end of the year). Reyes has a solid .774 career OPS and while he's no gold-glove at shortstop, he would be light-years better than anything the Twins have, both offensively and defensively.

J.J. Hardy - SS - Orioles - 28-years-old
I find this scenario unlikely as well, considering that a) the Twins traded him away for two garbage relievers and b) there were rumblings that the coaching staff wasn't that impressed with Hardy. The Twins would have to be stupid not to consider this option, however, because the fact of the matter is that the Twins are getting schooled this season on the importance of middle-infield defense and Hardy, when healthy, is about as good as it gets at shortstop.

Rafael Furcal - SS - Dodgers - 33-years-old
While Furcal is an older option, his .285/.350/.410 hitting line would fit nicely into the Twins lineup. With Furcal, the question is always "can he stay healthy" as he has seen significant DL time in 3 out of the last 4 seasons. When he has been healthy he been a good producer offensively and his glove, well, it's been good enough (.965 career Fielding% at SS). The tricky thing with Furcal is that if he reaches 600 PAs this year (unlikely), his $12M option for 2012 become automatic. I can't see the Dodgers picking up a $12M option on him otherwise, so it's likely that Furcal will be a free-agent at the end of this season.

Other options include Yuniesky Betancourt, Ramon Santiago, and Jack Wilson, but to be completely frank, none of those options are much better than the middle-infield options the Twins have had this season.

Given that the Twins will likely have $20-$30M to spend during this coming off-season, using $8M-$10M of that money to fix their shortstop problem should be a no-brainer and they really couldn't go very wrong with any of the three options above. I would be ecstatic to have Reyes, but I find that to be so unlikely, it's not even worth getting excited about. The bottomline with all of this is that the Twins don't need to be aggressive sellers in the next two months and, in fact, they shouldn't make a deal unless they're getting quality in return. Bill Smith could go a long way in repairing his image with Twins fans if he makes patient, smart moves this year that end up paying off next year or down the road.

Future HOFer?: Miguel Tejada

I'm in agreement with what Matt wrote the other day, I have almost zero interest in writing about the Twins. When I do I find that what I write is mostly negative (or sarcastic) and that's just not healthy. This blog originally started out covering Major League Baseball in general and I have no problem with it reverting back to that for the time being. It's one thing when the team you love has a run of bad luck because of injuries or the like. That stuff happens from time to time and, well, you re-group, get healthy and try again next year. It's another thing when the front-office of your favorite team makes poor decision after poor decision and hamstrings what should otherwise be a good team...especially when that front-office has a brand-new stadium and over $100M at their disposal. Anyway, the bottomline is that I don't want to write yet another negative post about this team, so I'm going to continue my series on potential future Hall of Famers, players who are towards the end of their career who have borderline Hall of Fame numbers. Today's subject is a somewhat controversial one: Miguel Tejada.

Miguel Odalis Tejada was signed as an amateur free-agent by the Oakland Athletics in 1993 at the age of 21. Tejada had been playing in the Dominican Republic and was showing signs of being a special talent there. He quickly made his way through the Minor Leagues, though surprisingly he was not a very good fielder at the time, committing 70 errors in his first 182 Minor League games. His bat was there though, including a decent degree of patience, sporting a 142:246 K:BB ratio through his first 3 MiL seasons. Tejada was called up to the Bigs in August of 1997 and finished out that season with the A's, hitting .202/.240/.333 in 104 PAs (23 games). In 1998 he didn't make the team out of Spring Training, but was called up at the end of May and played the rest of the season at SS for the A's, hitting .233/.298/.384 while committing 26 errors in 526 chances.

The 1999 season was when things really got going for Tejada. He didn't smack the cover off the baseball or anything, but he played the full season at shortstop and his numbers finally started to resemble his MiL numbers. In 159 games at shortstop, Tejada hit .251/.325/.427 with 21HRs, 93Rs and 84RBIs. He also improved on defense committing 21 errors in 784 chances, good for a .973 fielding percentage. From 1999 to 2006, Tejada compiled 34.9 WAR (4.36 average) and won the MVP award for the 2002 season. During that year he played in all 162 games, he hit .308/.354/.508, he hit 34HRs, drove in 131, compiled 204 hits and crossed home plate 108 times. To be honest, he didn't deserve the MVP award that year, and it wasn't even close. Alex Rodriguez should have won the MVP award as he hit .300/.392/.623 in 2002 and drove in 142 runs (10.0 WAR!!!) for the Rangers. That said, the Rangers finished last in the AL West while the Athletics won 103 games and captured the division crown. Even Nomar Garciaparra was more deserving of the MVP award for Red Sox team that fell just short of the playoffs...but hey, winning is everything and in this case, Tejada has the A's success in 2002 to thank for his MVP award.

Tejada hasn't exactly been the same since the 2006 season. Where he was once a perennial .800+ OPS guy, he hasn't hit that mark since the 2006 season and through 50 games this year with the Giants, his OPS sits at a Twins-esque .520. At 37 years old, Tejada is clearly in the twilight of his career, though others will chalk his decline up to being a former steroid user. In 2005 Tejada was part of a panel that testified before Congress about steroids in baseball, it was later found that he lied under oath and in 2009, he was charged with lying to Congress, he pled guilty, and he was sentenced to one-year of probation. So Tejada is a known steroid-user, which will likely be a nail in the coffin for his HOF chances...unless some people change their mind. From a statistical stand-point, Tejada has the numbers...though he is a fringe candidate which likely means he won't get in. I guess it will all depend on how the "Steroid Era" is viewed 5-7 years from now when Tejada is eligible for the Hall. I'll leave you with a highlight of his offensive achievements (through 5/31/11) and let you decide.

2,077 Games
8,893 Plate-Appearances
8,145 At-Bats
1,202 Runs Scored
456 Doubles
2,326 Hits
301 Homeruns
1,272 RBIs
Career .286/.336/.458 hitting line
Career .971 Fielding% between SS and 3B
6-time All-Star
1 MVP Award
2 Silver Slugger Awards
29th Among Active Players with 41.0 accumulated WAR

One interesting side-note about Tejada. He's been to the playoffs 4 different times, all with Oakland, and every single one of those teams lost in the first round

Fairweather Blogging

So this is what it must feel like to be a Royals blogger. Or a Pirates blogger. Or a Nationals blogger. For my generation of Twins fans, sustained stretches of losing haven't been a part of our baseball experience since our middle school and early high school years, before most kids are very interested in keeping up with the team on a daily basis, let alone trying to do advanced statistical analysis. This type of losing is something we haven't seen in over a decade, and it's frankly getting hard to watch. I have no desire to be a fairweather fan, and still care a great deal about this team, but as a blogger, there's not much left to say that hasn't been said already about the atrocious start to the season. I'm not trying to make excuses for the lack of content around here lately, but the reality is that my energy level for churning out Twins-related posts has taken a dive along with the team's record.

Does this make me a fairweather blogger? Does my lack of enthusiasm for churning out 1,000 words about why the Twins have somehow managed to have both the worst offense and worst pitching staff in baseball mean that I'm failing in my duty to the Twins blogosphere? Should I add another to the long line of "what's wrong with [insert name of almost any Twins player here]?" posts? What about a feature on the Marvelous Imploding Bullpen? (Worth their weight in negative WAR! Able to blow huge leads in a single inning!)  This feeling serves to solidify the respect I have for those people who have kept up blogs for losing teams even when it didn't appear that there was much light at the end of the tunnel. For the Royals, that light may be fast approaching. For other teams like the aforementioned Pirates and Nationals, the future maybe doesn't look quite so bright, but both are playing better baseball than the Twins at the moment. My point is that I'm getting a good sense of the dedication that it takes to write about a team that seems to be making mistake after mistake, each one compounding the next.

The situation in Minnesota for the future isn't necessarily all gloom and doom. There should be a good chunk of money coming off the books next year, Target Field should continue to provide a good revenue stream (although that shouldn't be taken for granted given the current quality of the on-field product), and the farm system has at least some glimmers of impact talent. However, the front office will certainly need to start making better personnel decision than the ones that contributed to this predicament in the first place (perhaps most notably sapping the organization of depth at middle infield and catcher), and if it gets to the point where we're looking at a firesale come July, it will need to be managed in a way that isn't getting pennies on the dollar in return. Potential changes using in-house options and teams that make logical trade partners are certainly worthy topics for posts in and of themselves, and I'm sure that at some point I'll be able to muster up some analytical willpower to try and produce some constructive suggestions for how to move this team forward. I just don't think that point is now. I'm headed to Target Field to see the Twins take on the Rangers on June 9th, and I have no doubt that I will enjoy every minute of it. I hope I'm not a fairweather fan, but bear with me as I figure out what it means to not be a fairweather blogger.

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.