I’d like to blame by entry dry spell on the Twins, and that would be half right. The new job and the fact the Twins have been in the hunt have kept me either furiously typing email or a little more glued to the TV than normal. I typically watch an inning here and there of just about every Twins game during the season, but over the last few weeks I had been hanging on every pitch.
Becky and I celebrated our 10th anniversary with a little trip to a nearby town for a weekend sans enfants (pardon me for that, I’m heading to Montreal for work this week and trying to get mentally prepared to dust off my French). I made her sit in the bar area during the close of the Saturday night game which they ultimately lost 4-2 when they had numerous chances to win. As soon as they lost that game I figured they were going to be done. They had too many games down the stretch where one decent pitch or hit would’ve put their opponent away but they couldn’t come up with it. It didn’t help that Morneau was an absolute mess at the plate the last few weeks of the season.
For the White Sox/Tigers game last Monday, I donned my Tigers shirt my mother-in-law had mistakenly purchased for me about 4 years ago, thinking it was a Duke Blue Devils shirt. I even picked up a Tigers hat for $4 over the weekend in anticipation of that game. Of course, the Tigers blew it and forced the Twins to do their own dirty work on Tuesday. As has been the case during the past few playoff series, when the Twins get into a playoff game, they can’t hit. Even though we finished with the 3rd highest runs scored in the league, it had to be a bit of a mirage. A .310 (or so) batting average with runners in scoring position was unsustainable and with Morneau in a funk, our team was reduced to Span and Punto taking walks and Mauer occasionally ripping another single.
I, like everybody in the media, was not predicting much from this team this year. I had them finishing with 77 wins, so obviously I’ll take 88. But 88 wins without a playoff birth is pretty worthless anyway. The only was it’s helpful is if it’s clear you had some people emerge that are going to help you long term and help you get back to the playoffs. I’m afraid Cleveland is going to own the playoffs in our division for a few years (if they add a SP and a closer) and we’re going to be treading water around the .500 mark. I say that because while we have Mauer and Morneau (and Nathan although he could be used more), the rest of our team is pretty average and we still have some big holes.
The frustrating thing is we traded a top pitcher in Garza for a LF who’s not a good defender and showed very little improvement at the plate. I’m afraid Delmon Young is going to be an albatross around us for several years to come. I realize he hit .290, but it was about as empty as it could be – a .336 on-base percentage and a .405 slugging percentage is awfully bad for a poor defensive left fielder. They say he’s going to improve, but it’s been 3 years (1 in the minors and two in the majors) of this type of good batting average, very little power, no patience type approach. If he’s hitting .275 with a .320 on base percentage next June, we need to send him back to the minors or dump him – we can’t put up with that lack of performance from a position where hitting is expected. I’d love to see if we could trade him for something – I was not a fan of him coming into the year and don’t think he’s going to magically improve.
Going into 2008, we had holes at SS, 3B, LF (or we could play Kubel which is what I would’ve done) and CF. We still have holes at SS, 3B and LF and the guy who should be filling CF is Denard Span, not Carlos Gomez. Gomez is a great CF and I love to watch him chase down balls, but he’s easy for anyone who’s scouted him to get out at the plate. He typically can’t catch up to fastballs inside and he’s a sucker for offspead off the plate away. He’ll swing at just about anything, so as long as you don’t hang a breaking ball over the middle of the plate, you should have him. He really needs to go back to the minors or an instructional league or something to learn how to hit different pitches.
There has been some speculation from the team that we’d try to get Adrian Beltre to play 3B and Orlando Cabrera to play SS next year. I think we need to upgrade in both places, and Beltre is an upgrade, but he’s worth about exactly what he’s being paid $12 mil, so I wouldn’t give up much of anything to get him. Cabrera is 34 and on the downturn of his career – I don’t know why we’d want him.
If I were king of the Twins world (and I may soon have connections to Mr. Smith since a friend of ours is going to work for the Twins), I would send Gomez and Delmon out to the minors or trade them, start Kubel, Span and Cuddyer in the OF, find a cheap DH (Dallas McPherson!) and find help at either SS or 3B. They could fill out their team pretty well by getting Mark Ellis to play 2B, putting Casilla at SS and getting Joe Crede to play 3B. With McPherson or Juan Rivera at DH the team would be pretty good and have good infield defense (Ellis and Crede are both plus defenders).
I wouldn’t touch the pitching staff. I’ve never really liked Perkins, so if someone in the minors stepped up, I’d be happy to move him to the bullpen. With Nathan, Neshek and (all of a sudden) Mijares as our top 3 and Guerrier, Crain and a long guy behind him, we should be fine. Breslow has been good too, but we need to make sure we have someone who can go 3+ innings to help in extra inning games and really short starts. I’d like to have Perkins take that role on long-term.
Eric's space 