Gallows Pole

Anyone else tired of hearing Gardy and Torii Hunter tell you not to panic?
Guess what assholes? It's time to panic.
Gardy told Pioneer Press columnist Tom Powers, "we're in a little bit of a funk."
Powers responded: A little bit of a funk? It's a Kool & the Gang type classic funk. It's a Gap Band, O'Jays, Curtis Mayfield type funk. Hey, it's the Commodores singing "Brick House" funk. Everything's pretty funked up.
Amen, brother.
Gardy, T-Ry, even TK, all deserve credit for how they, better than anyone else, have understood over the years that it's a long season. And there have been times when they were the only ones confident this team would be there at the end, and they were right.
That is why they do what they do for a living, and we sit at cubicles and bitch about them on message boards and fan blogs.
But now that I've put the obligatory respectful pleasantries out there, it's time to start ripping.
I'm going to go right down the list.

GM Terry Ryan - T-Ry has to go get someone. Now. The trade deadline is July 31, and usually any and all deals go down at or near the deadline. But by July 31 the Twins could be 16 games out (they're 9 back right now in case you missed it.) Reds third baseman Joe Randa is a veteran .300 hitter with decent power and a very good glove. He is signed only through this year for a very modest 2.15 million. (Come to think of it, for 2.15 million why the hell didn't the Twins sign this guy in the offseason? He's a really good player. For that cheap I wouldn't mind if the Twins signed him for the next 3 years.)
Kyle Lohse, Michael Cuddyer, Dave Gassner, Matthew LeCroy and Michael Ryan are all guys that we can part with rather easily.
Once Randa is acquired for Cuddyer and Lohse, it's time to look for a lefty pitcher.
However, I suggest the Twins consider Gassner, a Jamie Moyer type who you may remember won his big league debut early this year in a brief callup, or Francisco Liriano.
Liriano is probably the top pitching prospect in the Twins entire organization. He's just 21, but was recently promoted to AAA, where he struck out 8 in 6 innings allowing just one run in his first start. Yeah, he's 21, but JC and Mulholland suck.
Remember when the Angels called up Francisco (K-Rod) Rodriguez in 2002? He was 21, and they wouldn't have won the World Series without him. Liriano could provide that kind of boost.
Terry, your team can't hit. And contrary to conventional wisdom, they don't catch it all that well, either. And lately, they can't seem to pitch.
There's enough talent here to win 85 games almost by accident, but it should be apparent by now that 85 wins won't get it done this year.

Gardy - Glad that Gardy moved Morneau back to the cleanup spot even though he's struggling. Batting him in front of Cuddyer is absolutely horrendous lineup-making. In all honesty I'm having a hard time blaming any of this on my favorite whipping boy, because T-Ry hasn't given him very good toys to play with.
Just one thing, though. Get Shannon Stewart out of the outfield and put Ford out there. I don't care if it'll hurt Stewie's feelings - ask the pitchers who THEY'D rather have out in left.
Gardy said today in the paper that his team needed veterans. Well, maybe you and the rest of the staff should've considered that before you set out on a voyage to the World Series with a AAA infield and a 22-year old catcher.
Gardy knows how to handle players, his strength as a manager has always been the intangibles. But I sense that he's getting close to blowing his top.
Fine by me.
Let 'em have it Gardy. Maybe the problem with having such a young team is that they're all just happy to be in the league.
Maybe sending Cuddyer and Morneau to AAA for a week would snap some sense into them. Time to remind them they're here to win a goddamn pennant.

Pitching coach Rick Anderson - Might be the best in the business. He could prove it by figuring out why in the Goddamn Hell we have to be behind 2-0 at the end of the 1st inning every single night.

Hitting coach Scott Ulger - Fire him. Today. Now. Yesterday. This man has not one success story he can put on his resume. He has done absolutely nothing. Our hitters are being put down by mediocre pitchers with the quiet efficiency of a lethal injection.
Stick a wheelchair in the dugout and bring back Tony O.
Or, if you REALLY want to shake things up, bring in someone like Gary Gaetti or Brian Harper, or, if he'd take the job, Kirby Puckett.
It might help to have a hitting coach who ACTUALLY HAD MORE THAN 11 HITS IN HIS MAJOR LEAGUE CAREER!!!!!

And the players:
C Joe Mauer - Joe's doing a pretty good job. Probably deserves less blame than anyone on the 25 man roster. Maybe it's unfair to expect a 22-year old to do more than hit .297 with average power while playing the most demanding position on the field.
Too damn bad. They told us Joe was the next Ted Williams, or at least the next Don Mattingly.
All right then. Let's see a little more.

1B Justin Morneau - Justin is quickly drawing the ire of Twins fans, media, and presumably, front office. Early on it looked like he was going to hit .350 with 30 homers.
Unfortunately, he's been doing a spot-on Scott Stahoviak impression lately. He's been ornery, too. He got his panties in a bunch about Torii telling him to toughen up and play thru injuries (Wake up Justin...This is Torii's team. It's his job to tell you to suck it up!)
Then he got pissy about Gardy moving him around in the lineup, and it seems like he spends most of each game arguing with an umpire who just called his ass out on a pitch on the corner after he had just swung at one at his eyeballs.
I'm not kidding, send him to Rochester. Just for a week. See how he likes that. Garrett Jones, the AAA first baseman, is a big power hitting lefty, too. Bring him up for a week, see what happens.

2B Luis Rivas - Keep trying Luis. Until Punto comes back you're all we've got.
Actually, if we get Randa, Cuddyer will move to second, unless Cuddyer is who we trade to get Randa. Then, well, we wait for Abernathy to come off the DL, then Punto.

SS Juan Castro - Hard to complain here. They said he was gold glove material - and he has been. They said he won't hit much - and he hasn't.
But if Bartlett gets hot (he's hitting .307 at AAA right now) he might deserve another shot.

3B Michael Cuddyer - It'll be hard for me to hold back, here. This guy is really pissing me off. No one is expecting him to be everything Corey Koskie was, but Denny Hocking had better years than this.
And it's not just the ugly numbers, he looks terrible. He's got the deer in the headlights look when the ball is hit to him, and he's got it whenever he's up with men on base. This guy is the human rally killer.
The Twins have been blabbing about this prick for six years. He's starting to look to me like the quintissential "AAAA" player. Dominates AAA, stinks in the bigs.
I think part of his problem is that he's reading the papers too much. He obviously knows that all of Twins Territory hates him right now.
Trade him while he still has some value. Every 0-for-4 he racks up makes him less and less tradable.

OF Torii Hunter, Jacque Jones, Shannon Stewart, Lew Ford - Except for JJ, these guys are almost totally exempt from blame.
Stewie has been his usual consistent self. He's setting the table, but no one is coming to dinner. He does, however, stink in the outfield.
Lew isn't putting up out of this world numbers, but he's been very consistent, especially with runners on.
Jacque has been somewhat of a dissapointment. He's not hitting much, and lately he's been screwing up in the outfield. I think we can finally say with some certainty that this is his last year with the Twins.
Torii Hunter, however, has been without question the team MVP. He still isn't putting up the numbers he's capable of, but he's on pace for about 25 homers, 30 steals and 110 RBIs. The catch he made last night was brilliant.
This guy gives 150 % every night, and at times, he seems to be the one guy who actually cares if the team wins.
It's evident just watching how he handles himself on the field, this guy wants to win.
That's why he told Morneau to stop being a pussy - that's why he told Kevin Brown to suck it - that's why he slams into walls and scrapes up his knees and elbows on the turf - that's why, even though Mauer, Morneau, Santana, etc, get all the hype as the future of the team, the Twins are Torii's team.
While I'm always waiting for him to take it to another level on the field, the best thing he can do is stay on these young guys' case - "Hey assholes, I'm trying to win a pennant over here, wanna give me a hand?"

DH/PH Matt LeCroy - I know we all love this guy but seriously. Couldn't Juan 'The Large Human' Thomas do what he's doing?

SP Radke, Santana, Lohse, Mays, Silva - Silva, Mays and Lohse (last night's stinker notwithstanding) have either met or exceeded expectations for this year. I'd like 'em to be better but they won't be. Period.
As for Santana and Radke? They just need to get it together. Tighten the screws. They're doing all right, but not good enough. No more time to dick around. Start getting some fucking W's.

RP Rincon, Crain, Romero, Mulholland, Nathan, Guerrier - Same thing here. Just do a better job, please. Throw fucking strikes. Stop beaning hitters. That's the same as a walk, you know.

The White Sox are good. So are the Indians and Tigers. Even the Royals aren't too bad since they fired the Worst Manager in Baseball History.
Maybe the Twins thought the pennant was going to be handed to them. Right now it looks like Ozzie Guillen's got a pretty tight grip on it.