Bringing the pain

(You can see Rondell White's enthusiasm for the game in this photo: "Ain't no motherfuckin' way I'm playing 162 of these motherfuckers")

Today I will highlight all that went wrong for the Twins this year. If you're a Circle-me-Bert-sign holding, Lew Ford-loving, Dick Bremer-kool aid-drinking, Piranha T-shirt-wearing weenie who thinks everything written about the Twins should be a bed-time story about how they hustle and play hard and have a small payroll, you might want to avert your eyes. This is gonna get ugly.

Terry Ryan got right to work in fucking this team up.
He picked up the option on Carlos Silva. Seemed questionable at the time, but worked out okay. But then he resigned Lew Ford, Rondell White and Nick Punto. Those three moves alone should probably have called his sanity into question. But it didnt end there.

Ramon Ortiz was signed to a 1 year $3.1 million deal and guaranteed a spot in the rotation.
Sidney Ponson was signed to a 1 year, $1 million deal, and while the public was told he had to earn a spot in the rotation, it was clear he had the team had every intention of making him the 5th starter from the day he signed.

The only move made that wasn't terrible was the signing of 3B Jeff Cirillo, and that turned out to be somewhhat disappointing. There was no real insurance for Punto and White's totally predictable fall.

It's possible the Twins could've survived these moves had they been corrected, or if the rest of the team overachieved, two things that happened in 2006, allowing the team to recover from similar preseason mistakes.

But the Twins are still at this moment running Punto out to 3B every day, even as he threatens some of the most historically bad hitting performances of all time. Meanwhile countless cheap and serviceable hitters changed teams without the Twins getting in on any of it, except for ridding themselves of two infielders (Cirillo and Luis Castillo) who actually had some value.

Again, Ryan comes off as looking woefully inept on this front.

But not all the blame can go to the front office.
Some players didn't live up.
Injuries certainly have played a factor, but Joe Mauer has had a flat-out disappointing year. .294 with 5 homers is good, but with the rest of the lineup what it is, the Twins clearly need more from him.

Yes, he's still one of the top hitting catchers around, but just because he plays a position where less offense is expected doesn't let him off the hook. The Twins didnt draft him No. 1 overall to hit .294 with 5 homers, no matter how pretty his OBP is.

Michael Cuddyer, like Mauer, has been a minor disappointment. His line of .277/.355/.442 is more in line for a 7 hitter, not a cleanup hitter.

I could write for an hour about all the ways Punto has hurt the team offensively, but that's the Twins' fault for expecting a mediocre utility player to be anything more than a terrible everyday player.

I'll admit, I expected Rondell White to be decent this year. Maybe 350-400 at-bats, a .280 average with 12 homers. Never should've brought him back. Fool me once, shame on...well you know.

I also really thought Jason Kubel would have big year, something along the lines of .280-20 homers. He might be closer if Gardy would commit to playing him every day, but regardless of who's at fault, he's been a disappointment.

Juan Rincon's steroids wore off, and now he's terrible.
Dennys Reyes has been effective when healthy, but since he's been hurt a lot, he hasn't been able to recreate last year.

Overuse probably has something to do with it, but Pat Neshek has been getting roughed up of late.

Jason Bartlett and Luis Castillo were maybe a little less effective than last year, but not enough for them to accept any blame for what has happened. Same goes for Johan Santana. Same goes for Justin Morneau. Morneau's average has dropped to .284 from last years .321, and he has hit only 1 homer in the last month, but I dont think you can complain about 29 HRs, 95 RBI and a .527 SLG with another month still to go. Plus his defense has continued to improve. Mike Redmond did a serviceable job of subbing for Mauer when he was hurt.

There are only three players on the entire Twins roster who performed better than I expected they would this year: Torii Hunter, the team's MVP this year, Carlos Silva and Matt Guerrier. I guess you could include Scott Baker and Matt Garza, but I'm honestly not that surprised by the success those two have had.

Last year, with the whole Tony Batista-Juan Castro thing, I just figured Terry Ryan had a bad year. My feeling that he's one of the top GMs in baseball did not change.

But after this year, I'm not so sure. He was in charge of a team with enough talent that competing in the AL Central was a very reasonable expectation. But not only did he fail to improve it, he actually made it worse. He simply failed at his job this year, miserably.

I'm optimistic that he knows this, and has plans in store to make up for it in '08. We'll see.

It was pretty much over, hopefully now it's like, really over

I hope you weren't enough of a sap to fall for the Twins latest "threat" to get back into the AL Central race.
I wasn't.
They won five in a row because the Orioles are the worst team in baseball right now. Once they had to play a real major league baseball team, the Twins once again showed their true colors.
If the Indians were to split their remaining 30 games 15-15, the Twins would have to go 24-5 to win the division.
It's over.

Considering the overall significance of the moment, and all that had happened in the first 132 games and 8 innings, I think Nick Punto's failed bunt in the 9th might be the most significant at-bat for the Twins since AJ Pierzynski's homer off Billy Koch.
It symbolized everything that is wrong with this team, everything that has gone wrong this year.
He's hitting .196, he's terrible, he has no business in the lineup in the first place, but there he is with a chance to contribute by completing a very simple task - get down a bunt. Something your average high school player can do.
And he failed. Again. It's beyond the point of benching Punto for the good of the team, he should be benched for his own good. If Gardy cares about these guys as much as he says he does, he should take Punto out of the lineup to save him from further embarrassing himself. There's a very good chance that this will go down as the worst offensive season by a player in ML history.

*Johan Santana's 4-run, two-homer 1st inning should disqualify him from the Cy Young award. I still think he's the best starter in the game, but he leads the league in homers allowed, and its not like he's just giving up a single, solo homer a game. It's been more than that, and Santana, with an 0-4 record against the 1st place team in the division, hasn't exactly stepped up when the team needed him this year.

*Carmen Cali in the 8th, in a one-run game? Seriously?

*Jason Bartlett leads the Twins in slugging percentage since the All-Star break (.518).

*Joe Mauer is hitting .274 with a .364 slugging percentage since the break. And he's out with hamstring problems again.

*Michael Cuddyer has very quietly failed to repeat last years numbers. He hasn't been bad, but he's hit like a No. 7 hitter, not a cleanup hitter.

*Jason Tyner is on fire. This is the high point of his career.

*Rondell, if you're really going to retire, would you please bring Punto with you. And Lew Ford. And Ron Gardenhire.

Rot in Hell...but rot in prison first

Every time I look at my dogs, I think of Ron Mexico, er, Mike Vick, and what a complete piece of shit waste of sperm he is.

Then I think about how he's going to spend the next year to year and a half tossing gangsta salads and giving hummers for cigarettes, and I don't feel so bad.

A year to 18 months doesn't seem long enough to me, because anyone capable of committing such atrocities is, in my opinion, a danger to society, not just a danger to dogs.

But he probably won't ever play in the NFL again, which probably means he'll find his way back to jail again someday after he gets out.

I mean he is related to Marcus Vick, after all.

Their dad, Michael Boddie, a former army vet who sired Mr. Mexico at age 17, must've been one hell of a dad.

(P.S. - If you don't know anything about the 'Ron Mexico' incident, or the exploits of Marcus Vick, look them up for some entertainment)

Forget the offense, how 'bout the pitching

The Twins have scored a major league worst 112 runs in 35 games since the All-Star break, an average of 3.2 runs a game. The Yankees have scored 271 runs since the break.

One more time for those of you who read slow.
NYY - 271 runs since All-Star break.
MIN - 112 runs since All-Star break.

The Twins should probably be something like 10-25 in those 35 games, but they are actually a respectable 17-18. Just this weekend, they took 2 of 3 from Texas while scoring three runs in the whole series.

The reason has been the starting pitching, Boof Bonser notwithstanding.

Johan Santana's near perfect outing Sunday lowered his ERA to 2.88, while he has posted 191 K's and allowed just 138 hits in 175 innings. He's only won 13 games, but if he can get to 17, and keeps his other numbers steady, he can still win another Cy Young award.

Matt Garza has a 2.05 ERA in 7 starts, and I think he's very close to being an elite starter already. He's probably the No. 2 starter, a potential All-Star.
Meanwhile Scott Baker has been better than even I would've thought possible, and I've been one of the only people defending him. Baker is 6-5 with a 4.53 ERA, and has 73 Ks in 99 innings, in which he's allowed 103 hits.
It'll be interesting to see if Baker remains a part of the Twins long-term plans with so many other young pitchers looking to make their mark. The way he's been going, it'd be tough to leave Baker out of the picture.
Even Carlos Silva has been good this year, with a 4.17 ERA in 25 starts.
The weakest link has been the only guy anyone liked besides Johan before the year, Boof Bonser.
0-8 in his last 12 starts, Bonser's ERA is now at 4.93. He's allowed 165 hits and 53 walks in 144 innings, for an alarming WHIP of 1.51.
The Strib reported this weekend that the team has acknowledged talking to Boof about losing some weight. He's currently at about 260, and the fact that he is always good for the first 3 or 4 innings then runs into trouble certainly suggests stamina could be a problem.
Whether or not that works remains to be seen, but I think Bonser will have a good career, possibly as a closer or set-up man, if he doesn't get it together as a starter.
Really, 4.93 isn't terrible for a guy in his first full major league season. He'll be fine.

The problem the Twins are running into is too many starters.
Looking at their minor league system, there are endless possibilities for the rotation.
Santana
Silva
Bonser
Garza
Baker
Kevin Slowey
Glen Perkins
Nick Blackburn
Francisco Liriano
Jeff Manship
Yohan Pino
Oswaldo Sosa
Anthony Swarzak
Brian Duensing

Seriously, all of these guys are going to pitch in the majors, and all of them could be very good.
Someone is going to have to either be traded or moved to the bullpen.

They should be creative here.
It sounds like the Twins are going to try to correct Juan Rincon rather than get rid of him after this year. With a sudden lack of depth in the bullpen, I guess they might as well, but I'm not optimistic he's salvageable.
Jesse Crain's injuries are quite serious, and I'm not optimistic about him either.

So there will likely be openings in the 'pen.
Silva says he wants to come back, so I say bring him back and stick him in the pen.
I'd probably trade Joe Nathan for some offense, make Liriano or Bonser the closer.
It'll be interesting to see what they do, but either way, they're in very good shape, and while they're still lacking offense in their minor league system, it's better to be overloaded with pitching, I think.

*Roadrunners season over
Despite finishing 3-7 in league play during the regular season, the Renner Roadrunners amateur team, boldly, courageously, brilliantly managed by a terrific .264 hitter named Matt Zimmer, played to the second to last day of the season, finishing in the Class A final four.
We faced elimination in district play, and three times in the state tournament, and kept winning to keep playing.
But our luck ran out Saturday, as we were eliminated by eventual runner-up Brookings.
Playing the state tournament at the Birdcage was a lot of fun. It was a great year, the most fun I've had in amateur ball in a long time.
For the first time in my life, I'm sad the season is over. Usually by this time, I'm ready for it to end. As I write this, I already can't wait for next year. We'll be back in the hunt.

No, Jason Tyner isn't a good player (and a trade)

People, you really have to get it out of your head that batting average is a good way to judge a player.
There's nothing wrong with hitting .300, certainly, and even a .279 average, like the one Jason Tyner carries, can, in the proper context, be decent.
The proper context being like, 25 homers or 100 walks or something.

Jason Tyner is a .279 hitter with no power who draws few walks. He makes an out about 67 percent of the time, and when he does get on base, it's a single or walk 90 percent of the time. Again, getting on base is getting on base, but a guy who can hit a gap or clear a fence once in awhile, say Jason Kubel, is more valuable even if his average is lower.
I will admit to being something of a stat nerd and subscriber to sabermetrics, so you'll have to bear with me as I drop some nerd-knowledge on you.
Tyner's OPS+ this year is 82. For his career it's 62 (really bad). The best OPS+ he's ever had was 98.

I know what your'e thinking. You have no idea what OPS+ means.
An OPS+ of 100 is average. So a guy with a 119 OPS+ is 19 percent better than average. A guy at 79 is 21 percent below average.
Again, Jason Tyner, 82 this year (18 percent below average) 62 for his career (38 percent below average).

If you still think Jason Tyner should be anything more than a pinch-hitter, this, stolen from AaronGleeman.com, should do it.

"Even with an improved approach at the plate, Tyner's complete lack of secondary skills make him one of the rare hitters who can avoid having significant value even when batting .300. Despite a .271 career batting average (including an even .300 with the Twins), Tyner's OPS is just .624. When compared to the league average, that ranks as the second-worst OPS of any outfielder with at least 1,250 plate appearances in the past 50 years:

                      PLAYER     LEAGUE      DIFF
Peter Bergeron         .612       .786      -.175
JASON TYNER            .624       .765      -.141
Doug Dascenzo          .590       .715      -.125
David Hulse            .644       .763      -.120
Darren Lewis           .645       .764      -.116
Eric Owens             .664       .780      -.116
Brian Hunter           .660       .773      -.113
Adrian Brown           .666       .779      -.113
Chuck Carr             .649       .760      -.112
Milt Cuyler            .631       .739      -.109

What's amazing is that Tyner's .271 batting average is the highest of anyone on the above list and four of the other nine hitters batted .250 or worse (including Peter Bergeron at .226). In other words, not only is he incredibly unproductive, Tyner is the epitome of an "empty batting average." Tyner hasn't lost much speed yet and possesses just enough range defensively to be passable in center field, which makes him at best a "textbook" fifth outfielder."

It's nothing personal. I kinda like the guy, too. He's better than Lew Ford. He's a decent pinch-hitter because he makes contact. But DH'ing him is embarrassing, and giving him regular at-bats is well, lame. He is, the above numbers prove, a historically unproductive offensive player.

*The Twins traded Ramon Oritz to Colorado for IF Matt Macri.
Macri, stunningly, appears to be a decent prospect, someone the Rockies liked. He can play 2b, ss and 3b, and was hitting .298 at Double-A before a callup to Triple-A where he went 6-for-9 before the trade. He's probably already a better player than Nick Punto.
I wouldn't count on him being an all-star or anything, but he appears to be a guy who can help at the major league level.
The fact that the Twins got a better return for a failed 5th starter-turned-mop-up reliever than they did for an all-star and gold glove 2B shows how desperate the Twins were to simply clear space so Alexi Casilla could begin training on the job at 2b.
The signing of Ortiz wouldn't have bothered me had it been cheap, like the Sidney Ponson deal, but for $3.1 million I hated it. I predicted before the year he would go 13-11 with a 4.86 ERA, and was only that optimistic based on his strong spring. It looked like he was on his way after a strong start in April, but he started getting hammered and the Twins gave him a quick hook, banishing him to the mopup role in the pen.
Another failed experiment from Terry Ryan, but the acquisition of Macri allows him to save face somewhat.

You Get What You Deserve

With all the throwing things at the TV, gnashing of teeth and calling for the jobs of Ron Gardenhire and Terry Ryan, one thing is clear.
This team is ill-equipped to compete in any division, so acting surprised at this point doesn't make any sense.

I don't know why exactly, but Ryan clearly made the decision that he didn't think he needed any offensive help before the season, that they could win with what they had.
When that proved to be wrong, he still had plenty of time to make adjustments, as Detroit and Cleveland faltered, but he did nothing. His decision to trade Luis Castillo, waive Jeff Cirillo and add nothing is/was clearly a white flag.

People are shouting about how they don't want to watch this team anymore, and I don't blame them. But folks, this isn't about guys failing to meet standards, it's about a team failing to provide itself with any Plan B options once their tenuous Plan A options predictably failed.

I thought Nick Punto might be bad this year, but by bad I was thinking along the lines of .240, not .200 with an inability to even lay down a sac bunt. He is without a doubt the worst everyday player in the major leagues. And this one is hard to blame on Terry Ryan, since Gardy was in such a hurry to proclaim Punto his 3B at the end of last year.
Most real baseball fans refused to embrace the whole 'piranhas' thing last year even when the players it pertained to were playing well. The reason? We knew it was bullshit. We were right.

Dumping Castillo was the right thing to do, because these last two months of playing time will probably prove invaluable to Alexi Casilla as he prepares to play every day next season.
If he's healthy, Jason Kubel needs to play every single inning the rest of the way.
This team is not going to win, so playing Punto, Rondell White or Jason Tyner is a complete waste of time. If Brian Buscher comes back, play him every day. Call up Matt Tolbert and Denard Span, and get them some PT, too.

At least that might be worth watching. Pretending you're still in the race, and thinking the best way to stay there is by playing Punto, White and Tyner, is a fucking joke, and no one is laughing.

Takin' the weekend off

*Seriously, if someone had shown this picture to Terry Ryan or Ron Gardenhire, maybe they never would've let him open the season as the starting 3B.

*You all knew, like I did, that the Twins 11-run burst on Wednesday was a total fluke, and that was proven when they were shutout by KC's Kyle Davies on Thursday.
At this point, I don't care if the Twins are a half-game out, the way they're playing right now, talking pennant race is a joke.
I just hope they're able to stay above the .500 mark and extend their club record streak of consecutive winning seasons to 7.

But I won't be watching this weekend. That's because me and the Roadrunners leave Friday for Yankton to compete in the Class A state amateur baseball tournament.
We are 11-11, but I think most people look at us as a dark horse, as we've underachieved all year. We've got a chance, but the Class A field is loaded this year. And we've got some injuries.
But we made it, so we might as well try to win the thing.
Wish us luck.

Not even this picture can cheer me up

Why do I keep falling for this shit?
A couple 3-2 wins and everyone (including me, I admit) starts going "We're only 4 1/2 games back! We're gonna do it again, just like last year! Here we come!"

Uhh, no.
The Twins pitching is good. Maybe even great.
Their offense blows dog.
This team can't make the playoffs. Not with a Texas-League lineup.

71 runs since the All-Star break, which is 14 fewer than any other team.
Just because the Twins have two elite offensive players (Justin Morneau and Torii Hunter) and two good ones (Michael Cuddyer and Joe Mauer) doesn't mean they can score runs consistently. Especially since those four are all slumping now anyway.

The rest of the lineup is poop. Runny, smelly poop.

One new bat isn't gonna do it. I am actually starting to think not making a deal was the right move. It probably would've been a waste.

It's '05 all over again. They're gonna finish 84-78. If they keep pitching.

A long weekend but a good one

It was quite a weekend.
First there was the bridge collapse. It just didn't seem right to go on a blog and bitch about the Twins in light of that tragedy, so TwinsTown stayed quiet.
Saturday I was at United Bowl III for work. I'm only marginally entertained by Storm games usually, but this was one of the best football games I've ever seen. It was just amazing. I couldn't believe how loud the Arena got. It was an incredible atmosphere. A lot of fun.
And Sunday, the Roadrunners were winning a pair of elimination games to land the final bid to the Class A state amateur baseball tournament.
We had lost seven of eight, and entered the day needing to win two to punch our ticket, which we did. We even beat the regular season league champion on their home field in the clincher. Cool.

So that's why it's been quiet here for a few days, and also why this entry will be short.
I'm just too damn tired. Exhausted. I know that the Twins are miraculously 4 1/2 games out of first. The Twins are still not that good of a team. But at the moment, neither are Cleveland or Detroit, so here we are.

Scott Baker. 3.13 ERA last nine starts. Told ya he'd be good.