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.