Fire Gardy

Today’s game isn’t televised, so I have to listen to it on the radio. Worse, I’m not getting the Twins’ feed, so I have to listen to the Boston commentators. I’ll be updating this with my thoughts as the game progresses. We’ll see how this works, and maybe I can do it sometimes during the season.

Randy Keisler got the start today. I’m interested in learning why the Twins even have him in camp. He’s 32 years old and has never been good. I’m sure they have their reasons. I just want to know what they are. Non-roster invitees are pretty cheap, and easy to come by — they’re probably just trying to see what he can do. Still, I’d rather see Perkins, Blackburn, Mulvey, and the rest of the young guys get the starts (and innings) in Spring Training.

He shut down the Red Sox pretty effectively in the first inning though, giving up just one hit (a solid liner over the shortstop). Other than that, the Sox didn’t make good contact against him.

Gomez led off with a bloop single. He’s finally got his first hit as a Twin. He quickly followed it with a steal — on the first pitch by the left handed Lester. The catcher had no chance to get him out. The Boston commentator was very impressed by his speed. After Mauer drew a walk, Gomez took third on a wild pitch that got about five feet behind the catcher. On the next pitch, Delmon Young drew a walk — perhaps his prediction of drawing 50 walks if he bats in front of Morneau will turn out to be accurate. Morneau drove in Gomez with a weak bases loaded double play to the shortstop. He’s definitely going to need to take advantage of bases loaded, no out situations; he may have been pressing to do too much.

In the top of the second, Keisler gave up a walk, followed by a solid double to left-center that scored a run to tie it at 1-1. He must have been rattled by that, because he proceeded to walk the next two batters to load the bases. Gardy stormed angrily from the dugout and quickly yanked Keisler from the game. The commentator joked that Keisler’s tenure with the Twins organization might be close to an end. Given the organizational hatred for walks, I have to think they’re probably right. Blackburn replaced Keisler.

Blackburn’s first batter hit an easy grounder to second base, with the infield back. Casilla deemed that he didn’t have a shot at a double play … and fired the ball to the plate. Mauer stretched like a first baseman and we got the force out. Pretty gutsy play by Casilla, but if it works, do it.

The next batter hit a sharp grounder past third base, scoring two more runs. Delmon Young fielded it and fired to second, getting the hitter out as he tried to stretch it to a double. When we have Young/Gomez/Cuddyer in the outfield, teams are going to have to learn that they just can’t advance to the next base. That ended the inning, but it’s now 3-1.

Garrett Jones had men on first and second with no outs, and topped a weak grounder to the first baseman. A poor play by Casey allowed everyone to be safe, but I don’t like that hit. Morneau did that so often last year; stats guys see that stuff and think “his BABIP is too low, that’ll regress to the mean and he’ll get better,” but I find it difficult to believe that a weak grounder to first will slip through very often. I think these left handed power hitters just have to stay back, be patient, and try to make better contact. (Not all contact is the same, which is the problem I have with simply looking at BABIP.)

Lester’s day is done after walking Casilla to force a run in. That’s 4 walks and 5 runs in 1+ innings of work for Lester. The commentator said that Lester’s “biggest problem in his career has been throwing strikes,” which may be a big reason the Twins didn’t rate him as highly as the Red Sox in their Johan negotiations.

Delmon Young crushed an RBI base hit to right field. He hit it so hard that Casilla wasn’t able to score from second. That’s promising … if he can hit those such that they’re not directly at the outfielders, he’ll be getting a lot of extra base hits this year.

Jones made a diving catch in RF after completely misjudging a fly ball. He was extremely fortunate to be able to make that adjustment. It looks like he’s still not really an outfielder.

Rincon got through an easy 1-2-3 fourth inning. I like that.

Mauer led off the 4th with a base hit off Papelbon; he was then lifted for pinch runner Butera. This is the worst (and, in some cases, best) thing about Spring Training. By the end of the game, you’re not watching major league baseball any more.

Delmon Young followed with a strikeout on a pitch out of the zone. He definitely needs to work on his plate discipline.

Duensing looked good in his first inning of work; after giving up a leadoff bunt single (on which he was knocked down in a collision with the runner), he got a fly out to Gomez (or Pridie, the commentators are confused about who’s playing right now) and then proceeded to blow away Drew with a high fastball and get Casey to ground out to first.

His second inning wasn’t nearly as good. He gave up a single, then a walk, then a hard ground ball that hit him. He left the bases loaded with one out. He’ll have to make some adjustments after that inning; he completely lost his command, throwing 5 straight balls at one point. He left with an injury … hopefully it’s not too bad. I’m not getting any information about where the ball hit him.

Cali replaced him and promptly walked the first two batters he faced, forcing in a pair of runs. I haven’t been impressed by anything I’ve seen of this guy. Fortunately, he managed to stem the damage and prevent any further runs from scoring.

Mulvey replaced Cali and got through a quick 7th inning before giving up a leadoff home run in the 8th to tie the game at 6. It was a line drive homer to a backup catcher who’s never shown much power in the minors. He struggled mightily in that second inning of work, unable to get outs. It wasn’t all his fault; an error aided the enemy’s cause. But good pitchers can get around that. By the time the inning ended, we were losing 7-6.

Deolis Guerra came in to pitch the 9th. He gave up a couple of hits, but got out of the inning unscathed, including a strikeout. The worst thing to say about it is that the two hits were solid, but that’s getting nitpicky.

Despite the final outcome, and the increasing sloppiness as it progressed, this was actually a promising game. While the starters were in, the offense looked effective. The Mauer-Young-Morneau part of the lineup proved to be dangerous (although Morneau didn’t actually hold up his end of the bargain), and the hitters showed a lot of patience and drew plenty of walks. Blackburn, Rincon, and Guerra all pitched well. Adding Kubel and Cuddyer to the lineup and keeping the entire offense in there for the whole game will obviously make a big difference. Delmon got to show off his arm, and Gomez gave us a taste of what his speed can do when he gets on base.

The team actually did something today, which is definitely a step in the right direction. However, tomorrow’s game takes on increased significance; if we lose, the Red Sox will have already clinched the Mayor’s Cup, and it’s only the first weekend of Spring Training. The way I see it, we simply cannot allow that to happen. I’ll be hoping for the best lineup we can put on the field … although it’s probably not likely given that we’re facing Tim Wakefield.

That’s it for my post today … it grew pretty long! I’ll see if I can change my update pattern next time, to post only the most salient bits of information. I think the play-by-play stuff will get much less important once the games are actually televised, so I’ll probably try to nix that. And I expect that insights will be easier to glean from the game when I don’t have to listen to it on the radio.