Fire Gardy

I was at the game last night. I stood, huddled out of the rain for two hours while a torrential downpour punished US Cellular Field (presumably for those dorky pinwheels). Finally, they started the game at 9 o’clock, despite the fact that it was still drizzling. I was not bullish on the team’s chances in the game. For one thing, they’d looked awful the night before. Secondly, Buerhle was pitching, and he always kills the Twins. And Monroe was in the 3-hole and Redmond-Tolbert-Punto were in a row. And the field was soaked. I said to my brother: “What are the odds the Twins score a run tonight?”

Well Carlos Gomez greeted me by crushing the third pitch of the game, lining it hard over the fence in left. When he makes contact on those “Who cares if I’m swinging way too hard?” swings, the ball can really sail. The Twins had scored a run, and beaten the odds.

Thankfully, the offense exploded for 13 runs on 16 hits, while Livan Hernandez took a shutout into the 9th (and promptly lost it when Jermaine “Roid Rage” Dye put one over the fence). And Carlos Gomez hit for the cycle … entertainingly, in reverse order — homer, triple, double, single. This is one of those dizzying highs for Gomez’s season, and I’m certainly enjoying it.

In the 5th inning, the Twins were putting a good threat together. Men on first and second, nobody out. Punto steps up to the plate. At the time, it was a 1-0 game, and it seemed this would be our chance to break the game open against Buerhle. Punto bunted, and proceeded not to run to first. Redmond was thrown out at third (it kind of negates the point of a sacrifice bunt if the guy on base is too slow to advance to the next base). It was a tough slide, and almost knocked Crede down … but he still had time to notice that Punto was still standing at home plate and set himself to throw Punto out. Quickly, the promising inning was no more thanks to a certain Nick Punto. (Gomez promptly tripled home a run, and Punto finished his game by hitting a couple of doubles and driving in 5 runs, so I guess someone really lit into him in the dugout. My guess is it wasn’t Gardy.)

(Quick aside: Over the offseason, Punto apparently worked out with Manny Ramirez. I wondered, at the time, what that would result in. Would Punto gain some strength at be able to hit a home run? Would Manny start playing with reckless abandon while trying to justify his contract? Neither seemed that believable. But last night, we finally discovered what Punto learned while hanging out with Manny: “Manny being Manny.” He put down that bunt and just stood there in the batter’s box, admiring his splendid work, just like Manny does when he pounds a homer (or near-homer). The thing is, “Punto being Punto” doesn’t have the same ring to it.)

This game really was incredible. It’s what you’d expect the first place team to be able to do once in a while. And excellence (13 runs, Gomez’s cycle, Livan’s gem) managed to completely overshadow utter incompetence (Punto’s “bunt”).

Slowey starts against Danks this afternoon, and we’ll get to see if the Twins can build off this performance.

It wasn’t too long ago that we were getting excited about the possibility of a more patient offense, one that wouldn’t swing at everything it sees, one that forces the pitchers to work, one that gets us to the bullpen, one that draws walks, one that scores runs.

Within days of Gardy’s first (and thus far, only) team meeting about this very issue, the Twins scored 12 runs while seeing 176 pitches. Things were looking up for the offense. Of course, things quickly turned south for the new offense, and the Twins reverted to their old free-swinging ways.

This culminated in Tuesday night’s game against the White Sox. Everyone on the team not named Joe Mauer went 0-26 with exactly 1 walk. Mauer drew a pair of walks, but perhaps most importantly, got the team’s sole hit with one out in the 9th to break up Gavin Floyd’s no hit bid.

The Twins were just 2 outs away from the amusing oddity of scoring a run despite getting 0 hits (earlier in the game: Mauer walked, advanced to 2nd on an error, advanced to 3rd on Cuddyer’s sac fly, scored on Kubel’s sac fly). But (fortunately) it didn’t happen, and all the players seemed to be thrilled not to be on the wrong end of a no hitter. Perhaps they shouldn’t be so thrilled about it — instead, learn to hit and avoid being anywhere near that situation.

Today, Gleeman brought up a new stat called Outside Swing Percentage. Basically, it measures the percentage of a player’s swings that are on balls outside the strike zone. Plate discipline is usually measured in walks, but this stat takes a look at another aspect of plate discipline: not swinging at bad pitches.

It seems like it should be really obvious, but if you avoid swinging at bad pitches (ie, pitches out of the strike zone), then not only will you draw more walks, but you’ll get more hits (because the pitches you’re swinging at are easier to hit) and your hits are more likely to be solid (because the pitches you’re swinging at are easier to hit — and you don’t have to reach for them). Apparently, this logic is lost on the Twins.

The only Twins players better than league average are Mauer, Kubel, Tolbert, and Punto. Kubel, Tolbert, and Punto haven’t got enough at bats to qualify for the batting title, so only Mauer qualifies as above average for our team.

On the other hand, Carlos Gomez (38.3%) and Delmon Young (36.2%) have the third and fourth worst Outside Swing Percentages in baseball (only Vladimir Guerrero and AJ Pierzynski are worse).

This is pathetic, and must be remedied as soon as possible. And it all came to a head in last night’s game.

The umpire had a small strike zone throughout (and it was consistent, so it’s not like the Twins were screwed). In the first inning, I sent a text message: “The small strike zone is going to hurt us tonight.”

The strike zone may have been consistent for both teams, but the Twins react terribly to it, and have for years. First, it hurts the pitcher because the corners aren’t called for strikes — meaning he’s giving up more walks and more hard hit balls than he’s used to. That isn’t consistent for both teams, however, because of the Outside Swing Percentage problems the Twins have: namely, they swing at everything that moves and won’t draw any walks regardless of how friendly the strike zone is.

For the Twins, a small strike zone means they’ll give up a lot of runs and struggle to get any baserunners. This isn’t new — Tuesday’s game was just an ugly reminder of the team’s (and, in fact, organization’s) woes.

Well, that was fun. Nothing like sweeping two rivals in one week. Lets start with friday. How Livan didn’t give up more than one run boggles my mind. It seems that even his outs were loud, but as the saying goes: don’t question miracles. Or something like that. The bats looked good on friday, consistent pounding the ball.  We got production from the entire lineup, which was awesome.  We only had one homer, but had 4 doubles and a triple to go with our 10 singles. The only person to go hitless was, surprise, Nick Punto. I can’t believe Ullger played him in Center.

Saturday was also good. Not a blowout. In fact it was very close most of the game. Craig was able to put it away with this second homer of the year.  The hero of the game was Brian Bass, with 4 shutout innings in relief of the injured Scott Baker.

After watching the first inning on sunday I was upset that the Twins were going lose the third game of a series in a blowout, something they seem to do all too often. After winning the first two they totally shut down on sunday and get trampled. However, they didn’t give up. They kept chipping away, and Boof righted the ship after the worst first inning I’ve seen in a while.

It was good to see Mauer catch all 5 games of the homestand. He looked good at the plate too, and I think he is going to have a big summer. Let’s hope Baker doesn’t need to go on the DL, but if he does Slowey will be ready to pitch in Chicago. So lets head to the south side and sitck it to the Sox again. Go Twins!