Fire Gardy

Seriously. These are grown men. How is it that they are completely unable to win a game on the road? They have lost 10 of their last 15 road games.  This is a very winnable division and the Twins have not taken advantage. It seems like nobody wants to win. The complete mismanagement of the bullpen by Ron Gardenhire (see I used his full name, that means he is in trouble) is unacceptable for a manager during a pennant race. I don’t care if people thought we would be terrible when predictions came out in march, it is September and we are in it.  There can be no “well, it was a nice run while it lasted” or “we’re playing with house money now” mentality.  If this team can get into the playoffs, I know they probably don’t stand a chance BUT it will give our young pitchers the big game experience they need.  Can you imagine if we have a real rotation and lineup for the entire season next year? No more Lamb, Monroe, Everett, Hernandez, etc. And our rotation will be playoff tested.  While this may contradict what I just said, it will be nice for our pitchers to pitch in meaningful games in September, but it would be even better for them to win those meaningful games and get to the playoffs.

Whoever wins the division will almost certainly start on the road against the winner of the AL east.  Both of those teams are very tough, that is why we need to get at least some momentum going in.  LaVelle mentioned the tie breaking scenarios the other day on his blog and none of them sound appealing. In fact, I think there is only one. We play a one game playoff against the White Sox in Chicago. That would be terrible. Turrible.

Having Michael Cuddyer back helps, but people forget he was pretty worthelss before he got hurt.  I do not think he deserves to be slotted into the starting lineup everyday just because there are lots of people who have Michael Cuddyer t-shirt jerseys who come to games once a week. His ability to do magic notwithstanding I think he should DH against lefties (like he did last night) and pinch hit. Hopefully that is Gardy’s plan for him.  Depending on how his foot is I might rotate him into the OF when someone needs a day off, but I like how everyone is playing.  Gomez has been lost at the plate but you can’t deny he is very valuable defensively out there.

We are approaching our windmill point (that is a back to the future 3 reference, meaning point of no return) where every game is a must win.  We can’t hope for the white sox to lose. We need to continue winning on this road trip and AT LEAST win 2 of 3 from them next week when we play. Hopefully we will be within 2 games when this happens. It seems like we have been within 2 games for about 6 weeks, so at worst we need to set it up so a sweep or 2 out of 3 puts us in first.  Leading by 4 games would be nice, but I don’t see it happening.  Go Twins!

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Today JoeC points out a nice little tidbit about the starter the Twins are facing today:

The Twins will face Daniel Cabrera, who continues to struggle with his control and has showed diminished velocity in recent starts.

Consider this: Cabrera has issued 85 walks this season. You can combine three Twins starters — Kevin Slowey (19), Nick Blackburn (31) and either Scott Baker (36) or Glen Perkins (36) — and only get 86.

Of course, that means Cabrera will go 7 innings, with 11 K’s and between 0 and 2 BB’s. After all, he does have quite a history of murdering the Twins, and the Twins have a history of ignoring an opposing pitcher’s weaknesses and attempting to beat their strengths.

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Given the continuing struggles of the bullpen, I think it’s about time to look back at the one bullpen acquisition we made versus the ones we passed up. At the time, we passed on both Latroy Hawkins and Chad Bradford (to my chagrin), and we picked up Eddie Guardado (also to my chagrin).

Here’s what it looked like at the time:

Hawkins: 23/17 K/BB, 42 H in 41 IP Bradford: 2.45 ERA, 1.19 WHIP in 40 IP Guardado: 28/17 K/BB, 38 H in 49 IP

We passed on both Hawkins and Bradford before Eddie showed up on the waiver wire and we pounced.

And what have they done since then?

Hawkins: 19/3 K/BB, 5 H in 13 IP, 0.00 ERA Bradford: 0.69 ERA in 13 IP Guardado: 11 H, 5 ER in 3 IP, for a whopping 13.50 ERA and 3.6 WHIP

Now tell me: Aren’t you glad we picked Guardado over Hawkins and Bradford? At the very least, he’s taking the strain off our overworked bullpen, right? Those 3 IP have been pretty valuable — especially since we have to pull him and put in someone else to put out his fire every time. His WHIP is 3.6!!! Are you kidding me?

The stats guys were right about this one.

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Well, the mystery of the Disappearing Bullpen Help may have been solved. As recently discussed in the comments over on our last post, Gardenhire claims that he’s looking for a spot to put Mijares into a game, but can’t find one.

Twins manager Ron Gardenhire is trying to find a spot to get a look at lefthander Jose Mijares. The ninth inning last night seemed to be a good time,  but the manager – with memories of several blown leads this season fresh in his mind – didn’t want a situation where Mijares gave up a couple runs and force him to warm up Joe Nathan. “Six runs is not that big of a lead in this league,” he said.

Oh, that’s right. Six runs ahead just isn’t enough of a lead. He might give up a few runs, in which case we’d have to use one of our better relievers who are all overworked. We wouldn’t want to do that. Instead, we’ll just use our better relievers who are all overworked. Problem solved!

So. Six runs ahead is too close. Obviously, Mijares and Humber aren’t coming into a game closer than that. That leaves the only possibility of these young relievers getting any work is if we’re being blown out. And if we’re losing by a lot, it stands to reason that we wouldn’t want to prevent the other team from scoring — oh no, we wouldn’t want to attempt a comeback and actually try to win a game! It’s much more important to just give up and prepare for the next day!

I can understand why Gardy would only want to bring these guys in in a blowout. That’s fine. (At first, until they demonstrate what they can do against big league hitters.) But … I don’t understand why we have to be losing big in order to see what they’ve got. Are we afraid he’ll give up the rare Grand-Slam-and-a-Half?

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After being swept in a doubleheader by the red-hot Blue Jays the White Sox sit just one game above the Twins with 18 games to go.  This is a huge morale boost.  The White Sox face Roy Halladay and he is awesome.  Also, Paul Konerko went down with what looked like a serious injury, I usually don’t wish harm upon other players, but the White Sox hardly consist of “players”, more like 25 “satan incarnates” and its OK to wish harm upon satan incarnate.   With Quentin formally out for the season, and Konerko probably done for most of the year, the Twins probably had their best 24 hours all season.  It is important that we just keep focusing on our own games.  I get the feeling that on that road trip (and the tigers series) the team focused too much on what the Sox were doing, and not enough on what the Twins were doing.  As hard as it is to do, its time to put the blinders on.  We have no control over what the White Sox do (until we play them).  They are now relying on Ken Griffey, Jr. to be an impact bat in their lineup, which is something no team should have to do.  The man is old, and I think they were expecting him to pick up some slack for the stretch run, not carry the offense.

The Twins have a stretch of six games (including last night) against the Royals and the O’s, so hopefully we play like we did last night for all six of them.  I still don’t trust the bullpen, but playing weak lineups should allow our starters to get into the 7th inning, thus minimizing how often we have to use worthless Reyes and/or Crain.  I still don’t get why Gardy isn’t using the September call-ups.  Last night for example, we are up by 5, why bring in a terribly overworked Jesse Crain instead of Humber or someone else?  Its a relatively low-leverage situation (I guess five runs isn’t a huge lead) and the Royals have a very weak lineup, perfect for a young pitcher to face. 

The Twins have an off-day before they start that crucial series against the Sox in a few weeks, so hopefully we will use that to our advantage.  Apparently having that off-day at home on Monday helped the team immensely.  It should be a fun next few weeks, Go Twins!

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The Twins evidently missed the memo informing them that The RNC Road Trip is over, meaning that they can stop blowing leads late in the game. Over the weekend we blew two more games to the Tigers and let a series victory get away.

Not surprisingly, the two meltdowns were the work of the bullpen, once again. And it was the usual suspects. On Saturday, Reyes and Guerrier each gave up two run homers before Crain and Breslow came in to finish the game. On Sunday, Breslow came in to give up a hit (without recording an out) before Boof came in to give up some runs and Guardado and Nathan finished off the loss.

But both times, I was left confused. For the entire road trip, and for several weeks leading up to it, all we heard about was how much the bullpen has been overworked. They’re so overworked, in fact, that Rick Anderson can’t even take them aside between games to work on stuff and try to fix what’s ailing them. They’re just exhausted from overuse and have been struggling to get the job done any more.

Oh woe is us, for surely there’s nothing to be done about that! Right? Except, of course, for the September 1 call up of Bobby Korecky, Phil Humber, and Jose Mijares. In close games this weekend, Gardy chose to put in overworked and underperforming Reyes/Guerrier/Crain into tough spots in which they have consistently failed all season (and especially lately) rather than try something new, perhaps to inject some life into the team and at the very, very least give the more experienced and talented members of the bullpen some valuable rest. Which would then allow them to stay fresh for the rest of the month (perhaps beyond?) and to — importantly — get some work in between outings with Anderson.

On Saturday, when Reyes came in, my immediate question was “Why does this situation warrant a walk and a hit?” The home run, of course, rendered my fear moot. Then Guerrier followed, as did Crain and Breslow … and I was left wondering what happened to Korecky and Humber. What’s the worst that could possibly happen? We lose the game? Well, what actually happened was worse — we lost the game and the top of our bullpen got even more overworked.

On Sunday, it was more of the same. Why are Boof and Eddie pitching when Korecky and Humber are ready to go? What’s the worst that could happen? We lose the game? Well, that actually happened again.

It’s folly for me to sit here and say that different moves would have worked out differently and we would have won the games. And Gardy’s reasoning for bringing in Reyes and Guerrier was “solid,” in that Granderson and Ordonez hadn’t hit well against them. However, for weeks now, he’s been using that same “solid” reasoning, and Reyes, Guerrier, Crain, Guardado, and Bonser have been failing. Repeatedly, and without signs of stopping. At some point, it must be time to re-evaluate and come up with some different reasoning. The kind that involves giving your bullpen some rest and giving Korecky and Humber some work. The very worst that could happen is that the results stay the same.

But, on this off day, consider this: The last time the Twins had lost a series at home was the beginning of June, immediately before getting swept by the White Sox — followed, of course, by two consecutive months of great baseball that kept us right in the hunt all summer. If (recent) history repeats itself, the Twins will find a way to figure out these problems and get back to their winning ways at exactly the right time.

The point is: Never get too far down. It can turn around in an instant.

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Today, Rob Neyer went over his list of potential American League MVP candidates. He’s obviously a big Red Sox guy (he does, after all, work for ESPN … and I think being a Red Sox fan is as helpful to employment there as being a no-power, no-plate-discipline middle infielder is to employment by the Twins).

So his conclusion? Dustin Pedroia!

A-Rod’s not going to win the award, for any number of reasons.

Hamilton’s fallen off everyone’s radar since the All-Star Game.

Cabrera hasn’t been on anyone’s radar since April. Same for Sizemore, who might actually be having the best season of them all.

It looks to me like there are only three viable candidates: Pedroia, Quentin and Morneau.

Except we’ve got some breaking news: Quentin’s season is probably over. In terms of the MVP, it is over.

Which leaves only Pedroia and Morneau. And with Pedroia’s Red Sox having a significantly better chance of reaching the playoffs than Morneau’s Twins, at this moment Pedroia’s the No. 1 candidate.

Morneau is the only player that he didn’t even bother to offhandedly dismiss, only stating that the Twins are, compared to the vaunted, awesome Red Sox, pretty crappy. But the thing is … I think he underestimates the Twins’ chances of making the playoffs.

Despite having played terribly on the RNC Road Trip, we’re still only a game and a half back. I know everyone’s really down on our chances right now (I know I am), and that 1.5 seems like a whole lot more — but think about it from the White Sox’ perspective. They saw we had this long road trip and it was their chance to put some distance between us and them. We played about as badly as possible during the trip … and we’re still right behind them. I talked to some White Sox fans today (an “advantage” of living in Chicago), and they continue to be terrified of the Twins while at the same time really worried that they couldn’t get more of a lead. And that’s without considering the loss of Quentin. So let’s not call the AL Central race over just yet. We’re not Fox News here.

But secondly, even if the Twins do manage to make it to the playoffs … could Morneau actually be an MVP candidate? Here’s how his numbers stack up against Pedroia:

Morneau: .311/.388/.516, 21 HR, 109 RBI, 40 2B, 85 R, 142 OPS+ Pedroia: .333/.378/.505, 17 HR, 76 RBI, 44 2B, 110 R, 127 OPS+

I don’t see how Pedroia’s numbers get him an MVP over Morneau if both teams make it to the playoffs. They’re quite simply … not as good. The runs and RBI come pretty close to evening out, and are mostly a function of where they bat in the lineup. I’ll take 4 more HR over 4 more 2B. And a higher OBP and SLG lead to an even higher OPS+ than Morneau had in his MVP 2006 season.

I still don’t think Morneau has a great case for MVP, but this season neither does anyone else. And Morneau’s just about our only offensive weapon — the same cannot be said for Pedroia. And there’s still some season left to play, before we get to see the National Media (located in Boston) invent an MVP award for one of their own.

The first step, though, is to make the playoffs. It’s time to right that ship, starting tonight. Go Twins.

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