Fire Gardy

One of the things that came up this offseason that I seem to care about a lot more than everyone else is the concept of performance enhancing surgeries — especially eye surgery for hitters. I’m not going to talk about ethical implications here, so don’t worry about that. Just keep reading.

Prior to 2008, Denard Span had never been much of a hitter. The team talked about him like he was supposed to eventually replace Torii Hunter, but privately they must not have believed it. Even the notoriously anti-stats Twins front office realized that Span simply could not hit. In the previous three seasons, at AA and AAA, his OPS never cracked .700, and was declining each year. He was the target of derisive jokes all over the blogosphere … and in the winter after the 2007 season, after Torii Hunter left, the Twins traded for three new outfielders, two of whom were expected to start immediately. One of those was Carlos Gomez, the brand spanking new Center Fielder Of The Future. Denard Span was out.

But little did we know, while all this was happening, Span had had laser eye surgery to improve his vision. Nobody knew what kind of difference it would make.

During (meaningless) Spring Training, Span outperformed Gomez. But that was even more meaningless than it normally would have been in Spring Training, because the “competition” for spots in the outfield was a farce from the beginning; Cuddyer was the incumbent star sitting on a big new contract, Young was the shiny new slugger who was in the running for Rookie of the Year, and Gomez was the shiny new speedster who had to play so the Santana trade didn’t look like a bad idea to the shortsighted “fans” who have recently discovered the internet and therefore cannot resist leaving disparaging comments about the team wherever there’s a textarea offering them the opportunity to spew some actively anti-grammatical, “typo”-laced rant that are useless to read, but you just can’t look away. Much like a trainwreck, but with more capital letters and broken logic. I’m sure the Twins have read some of this drivel, and the more thin-skinned among them reacted by crowning Gomez the starting center fielder before Spring Training 2008 even began.

But this isn’t really a story about Denard Span. It’s a story about eye surgery. At this point, it remained unclear if the surgery was affecting him, though he claimed he could see the ball better than ever.

Of course, never listen to a guy who just made it up to the majors; he’ll say anything to stay there. (As well he should.) What you should do is look at his production. And in April of 2008, Span’s numbers looked like this:

.258/.324/.258, with 0 XBH. And an unsustainably high .320 BABIP.

In other words, bad. Bad enough to get sent back down to the minors, presumably forever, his prospecthood finally destroyed. There was more deriding of Span around the internet.

But then … something clicked. Back at AAA, Span started hitting. He hit .340/.434/.481, in his 40 games in Rochester. Then Cuddyer injured himself tripping on the ground or diving into a base (or something equally “intelligent”), and Span found himself back in the majors. And everyone knows the rest of this story. He hit all season. He was one of the best hitters on the team, to go with his nightly Web Gem in right field. Span was here to stay.

But what happened at the end of April, or the beginning of May, when he finally started hitting? Was it that he was angry about being sent down, and thus turned the corner that had eluded him for his entire career to this point? Or is that just the sort of thing that managers and players and writers come up with because they don’t know what’s going on? I don’t know. But it’s also possible that something happened with his eyes, in the first couple months after he started playing again, post-surgery.*

* I know the surgery is supposed to improve your eyes instantly. But that doesn’t mean you’re used to it, and can hit a baseball like you’re accustomed to. Maybe it took Span a month or so to get used to it and start actually seeing the ball well.

And that brings me to what I really wanted to talk about. (That didn’t take long, now did it?) Since the beginning of the season, I’ve been complaining that it looked like our players are having trouble seeing the ball, especially Morneau, Cuddyer, and Casilla. Now, Casilla has no excuse; he just looks awful and needs to pull his head out.

On the other hand, Morneau and Cuddyer both had laser eye surgery this winter, on the recommendation of Span and with the approval of the team doctors. Is it possible that they’re just getting used to their new eyes at game-speed, which is why they look blind out there?

Now, a performance-based analysis of Morneau would probably say “What, are you nuts? He’s seeing the ball great!” Because he’s hitting .341/.348/.569, with 2HR and 4 2B. But he’s only had 1 BB, and 9 K, and I’ve seen his at bats, so the performance-based analysis can shove it. Morneau is struggling.

Of course, said analysis can un-shove it when it comes to Cuddyer. Watching his at bats, he looks even worse than Morneau. And his numbers go something like this: .238/.283/.357 with 1 HR, 2 2B, 3 BB, and 10 K. Yes, he has struck out ten times in 11 games. Not at all good for someone who doesn’t hit home runs.

Now, maybe I’m just grasping at straws here, while the Twins flail around and suck like it’s going out of style.* But it’s still possible that Morneau and Cuddyer take a Span-like jump forward at the plate and go to a new level of offensive performance that we haven’t seen from them before. And it’s possible that it happens at the same time that Span’s did: right around the end of April.

* You know what I think is amusing? That the phrase “[blank] like it’s going out of style” has, itself, gone out of style. Thus I am going to start using that phrase, as if it were going out of style. Follow me?

And it’s also possible that when it happens, the eyes don’t get the credit. Because that’s right around when Mauer’s going to come back and save our season.

Just remember that I brought this up when Mauer returns and all of a sudden the middle of the order is smashing the ball again. It might not all be Mauer.