Fire Gardy

Let’s not talk about yesterday.

This week Forbes published its annual baseball franchise valuations.  The Twins ranked 22nd on the list with a value of $356 million.  This doesn’t include any potential revenue from the new stadium because, as we have seen with the new Yankee stadium, you can’t assume all your new high price seats will get sold.

The Pohlad family bought the team in 1984 for 44 million, that is a pretty tidy return.  Not quite as good as the Yankees, Steinbrennerbought them for around 10 million in the early 70s, but still good.  One of the points I found interesting is that Carl spent 63% of revenue on player salaries over the last five years, that is significantly higher than the 57% that is the league average.  Guess he wasn’t such a cheapskate was he?  He did run the team like a business, but who are we to tell him how to spend his personal fortune.

The Twins 2008 wins to player cost ratio was 133.  That means we got 33% more wins per dollar than the league average.  In this formula postseason wins count double.  That can’t come as much of a surprise to anyone, as we have discussed the Twins payroll efficiency in this space before.

The Twins have seen a dramatic increase in both value and revenue since 2000.  This is also to be expected, as franchise values overall have increased steadily over that time.  Also, the Twins have been much for successful on the field in this decade than they were in the 90s, thus more people are wont to buy tickets, jerseys, etc.  

The Twins get roughly 45% of their value from “sport”, which is defined as “portion of the franchise’s value attributable  to revenue shared among all teams”.  This also can’t come as a shock, as the have always been one of the biggest benefactors of revenue sharing.

Does anything else stand out?  Nothing really groundbreaking here, I just wanted to write about something unrelated to the Twins terrible play yesterday.  One comment: I am now more convinced than ever that I could homer off of Scott Baker.  He needs to figure his shit out. Quick.

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The Twins and Red Sox will hopefully get at least one of the two scheduled games in today.  The weather in Boston is dicey, but it looks like it will be OK for the first game.

We are facing Tim Wakefield, and that got me to thinking about knuckleballs and knuckleballers.  Will the addition of RA Dickey this season perhaps help the Twins hitters in their approach to facing a knuckleball?  Maybe having him around to throw batting practice or something will help.  However, the reason the knuckleball is effective is because of its unpredictability.  A hitter could see a BP knuckler hundreds of times, and it really won’t help them in a game situation.  Especially since I’m sure the pitch varies from pitcher to pitcher more than a traditional pitch.

Hopefully the wind isn’t too strong in Fenway this afternoon.  I would hate to see Baker break some sort of record for most homers given up in the first two starts.  Because he has to be somewhat close.

The Red Sox bats are starting to wake up, which is another reason to be very nervous about this game.  Hopefully I am wrong and Baker rights this ship with an impressive showing, and the bats tee off on wakefield and his knuckleball.

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While the Twins game continues to not start because for some reason Fenway doesn’t have a retractable roof, I figured I’d do some writing about the bullpen situation given Crain’s injury. Intelligent reader thrylos98 had this to say:

Crain did get overused so far this season. It was inexcusable for Gardy to put him in the 9th inning to close a blow out game. That is done, it cannot be corrected, but I hope that Gardenhire realizes his mistake and does not repeat it. Speaking of repeating mistakes, when Gardenhire was asked about who the set up man will be now, he answered that everyone who is rested except Morillo who is still “a project”. Wrong answer. He should select one (even pull names off a a hat) and go with him. The worse thing about a reliever is not knowing what his role is. Pitchers need to get ready to pitch.

I agree that Crain was overused and absolutely shouldn’t have been pitching in blowouts. (Though I seem to recall that none of the other relievers could get anyone out, so we kind of needed to go with Crain.)

But I absolutely don’t agree that Gardy’s “anyone who’s rested will be the setup man” is the wrong answer. Picking roles and leaning too heavily on a single go-to reliever is exactly what re-injured Crain (and put him on the surgeon’s table the first time), what wrecked Guerrier, and what killed Neshek. Many managers have this problem, and Gardy’s no exception.* Joe Torre is famous for doing this to his favorite reliever.

* Joe Maddon, apparently, is an exception, given that he named his third or fourth best reliever the “closer” and went with his good relievers in higher leverage situations that warranted it. Point is, more thought is needed, but it seems that breaking down bullpen roles could be a good thing.

My hope is that the relievers are able to step up and keep us in games for Nathan to close them out, and that this experience helps Gardy with his bullpen management in the future. If he can actually use whichever reliever is most rested (and most able to get outs), rather than finding another guy to lean on and destroy, it would unequivocally be a good thing.

My other hope is that it stops raining in Boston so we can get on the field soon.

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For some reason, I feel like bringing up something useless and petty*. This is what happens when the season starts and I go without watching a baseball game for over 24 hours. Watch out people.

* Seriously, what do you expect from me? If you want the news, listen to FunBobby. Something about Humber sucking happened recently, I think.

Managers wearing uniforms. Why do they do it? It’s difficult for anyone to look good in a baseball uniform (I think baseball started before the word “style” was invented), but it’s virtually impossible for a middle-aged former athlete with a beer gut and a sunburn to pull off the look. And it’s not like these guys need to be wearing the uniform, it’s not like they’re going to go pinch run for one of the players.

Rule 1.11(a) says that all members of a team must wear a uniform. The manager is not a member of the team. Just like anyone else at the stadium who isn’t a player, he may where a uniform, but he is not required to.

According to an informal look by researchers at the National Baseball Hall of Fame, it’s believed that the last manager to wear a suit was Burt Shotton of the Brooklyn Dodgers, who last managed a game in 1950.

So no suits in the last 60 years. But that doesn’t say anything about non-uniformed managers, wearing jeans and a polo shirt, or whatever they might find fashionable or comfortable that day.

You might be wondering, as I was, about Gardy’s take on this. It is utterly unsurprising that he’s a fan of the uniform*, but his response to why he wears it during games: “I hate sport coats.”

* We’re talking about a former slap-hitting middle infielder who could “play” multiple positions who values nothing more than slap-hitting middle/utility infielders. Is it obvious to anyone else that he’s clinging to the past a little bit?

Fair enough, Gardy. But nobody said that was the only other option.

Frankly, I think it’s past time managers give up their traditional clinging-to-their-younger-days-by-wearing-the-garb-of-a-20-year-old, just like other people their age, and dress more appropriately. If I may make one stipulation, though, I am not interested in seeing any of these guys wearing shorts.

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Phil Humber has cleared waivers and will be sent to AAA Rochester to rejoin the starting rotation.  I don’t think anyone really cares that this happened.  So we get to keep Humber, it is widely agreed that he might have been the most replaceable player on the roster.  I guess its not a terrible thing, he might be able to help Rochester win some games.  It also allows us to keep one of the pieces of the Santana trade, so in the off chance Humber turns out to be OK, we look a little better.  I think the fact that nobody wanted a young(ish) starting pitcher is kind of a testament to just how useless Humber is at this point.  The fact that not even the Nationals (Natinals?) wanted him has to hurt the confidence.  Oh well.  That’s all the news after an off day. 

That and Mauer played in a simulated game yesterday and was 1-3 with a double and a walk.  He will play in a single-A game on Friday.  Lets hope he is back by month end.  As reader MarkW (and Gleeman on his fancy new national blog) pointed out,  if the Twins can be around .500 when Mauer comes back they will be in pretty good shape for the summer and fall.

Go Twins!

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Jesse Crain has been placed on the DL with shoulder stiffness, LEN3 reports.  It is apparently minor, and hopefully he will be good to go in about 10 days time.  In the meantime, the Twins have called up Jose Mijares. After an awful spring, he has put together a nice start in Rochester.  He is currently on a 6.1 scoreless innings stretch.  I’m not sure who will slide into the 8th inning role, but the top choices have to be Guerrier or Breslow.  I am not basing that on anything other than those are the two guys Gardy probably trusts the most. Hopefully we see Nathan used a little bit more, but that usually doesn’t happen this early in the season.

I like what I have seen out of Morillo, although from the scouting reports it sounds like he will have trouble throwing strikes consistently, so its best if he is used in low leverage situations.    This is a blow to the Twins already weak bullpen.  Hopefully Mijares can step it up and be useful in his (hopefully) short stint in the majors. 

The list of people I don’t trust out of the bullpen has grown to include the following:

Ayala, Dickey, Morillo, Mijares, Guerrier, Breslow.  So everyone but Nathan is what I’m trying to say.

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The Twins had an excellent weekend against the Angels.  This series had a little bit of everything.  A thrilling come from behind win (Friday) a blowout (Saturday), and a close-ish game (Sunday).

During the game on Friday, our terrible bullpen was on display.  As they were giving up a parade of hits to the Angels, I was about ready to give up on the team.  They seemed unable to do anything right or good.  Then came Jason Kubel.  Even before the grand slam, he had put together a pretty good game, which was overshadowed by our terrible bullpen.  You know how it ended, so I will spare you. 

I attended the game on Saturday and it was pretty ho-hum.  Kevin Slowey made one mistake, a two run homer to Hunter.  The Twins actually trailed until the 5th inning when they took the lead for good.  It would be nice to see them take the first lead of the game and hold it wire to wire, but I’ll take what I can get.

Sunday brought another superb pitching performance from Perkins not only did he shutdown the Angels, but he took a comebacker off the leg and walked it off.  What a badass.

I hope nobody missed the good parts of the game on friday, if you did you better have been doing something really awesome.  Skydiving is one acceptable excuse.  Something involving supermodels is OK too.

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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.

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Before I went to last nights Twins “game”, I attended a cocktail party for a committee I’m on at a high end jewelry store.  As I was waiting for my friends to arrive an employee noticed the Twins tickets in my pocket and asked me if I was attending the game, I told her I was.  She then proceeded to tell me that “Lexi” (I’m assuming she was talking about Casilla. Did she think she was cool by throwing a nickname at me?) had been in the store earlier that day.  She said we were going to win because she rubbed his hand for good luck.  Creepy.  I asked if he had made a purchase, and she told me it was confidential.  What?  How is whether or not Casilla bought a watch confidential information.  Get off your high horse, jewelry store employee. Selling high end watches doesn’t make you better than me.  She then went on and on about how great Casilla is.  She said he was going to be the next Kirby.  That is the most ludacris comparison ever. They are of different ethnic backgrounds, play different positions, one is a great hitter, the other hasn’t proved to be anything more than average.  How is Casilla the next Kirby?   Was she referring to the fact that they both are   good people,  help the community, are role models, etc?  Well in that case, I would give that crown to Mauer.  I decided to no longer engage this woman as she came off as a total moron.

The game wasn’t much of one.  Well, it was a nice little pitchers duel between Liriano and Halladay for 6 innings.  Then our team of arsonists we call a bullpen came in a doused the place with gasoline and any chance we had of winning went up in flames.  I think we are starting to realize how important Mauer is behind the plate.  He can’t get back soon enough.  Redmond is a great backup, and it seems that Morales is barely better than Vic Martienz behind the plate. Although he did do a good job of getting to some balls that bounced past him.  Outside of Liriano, this game had very few bright spots.  We did get two plays in Sportscenter’s top plays; the Cuddyer catch, and the Buscher play at third.

We need Blackburn to go deep in the game tonight, or else we might see a lot of Phil Humber and RA Dickey.  I shudder at the thought.

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Last night, Baker returned to action after a brief stint on the DL. My theory at the time was that he wasn’t really hurt, the team just thought he wasn’t ready and wanted to give him an extra week or so of extended spring training.

Well, either he was hurt (and still is), or he’s still not ready. He gave up 6 runs in 4 innings, while giving up four home runs. That’s not the first time in his career he’s given up four homers, despite Blyleven’s apparent claim* that Baker isn’t known for giving up home runs.**

* I didn’t have the sound on. FunBobby alerted me to the fact that Bert said this.

** Also, in what universe is “20 HR in 28 G” not a lot of home runs? I think Bert’s having an “I’m great, nobody else can be as good as me” moment with regards to giving up home runs. Has he ever mentioned that he led the league in home runs once? And that it doesn’t mean he’s a bad pitcher? I feel like he might have mentioned it.

Well, those four homers erased an early 2-0 Twins lead “earned” in the bottom of the first. Neither run was driven in via a hit. And there wasn’t much hitting afterwards, because once we lost the lead the hitters became demoralized and stopped hoping for a comeback. Just like they do every game.

After taking that lead, the Twins were at about 75% to win the game. Let’s look at the chart.

As soon as Baker took the field, we dropped back down to 50% on Rolen’s 2 run shot. I probably jumped the gun a little bit when I immediately shouted “game over,” but it really didn’t take long. We dropped below 25% in the third, and hit 0-1% in the 6th. This was simply another disaster of a game, which has become far too common early in the season.

I realize that it’s still a little too early to say “It’s not really that early any more.” We’re only 6% of the way into the season. We don’t have Mauer. Et cetera.

But at some point, the players are going to have to play well. They’re going to have to play well when Mauer returns, or we’re still going to get blown out on a regular basis. The pitchers continue to serve up batting practice meatballs and miss their spots (and get knocked out early). The relievers can’t find the strike zone and are giving up line drives all over the field. The hitters seem to be competing for the Most Pathetic Plate Appearance trophy (that is, those hitters that can actually see the ball, which it is apparent that Morneau, Cuddyer, and Casilla simply cannot do). The fielders look scared of the ball.

These things all have to change, and they have to change soon. We finish up the four game set against the Jays tonight. Are we going to beat them before late 2011? We play the Angels this weekend. Will it be the 4th consecutive series we face multiple Cy Young candidates and the top offense in baseball?

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