Fahgeddaboutit

The Twins performance on Sunday was, shall we say, not memorable. Against Jimmy Gobble and the Kansas City Royals, the Twins laid an egg, losing 12-3. The Twins looked like a bunch of turkeys against Gobble, who pitched a complete game, lowering his ERA to 5.40. The Twins scored two in the ninth to avoid a double digit loss.

Today's was an equal opportunity loss. The Twins offense continued its funk. As I mentioned yesterday, the Twins were averaging just three runs a game in September, and they lived up to that average again today. The Twins had just three hits going into the ninth before they got three more against a clearly tiring pitcher. Gobble threw 125 pitches, easily his highest total of the year (he had only thrown more than 100 pitches twice before this year). Gobble was making his first start at the major league level since the end of July, having spent the month of August in the minors. Yet today, he mowed down the Twins with ease, inducing one ground ball after another. Li'l Harmon struggled, striking out 3 times in an 0-4 performance.

Obviously, too, the pitching was not exactly outstanding. Kyle Lohse struggled again, giving up seven hits and six runs, three earned, in 3 2/3 innings. Lohse has had one good month this season, June, when he was 0-2 with a 3.69 ERA. He has been otherwise terrible, and I'm sure it causes the braintrust some sleepless nights. By all accounts, Lohse has great stuff. I have heard his primary problem is that he throws everything hard. I advocated before that you should go out and watch Johan Santana pitch. The great thing about Santana is that he can blaze a fastball in at 94 miles an hour, but the next pitch may come in at 77 miles an hour, making him almost impossible to time. Unless Lohse learns to change speeds, he will never be effective. The next time I see Lohse pitch, I'll watch his velocity to see if he is changing speeds. Certainly, the Twins cannot be thinking that Kyle Lohse can pitch in the playoffs except in long relief. He is not capable at this point.

At 25 years of age, and at a relatively low salary ($395,000 in 2004), there seems to be time to teach Lohse how to pitch as opposed to how to throw hard. However, 2004 has been very disappointing. His walks and hits are way up (a 1.63 WHIP in 2004, up from 1.21 in 2003), his strikeouts are down, and his OPS against has ballooned to a ridiculous .849 (that's before Sunday's effort). It seems to be apparent that unless Lohse makes some changes in his approach, he will not be a viable candidate for the rotation for 2005.

Finally, the defense "pitched in." The Twins committed two errors. Shannon Stewart misplayed a popup with directly lead to three runs while the game was still relatively close. Terry Tiffee also made a throwing error on a force play to second. In truth, it looked like Michael Cuddyer's fault. Tiffee appeared to throw the ball right at the bag, but Cuddyer just seemed to be late getting to the bag.

In other words, our favorite nine did very little right today. I'd be a little more upset, but the Twins finished their homestand 5-1. So forget about this one. On a personal note, I know that my sister and her family went to the game today, their first game of the year. What bad luck for them.

As a Twins fan, and because I believe he deserves it, I really want Johan Santana to win the Cy Young Award. Recently, it appeared that Santana was in a two man race for the award along with Mark Mulder. Mulder's chief advantage over Santana was that he had two more wins. However, Mulder pitched on Saturday and got shelled, giving up 5 runs and 10 hits in just six innings. While he didn't get the loss -- Oakland did win the game -- he did not get a win. This was very big for Santana, as they are now one win apart. However, look at the chart below.

Pitcher A is Mulder and Pitcher B is Santana. Note how clearly superior in every category (except wins) that Santana is over Mulder. I think that a full run better in ERA, plus almost 100 more strikeouts would swing the Cy Young vote to Santana over Mulder, even if Mulder has one more win. Now, look at pitcher C. Santana is still having a better year than pitcher C, although the numbers are closer. Santana has given up a lot less hits, and has struck out 50 more batters. But C has shown excellent control with 20 less walks and he now has two more wins than Santana.

Thrown in the fact that Pitcher C has been good for a long time (181 career wins), has never won a Cy Young award although he's been close, plays for a big market team and is a tireless self-promoter, and well, I present to you the new front runner for the American League Cy Young award, Curt Schilling. (I still think Johan has been better, but if Schilling is close to him, I can definitely see Johan coming up empty.)

I recently came across an article on Bronx Banter talking about Twins Blogs. He talked about the number of really good blogs written by Twins fans and he couldn't really understand why there was so much good writing about the Twins. I think it is simple, we love our team and it is much more fun to watch and write about the Twins than the $180-million-they-better-win-or-else-the-sky-will-fall Yankees. In fact, there are more Twins Blogs out there than Bronx Banter realizes. Another good Twins blog that I have been reading is Twins Chatter. Twins Chatter is well-written, and the guys put in regular thoughtful columns on our favorite nine. Check them out. Daily.