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Game 52: Minnesota Twins at Tampa Bay Rays

twayn May 31, 2009, at 11:30 am 165 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) , ,

Tropicana Field
First Pitch - 12:38 p.m. CST

TV - WFTC29
Radio - TRN

Probable Starters:
Nick Blackburn (4-2, 3.55 ERA, 1.36 WHIP ) vs. Matt Garza (4-3, 3.65 ERA, 1.13 WHIP )

In case you haven't noticed, the Twins in general and Joe Mauer in particular have had a pretty good month of May. Mauer has 11 home runs and 32 RBI on the month, the first time in history a Twins player has accomplished that feat. He's hit .417 with a .500 OBP this month.

As a team, the Twins are hitting .285 in May, best in the AL, and their 273 hits rank second only to Tampa Bay's 275. The Twins have hit 40 home runs in May, second in the AL to the Yankees, who have 44. You would think that all that offense would have given the team a winning record in May, but you would be wrong. In baseball and comedy, timing is everything.

It would have been nice to get some of those hits and homers in a more timely fashion, as the Twins have lost 16 games in May while winning just 13, and of their 16 losses, 10 of them have been by one or two runs. So far the magic number for the Twins appears to be 5. When scoring five or more runs, the Twins win more than half the time. When scoring less than 5 runs, they lose at an alarming rate. But when they score 8 or more runs in a game, they have yet to lose.

In the fun exotic stat category, I notice that Joe Mauer has an OWn% of .907. Offensive Winning percentage tells you how often a team would win with 9 of a particular player batting in the lineup, assuming league average pitching and defense by the other team. So if you stock your batting order with nine Joe Mauers, you will win about nine out of every ten games. With Justin Morneau, you win at a .790 clip. With Michael Cuddyer, .585. With Jason Kubel, .645. And if you had 9 Delmon Youngs batting, you would win at just a .158 rate.

Let's take a look at today's momentum. In his last start, Blackburn struck out a career high seven batters against a tough Boston lineup while giving up just one earned run. In Garza's last start, he gave up three home runs but just two other hits and also struck out seven. What does it all mean? Who knows, but if I had to give the ball to somebody on this team to stop a three game losing streak, Blackburn would be one of my top two choices right now.

Game on.

Mugshot Purgatory: Corner OFs and Rays

AMR May 29, 2009, at 8:30 am 10 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) , , , , , , ,

Today, we start off with our two leftfielders (D-SPAN2 was considered a centerfielder for my purposes). Jason "the Dude" Kubel is typically the DH, while Delmon "_elm_n" Young has no D and no O.
kubel_jason_2009kubel_jason_2008kubel_jason_2007kubel_jason_2006
young_delmon_2009young_delmon_2008young_delmon_2007young_delmon_2006
(Kubel '09, '08, '07, '06; Young '09, '08, '07, '06)
I don't know how the Dude got his nickname. Could anyone fill me in? I don't know what's up with Del's 2008, it's clearly a photoshop, but I don't know of which year. And it's not like he was traded after '08 pictures were taken, or missed spring training.

Click here to continue reading Mugshot Purgatory: Corner OFs and Rays...

2008 ALDS Game 3: TB Rays @ ChiSox

SBG October 5, 2008, at 2:01 pm 10 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) , , ,

With any luck at all, the 2008 baseball season will end for Chicago today. The Cubs, out in three straight, have done their part and now it's time for the White Sox to roll over and play dead.

The White Sox are sending John Danks out to the mound today to stop a sweep from happening. Danks was last seen putting an end to the Twins season. The Rays aren't exactly killers against left handers, either, hitting a collective .246/.330/.396/.726 against lefties as compared to .267/.344/.434/.778 against righties. (Compare that to the Twins: .275/.332/.397/.729 against lefties, .280/.344/.413/.757 against righties, huh, almost the same.) This looks like a bad matchup for the Rays, who haven't beaten a quality left hander since... Friday, when they beat Mark Buehrle in game 2 of this series. Trends are trends, of course, but these playoff games are discrete events, so yep, it would appear that the White Sox have the edge here with Danks, but all that matters is what happens today. If the White Sox are feeling a little less than secure about things, that might matter just as much as whether the Rays have hit Danks in the past (and they haven't, in 19.1 innings against the Rays this year, Danks has allowed 16 hits and 3 walks, while striking out 20).

Meanwhile, the Rays counter with our old friend Matt Garza. The Rays certainly look like they've drawn the longer stick in their trade with Twins in the off season, and Garza (and not their "MVP" Jason Bartlett) is the reason. Garza's performance this year was right in line with the five young starters that the Twins have, so I suppose trading him wasn't the worst thing in the world, but hey, it's worked out great for the Rays. I liked Garza, I like that he was in Gardenhoser's doghouse, I like that he's been found out to be a quality major league starter. That's not to say that he'll hold down the Sox today, but it would be sweet if he did.

Go Rays!

Liriano

ubelmann July 17, 2008, at 3:34 pm 27 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) , , , , ,

This was brought up by Neil in the Cup of Coffee.

My 2 cents:

It's okay for Liriano to be frustrated. He's a competitor, he's had success at the top level, and he wants to get back there. I get that. I certainly have had more irrational reactions when I was 24.

I don't like that Liriano's agent is talking about filing a grievance. I mean, come on. It has been suggested in the past that Garza and Bartlett were left in the minors to save dollars, but look at where they are now. The farther we get from that situation, the more it looks like the Twins simply didn't like what they brought to the table that much. I certainly disagreed, but it was a baseball disagreement and not a beancounting disagreement.

The Twins know that if they miss the playoffs, they are going to lose money. They're in a pennant race right now, and they want to win it. If they think that promoting Liriano is the best baseball move, they are going to do it.

If I'm representing the Twins in a hypothetical grievance hearing, just this season, I have Exhibit A and Exhibit B of players who they could have sent to Rochester for the whole year, gaining a lot of team control over them, and it could have been completely justifiable from a baseball standpoint. Going farther back, I have Exhibit C, Exhibit D, Exhibit E, and Exhibit F.

The Twins have their organizational beliefs. Some might even call them fetishes. If they think you play defense well, you're going to get promoted a lot faster. (This is probably why Gomez came up ahead of Span, why Bartlett was held back for so long, why Morneau was held back behind Mientkiewicz, why Mauer skipped AAA altogether, why Hunter was promoted with a suspect hitting record, etc., etc., etc.) And if you're a pitcher, you get promoted a lot faster if you throw strikes than if you have some questions with control. (See Garza v. Slowey, skipping Radke past AAA, keeping Santana in the bullpen, Bonser not promoted until he was out of options, etc.) Liriano's walks have been down lately, but minor league hitters are much less disciplined than major league hitters, so it's not necessarily a rock solid indication that his control is all the way back.

That Liriano isn't back yet indicates to me that the Twins aren't fully convinced that he can throw strikes consistently. Whether or not that's true, I don't know, but that's a baseball issue, not a matter of trying to take money out of Liriano's pocket. Liriano's going to be with the Twins soon enough and this whole thing will blow over then.

Checking in with an old pal

ubelmann July 1, 2008, at 10:43 pm 4 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) ,

I saw that Garza had a pretty good start tonight, and I remembered the start of his season being pretty mediocre (or even bad depending on how you looked at it.) But of course he had an injury to overcome, so I thought I'd check to see if he's just throwing better now:

37 IP, 15 K, 16 BB, 4 HR, 4.86 ERA -- Garza's first 7 starts
46.7 IP, 40 K, 13 BB, 5 HR, 2.89 ERA -- Garza's next 7 starts

So he's started to miss a lot more bats, but with such a small sample size it's tough to say just how much of this has to do with his opponents and how much of it has to do with improvement. After 14 games though the season, he has an xFIP of 4.46, which is pretty decent, but certainly unspectacular and suggests that he's had good support/luck to post a 3.76 ERA over those 14 starts.

Looking back on his PECOTA forecast and other various projections, I guess I'm a little less high on Garza than when the Twins made the trade, but I still think he'll be a decent starting pitcher in the AL.