Bang the Drum Slowly

but a conundrum, nonetheless.

Let's say Garza gets called up, and pitches great. Not Liriano great, but 1991 Scott Erickson great.

(Assuming best possible scenario- Twins are in the playoffs) When it comes time to set up the postseason rotation, what does it look like?

What's Crain's role? Is Tyner still in the starting lineup?

Joe Mauer was the lead story on ESPN's home page yesterday, with a bunch of related features. They've moved it to their baseball page. I'm not sure how long it will be there, but there's a cool breakdown of his swing, a Rob Neyer article about great young catchers in baseball history, and more. Barring a massive slump, Mauer Mania will only heat up. He's hitting .380, and has a legitimate shot at becoming the first catcher in AL history to win a batting title. Right now, the race looks like this:

Joe Mauer .380
Derek Jeter .346
Ichiro Suzuki .340

Assuming they keep up their pace of at bats, if the three guys hit at their career averages the rest of the way (JM .326/DJ .316/IS .334), the final numbers would look like this:

Joe Mauer .359
Ichiro Suzuki .338
Derek Jeter .334

If Joe hits "only" .300 the rest of the way, he'd finish at .348, and Jeter would need to hit .353 the rest of the way to pass him, while Ichiro would need to hit .360.

If Joe slumps even more, and hits .280 over the final third of the season, he'd still finish at .340. Jeter would need to hit .330 to top that, while Ichiro would need to keeping hitting at his current pace, .340.

Regardless of what happens, this is a great time to be a Twins fan. They've clawed their way back into the playoff race, they've got 2 pitchers with Cy Young-worthy stats, a catcher shooting for a batting title, and a young slugger on pace to hit the 7th-most home runs in a single Twins season (and the most of anyone not named Killibrew).

In fact, Stick and Ball Guy is tracking Morneau's place in Twins history. Talk about a franchise lacking sluggers over the years- Ron Coomer and Tim Laudner are tied for the 18th-most career home runs in a Twins uniform!

The Twins won a big game in Chicago tonight, pulling them within 2 games of a playoff spot. There were many heroes in this game- Brad Radke gave up only 2 runs in 6 innings; Joe Mauer, Mike Cuddyer, and Justin Morneau all homered; Jason Tyner and Jason Bartlett each had 3 hits. When I looked at Sportsline's wrap-up of the game, however, I was very shocked at the second player of the game:



That's right- Kyle Lohse, who gave up 2 runs in one inning of mop-up relief, was apparently more valuable than Brad Radke! My theory: Terry Ryan badly wants to trade Lohse, but no one will offer anything for him. Ryan knows some people at Sportsline, and passes some cash under the table in exchange for this. Then, when he's got GMs on the phone, he can refer to Kyle as "recent Sportsline player of the game."

Koren Robinson checked himself into a rehab clinic. Good thing we got rid of bad apple Randy Moss, huh? The Vikings could be in big trouble if Robinson were not able to suit up this season. I'm excited about Chester Taylor's potential, but Robinson is their one definite threat to break a big play.

The Eddie Griffin story is much more interesting. In case you missed it, Griffin, who has had substance abuse issues in the past, crashed into a parked car in March while driving drunk, and masturbating while watching a porn DVD. That's right- drinking, driving, watching porn, and snapping one off, all at the same time! Oh yeah- this hasn't been proven yet. But a number of witnesses say Griffin was hammered, and the cops drove him home without performing a sobriety test.

The best part about this story is that Eddie Kline has been selling EG booze at Sharrett's Liquors! When he told me that, I thought about calling Kevin McHale and blowing the whistle.

Drinking and Minnesota sports have always gone hand-in-hand. From Keith Millard's "My arms are stronger than your guns," to Hrbek and G-Man staying up all night wrestling in hotel rooms, to Doug West polishing off a six pack in the locker room after every Wolves game, to Dino Cicarelli's fondness for gathering the mail in the nude (I assume drinking was involved in that one).

Here's a City Pages article from 2000 that details many of the Vikings players vs. Johnny Law confrontations over the years. And here's another article that talks about some of the scandals since then, including the Lake Minnetonka boat incident, and the "Artic Blast" sexual assault debacle from 2003, which might be the blackest mark in Vikes' history. Wow- some "tradition of excellence."

If you get a chance to take a look at this book, I highly recommend it- especially if you're not very familiar with sabermetrics. The Baseball Prospectus people put together a nice book full of essays, addressing questions such as Why are pitchers so unpredictable?, Five pitchers or four?, Is Mike Matheny a catching genius?, and Are new stadiums a good deal?

(Very abbreviated answers: for the most part, pitchers aren't unpredictable- the traditional stats used to measure their value, particularly wins and ERA, are flawed; going back to a 4-man rotation might make the most sense- evidence doesn't suggest that short rest is bad- it's high pitch counts in a single game that lead to injury and ineffectiveness; there's no evidence to suggest that some catchers "call a good game"- success depends on the pitcher, not the catcher (although catchers need to be able to catch the ball); a new stadium does not generate money for a community- people just spend their entertainment dollars in a different place.)

So head to your local public library, and give it a look. It's a great book to have if your reading time is limited- each essay can be read in a matter of minutes.

I'm not exactly sure where to begin, since I have about a million Twins-related things to talk about.

Maybe I wasn't jinxing the team when I titled a recent post Turnaround time for the Twins? Of course, with the White Sox and Tigers continuing to play so well, a playoff berth this year is still unlikely. Regardless, having the young core of this team gell and play decent baseball is a win-win situation.

Maybe Ron Gardenhire heard all the Twins' bloggers calling for his head, or maybe Terry Ryan just shortened his leash. It makes you wonder, though. If the Twins had started the season with Bartlett at SS, anyone but Batista at 3B, and Liriano in the rotation (all moves many of us considered painfully obvious), would there be a 3-way race for the division right now? Maybe not quite, since Radke, Silva, Crain, and others got off to such a horrendous start. I guarantee the team wouldn't be 11 1/2 games behind Detroit, however.

The other major mistakes?

• Offering Lohse arbitration (he actually had some trade value this off-season!)

• Continuing to jerk around Kubel and Cuddyer. Gardy is so crazy. He often prefers crappy veterans like Juan Castro to talented young players. But then he'll give someone like Kubel an incredibly important at-bat in the playoffs. Kubel was coming off major knee surgery, and most people assumed he'd start the season in AAA. Meanwhile, Cuddyer tore the cover off the ball in spring training. So Gardy annoints Kubel the starting RF, and Cuddyer gets a total of 4 starts and 22 plate appearances in the first 14 games of the season. It's amazing that Bartlett, Cuddyer, and Kubel are all doing so well, after the way Gardy's messed with their confidence over the past few years.
  

While I assumed Gardy would be stubborn (stupid) enough to throw Shannon Stewart back in left field when he returns from the DL, relegating Kubel to DH duties, apparently that's not the case:

"I'll talk to Shannon about it," Gardenhire said. "But we're looking to probably to DH him and maybe spot play [in left field] here and there when he comes back to protect him, before he hurts himself out on the AstroTurf."

Stewart has been a defensive liability in the outfield for 2 1/2 seasons now. Add to that his injury history, and it's been a no-brainer for a while now.

Gardy hasn't all of a sudden become a smart manager, though. What was Lohse doing pitching in an important situation last night?

It sounds like Torii Hunter wants to remain with the team- he's mentioned wanting to play in the new ballpark. While I previously endorsed trading him this year, I've changed my opinion. He does remain a player whose trade value is probably much higher than he's actually worth, and I don't want to see the Twins paying him his $12 million option next year.

However, he's the one Twin that all the little kids look up to, he still plays very good defense in center, and he brings some emotion to a team with a lot of mellow young dudes (Mauer, Morneau, Santana, etc.). Oh yeah- he get a big hit every now and then, too. If they can restructure an affordable deal with him, and if he promises to never throw a punch at Morneau again, I'd be in favor of holding onto Torii. Who's our other CF option? Ford? Way too inconsistent. Denard Span's hitting decently in AA, but he may never make the leap.

I had jotted down a bunch more Johan Santana stats the other day, marvelling at how well he's pitched, and what an incredible season he may end up having. Most of these numbers, jotted on various scraps of paper, don't make sense to me anymore, but there are a few interesting things. In his past 11 starts, look what he's done:

79 IP / 60 H / 7 BB / 91 K / 20 ER / 2.28 ERA / .848 WHIP
That's 10.37 strikeouts/ 9 innings pitched, and only .78 BB/9 IP! If he can keep that walk rate low, there's no telling what he can do.

Right now, Santana is on pace for stats very similar to his '04 and '05 seasons. However, he seems to have heated up earlier this year. In 2004 and 2005, his numbers from July onward are absolutely sick:
1.63 ERA * .838 WHIP * 13.48 K/9IP * 1.92 BB/9IP
If he stays true to form, and finishes strong, his 2006 totals will be absolutely incredible. Of course, if he doesn't lead the league in victories, John Kruk won't think he deserves the Cy Young Award.

A couple things that will be fun to watch:

Clemens vs. Liriano, obviously.

Torii Hunter is 0-23 with 13 Ks vs. the Rockett in his career. It would be nice to see him jack one!

Mauer vs. Prior this weekend. Although Prior may have helped the Twins win a World Series, it's safe to say that we made the right pick.

Johan Santana recorded his 1000th career strikeout Tuesday night, becoming the sixth Twin to reach that milestone. Any guesses at the other 5? I'll provide the answer at the end of this post.

From the MLB.com recap of the game:

Dominant outings aren't anything new for Santana, but against the Red Sox, the Twins ace was historic. Santana became the sixth Twins pitcher to record 1,000 strikeouts. His was the second fastest to the number, accomplishing the feat in his 198th appearance. Bert Blyleven is the only Twins pitcher to reach 1,000 career K's faster, as he did it in his 170th outing.

Bad grammar aside (I'm assuming she meant to say "he was the second fastest to reach the number"), why does it make sense to use appearances to judge who K'd 1000 batters first? It's not Johan's fault that the Twins used him in relief 76 times between 2000 and 2003, compared to 42 starts. Blyleven had a grand total of 2 relief appearances, both during his rookie year.

It took Santana 948 innings to get to the 1000 strikeout milestone, while it took Blyleven 1160 innings. In other words, Santana struck out 1.05 batters/inning (9.49/9IP), while Blyleven struck out .862/inning (7.76/9IP).

Santana is starting to creep up the lists of all-time Twins records, both single-season, and career. I think Walter Johnson's single-season ERA records are safe, though. (Why can't baseball-reference.com sepearate Senators and Twins stats?)

One ridiculous stat difference I noticed while researching this is complete games (CGs). Blyleven had 25 CGs in 1973, and he averaged 17 Cgs between 1971 & 1978. To put this in perspective, Roy Halladay led the AL with 5 CGs last year. The last time pitcher had at least 10 CGs was Randy Johnson in 1999 (12).


Twins Strikeout Leaders
Bert Blyleven 2035
Camilo Pascual 1885
Jim Kaat 1851
Brad Radke 1384
Frank Viola 1214
Johan Santana 1005