|
|
|
Friday, April 29, 2005
Link-O-RamaWith yesterday's game tied and runners on first and second with no outs in the top of the 10th inning, Ron Gardenhire chose to pinch-run for Justin Morneau, who was the go-ahead run at second base, with Luis Rivas. Jacque Jones then came to the plate and was asked to bunt, but when he bunted through the first pitch from Jaime Cerda, Kansas City catcher John Buck threw to second base and picked Rivas off.I watched the replay a few times after bashing my head against the wall repeatedly, and it was one of those typical runner-straying-too-far-from-the-base plays where Rivas was anticipating Jones getting the bunt down. While Jones is obviously at least partly at fault by missing the bunt attempt, I did find it amusing that Rivas was picked off of second base almost immediately after entering the game for the sole purpose of running. Well, I actually didn't so much find it "amusing" until after the Twins won the game, but you know what I mean. My favorite part of Rivas getting picked off is the fact that the anti-Rivas e-mails from readers started flowing in almost immediately. You guys are not only great at preaching to the choir, your preaching is very timely too. So, in honor of one of Rivas' most memorable blunders (which is really saying something), the immediate reaction that followed in my mailbox, and Lew Ford's third game-winning RBI in the past week, here is a nice, old-fashioned link dump ... The Scarface game's storyline picks up where the movie left off, when the foulmouthed Cuban-born drug kingpin fights off a bloody assault on his mansion only to die in a hail of bullets.Of all the words you could use to describe Tony Montana, how could anyone possibly lead with "foulmouthed"? Foulmouthed?! - The OFGoAG.com in what is maybe the greatest photograph I have ever laid eyes on. - The OFGoAG.com's spread in GQ magazine. - The OFGoAG.com at the premiere of her new movie, looking ... wow. - The OFGoAG.com playing the bongos. Seriously. - The OFGoAG.com in the role that led to her overtaking Alba in the standings. It is really sad in general when someone isn't able to do something they want and deserve to do. But in a case like this, the worst thing is that an amazingly talented person may let some self-doubt creep into their mind simply because someone in a position of power wasn't able to spot that talent. I am of the opinion that every person who is to become successful at what they dream of doing has to have at least one other person or group of people as a chip on their shoulder once they get there. In other words, it hurts like hell now, but think about how great it'll be in 20 years when a wildly successful and famous Tony Pierce can tell his millions of adoring fans about the time he got rejected from U-C Irvine. Everyone will laugh, and he'll smile. And then when he goes home to his penthouse apartment filled with leggy blondes watching the Lakers on a big-screen plasma TV, he'll take out that rejection letter from a box somewhere and have a nice, long, motivating look at it. Today at The Hardball Times: - Crystal Balls: The Slide Of The Yankees (by John Brattain) Today's Picks (25-15, +$1,075): Arizona (Webb) +150 over San Diego (Peavy) Toronto (Halladay) +180 over New York (Johnson) Los Angeles (Byrd) +110 over Minnesota (Silva)     
Thursday, April 28, 2005
Twins 9, Royals 4vs LHP (2002-04) AVG OBP SLG OPSJones went 1-for-3 with a single and two strikeouts against Anderson. I would have though that Mays, who was making just his third start since missing an entire season after Tommy John surgery, would be on a short enough leash for the bullpen to be on-call at that point. Giving up four runs in six innings is certainly far from a disaster, but it's a shame that he couldn't have left the mound on a positive note. Instead, he was visibly upset in the dugout, shaking his head and generally just looking frustrated. The good news is that he more or less cruised through the first five innings, and got 12 of his 18 outs on ground balls. Oh, and here's a Mays-related tidbit that is probably of interest only to me: Mays' win last night was his first since June 19, 2003, when the Twins beat the Royals 16-2 and Mays pitched eight strong innings. That day was also a milestone for this blog, as AG.com surpassed 100,000 visitors. So in the time it took Mays to win another game, over 1.1 million people visited this website. The following players who are no longer with the team played in that game: Tom Prince, A.J. Pierzynski, Bobby Kielty, Dustan Mohr, Doug Mientkiewicz, Corey Koskie, and Cristian Guzman. The funny thing is, while Bremer and Blyleven were discussing Knoblauch's place in the batting order, I typed "Retrosheet.org" into my web browser and found the information they had been searching for within 30 seconds. The answer? Knoblauch had 460 at-bats batting second in 1991, along with 85 at-bats leading off, and a total of 20 at-bats hitting in other spots in the lineup. In addition to that, I can also tell you that he batted .298/.369/.374 in the #2 spot, compared to just .200/.250/.247 leading off. The most shocking thing about this is not that the information is so easily found online (I have learned to assume that everything is available online until proven otherwise), but rather that not a single person associated in any way with the television broadcast of an MLB team is aware of its availability. Well, needless to say that led to Ozzie Guillen -- and eventually Crede -- being ejected from the game. Which in turn led to the strange sight of Jermaine Dye playing shortstop for the White Sox (Crede had started at shortstop because of injuries to Juan Uribe, Tadahito Iguchi, and Pablo Ozuna). And the entire time all this was happening, Hawk Harrelson and Darrin Jackson were going absolutely nuts about the umpiring in the series on Chicago's TV broadcast.  They were talking about how this particular umpiring crew had a history of screwing the White Sox, and about how they long suspected things would turn out badly during the series because of it. Jackson even uttered one of the most laughable comments I have ever heard during a baseball game, saying, "Well, the umpires just lost us the game." Keep in mind that Jackson said that while Crede was actually still batting with a 2-2 count and two men on base in a tie game. Needless to say Oakland scored the game-winning run in the bottom of the inning when Marco Scutaro doubled past a diving Chris Widger down the third-base line, scoring Erubiel Durazo. Yes, that's right, the White Sox had a 34-year-old catcher at third base and a 31-year-old right fielder at shortstop in the bottom of the ninth inning. It can't all be blamed on the umpires though, because Widger actually started the game at third (his first career appearance there in nine big-league seasons). And just to be clear (since I can almost hear White Sox fans typing their angry e-mails to me as I write this), I thought it was, at best, an extremely iffy call. I imagine that if I were, say, rooting for the White Sox to win games instead of rooting for them to have the worst season possible, I would have been just slightly less outraged than "Hawk" and "D.J." All of which brings me to the fact that the Twins are now just three games back of Chicago in the American League Central. Today at The Hardball Times: - Ten Things I Didn't Know Last Week (by Studes) Today's Picks (25-15, +$1,075):
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
Twins 2, Royals 1I have nothing to babble about today, so let's get right to last night's win ...His final line: IP H R ER BB SO HR PITA thing of beauty, and he improved his record to 4-0 while lowering his ERA to 3.55. Santana also now has a ridiculous 45-to-3 strikeout-to-walk ratio, which would have been an even more ridiculous 45-to-2 if not for the intentional walk he handed out to Mike Sweeney. Oh, and he hasn't lost in 20 starts dating back to last season, during which time he is 17-0. Or as I "discovered" when THT's Craig Burley tried to trip me up after I announced that stat to him last night, 18-0 over his last 22 starts counting the postseason. In other words, Santana hasn't lost since the Twins were shut out by Detroit on July 11, 2004. Speaking of Brown, he is the perfect example of why we should never, under any circumstances, pay attention to spring-training stats over a previously established level of performance. Someone please remind me to bring Brown's name up next year when a .200 career hitter is batting .400 in spring training and some silly team is considering giving them a starting job in the outfield.  Jacque Jones followed with a walk, his 11th of the season. That brought Matthew LeCroy up to the plate for the Twins' league-leading 27th at-bat of the season with the bases loaded. Following in the tradition of the previous 26 at-bats, LeCroy fell behind 0-2 before he struck out looking on a pitch that clipped the outside corner. Luckily for LeCroy there were already two outs, so he couldn't ground into a double play. (Mauer later grounded out on the team's 28th bases-loaded at-bat.) Morneau fouled off five straight pitches to start the at-bat and then singled past a diving Berroa and into left-center to put runners on first and third. Then, with Torii Hunter (a right-handed hitter) due up, Pena yanked Lima for Sisco. It worked, as Hunter struck out, but plenty of dumb moves work in sports. Fortunately, pulling Sisco in favor of rookie Ambiorix Burgos, who has barely pitched above Single-A and has barely shown any control anywhere, didn't work out quite as well.  Today at The Hardball Times: - News, Notes and Quotes (April 27, 2005) (by Aaron Gleeman) - Business of Baseball Report (by Brian Borawski) Today's Picks (25-14, +$1,205): Chicago (Garcia) -130 over Oakland (Saarloos)
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Tigers 6, Twins 4I had class yesterday afternoon, so I "watched" the Twins-Tigers game in the journalism school's computer lab, via MLB.com's "Gameday" game tracker. It is an unbelievably tortuous way to track a game in general, but it was made especially painful by the fact that the Twins came back from an early deficit, took the lead, and then blew the game in the late innings. That is a difficult series of events for a bunch of graphics on a computer screen to convey.MLB.com's play-by-play is as good and as fast as anyone's, but it is still infuriating at times. For instance, when the Twins were clinging to a 4-3 lead with the bases loaded and one out in the bottom of the seventh inning and Juan Rincon gave up a game-tying single to Craig Monroe, all I saw on the screen for about a minute was "run-scoring play." I didn't know if that meant one run, two runs, three runs, or four runs, and I didn't know if it meant Monroe hit a grand slam or bounced into a fielder's choice that scored a run while using up an out. And trying to decipher exactly what happened in the bottom of the eighth inning, when Joe Mauer's throw to third base sailed into left field and Nook Logan took third and then came around to score ... well, let's just say I was staring at the screen like it was one of those weird 3-D puzzles where you start to see things if you focus on them for a long time. I kept focusing on the play-by-play screen, hoping I would see Detroit's runs come off the board. Sadly, they didn't. Yesterday's game was one of those early season matchups that was played in front of about a dozen people and will be quickly forgotten, but losing it really hurts. It is the sort of game a division-winning team simply should win, especially when they are looking up in the standings at a very hot White Sox team at the moment. But once again, the Twins' offense simply couldn't come through in crucial situations, where one hit would have meant the difference between losing and winning. - In the second inning, Jacque Jones doubled with one out, but Lew Ford and Michael Cuddyer stranded him there when they couldn't get a hit with a runner in scoring position. - With a run already in, the Twins had runners on first and second with no outs in the third inning, but got just two ground outs and a run-scoring sacrifice fly from their 3-4-5 hitters, Joe Mauer, Justin Morneau, and Torii Hunter. - After a Mauer single and back-to-back walks by Hunter and Jones, the Twins had the bases loaded with one out in the sixth inning, but Ford and Cuddyer couldn't get the ball out of the infield. As has been the case seemingly all season, the Twins were just one or two hits in key spots away from busting a game open. Instead, they let the other team hang around and ended up going 0-for-Detroit in a very depressing four-day stay in the Motor City. The Twins now lead the AL with 26 at-bats with the bases loaded and have scored just 10 runs (.385 runs per at-bat) while hitting a despicable .154/.138/.154. For some context, the rest of the AL combined has 199 at-bats with the bases loaded and has scored 202 runs (1.02 runs per at-bat). So if the Twins had simply been average in those spots thus far, they would have scored about 16 more runs than they have. And that's not even fully accounting for all the double plays in those spots. The Twins' bases-loaded ineptitude so far has potentially been the difference between 10 wins and 13-14 wins. And considering how many of those botched bases-loaded opportunities came in the two-game series against the White Sox, that's probably the difference between running neck and neck with a red hot Chicago team and being five games back. Today at The Hardball Times: - A History of the LOOGY: Part Two (by Steve Treder) - Game in Review: Red Sox vs. Devil Rays (by Studes) Today's Picks (23-13, +$1,105): Arizona (Ortiz) -100 over Los Angeles (Erickson) San Francisco (Schmidt) -140 over San Diego (Eaton) Chicago (Buehrle) +110 over Oakland (Harden)
Monday, April 25, 2005
Notes From a Snowed Out WeekendPretend for a moment that we lived in a world where Mulholland didn't have some sort of strange "free pass" for being really old and having a "rubber arm." Would any other pitcher who had a 5.18 ERA last season and hasn't had an ERA better than league average since 1999 be asked to pitch multiple innings in a tie or one-run game unless the team had run out of other options? Of course not. I just don't get it. Here's a disturbing little tidbit: Mulholland has thrown more innings out of the bullpen this season than Joe Nathan, Juan Rincon, J.C. Romero, and Jesse Crain. He has also allowed three times as many earned runs as those four guys ... combined. Something just isn't right about that. Oh, and the last three paragraphs you just read are exactly why Bat-Girl's blog has a thriving community of cheerful, exuberant Twins fans, while I just have a few thousand of you cynical bastards coming here every day. Wait, it gets better. Jones got two at-bats against Maroth, who has been significantly better against left-handed batters than right-handed batters over the course of his career. Then, once Maroth was out of the game, Gardenhire brought LeCroy off the bench to pinch hit for Luis Rivas in the seventh inning ... versus a right-handed pitcher (against whom he is a career .252/.303/.411 hitter). If the manager had done things the completely opposite way, LeCroy would have gotten multiple at-bats against a left-handed pitcher and Jones could have been available off the bench to pinch hit against a right-handed pitcher. Today at The Hardball Times: - Jeff Weaver's 2005 Season, By Robert Louis Stevenson (by Aaron Gleeman) - Rivals in Exile: Last Place (by Ben Jacobs and Larry Mahnken) Today's Picks (21-12, +$960): Houston (Oswalt) -140 over Pittsburgh (Perez) Arizona (Vazquez) +160 over Los Angeles (Lowe) Chicago (Garland) +125 over Oakland (Zito)
|
E-Mail: aarongleeman@gmail.com Twitter: twitter.com/aarongleeman  Read Me Elsewhere Rotoworld NBC Sports MinnPost Minnesota Twins Stuff Minneapolis Star Tribune St. Paul Pioneer Press MinnesotaTwins.com LaVelle E. Neal III Joe Christensen Kelsie Smith Kelly Thesier Seth Stohs Stick and Ball Guy Nick Nelson Parker Hageman Phil Mackey John Bonnes Edward Thoma Josh Johnson Howard Sinker Twinkie Town Pat Neshek Sports Stuff Hardball Talk Rotoworld Fan Graphs Baseball-Reference.com The Hardball Times Baseball America Baseball Think Factory Bill Simmons Rob Neyer Joe Posnanski Big League Stew The Big Lead Deadspin Fanhouse Baseball Prospectus U.S.S. Mariner Al's Ramblings Sports By Brooks Baseball Musings MLB Trade Rumors Non-Sports Stuff MinnPost Alan Sepinwall David Brauer Adam Carolla Poker Road Gorilla Mask Wicked Chops Poker WWTDD? Popoholic The Superficial Steve Silver Tao of Poker Discount Sporting Goods   ![[Powered by Blogger]](http://buttons.blogger.com/bloggerbutton1.gif){kind=small}
 Official Fantasy Girl of AG.com OFGoAG.com Timeline: Heidi Klum (8/2002 - 12/2003) Jessica Alba (12/2003 - 10/2004) Elisha Cuthbert (10/2004 - 11/2006) Vacant (11/2006 - 6/2008) Keeley Hazell (6/2008 - 3/2010) Mila Kunis (3/2010 - Present) OFGoAG.com Candidates: Marisa Miller Jenna Fischer Kate Beckinsale Keeley Hazell Diora Baird Top 40 Twins Prospects of 2010: 1. Aaron Hicks, CF 2. Kyle Gibson, SP 3. Wilson Ramos, C 4. Miguel Angel Sano, SS 5. Ben Revere, CF 6. Angel Morales, CF 7. David Bromberg, SP 8. Danny Valencia, 3B 9. Matthew Bashore, SP 10. Billy Bullock, RP 11. Rene Tosoni, RF 12. Chris Parmelee, RF 13. Adrian Salcedo, SP 14. Joe Benson, CF 15. Jeff Manship, SP 16. Tyler Robertson, SP 17. Carlos Gutierrez, RP 18. B.J. Hermsen, SP 19. Anthony Slama, RP 20. Max Kepler, CF 21. Alex Burnett, RP 22. Robert Delaney, RP 23. Luke Hughes, 3B 24. Ben Tootle, RP 25. Deolis Guerra, SP 26. Shooter Hunt, SP 27. Trevor Plouffe, SS 28. Michael McCardell, SP 29. Reggie Williams, 2B 30. Estarlin De Los Santos, SS 31. Derek McCallum, 2B 32. Jose Morales, C 33. Chris Herrmann, LF 34. Bobby Lanigan, SP 35. Danny Rams, C 36. Josmil Pinto, C 37. Steven Tolleson, 2B 38. Anderson Hidalgo, 3B 39. Loek Van Mil, RP 40. Joe Testa, RP |
