Gardy's fixation on backup catchers

[ashbury]

If the team is injury free. Yeah... This will happen. you can't stop it. Parmelee will be sent down.

 

Doumit will get more DH time. Parmelee will move into a RF rotation with Thomas and Plouffe. Parmelee needs to play like Revere needs to play and with Doumit DH and the fear. Towles is on his way.

Small sample size and all that... but Towles is off to the slowest start of the three. Butera is the one, ironically, who has promising looking AAA stats, due in large part to a home run. It will be interesting which one they bring up. Towles looked good in Ft Myers.

[Riverbrian]

Small sample size and all that... but Towles is off to the slowest start of the three. Butera is the one, ironically, who has promising looking AAA stats, due in large part to a home run. It will be interesting which one they bring up. Towles looked good in Ft Myers.

Yeah... It could be any of the three. Butera would not surprise me. I'm just hoping for Towles. Maybe TR or Gardy will want to see what he can do because they have seen what Butera can do. Whoever it is will have little effect on the team because they won't play. Maybe a game every two weeks when Gardy thinks to himslef. Yeah, let's get you in a game.

[Riverbrian]

That would leave Rochester with only two catchers. Would they be able to continue playing? Or would they have to forfeit their games?

lol... Love it...

 

I think it won't be long and the Twins will issue a policy that catchers at all levels are not allowed to travel together in case the plane goes down. No night clubbing together in case of fire or gunplay. No sitting in the dug out side by side in case a foul ball clips both of them.

[jmlease1]

So what's the option that everyone is pining for? Doumit at DH? I think everyone is OK with that, but

 

a) that's only a recent option, now that Morneau seems to feel like he can play first base and

what other good option is going to take over right field? Parmelee? Is he going to be any better defensively? Clete? Sure, defense is better, but he was waived for a reason. Plouffe? Fine versus righties, but Gardy was already doing that even with Doumit in the lineup. Revere? In right field? How does that make sense?

 

What am I missing? I honestly can't figure out what people are criticizing.

I think the concern is that Clete is going to start getting more PT than Doumit when Mauer is in the lineup so as to ensure gardy has a catcher on the bench. or that with Morneau playing in the field again, Parmelee is going to be sent down in favor of having a (useless) 3rd catcher in order to cater to Gardy's fear of losing his DH. Based on prior history, that's a legit concern.

 

I'm willing to wait and see how this plays out afore trashing the manager, especially since he's made the move to break up Mauer & Morneau with Willingham in the batting order. I hope this means he will continue to make the right moves to get the right guys in the right positions and give them and the team their best chance to succeed.

[whydidnt]

Here's your small sample size stat of the day. Since we acquired Thomas, 4 games ago, Thomas has played in all 4 games, starting 3, Doumit has played and started in 2. Notice a trend? Doumit has not set the world on fire with his bat, but neither has Thomas. Doumit has a track record of being a good offensive player at the major league level, Thomas does not. It's too bad Thomas is a LH hitter, he would make decent platoon partner with Doumit if he could mash lefties. The good in a small sample: Twins over the last 4 games: 2-2, before that 2-6, so that's a positive trend.

[one_eyed_jack]

Had a chuckle reading Christina Kahrl's Roster Roundup on ESPN this morning: "Please think these things through: The Twins might be bad on offense, but Ron Gardenhire’s being a worrywart over having Joe Mauer and Ryan Doumit in the same lineup is a way to make a bad lineup worse." I couldn't agree more..

 

 

I wasn't trying to imply that in the 10 games this year Gardy had under utilized-Doumit. Come on guys, talk about a small sample size!

 

 

Sooooo........what precisely were you trying to imply when you said that you "couldn't agree more" with Kahrl's piece, the central point of which was that Doumit was being underutilized because of Gardenhire's alleged fear of having him and Mauer in the lineup at the same time?

[whydidnt]

Sooooo........what precisely were you trying to imply when you said that you "couldn't agree more" with Kahrl's piece, the central point of which was that Doumit was being underutilized because of Gardenhire's alleged fear of having him and Mauer in the lineup at the same time?

Actually the point wasn't that he WAS being underutilized. The point was that it's a bad move to bench him in favor Thomas. Keep in mind this was Monday morning, at that point we had 1 whole game on record with Thomas on the roster, you are among those that have tried to twist this into a discussion on Gardy's utilization of Doumit to this point. My point was that he has a known concern about putting his backup C's in the lineup and that it would be a bad move to take Doumit's bat out of this lineup in favor of Thomas. We can argue all day about whether my presumption that Doumit is better than Thomas for the lineup is right or wrong. However, since the only arguments any have posted disagreeing with this premise have limited it to a 10 game stretch of this season tells me the premise itself has merit: Gardy is a worrywart about his Catcher. It's a fact, he's admitted it to be the case, and I think it's a mistake on his part to be so concerned about it, and apparently so do some in the national media.