Old Twins Cap

Now what? Twins minor league season is over. Nothing left, only MLB Twins. And that is not much to follow. Kind of sad. In a lot of ways.

Just in: Baltimore gives us Casilla and Valencia in exchange for JWill. Burp.

Good news on Tanaka. I just sent Rad an email. As long as he's over there, there's a kid in Japan, plays shortstop, incredible range, good enough arm, great line-drive hitter. He's a can't miss MLB standout. Probably get him cheap. What's his name again? .....

It is our fault. Look at attendance: 30K regularly, sometimes a lot more. What motivation does the Twins FO have for doing something different? It's working just fine the way it's going now.

It just amazes me the excuses that people make for Gardenhire. "It's not his fault." "He doesn't get to pick his players." "He's not responsible for the way rookies play." "It's not his pitching staff." Vomit. He's been Twins manager for 12 frickin years. He talks to TR every week and is in every key meeting regarding personnel. Over that time, he's won one playoff series, and been swept by the Yankees, what, three times? For the last three years, the team has lost 90 games -- no matter what players he's been given, no matter his coaches, the schedule, anything. The bare facts of managing in MLB are these: if you are manager and your team does not perform well, especially for THREE ENTIRE SEASONS, you will get replaced. That's the way it works in a normal, functional organization. The fact that the Twins, for some reason, and even their knucklehead fans, cannot bring themselves to face reality and do the obvious thing -- i.e. try a new manager -- is stupefying beyond belief. People like me have not only given up our season tickets, not only stopped going to occasional games, not only given up listening or watching, -- we are actively engaging in civil disregard for the whole Twins organization because, in the final analysis, when a group is this dysfunctional and shows absolutely no ability or aptitude to change themselves for the better -- there really is nothing to be done but hope that with enough fan apathy and failure, they will eventually be forced to realize they can't go on like this anymore.

Kepler playing a lot of 1B these days. Seems like the Twins are folding their cards on his ability to play center field. Is he just too damn big?

How many errors does he have?

Sano's a man. Let him play like a man. You don't see the baseball people in Boston calling for Ortiz to be benched after he took a bat to a bullpen phone, then had to be restrained by his manager, screamed at by Pedroia -- all in a game they were winning handily and because Ortiz felt a couple of strike calls were overly generous. Sano will be okay if you surround him with serious ballplayers who want to win. Do not neuter his machismo.

Tyler Jones. Haven't heard much about him, but nobody squares up against him. There's a lot young arms at various levels for the Twins, almost too many to keep track of.

The reason to lead with such pessimism is because it is realism. The Twins do not have a Major League lineup -- with Mauer out, Willingham out, Morneau diminished -- go back and look at that lineup. They just will not score many runs with AAA players, rookies and cast-offs. It's not that hard to figure out when the Twins FO is simply punching the clock with no intention of putting a quality team on the field. Sorry if that harshes your fandom, but until the fanbase starts demanding a better roster, we will be consigned to this level of mediocrity. And yes, three years of 90 losses is pretty sad and frustrating. I want it to end even more than you do.

I haven't seen the play on TV, but, I did look at the Twins lineup. Even if the umpire makes the right call there, you have runners at 1st and 2nd, one out, and absolutely no possibility of scoring a run with the Twins lineup. Sad but true.

HIcks plays a pretty mellow game of baseball. It looks cool when it works, but when it doesn't, he just comes across as someone who doesn't care about outcomes. He's a young kid. He could still change. But, we already have Mauer, who takes unemotional to a robotic level. Between the two of them might as well nod off during the game and read the boxscore.

MLB needed this as much as Braun. You gotta start somewhere, and a former MVP who was willing to waive appeals and take his medicine is as good as any. There are some big fish and many names yet to drop. They started with Braun because it sends a clear message to the rest: come clean, take the hit, and we will let you off easy. Take the long road, and we will inflict maximum pain. Think of the pressure now on the rest of the Biogenesis crew: would you want to be the last one to admit guilt?

In other words, the Twins are judged to be a mid-size market, have above average attendance, and ownership is walking away with a lot of profit. It's only the team that isn't doing well. Add that up and it's kind of damning.

Sorry my friend, this is a sad apology for a manager who does not deserve his job. I keep hearing this, "Well, he doesn't make the plays, he only fills out the lineup card and makes pitching changes". Well, SSSSSOOOOORRRRYYYYY. Life ain't fair. Period. If it were, we would live in a more egalitarian society. We don't, and Gardenhire is sitting in a position, managing a team, that, by any measure, is truly awful. There is this thing in the professional ranks called accountability. You may have heard of it. It means that if you are a teacher and your student's test scores don't measure up, you can be let go. If you are a CEO and your company's earnings fall off, you can be fired. It's life. Functional organizations follow these basic precepts. A truly dysfunctional organization continues to do the same thing, year after year, and expects a different result. That is the definition of denial. Gardenhire, in his best years, did not advance in the playoffs, and in fact, are you even aware of the Twins record the last three trips to the post-season? What are you trying to preserve exactly -- the Twins right to be doormats for the Yankees? After 10 years plus, his team is rotten. It doesn't matter if it's his fault or not. All that matters is that the Twins take up a new direction. It ain't going to happen with Gardenhire as coach. In particular with all the new players expected to emerge in the next few years, it is exactly a new coach that will allow the cream to rise and keep old habits, losing ones, from being ingrained in younger players. If you could cite some metrics for your praises of Gardenhire, like numbers, or I'd even take anecdotes, anything besides the fact that the Twins won 6 division titles in the worst division in baseball AND NEVER ADVANCED TO THE WORLD SERIES as rationale for keeping him.

I'm really sick and tired of the argument: It's not Gardy's fault. The FO didn't give him enough talent. You know what, life ain't fair. Some kids are born disabled and some are given a million bucks by their parents. And for sure, any given outcome in a baseball game is not about "fairness". It's not what Gardy has or has not been given that matters. His team is stale. It's putrid. It's like having the same teacher for 10 straight school years. How boring is that? How much of the routine do you just tune out because it's old news? Where's the passion? The fire? There's nothing fair about having to face the Yankees in the playoffs. Nothing fair about Morneau's concussion in the midst of an MVP season. No fairness in the quality of their pitching staff. So life isn't fair. Get over it. Baseball is about winning, and when it ain't happening for the third year in a row, fair or not, it's time to switch coaches. That's what normal functional organizations do. By hanging onto Gardy the Twins are showing, once and for all, that they are a dysfunctional organization, inimical to change, incapable of accountability and just plain afraid of trying something new and different. With that mind-set, good luck trying to rebuild around a new group of young raw talent.

Oh man, you are going to blame Diamond's performance on his catcher? Are you one of his parents or what?

Don't think the Yankees catcher is named Chris Davis. Stewart much more likely. If it was Davis, that would be quite something, with all the home runs and RBIs, I think the Yankees would be set.

You guys can't see the forest for the trees. The Twins are bad, and their players are bad. But at some point, you have to look at the manager and realize that the staleness on his team is his responsibility. No passion? That's on Gardy. No excitement? That's on Gardy. No one who hates to lose? That's Gardy, too. After a decade, it's hard to come to the same job every day and bring a level of intensity and insight that makes a crucial difference to guys three decades younger. That's why teams change managers. Not because Gardy isn't a good guy or likeable or even a good manager. But because it's time.

Three years of this now.... Why isn't Gardenhire ever held accountable for this kind of performance? Not his fault? Other teams at least have regular pick off plays, squeeze bunts, hit and runs, and generally try to put pressure on the other team. Gardenhire is playing for the three-run homer and shut-down relief pitching. And, it ain't working. For the third year in a row. Going to get monotonous real fast as the year winds on.

After last night, with Burton looking like an average guy and Duensing doing his failing imitation of a lefty-specialist, it is more than high time the Twins look at their bullpen soberly and with fresh eyes and start tinkering. It's not about this year anymore, so bring on some new arms and see what happens.

It is what it is. Baseball is baseball, and if you look at the splits, the Central has done well against the other two divisions. Now, with home and away games and other team factors in the head-to-heads, who knows if the Central is or is not the better division, but over time, these things tend to take care of themselves. So, kudos on a fun fact. It seems the AL East got fat on the NL.

It's in the bag already: Jose Iglesias, Red Sox, 3B and SS. He's over 1000.00 OPS, good fielder, and most importantly, plays on the East Coast for a 1st place team so he'll get all the Elite Media votes for ROY.

This is no funk or freak occurrence. Mauer is striking out at a higher rate. In high school, Joe was famous for striking out only once in his career. But now, there's a lot of pelts being taken. This has all the signs of an aging player. Question is: can Maurer make an adjustment and maintain excellence by becoming a different kind of hitter? And what would that be in his case?

What's up with Buck? Two games now. And Sano? Are they on airplanes headed to new teams or what is going on?