Teflon

Upgrade the Twins scoreboard and other electronic signage to full 3D. (Also introduce the first 3D players uniforms)

Maybe we're really using this trade to evaluate Don Cooper as a pitching coach prospect for next year.

Trevor Plouffe's low number of RBI's from his 18 homeruns brings to mind a similar performance from another young right-handed Twins batter who wore #24 - Tom Brunansky. In 1982, Brunansky hit 20 homeruns while only driving in 46 - which at the time I thought was an interesting stat. Brunansky batted third most of that year behind #9 hitter Lenny Faedo, leadoff hitter Bobby Mitchell and #2 hitter Ron Washington, none of whom got on base with great frequency. Bruno also was followed by Hrbek, Gaetti, and Ward in the batting order who cleaned up their opportunties nicely, all driving in 80-90 runs. (While Brunansky's is the season that immediately springs to mind for high HR-low RBI numbers, Kevin Maas had an even more disproportionate HR-RBI season (1990) for the Yankees when he hit 21 and only drove in 41.) My question: Is there a better way for the Twins to capitalize on Plouffe's home runs? Would dropping him to 7th or 8th in the order instead of the 5th or 6th he's been hitting as of late give him more RBI opportunities? Or, is the low RBI to HR ratio just an anomaly based on a not-so-large and somewhat-flukey data set?

Matt Hauser, who has been a solid late inning reliever for the Twins Florida State League team in Fort Myers over the first half of the season, makes an appearance in the Miracle's starting rotation tonight versus the Charlotte Stone Crabs at Hammond Field. This will be Hauser's second start as a professional - the first coming in a 3-inning start on a designated staff day leading into the FSL All-Star break. Matt has made 4 relief appearances since then, including a three-inning stint in his last outing - a 9-3 loss against the Tampa Yankees in which Hauser surrendered 3 runs. On the season, Matt is 1-1 with a 2.57 ERA in 42 innings of work. He's struck out 38 and walked 15 and has an outstanding 1.07 WHIP and a .196 opponent's batting average. Good luck to Matt tonight. Fireworks are scheduled to follow the game in Fort Myers. (Hopefully no pyrotechnics by the Crabs while Hauser's on the mound.)

http://pic.pimg.tw/chenshilun/normal_4a2d21232eeff.jpg The diminutive Kuo-Hua Lo circa 2010.

We must have the Flowbee of starting pitching staffs, then.

As the Florida State League comes back from their mid-season All-Star game, time to provide Twins Daily Nation with an update on the 2012 season of relief pitcher Matt Hauser of the Fort Myers Miracle. Worthy of note is that Matt just made his first starting appearance as a professional pitcher on June 13th versus Bradenton after appearing in 74 games in relief over his 2 1/2 years in the Twins farm system. Don't read too much into that however, as the game was designated as a "Staff Day" for the Fort Myers mound corps prior to the FSL All-Star break and Matt was only used for 3 innings in the game. (Allowing no runs on one hit and striking out three with no walks.) For the season, Matt has been a solid 7th inning option for the Miracle, compiling a 2.23 ERA and excellent 1.07 WHIP in 36.1 innings of work, spanning 21 games. He's only surrendered runs in 6 of those appearances while working 2 or more innings a dozen times, not counting his lone start. He seems to be in a groove of late, as well, giving up only 6 hits and a single earned-run in his last 19 innings dating back to May 14th. During that time he's also fanned 12 and walked 7. Matt has been a 1+ strikeout per inning pitcher in his minor league career so his K's per IP seem to have dropped a little this season but his hits have also been fewer. If I had to guess, I'd assume the numbers to revert to norm by the end of the season. With FSL All-Star Rickey Bowen pitching solidly as the closer in Fort Myers, Hauser appears to be slotted for 7th and 8th inning work as long as Bowen and Hauser both remain in Fort Myers. Hauser pitched briefly for New Britain at the end of the season last year so it's possible the 24-year old could see some time in the Eastern League again before season's end. As a footnote - I found this interesting... the Baseball Cube creates a rating of pitchers based on a 1-100 rating comparison to their similar-level peers in control, strikeouts, efficiency (similar to WHIP), and surrendering homeruns. Matt currently is valued at Control 88 K's 66 Efficiency 83 vsPower 67 Walks have been borderline high in his career thus far so the control number seemed a little high, but overall this paints the picture of a solid performer at the A+ level.

For years Mariano Rivera's cutter has been acknowledged as one of the nastiest pitches in baseball. What other current MLB pitcher's pitches would you put in that category? Stephen Strasburg's fastball? Cole Hamel's changeup? Adam Wainwright's curve? Feel free to use data to support your choice. (PITCHf/x, etc.)

I find the resemblence in profile a little disturbing.

Ex-Twins reliever Pat Neshek is also playing for the Orioles' AAA team.

God yes. This "injury" business is getting absurd with the pitchers. (And give Slama a shot already. He's earned it.)

How would it be any different than a ref in the NFL deciding when and where to enforce the out-of-bounds line based on the score of the game or hockey waiving offsides calls for teams that are trailing? Geez Louise. Imagine a crisply played baseball game where at-bats were actually resolved based on the true merit of the pitch being thrown. I would pay more to go to those kinds of games.

Diamond and Walters and then three defaulters.

Twins pitchers are the freshest in the league as they have thrown the fewest innings per game of any American League team this year: 8.61. (The Baltimore Orioles have pitched 9.41 innings per game.) The Twins have accomplished this by only having to pitch the 9th inning in 4 of their 16 road games thus far and by not playing in any extra inning games.

What's frustrating is that digging out of this hole looks like a multi-year project for the Twins. To make the frustration worse, FSN ran the Johan Santana 17-K game from 2007 before tonight's Seattle game. The only 17-K performance we were likely to see this year would have been from Clete Thomas.

This move is akin to changing out the cupholders in your Aztek.

I get a -$12.25M change comparing rosters from 2011 ($112.7M) to 2012 ($100.3M) when I do the math. -$40.4M for players on 2011 MLB payroll not on 2012: (Nathan, Cuddyer, Delmon Young, Kubel, Thome, Slowey, Repko, Mijares, Dusty Hughes, Tolbert, Manship) -$3.65M for smaller salaries from 2011 to 2012 (Morneau $15M to $14M, Capps $7.15M to $4.5M) +$8.5M for larger salaries from 2011 to 2012 (Span, Blackburn, Liriano, Baker, Perkins, Casilla, Pavano, Valencia, Duensing) +$23.3M for players on 2012 MLB payroll not on 2011 (Willingham, Doumit, Marquis, Carrol, Zumaya, Burton, Burroughs, Revere, Burnett, Slama, Luke Hughes, Plouffe, Maloney, Clete Thomas, Hendriks, Parmelee, Waldrop) That's $44.05M removed from the payroll from last year and $31.8M added for a net change of -$12.25M Another way to look at is - there are 14 carryover players from 2011 making $77.1M this year as opposed to $72.3M last year. In 2011, the rest of the roster (since jettisoned) cost $40.4M. Their replacements this year cost $23.2M.

With the torn ACL injury suffered by the Yankees Mariano Rivera last night while shagging fly balls during warmups in KC, the Yankees might be looking for some bullpen bolstering. I'm assuming the capable David Robertson goes to the end spot but that New York might be interested in a 7th or 8th inning option. Do you think Matt Capps would be appealing to them in trade for a mid-level prospect in return?

Question - Will this Twins squad be no-hit again this year?

There's a distinction between being in the bottom third in the league in ERA with good offense and being the absolute worst pitching staff in the league coupled with a bad offense. The Twins 2009 Twins staff was a run and a half better and scored more runs than they gave up while the 2012 Twins are on the pace to allow over 900 runs this season and only score around 600. We thought the -200 run differential last year was bad - this year's team threatens -300. No way a team like that competes. Sorry. Strangely, the three most wins for teams that allowed more than 900 runs in a season all occurred in 1996. The Orioles won 88 games, (Scored 949 runs/allowed 903) the Red Sox won 85, (928/921) and the Rockies won 83. (961/964) You'll notice all scored over 900 runs as well.

I remember the Glen Adams performance in '77 taking a back seat to Carew, even though Glen set the Twins RBI record. Rod had generated a huge amount of media interest with his pursuit of .400 and this game was the pinnacle of all the attention as his 4 for 5 day put him up to .403. Also, the Twins were very much in the pennant race in the AL West at that point and ended up taking the lead over the White Sox with this victory. It was just a gorgeous warm late June Sunday afternoon for baseball, too, leading to a rare sellout crowd that day at the old Met. (And lots of beer sales.) I would circle this game as one of the ten most memorable regular season games in the Twins chronicle as it was a confluence of great individual performances that were meaningful in the bigger team picture as well. As far as the individual performance by Adams, I think Kirby's incredible '87 weekend in Milwaukee was more impressive but this game was much more memorable.

In Sunday's game versus the Royals, in the bottom of the 2nd, Mauer uncharacteristically jumped on Bruce Chen's first pitch to him in the 2nd inning, sending a deep shot to straight-away CF that was caught at the track. In Mauer's remaining at-bats, the KC pitchers went to 2-0 counts in all three, not coming in with any first-pitch strikes. To me, it seemed similar to showing bunt to get the third baseman to play in farther. You're not going to bunt all the time, but you still show it sometimes to keep them guessing. I don't know if that was actually Joe's intent or if the first pitch from Chen was just unavoidably fat. Either way, it worked well for Joe in his subsequent at-bats. Of course on Friday, Mauer hit a double and a triple after first TAKING two strikes in each at-bat so it really didn't matter how the Royals started him off, I guess. His first pitch swinging percent this year is 10% which is higher than it's been since 2008. To put that in some context, however, Justin Morneau has sung at 33% of the first pitches he's seen over his career and was swinging at 43% this year. Joe has typically driven in around 18% of the batters on base when he bats. The league average is around 15%. This year Joe is driving in 20% (12 of 59) so the impression than he is leaving more men on base is false. Maybe his fails are in more dramatic situations causing the fans to perceive them more dramatically, I don't know.

Today's ray of sunshine: In a scene reminiscent of Waiting for Guffman, Phil Mackey has reported that a "person in the know" has said that Francisco Liriano will be scouted by at least one interested MLB club tonight.

Bobby Korecky is the best hitter in Twins history with at-least one at bat.

Lawrence George "Moose" Stubing had the same number of wins in his 8-game career managing the Angels as he had hits in his 5-game career playing for the Angels.