formerly33

Okay, lol....That's what I thought at first, but then other people were taking it otherwise, whether they approved or not, and then I went back and looked again...and read it backwards. And to be honest, I always enjoy it when people bash their winning team. It's kind of a fun, sarcastic way of saying how much you're appreciating their worth.

I don't know if, as a general rule, people like Michael Tonkin. I guess he hasn't really pitched enough this year to draw much attention, but I was doing some math (yeah, right, me doing math for the fun of it...lol) concerning all the Twins pitchers; that drew my attention to Tonkin more than anyone else. I was just a little surprised since yes, while he's only pitched 7 innings, he's picked up 7 strikeouts and his strikeout to walk ratio is 7.00, leading all Twins pitchers with the exception of Glen Perkins. Yes, even Phil Hughes (well, I did say he's only thrown 7 innings, but...). His WHIP looks good, too, at 1.43. Considering all that, he should be pretty good...but unfortunately, the good news ends there. His ERA stands at 5.14, and that isn't pretty at all. But considering that, I still didn't think much at first since Brian Duensing and Tim Stauffer (surprise!!) both have worse ERAs, and Ricky Nolasco, who currently leads the team in wins, has an ERA of 5.12. Trevor May (and yes, I could even include Phil Hughes) isn't much better. So what's the deal? Well, like I said, I was doing math. (Reading stats is not math, by the way. ) I wanted to know every pitcher's runs per walks/hits ratio. I'm not the most stats geeky person in the world, so this may be a stat I can see by looking at player's Baseball Reference pages, but as it is, I multiplied WHIP by 9 and then divided ERA by that (I suppose I could abbreviate it to WH9 - is that on their stats pages, btw?). I have a feeling that there's a faster way to do this, but whatever. I got the necessary data. So this is what I came up with. I'll just say that this so-called runs per walks/hits ratio stat thingy can be abbreviated to RWH to make it easier. It might be a kind of stupid stat to look at, but I found it to be sort of interesting, nonetheless. It's probably not important. I guess you could say it's a sort of trust stat. Anyway, Perkins had the best RWH, at 0.14, which isn't surprising, or we wouldn't all laugh about how he likes to tease us. The team's RWH is currently 0.32, and the worst players were 0.40. Those were Tim Stauffer and Michael Tonkin. I wasn't surprised about Tim Stauffer at all, and I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised about Michael Tonkin, all things considered. But it was interesting. Now, I'm not saying that Tonkin is as bad as Stauffer. I'm sure that his RWH would go down if he could get more innings under his belt, and while he sure hasn't been too good at keeping runners from scoring, of course that could have something to do with his fielders. Looking at stats doesn't tell you much about that scenario. Also, most importantly, his WHIP is considerably lower than Stauffer's, at 1.43 while Stauffer's is 2.28. But we'll see what happens. Oh, and another thing I noticed is that Aaron Thompson is our only pitcher with more losses than wins (1). Could we have said that about any given pitcher last year?

You can go ahead and worry about my sanity (or lack thereof) if you want to. I mean, this is the first time I've rooted for a winning team (legitimately, that is), so why not be a little crazy? It's way more fun than the Twins losing and having my head on my shoulders. And I'd rather be able to respond "It's good to be optimistic" to people who tauntingly ask "Remember how excited you were at the beginning of the season?" than "It's good to be pessimistic" to people who ask the reverse....lol. But whatever. You go ahead and think what you want to think, I'll think what I want to think, but we'll all be happy with each other since the Twins are winning and everybody's just a little bit crazy.

Lol, that's a way to look at it. I think they should have the team with the longer winning streak and/or the better record in the last ten games at the top.

Looks like MLB is having a slight problem with authority right now.

Oh wait!!! He lined out!!!!! BALLGAME!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Take a good look at our license plate, KC!!!!

Okay, shhh, be quiet.......The Royals are batting in the top of the 9th.....Andrew Miller on the mound.....Omar Infante grounded out to short.....Paulo Orlando grounded out to 2nd......1 strike on Alcides Escobar...............

I CAN'T keep calm because we ARE the best!!! The Twins are now 10 games above .500!! The Twins are in a 5-game winning streak! The Twins swept the BoSox! The Yankees are about to extend KC’s losing streak to 4, making the Twins the top of the AL Central! The outlook’s pretty brilliant for my hometown team today.

BALLGAME!!!!!!!!! 10 games above .500!!!!!!! Head of the division!!!!!! YEEEESSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

In play, outs. Details please!

I personally thought he was doing a pretty good job behind the plate.

Perkins may like to scare us all, but I'd have to agree with his wife. Tweet.

I almost mentioned that yesterday. And then of course the tickets out in center (that's where they are, right?) say 2015. You figure.

Uh...no. No, I wouldn't say that.

Yes.

TORII!!!!!!!!!

EDDIE!!!!!!!!!!!

No.

EDDIE!!!!!!!!!!!

And the Yankees are beating KC 4-1 in the bottom 3rd with 3 runs this inning, a man on 1st, and only 1 out.

TORII!! Tie game!!

Hm, I'd like Jun 1, but I'm not sure if I can do the whole series. And.....it is??

I was able to find out a little more details about Vavra's injury from an article about yesterday's game by The Gazette.

No. I went deaf.

NINE games above .500. Are we happy?