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one_eyed_jack

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Everything posted by one_eyed_jack

  1. one_eyed_jack
    I'm glad you decided to write on the subject, Nick. Thoughtful and reasoned, as always. I also commend you for taking the high road. I would have been tempted to offer a far less dignified response. The stuff he said was childish, illogical, insulting, and flat out wrong. It's pretty ironic to me for him to complain about bloggers not being accountable for getting things wrong like he is. Seems to me he got this one pretty wrong, but I doubt he'll face consequences for it. (At least none beyond the same ones that bloggers face - a loss of credibility after a bunch of other people point out how wrong you are.)
  2. one_eyed_jack
    ---Helpful tip: there is a "Reply with Quote" button you can use to include the original post when responding to others. Had you known this, you could have saved yourself a few keystrokes and not had to re-type or copy/paste the "Gardenhire is perfect" argument that has been advanced so many types by so many people on this thread. Cheers.
  3. one_eyed_jack
    ---Maybe in terms of the regular season. Gardy's teams have generally finished with better records than the '87 Twins. But once the playoffs were expanded, you couldn't really do what the Twins did that year and basically ride 2 pitchers to a title. If there had been a wildcard in '87, the Twins would have had to beat Toronto, who won 96 games that year, before even getting to Detroit, who they would have had to beat 4 times, not 3. TK would have been forced to go deeper into his rotation, and that would have made things a lot tougher. So there's an argument to be made for some of Gardy's rotations being better for the long haul of a 162-game season. But if you're looking for 2 guys to get you through a short series, I would take Viola/Blyleven over Santana/Radke without hesitation. Santana was a true ace and Radke a nice pitcher. But Sweet Music and Bert were big-time gamers.
  4. one_eyed_jack
    I've never seen a manager do so much with so little, yet still get bashed incessantly by the fan base for not doing more. Yes, I get it, the lack of postseason success is frustrating. But the key ingredient to winning in October is starting pitching. When you're forced to trot out the likes of Boof Bonser and Brian Duensing as playoff starters, your chances of success are pretty slim. Take your top run producer out of the lineup a la Morneau in '09 and '10, and you can pretty much forget it. Look at Bruce Bochy's track record before winning the Series with the Giants. Not very impressive, is it? Did he finally figure it out after a decade-and-a-half? Or do ya think maybe having a staff with Lincecum and a few other guys who would have be aces on a lot of teams made a difference? 6 division titles in 9 years is no small feat, folks. Especially considering the low payroll and injury problems he had to deal with for a lot of those years. Twins fans always point to Kelly, but though he won 2 rings, the team was not consistently competitive under him. He managed the Twins for 15 full seasons. They finished higher than 4th in the division in only 5 of them. His career winning percentage? .478. Now Gardy, like many of his players, had a down year last year and needs to bounce back. I, for one, hope and think that he can. We'll see starting Friday - bring it on!
  5. one_eyed_jack
    OK, so it's all about the manager saying the right thing to his players. The fact that the Yankees had a lot more talent, a lot more experience and healthier rosters has nothing to do with it. Check, got it.
  6. one_eyed_jack
    I think relief pitching and defense were the 2 biggest reasons for last season's disaster. Unfortunately, I don't we did enough in those areas to make us a threat. I actually think the rotation will be fine, and I think we'll be able to score runs. But with pitchers on strict pitch counts these days, so many games are won and lost in middle relief. There seems to be a lot of anxiety over Capps saving games, but I'm more worried about the ability of the 6th/7th/8th inning guys to get the ball to Capps with the lead in tact. And if the defense is giving the opposition extra outs every game like they were last year, it's going to make things that much more difficult.
  7. one_eyed_jack
    ...that effectively shoots down Heyman's piece as well. http://jamessmythbroadcast.blogspot.com/2012/03/breaking-twins-were-psyched-out-by.html "Was this all because of that famous MYSTIQUE and AURA? Of course not. The Yankees were the better team in each of the four seasons, even holding a better record as a wild card team than the Central-winning Twins in 2010 ... Having said that, there was definitely a Murphy's Law factor in all of these series. The Twins held leads in seven of the 12 games they lost. There were a ton of goofy things that all went the Yankees' way, from baserunning miscues in big spots, to Joe Mauer's double-that-wasn't, to Joe Nathan turning human." It's painful to read about the Twins having leads in 7 of the 12 playoff losses to the Yankees, but if they were as psyched out and intimidated as Heyman suggests, they would never have gotten the lead that often in the first place. Heyman has written about the Twins being "psyched out" by the Yankees before, so now he's just molding facts to fit a narrative.
  8. one_eyed_jack
    Heyman's piece is ridiculous. He's honestly suggesting that the '03 and '04 Twins were evenly matched with the Yankee teams of those years? Please. Compare the records, rosters, and payrolls. It's not even close. And I find it hard to believe that what happened to them in the playoffs those years would somehow be the heads of an almost completely different roster of guys 5 years later. There were a lot of close games between the teams, and you can't point to a lot of reasons the Yankees won. They had more talent and more experience. The Twins caught some bad breaks (Koskie's double, Cuzzi's foul ball call, Morneau out in '09 and '10) and made some dumb base-running mistakes. But the east coast centric national media loves the storyline of a "Yankee mystique" so powerful that the mere sight of Yankee uniforms has small-market teams like the Twins quivering with fear. So they keep hyping that. But it's silly. Bear in mind Heyman is the guy who thinks Morris should be in the HOF but not Blyleven, so that should tell you a bit about his knowledge level of baseball in general and the Twins in particular.
  9. one_eyed_jack
    I don't ever remember entering a season as hard to predict as this one. But I'll give it a go. -Mauer and Capps have big bounceback years and silence a bunch of their critics -Morneau gets off to a nice start but somehow hits is noggin again and is forced to retire -The Twins will be much better than expected and hang in a 3-way race with Cleveland and Detroit (who will not be as good as expected) for a lot of the season before tailing off in September and finishing third -This will be Gardenhire's final year managing the Twins. -
  10. one_eyed_jack
    Heyman's piece is ridiculous. He's honestly suggesting that the '03 and '04 Twins were evenly matched with the Yankee teams of those years? Please. Compare the records, rosters, and payrolls. It's not even close. And I find it hard to believe that what happened to them in the playoffs those years would somehow be the heads of an almost completely different roster of guys 5 years later. There were a lot of close games between the teams, and you can't point to a lot of reasons the Yankees won. They had more talent and more experience. The Twins caught some bad breaks (Koskie's double, Cuzzi's foul ball call, Morneau out in '09 and '10) and made some dumb base-running mistakes. But the east coast centric national media loves the storyline of a "Yankee mystique" so powerful that the mere sight of Yankee uniforms has small-market teams like the Twins quivering with fear. So they keep hyping that. But it's silly. Bear in mind Heyman is the guy who thinks Morris should be in the HOF but not Blyleven, so that should tell you a bit about his knowledge level of baseball in general and the Twins in particular.
  11. one_eyed_jack
    Another similarity with '08 - the Detroit Tigers were heavily favored to win the division (even to win it all by some) that year after making big splashes in the offseason with the acquisitions of Cabrera, Willis and Renteria. And they ended up falling flat on their faces. Everyone was crowning the Tigers division after they signed Prince. But what happened in '08 is another reminder that games are won on the field in Spring and Summer, not on paper in December and January.
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