I've now decided that I will be writing one blog a week dedicated to the Minnesota Twins, so as to stay close to home with the topic.
Monday night's loss to the Seattle Mariners in 10 innings should be the final straw, but it won't. I mentioned this in my last Twins blog (When Does "It's Still Early" No Longer Apply - Friday, May 13th), but it has now reached the time where this organization needs to hold people accountable for the debacle that has been the 2011 season. After blowing yet another lead, this time a lead of three runs in the eighth inning, the Twins lose the game in the 10th inning. In any other market, you would be seeing the guys on "Baseball Tonight" discussing whether or not the manager would be on the hot seat, with the potential of losing his job. However, with this team and this organization, national media outlets know that the Twins front office wouldn't have the spine to do what needs to be done, thus not wasting energy even discussing it on air.
You can blame the players all you want to. The bullpen has been a hodgepodge of random arms all season, with no one other than Glen Perkins showing any promise of wanting to actually compete and to win. Unfortunately, Perkins went down on Saturday with a strained oblique muscle and will miss the next couple of weeks. Go figure. You can blame injuries all you want to, as well. The Twins have many key players that have missed significant time due to injuries, most notably Joe Mauer, who is on the disabled list with only God knows what now. Jim Thome, Delmon Young, Tsuyoshi Nishioka, and Mauer have all missed a number of games, some warranted in the case of Thome, Nishioka, and Mauer. Others, namely Delmon Young, have been rumored to have missed time because of the early season cold weather making it tough to loosen a tight muscle. Come on, really?
What this team used to win with, it's now getting beat with. The term "Twins Baseball" was a phrase that gave opposing managers headaches. Now, the team that helped make "small ball" a way of life in Major League Baseball, has decided to abandon its roots. Speed, fundamental execution, and stellar defense have been the staples of this team throughout the last ten years. It would almost appear that the 2011 Twins have no one remaining from those previous teams, even though the core group of guys are still there (Cuddyer, Morneau, Mauer, Kubel, Span). None of those three mentioned factors have shown themselves this season, and quite frankly, that's on the coaching staff, not the players.
Starting with the blown rundown in the first game of the season, the Twins have shown that their fielding has become suspect this season. A basic rundown has proven to be a difficult task for this team. There have been two glaring weak spots: the middle infield and left field. With Nishioka going down early with a broken leg, and Alexi Casilla's overall incompetence both in the field and at the plate, the Twins have thrown whatever they can out there to patch up the middle infield, including putting there usual right fielder, Michael Cuddyer, at second base for a number of games. This uncertainty up the middle has been a big cause of a lot of the fielding mishaps so far this season. Although the bullpen blew the lead Monday night, you could almost attribute the loss to a poor fielding play by shortstop Trevor Plouffe, who let a soft line drive by Ichiro Suzuki drop in front of him in a poor attempt to try and turn a double play, rather than catch the ball, get the out, and prevent the runner on third from scoring.
As far as left field goes, for those of you who know me, you know how little faith or confidence I have in Delmon Young. I still believe that trade has not worked out for this team. Again, people will say that if not for Delmon, we wouldn't have won the division last year. That may be, but again, those people need to realize that it's not about winning the division any more. That is the biggest cop out in sports! The object is to win a World Series championship, plain and simple! Delmon Young is not the type of player that can help you achieve that goal! His immaturity and lack of discipline and hustle are ten times more detrimental to a ball club than his athletic talent, and it can still be debated if in fact he has much of that. He's loafed after balls in the outfield on a few occasions, and is still a major liability in the left field. When you look at what the Twins gave up, that trade as thus far worked against the them. Giving up a starting pitcher in Matt Garza, who, when you look at your current options, would be either the ace of your staff, or your number two man, has proven to be a major mistake. The other piece the Twins gave up in that trade was a proven commodity at shortstop in Jason Bartlett. Bartlett was a great fielder with Gold Glove potential, and had a solid bat, much more solid than any of the patch work shortstops in the lineup currently. And for those of you who want to use the argument of "Delmon's only 25," get over yourselves! He's been in the league now for five seasons. There are players right now, namely Jason Heyward of the Atlanta Braves, Evan Longoria of the Tampa Bay Rays, and Carlos Gonzalez of the Colorado Rockies, who are all 25 years old or younger, where you don't question their maturity. What's it going to be in two years when Delmon is doing the same stuff? Oh, he's only 27? Seriously, if he hasn't gotten it by now, five years into his major league career, he isn't going to get it!
Again, you can place blame on the players as much as you want to, but at what point do you start looking at the root cause? I'm going to throw some numbers out there, so hang in there. Answer this question for me: Through Monday, the Twins have a total of 366 hits this season, of which 257 of those are singles. Your leadoff hitter, and one of your fastest players, Denard Span, as a total of 45 of those singles, yet, he has only five (5) stolen base attempts this season. When speed is supposed to be one of your major strong suits, and your leadoff hitter is doing what he's supposed to and getting on base, why have you only let him run five times? That's not a player problem, that's a manager problem! It's things like that where I just don't feel you can pin it all on the players themselves. I'm not saying that stolen bases are the biggest thing in baseball, but when you're last in runs batted in and extra base hits, and you're hitting a lot of singles, you need to manufacture runs any way you can. Strangely enough, manufacturing runs was a Twins staple in the mid 00's. Remember the Piranhas?
The Twins' front office needs to take a long, hard look at Ron Gardenhire and his staff, namely pitching coach Rick Anderson and hitting coach Joe Vavra. When you've chosen not to pursue the best talent all the time and stuck with your own "home-grown" minor league talent, you can't always blame the talent. What the manager and coaches do to get the most out of that talent becomes a greater concern. Right now, it almost appears that Gardenhire has fallen into a weak-minded fan's approach, which is to feel sorry for himself because of all the injuries, and to just try and "weather the storm" until you get your players back. If you don't do what you can to improve what you have, they'll lack the confidence and winning attitude necessary to weather that storm. Right now, a message needs to be sent, if not by Gardenhire himself, then by the front office. This can't be tolerated any more!
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