Postgame update: Crede, Liriano, Blackburn
Posted on August 26th, 2009 – 11:22 PMBy Joe Christensen
(*) Joe Crede had an epidural in his back, and the Twins are waiting to decide whether he’ll be placed on the DL. He has missed the past five games, but apparently at one point when Crede was battling back problems with the White Sox, he was able to play a few days after having an epidural.
(*) Francisco Liriano also had a cortisone shot in his left elbow. This came as a postgame surprise, but as I wrote in our notebook, Manager Ron Gardenhire said he isn’t counting on Liriano or Glen Perkins to rejoin the rotation this season.
(*) As noted in the game story, Nick Blackburn’s fastball averaged 89.3 miles per hour. According to Fangraphs.com, that’s 1.5 mph off his season average.
“To be honest, these radar guns are kind of off a little bit,” Blackburn said. “I don’t think that has any indication how I’m throwing.”
Opponents are batting .381 off Blackburn since the All-Star break. He said the Orioles hit some good pitches tonight, but he’s not hiding from the fact he’s 0-5 with an 8.22 ERA in eight starts since the break.
“I’m getting tired of it,” he said. “It’s very frustrating to come to the field every time and continue to do this stuff. I’m trying to battle my way out of it, and I’m working just as hard as I was earlier in the season. I’m just trying to fight through it. Everyone keeps saying that’s how baseball is, but it’s frustrating.”
47 Responses to "Postgame update: Crede, Liriano, Blackburn"
Blackburn ALWAYS says “im getting tired of it”..etc, etc.
Baker
Liriano
Perkins
Slowey
Washburn???
Something like that for next year
“Something like that for next year”
what about the rest of the year?
really… washburn? highly doubt it. if anything i see someone from AAA stepping up next year in the rotation because MN will be spending their money on signing Joe mauer. At least a girl can dream 
Washburn stinks!
John Lackey is really the only free agent pitcher that is worth going after.
What about picking up Brad Penny is he to much $
Probably too much $$…Lackey as well 
Still the Twins need an ace and I don’t think they have that in their system.
Erik Bedard will also be out there.
Otherwise, Jon Garland could be interesting, but he’s not a #1.
Whelp….That’s what happens when you only “pitch to contact” and have average stuff for that contact.
The better question is what happened to Blackburn’s sinker?? He isn’t exactly inducing a lot of ground balls these days. More like line drives hit very, very hard.
A key problem here is that most Twins pitchers do not have anything resembling a “strike out pitch.” The result is higher pitch counts, and leaving the door open for batters to have good long at-bats, getting a better feel for the pitcher, then inevitably doubling down the line (aka. the Chad Moeller effect).
Oh, and I should commend Blackburn for once again telling us “he is tired” of these sub-par to awful starts.
I can sympathize as I am beyond tired watching them.
Blackburn was our best starter for the first half of the year. Now that he’s struggling everyone wants to kick him to the curb forever? No he’ll bounce back
YOU are getting tired of it Blackburn? Try watching your sorry performances since the All-Star break. When it is your turn in the rotation I know I can’t start watching the Twins until the 4th inning. (the second in some cases) Quit making excuses and figure something out. I am so beyond being tired of it, you should be too!
Blackburn has been lucky for the first half of the year, he pitches to contact relying on excellent DEF, over an entire season things even out
he’s a #5 starter decent, but not great
Dustin,
Blackburn is a #4 or #5 guy. Keep in him those spots.
However, the way he is pitching at this point he’s not even good enough to be in those spots!
Trust me man-I was at that game in Oakland watching Blackburn’s meltdown.
this is another failure by mr smith. last yr we got eddie to fix the bullpen any decent help would have been a div title. this yr, nearly from the start, the pitching has been suspect. lots of guys out there have changed teams who could have helped. we get pavano, who has been ok, and a bunch of aaa guys who have not. this team should be 4-5 games up not down and it’s all on mr smith, another year of not doing his job!!!
that last statement may not be true if his job is not to put a winning team together but only to make money for the owners.
Just as I predicted before the game yesterday; Punto back in the line-up, winning streak over. Who couldn’t see THAT coming?
He does pitch to contact, and then Cabrera (who some people want to sign to an extension?) can’t make the play. The game is totally different if Cabrera makes a hard, but very makable play.
What if the ejection had come in a close game last night, and the TWin$ had to have Cuddy actually play 2B for an extended timeframe? How can this FO keep leaving this team short of players, over and over? I really don’t understand their decision making. Also, it isn’t like Crede has exactly been effective since the ASB.
He has 1 HR and a .593 OPS since the ASB (that’s the 2nd lowest OPS since the ASB on the entire team, Harris is actually worse!). What, exactly, are they waiting for in just putting him on the 60 day and calling up Hughes or Valencia or even Buscher (please, no) at this point?
Don’t really get the decision to not DL Crede yet. It seems obvious that’s where he’s headed.
I also don’t get Gardy’s decision to start Punto over Harris last night. If Harris starts, you don’t need a pinch-hitter in the 7th inning and then Punto is available to replace Cabrera.
I was very upset to see Punto in the starting lineup ahead of Harris since it’s plain to most normal people that he is a better hitter and at least average defense and the Twins win when LNP is out of the lineup. When I watch Blackburn pitch I’m reminded of a certain Carlos Silva who was great when his sinker was sinking, but pretty terrible when it wasn’t. Blackburn can pitch to contact but when contact ends up being a home run or a double off the wall it helps nobody. Rick Anderson needs to be working with Blackburn to get that sinker down and keep those balls from being up in the zone. It’s disappointing for the rest of the team to be playing in a deficit every game and trying to play comeback; on a brighter note, I’m very happy with Casilla’s defensive plays and he’s doing much better at the plate too. Take a day off Twins and then come back smoking!
Nick Blackburn’s fastball averaged 89.3 miles per hour
Urban legend or bad data.
Blackburn’s fastball averaged 90.1 (close to his season average) and topped at 93.2 mph per PitchF/X:
I was surprised to hear during the telecast that DicknBert had him topping at 91. These guns over there must be slow…
Well Nick Its nice to know your tired of your pitching. And I asure Nick we fans are tired of it to. However, knowing this team they will give you and Perkins and perhaps Liriano another chance next year. Perhaps you guys can find a good pitch to get alot of those hitters out instead of hitting all those foul balls. Its your career Nick so either shape up or be prepared to be shipped out……
“Urban legend or bad data”? whatever the actual speed of his pitches, they were fairly easy to hit.
as stone cold steve austin would say, “and that’s the bottom line”!
But gobble it looks better if you throw fast pitches that get hit instead of slow ones that dont. Image is everything.
I’d 100% give Blackburn a chance to pitch as a starter next year. He was pretty good last year, and he’s been about a 4 or 5 for a good part of this year, just not in the last 6 weeks.
I’m not sure why we’d give up on him at this point.
I don’t think the Twins should give up on him yet, either.
Blackburn pitched like a #5 starter last night. Since he projects as a #4-#5 starter, I don’t really see that much to be upset about.
That loss was on the offense. Even guys like Halladay and Santana have a tough time getting the W when their team only scores one run.
True, saam. However, when you look at the season as a whole, this hitting has been there and the pitching has not. Blackburn simply has not been good for 2 months.
Boneyard
As I said before, Blackburn pitched like a #5 starter. His last outing he went 7 innings and gave up 3 runs.
I know he’s been bad the last two months or so, but I’m not going to get on him for last night’s game when he’s done okay in his last two starts.
The fact that some players have been hitting well all season doesn’t change the fact that the offense laid an egg last night.
Urban legend or bad data.
Couldn’t the same be said for pitchF/X?
I still trust Blackburn to figure this thing out before I trust Perkins with a baseball anywhere. Blackburn was very good last year and very good the first half of this season. Perkins was very lucky to have a lot of run support last year and got totally exposed as soon as he didn’t get it this year and came down with a series of phantom injuries.
Blackburn just needs to bear down and pulla 163 every start for the rest of this season. Do it!
Er, saam, maybe you didn’t read the part where I indicated what you said was true. Interesting.
Couldn’t the same be said for pitchF/X?
the margin of error in the pitchF/X system is about .3 mph while in a hand held radar gun about 4 mph. I’d take the .3 over the 4 any time as far as what is more accurate.
the margin of error in the pitchF/X system is about .3 mph while in a hand held radar gun about 4 mph. I’d take the .3 over the 4 any time as far as what is more accurate.
So the pitchF/X folks say, thrylos. So they say. I’m curious though…How are the pitchF/X folks able to measure how closely they measure?
Personally, I’ll put more stock in the fact I don’t recall a single late swing last night over what either machine says.
Boneyard, I did read that part. I also read where you said, “However…”
Is the stadium radar gun hand-held?
Talk about stone-age technology!
Do they think that home plate is going to move during the season?
Right. I simply tried to take the discussion a bit further, to what the team’s real problem this year is (pitching), not just happened in one game out of 127 so far.
“How are the pitchF/X folks able to measure how closely they measure?”
Maybe they use ANOTHER (inaccurate?) pitchF/X system as their standard.
How convenient.
Also possible.
Their “margin of error” is actually the uncertainty band covered by multiple speed measurements of machine delivered (repeated) pitches.
Accuracy and uncertainty aren’t the same.
Hypothetically, a pitch incorrectly measured by 50 mph, may have only a 1 mph spread in its uncertainty band.
I apologize.
I think I put you all to sleep.
I can hear the snoring coming from my monitor speakers.
I agree that pitching has been the problem, although I would argue that defense is also a problem. My point is that I’m not going to get on a player for playing to his ability, which I believe Blackbrn has done his last two starts. (I also don’t rag on Punto for being a bad hitter.)
I apologize up front, as I haven’t read every post. Maybe someone made this point already.
For all the Blackburn bashing today, you’d never know he was one out from a “quality start”. Sure, he didn’t shut down the O’s. that much is true. Jeremy Guthrie shut down the Twins line-up.
7IP and 1 ER. We got 6 hits and 1 run off Guthrie? This was not Sabathia, Beckett, Grienke or Halladay we were facing last night. It was Guthrie, who is 8-12 with 5.00+ ERA.
If Pavano pitches into the 6th inning, tossing about 100 pitches and gives up 4 runs or so, I think all would say, “Well, that’s Pavano for you”.
BB does it, and there seems to be a special venom reserved for him. How about the lack of hitting against a pitcher like Guthrie?
Blackburn was, by far, the least of the Twins troubles last night. 3ER in 5.2IP. Could’ve been better, could’ve been much worse. Regardless, it was still a winnable game and the line-up failed to deliver. They deserve just as much blame.
I didn’t see any quotes from Kubel, OCab, or the others about how they’re tired of being shutdown by below-average pitching.
“I didn’t see any quotes from Kubel, OCab, or the others about how they’re tired of being shutdown by below-average pitching.”
That’s probably because they haven’t been shut down by average pitching as they’ve averaged more than 5.5 runs per game this month.
Go back and look at the losses for August. Plenty of evidence the offense has been owned by inferior opposing pitchers.
Carmona(Cle), Huff(Cle), Davies(KC), and Guthrie. I’m not a Blackburn apologist. Just saying that there are plenty of games where the offense deserves some blame, and last night was one of those nights.
Occasionally, good hitting teams come out flat. It happens. It happened last night. Blackburn wasn’t great, but it’s not like he got lit up, either. If the offense had been putting up some runs, everyone would have been talking about how Blackburn could have been better, but at least he “kept us in the game”.
The problem is that this team needs to make up 5 games on the leaders in the last 5 weeks of the season and last night was an opportunity to pick up one of those games against a mediocre pitcher… and it was an opportunity missed. The margin for error is getting frightfully slim at this point.
JimCrikket,
They need to make up five games, but they have quite a few left against the Tigers, which could make a very interesting end to the season.
13 of Detroit’s last 16 games against Chicago and MN. Gotta love the way the final month is shaping up. Although, I’d prefer that we would’ve won about 7-8 of those games blown in Apr-Jul, so that we’d be in first place right now.
Why not put Crede on the DL retroactive to a week ago? He won’t play for a few days anyway, might as well have another option off the bench and let him rest up for another week.
Blackburn was victimized by three things, only 2 of which were his fault:
1) Cabrera cost one or two runs in the first inning; the throw was well into foul territory before the runner was anywhere near the bag. An out there: 0-0, instead of an instant 2-0 hole. Or at worst a good throw, and he beats it and it is just 1-0. Blackburn has low confidence at this point, and making or not making a good play in the field early inthe game can make all the difference.
2) Too many walks - where is his control and command from earlier in the season? he is either out of the strikezone, or right in the middle. His sinkers are starting high and dropping to mid-thigh, not starting mid thigh and falling below the knees. I still wonder if his knee is acting up, so his drive off the rubber and release point are out of whack.
3) An inability to get out Pie, and Chad Moeller - a guy hitting .227 with 1 HR andd 4 RBI is 2-2 with 2 BB? Guerrier, who usually has great control, had the same issues with those two. How can one explain this? We did fine with Roberts and Markakis.
