I watched only about 4 1/2 innings live of the three blowouts in Chicago and, other than thinking that maybe the Twins currently need a 23-man pitching staff, I don’t really have much to add to the discussion right now. The pitching was horrible, the hitting was untimely and the Twins encountered a hot-hitting team with significant power on a weekend when the wind was blowing out toward left field. Did I say the pitching was horrible?

In the standings, losing three games by a combined score of 101-11 isn’t any different than losing three one-run games. But the reality is that the starters need to regroup and fight their personal battles. For Kevin Slowey, that means pitching inside more effectively and more than every once in a while. For Nick Blackburn it means figuring out a way to avoid falling into patterns that too often lead to big innings. I’m not sure what Livan needs to do beyond the macro issue of knowing that allowing more than one run per inning, which has been the case in his last four starts, simply can’t continue.

In effect, the Twins are battling to stay in a 2008 playoff race with a rotation that — with the exception of Hernandez — is being groomed for 2009 and beyond. The young pitchers will take lumps. That’s the reality, but the surprising weakness of the AL Central has created development and big games at the same time.

Glen Perkins needs to take the mound today and knock some White Sox on their a$$e$.

With a few exceptions, the Twins are playing like a dispirited team. One of those exceptions is Gogomez, who made a full-length diving catch to end the sixth inning on Sunday that drew the praise of Steve Stone, the White Sox radio announcer, for his going all-out in a game that was clearly out of hand. Part of me still wonders suspiciously if there’s some mental backlash to the way Gardy had to manage Thursday because of his three-man bench and the decision to bring in Rincon on Friday with the Twins only trailing by two runs.

Of course, how was Gardy to know how much garbage time there would be in the next two games to give Rincon a chance to show something, anything? (For those of you who need me to keep track, Rincon has given up 13 earned runs in 21 hits and 10 walks over 12 innings in his last 10 games.)

And Mike Lamb is still 0-for-June in 19 at-bats. For the Punto bangers in the house, Lamb’s numbers for the season are .228 average/.267 on-base percentage/.310 slugging percentage. In 2007, Punto was .210/.291/.271. Oh, the wonders of the three-man bench. (If I write “three-man bench,” that makes me feel a bit less redundant than if I keep writing about the 13-man pitching staff.)

Good teams have bad weeks. The only thing the Twins are good at right now is raising questions about how good they really are.

Day game today. You have permission to ignore it and work up the nerve to check the results.

other people are here too

This entry was posted on Monday, June 9th, 2008 at 7:52 am and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.