Twenty-five games into the Twins season, this seems obvious: If the Twins continue to play mentally weak and the bullpen doesn’t improve, they will be increasingly difficult to watch. If the mental mistakes are remedied (two-strike cookies from the starters, clueless base running, inability to advance runners and beer league defensive misplays that were all part of the weekend losses)  there’s no reason why the Twins can’t win the AL Central.

I want to believe that Nathan/Mijares/Crain can be the three-man combo for the final innings and that the other relief issues will be handled by something other than prayer. Where will this year’s Craig Breslow-of-2008 (38 runners/38.2 innings) come from? And how many more chances will Gardy give the Craig Breslow-of-2009 (13 runners/6.2)? It didn’t sound like many from the manager’s remarks over the weekend. Who will get inside Alexi Casilla’s head? Who can explain to Nick Punto that if he hits .250, plays the kind of defense that he’s been playing and refrains from high-strung mistakes, the internet venom will largely disappear, especially if he maintains his conseuctive-game streak of not diving into first base.

And speaking of the manager’s remarks, I am amused by those who seem to think that Gardy’s public evaluations of players somehow amount to “throwing them under the bus” when he is being anything but 100 percent positive about them. “…couldn’t he just say the kid did everything we asked but he needs to play everyday and has things to work on?” I am especially amused by opinions of that sort coming from the comments section of blogs, where grenades are tossed like parade candy.

Gardy is pretty clinical in discussing the good and bad.  For him to say anything other than his team gave away the game Saturday night would have been disingenuous. And I’m sure he’s not saying anything to us that he and the coaches aren’t saying to the players. In baseball, you don’t have to “break down the film,” my favorite football coach’s fallback, to see what went wrong.

And, finally, here’s the double-shame of the weekend. It appeared that two of the hits in the Kansas City seventh on Sunday were just out of the reach of Brendan Harris. Yes, they would have been excellent plays, but Casilla’s range is better and I think he could have turned one or both of them. (Yes, that’s a step short of “He woulda got to those those balls.”)

But…

After Casilla’s error on a simple grounder Saturday night, which gave away a run in the eighth and (essentially) the game, and his .160 average (including his current 3-for-37 skid), there’s no way that Gardy could have put him in the lineup Sunday afternoon. Last year Casilla made himself too valuable to take out the lineup. So far this year, it’s just the opposite. Same this with the center field situation: Carlos Gomez is going to get to some balls that Denard Span doesn’t catch, but overall at the moment, Gomez is No. 4 among outfielders (.196/.245/.304) and is showing little that begs for him to be in the lineup, not when Span has a .380 on-base percentage in the leadoff spot. Harris is playing solid defense and his .327/.346/.429 bat needs to be playing for now.

And Joe Mauer’s pretty good, huh?

This entry was posted on Monday, May 4th, 2009 at 10:24 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.