The Twins will play their 100th game of the season tonight. It’s no longer a small sample size.

And the Twins are in a fade caused by sloppy, indifferent-looking baseball that makes them look like they’re 14 games out of the division lead instead of four. The rotation is battered, the offense gives up too many automatic oitsouts and fundamentals are on holiday. And the excitement of 2008 generated by youngsters Gomez, Casilla and sometimes even Span has been replaced — more often than not — by wondering wonder what they’ll do next to make it that much harder for the Twins to win.

I’m not the guy who sits in the stands and boos the home team. I tend to sputter and stammer and reach for the peanuts.

But if you are that guy (or woman), I’m totally fine with it at this point.

The Twins are playing baseball that deserves to be greeted with derision — aimed everywhere from the front office to the playing field. Stinks to say, but that’s how it is. The key players pretty much made that point in LaVelle’s story this morning by going public about the team’s need to deal.

If the Twins had recovered from their “unjust” loss to Oakland on Monday by winning the next two and playing better in Anaheim, you could give them some returning-from-adversity points, as long as you remembered that the Twins cost themselves that 14-13 loss in Oakland 100 times more than the home plate umpire and his missed call.

But the games since have often been a horror-house of give-up at-bats, unfocused pitching and sloppy defense.

I mentioned in the last post how there were two throws to nowhere that didn’t hurt the Twins in the ninth inning of Thursday’s loss. On Saturday, as the Angels scored their nine runs in the fourth, there were two wretched throws (way, way over the cutoff man’s head) that contributed to the damage. (Kubel and Span were the culprits) And later, Cuddyer threw to second on a fly ball to right when everyone who saw the play (I’d opted for a movie by then) said he should have gone home.

Playing sloppy doesn’t come and go.

Sometimes it happens out of frustration; sometimes it happens out of stupidity. Doesn’t matter. It shouldn’t happen. You get sent back to the dugout by John Lackey or Mark Buerhle and you’ve probably been overmatched. You go popout/strikeout/weak groundout against Justin Speier after getting runners on first and third to start an inning and you’re just not working hard enough.

I can argue that most position players beyond Morneau, Mauer, Kubel and Cuddyer have regressed from last year. Put Gomez, Casilla, Punto, Young, Redmond and Buscher in bold on that list. Add Harris and his current .306 on-base percentage (.214 in July) and Span for his mistakes on the bases and in the field.

I’m of mixed mind on Crede because of his two years of back problems — his .299 on-base percentage and his total lack of pop against lefties don’t help. His power and defense do. (I will not dog Crede for his injuries, a combination of freakish ones and others caused by hustle.)

Some of those are tough judgments, but we’ve been spending a lot of time this season pulling slivers of excitement from the mountains of mediocrity. (Gomez and his five-RBI game two weeks ago, for example.) It’s time for the Twins to cut a path through that mountain.

In their defense, Harris had a stretch where he was vital, Span has largely kept the Twins from worrying about the leadoff spot and Crede (when healthy) plays gem-filled defense. Can someone make a case for one or more of the others? Be glad to hear it.

Morneau, Mauer and Kubel could be doing less than they are still be having excellent seasons. Morneau is on a 134-RBI pace despite the lack of base runners from the 2-hole (and a 42-homer pace, too).  Mauer and Kubel have been studly. Those three guys should be greeted with loud ovations for their work. Pretty much everyone else looks like they’d be at home wearing a Royals uniform and signing autographs as Tony Pena Jr.

Things are going badly enough that I made it a point to listen to Gardy yesterday morning on his radio show. (Unfortunately, there’s no podcast on the KSTP radio site, but props to Jim Souhan and Mark Lane for getting Gardy to go beyond the cliches.) Among his other frustrations, Gardy told of an exchange between coach Jerry White and Casilla, in which White suggested to Casilla that he may want to take more pitches. According to Gardy, Casilla’s response was, “I just want to have fun.”

I’m sure he’d have great fun watching somebody else come in and play second base.

Many years ago, a Twins middle infielder of modest ability complained about how the manager wouldn’t give him the green light to swing a couple of times when he was ahead in the count. The team’s response? That player never started another game for the Twins — literally — and when he was sent to the minors, he was loaned to another organization. That sent a message. The player never appeared in the majors again.

My question for Gardy is why was Casilla in the lineup after showing that kind of disrespect for White and, more to the point, for his teammates? (Someone call me out if I’m overreacting.) I know the options are uncomfortably few right now, but managers like to say that most major-leaguers understand only one thing — playing time.

The good news for the Twins is that about two-third of the remaining games are against AL Central teams. So the Twins still have the potential to take command of their fate, starting tonight against the White Sox. That would be fun. Droplets of good news were that the achievers on the roster spoke out at a team meeting after Saturday’s embarrassment and made their opinions about the roster known by talking to LaVelle. But one game of improvement is no cause for celebration, especially for a team that has been so consistent in its ability not to play good baseball for an extended stretch.

My advice: Hope for the best right now, but don’t bank on it.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 27th, 2009 at 9:56 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.