Eric The Blue

Some of MLB's great MVP debacles

As a teen, I read a jillion of those "as told to" sports autobiographies, including My Turn at Bat, "the Ted Williams story," so I knew that on two occasions, the 1942 and 1947 seasons, Williams won the Triple Crown but not the American League's Most Valuable Player award. It happened that in both seasons Williams led the American League not only in the Triple Crown categories (batting average, homers, and runs batted in) but also in runs scored, walks, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, and total bases. Here are his numbers in the Triple Crown areas compared to those of the MVP. First, 1942:

Williams             .356    36    137    

Joe Gordon        .322    18    103

And 1947:

Williams            .343    32    114

Joe DiMaggio     .315     20      97   

I had always supposed that these were the two greatest MVP snubs of all time, but, rooting around on the Internet in the wee hours of the morning last night, I learned that in 1934 Lou Gehrig won the Triple Crown and yet finished fifth [sic] in the MVP balloting. Here are Gehrig's Triple Crown numbers for that season, compared to those of the MVP, Mickey Cochrane of the Detroit Tigers:

Gehrig                .363    49    166

Cochrane            .320     2      75

What gives? Well, Cochrane's Tigers won the pennant, and he was both their catcher and their manager. But so what? The "P" in MVP stands for "player." If you were a sportswriter with the view that the MVP should be from the pennant-winning team, then it should have been Tiger Charlie Gehringer, who finished second, behind Cochrane, despite batting .356 with 11 homers and 127 RBI. He also led the league in hits (214) and runs scored (135). Had Gehringer won the MVP, I'd say the writers were guilty of a misdemeanor instead of a felony. The other two players who finished ahead of Gehrig were both pitchers, Lefty Gomez of the Yankees, who went 26-5 with a 2.33 ERA, and Schoolboy Rowe of the Tigers, who was 24-8 with an ERA of 3.45.

Gomez, Gehrig's Yankee teammate, finished third in the MVP balloting, and Rowe, the teammate of Cochrane and Gehringer, finished fourth. This seems apt inasmuch as Gomez pretty clearly had a better year than Rowe, the best pitcher on the pennant-winning squad. But why then did Gehrig's performance not lift him above all the Tigers? The gap between Gomez and Rowe was nothing compared to the chasm between Gehrig and Cochrane—or, for that matter, between Gehrig and anyone playing baseball in 1934. 

The Yankees won the pennant in both of Williams's Triple Crown years, and of course the MVPs for those seasons, Gordon and DiMaggio, were both Yankees. I don't know how the idea that the "most valuable player" almost necessarily had to play for the pennant-winner took root. That the notion has been retired is proof that not everything is getting stupider. 

Multi-tasking

Touching moment: Dick Bremer is recognized for 40 years as the voice of #MNTwins by Justin Morneau & Trevor Plouffe.

Congrats to the legend himself @dbremer_pxp!

His enduring voice & insightful commentary have guided generations of fans through 40 years of triumphs & failures. pic.twitter.com/7BnifPLcoX

— Talkin' Twins ⚾️ (@TalkinTwins) October 1, 2023

 

I probably would have seen the above live if I hadn't been on my way home from a golf course. I've learned a lot listening to Dick, too: for example, about the pace of integration in MLB, which I discussed here. Before he became the TV voice of the Twins, he did the play-by-play of the boys' high school basketball tournament, and I remember noticing how once, when there were just seconds left in a one-sided contest, the coach of the losing team inserted into the game a bunch of kids who hadn't played and Dick seamlessly reeled off the substitutes' names, no doubt pronouncing each one correctly. I guessed that he had prepared for precisely this scenario. 

I saw the clip of Dick getting his Scotch and cake on the X-feed, formerly Twitter, of Twins' radio guy Cory Provus. Here's Cory calling the last out of yesterday's game when the Twins beat the Jays for the second day in a row to advance to the post-season's next round:

Incredible crowds at Target Field. In the words of @CoryProvus, "@Twins Territory...you will not forget this moment!" We look forward to bringing you ALDS action on Sat with 1-hour Pre/Post Game Shows starting at 2:45pm on @ticasino Net, @wccoradio, @1029TheWolfMN & @audacy app. pic.twitter.com/f8QxZgOK8P

— TwinsRadio (@TwinsRadio) October 5, 2023

About the only thing I can multi-task at is sports fandom. While reading about the Vikings next game, against the Chiefs, it occurred to me that Taylor Swift has it within her power to save the world—all she'd have to do is drop the tight end like a bad habit and start dating a nerdy climate scientist.

Mea culpa, Max Kepler

Since I was back in April, May, and June, and for whole seasons before that, one of the biggest Max Kepler anti-fans, I want to go on record saying that the team's turn-around over the past 70 games or so hasn't been due only to the hitting provided by guys barely old enough to drink who, back in the spring and early summer, were either injured or tearing the cover off the ball in Triple-A—I mean Julien, Kirilloff, Wallner, and, especially, Lewis. Today, with two games left in the regular season, Kepler is batting .259 with an OPS of .811. That may not sound like anything to crow about, but you can estimate where he was in late July from the fact that in August and September he has batted slightly over .300 with an OPS a tick north of .900. He's always been a good outfielder, and for two months now he's also been an all-star level hitter.

The Twins, who were 45-46 at the all-star break, stand at 86-74. Lots of guys have played well, including Wallner who I saw play last summer for the Twins Double-A team in Wichita, and Julien who was at Wichita too even though I don't remember him, but Kepler's play has been for me the biggest surprise of all. I withdraw for now my carping complaints, Max.

I'll post another retraction if evidence turns up of Trump being a scholar and a statesman. I see that he said, under oath in a deposition, that he could not possibly overvalue one of his properties as the Saudis would always be happy to pay him as much as he asked for anything he owned. It's his successor, of course, who is guilty of corruption and influence peddling. Every accusation is a confession. 

Lauren and Kristi; Harmon and Tony

Lauren Boebert: any classier and she'd qualify for a trial membership in the demographic group sometimes designated "white trash." With some, it's heritage; for her, it's aspirational. The pregnant lady sitting behind her was upset by the vaping but, from the looks of things, Boebert's date probably wished even more fervently that both her hands were free. 

True confession: I was so taken by the video of Boebert enjoying herself at the performance of Beetlejuice that I only just now learned that the governor of South Dakota has been boinking Trump pal Corey Lewandowski for I guess a number of years. Family values dictate that they should introduce their respective marooned spouses to each other. Everybody has a hungry heart.

If anyone's saying that either Noem or Lewandowski deserves better, I demur: they're perfect together.

Now for something completely different, the online equivalent of a shower after I've made you contemplate gross stuff:

 

Watching Tony and Harmon run around the bases after a homer reminds me of what Bud Grant is said to have told players about how they should comport themselves after scoring a touchdown—"like it's not the first one you ever scored, and you're sure it's not your last, either."

Growing up Baseball

My older daughter cusses a lot—"Even more than I do," tattles little sister—but, on the plus side of the ledger, I've raised a girl who, assigned to write a brief school essay on "a place in Minneapolis that's important to you," produced the above ode to Target Field.  

💗💗💗

Molly O'Neill, sister of baseball's Paul, the all-star rightfielder for the Reds and Yankees back when big leaguers were about my age, once wrote an essay that included:

"We grew up in Columbus, Ohio. In a neighborhood where most children grew up Lutheran or Methodist, we grew up Baseball."

Meandering

1. When I turned on the Twins game last night, they were already ahead 9 to 1. I kept watching, and the Guardians soon brought in a position player to pitch. This is now a common strategy in one-sided games as it allows the team getting beat up to get through the last innings without using up pitchers who might be needed tomorrow, or the day after that, in a game that can be won. The Twins ended up scoring 20 runs last night. 

Baseball has enacted some recent reforms, almost all of which, imho, have made the game better. How about one more?—a 10-run rule after, say, 6 innings. If the trailing team has given up, and is no longer doing its best to get the other guys out, why should the game continue? It begins to be a little farcical. The team ahead by a lot should keep trying, right? So they get hits, home runs, that they can't even feel too good about. Run around the bases, get back in the dugout, don't show anyone up. Come to think of it, not a bad idea no matter the score, especially if the alternative involves gesturing toward God in heaven as you cross home plate. What, is the pitcher an atheist?

I also don't understand the evident stoic mindset of the non-pitcher who's "pitching." You'd think he'd want to have some fun, see what he could do, try out his curve and his knuckler, but no, they all just keep lobbing it in there until, eventually, blessedly, three outs are recorded. These guys are all great ballplayers with live arms. If they'd zip it in there, make it at least look like they were doing their best to retire hitters, the farce would be harder to detect.

But, in any event, the 10-run rule: a solution for a problem. Would there be unforeseen consequences? You're down 8 in the sixth inning, and you don't want to wear out your bullpen, so you instruct your guys to give up two runs so that the game will end. Now a farce reduction act has resulted in a bigger farce. What if, after the sixth inning, you just allowed a trailing team to surrender, like when the cornerman for a boxer who's getting pummeled requests that the fight be stopped? When you call on your second-string catcher to "pitch," you're really surrendering, so why insist that the surrender be artificial and unsightly?

2. On the topic of stuff I don't understand, what's with the obsession with Biden's age and alleged "decline"?  My only theory is that the explanation relates to this journalistic rule about "playing it down the middle," which requires, apparently, that if one side has in fact committed felonies, you better find that the other side has at least committed some petty misdemeanors and then play them up as something to be balanced against the felonies. Thus, "whether it's 80-year-old Joe Biden free-associating goofily, or 78-year-old Donald Trump subverting democracy by seeking to remain in power despite having lost the election, both sides have a problem with their geriatrics." 

It's actually worse than that, since Trump, in his prime, managed to run casinos into the ground. 

3. I've been reading Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, which may account for this current tendency to discern moral problems in baseball games. His subject is how to live a good life and be happy, topics that might interest anyone, but I'm not sure that a happy good life will include a reading of the Nicomachean Ethics, which for long stretches is a colossal bore. Aristotle is a wooden writer, assuming it's not the translator's fault, as well as a relentless taxonomist. How much of this sort of thing must be endured?

(1) Some things are pleasant by nature, and of these (a) some are so without qualification, and (b) others are so with reference to particular classes either of animals or men; while (2) others are not pleasant by nature, but (a) some of them become so by reason of injuries to the system, and (b) others by reason of acquired habits, and (c) others by reason of originally bad natures. This being so, it is possible with regard to each of the latter kinds to discover similar states of character to those recognized with regard to the former . . . .

Answer: Lots, if for some reason you persevere to the end. Also, this idea that the solution to every problem involves discovering the golden mean between extremes deserves whatever satire has been directed at it over the past 23 centuries. How devoted to your children should you be? Well, somewhat devoted, but not too devoted. I'm not making things up, he says that, only in a gray dull way. 

I might be with him on money, however. Many philosophers have recommended poverty, on the ground that wealth, or possessions of any kind, distract from the contemplative life. Aristotle held—I don't have to tell you, but, not too much, not too little, same as everything else. Interestingly, I just read somewhere that the philosopher Spinoza had a little problem with his sister after their father died. She wanted the entire estate. He countersued, and it was only after the court entered judgment in his favor that he gave her everything and went back to his books and lenses. I wonder whether he knew that she knew that he didn't care about money, also that she was eager to exploit this circumstance to her advantage, and that his course of going to court before assigning everything over to her was Spinoza's version of a golden mean. 

4. Today's the first day of school. Older daughter was supposed to read The Catcher in the Rye over the summer. I think once in June, twice in July, and three times in August I asked how that was going. Vague replies. Last night I looked over her shoulder as she sat at her desk reading a screen: Sparks Notes to The Catcher in the Rye.

How diligent should a student be? Not so diligent as to read the book, but diligent enough to consult Sparks Notes.

Down goes Anderson!

I watch a lot of baseball, and I can't remember seeing two guys assume the position of boxers and then start throwing punches—until José Ramírez of the Guardians confronted Tim Anderson of the White Sox at second base a few days ago. This may not be the best video, but it's surely the best live audio "call" of the play, or fight, courtesy of Tom Hamilton, the Cleveland radio guy: 

 

On January 23, 1972, I happened to be at Williams Arena, in Minneapolis, for the Gopher-Buckeye basketball game that ended in a brawl. When I got home, my dad had 10 million questions about what had happened, because he'd been listening on the radio and the announcer, Ray Christensen, could not bring himself to describe the riot. According to my dad, he just did his imitation of a morally shocked Scandinavian, repeating over and over again such phrases as "Oh my, this is terrible!" and "This isn't what college athletics is about!" (Actually, it wasn't an imitation: Ray was Scandinavian, and shocked.)

Cleveland fans listening on the radio, on the other hand, had a pretty good idea: "José and Anderson square off! They're fighting! They're swinging! Down goes Anderson! Down goes Anderson!"

Maybe it's because I've long loved Ramírez as a player, while something about Anderson rubs me the wrong way—I get the idea that he'd like to take a selfie of himself in the batter's box—but it was for me satisfying to see José, while being pulled backwards by a teammate, still land a blow of sufficient force to put his antagonist on the ground. They play a lot of games, and some of them seem pretty sleepy, so it's oddly reassuring to see evidence of competitive zeal, even over-zeal.

As exemplars of the Scandinavian race, Ray Christensen probably laps a guy who enjoys the occasional fist fight. 

Turned on the TV and in the third inning the Twins are ahead of the Tigers, 8-0. I rely on Aaron Gleeman, who covers the Twins for The Athletic, to keep me abreast of Twin bytes. Jeffers continued the hitting jag he's been on lately with a 3-run homer in the first inning. His on-base percentage is now .388. Joe Mauer, who was inducted into the team's hall of fame on Sunday, is the only catcher in Twins history to have a .388 on-base percentage for a whole season. Mauer did it several times. In fact, his lifetime on-base percentage was .388. Has to be a first-ballot Cooperstown inductee.

Earlier today Gleeman tweeted:

MLB just handed down the White Sox/Guardians suspensions. 

Tim Anderson got six games for starting the fight and José Ramírez got three games for ending it.

If you like baseball, especially the Twins, Aaron is a good social media follow. 

All-star break

Usually these are for me the worst four days of the summer—all-star break, no ballgames—but I find that last home series against the Orioles is operating on me like an analgesic. No one wishes for the return of the sensation of flesh being torn.

The Orioles, however! (Twins look so bad I'm reduced to feeling attracted to their opponents.) Why aren't more people talking about them—or am I just missing the chatter? Two years ago, they lost 110 games. Then, last year, they improved to 83-79, but, probably because in their division that was only good for fourth place (of five teams), few noticed. This year, at the all-star break, they stand 54-35, two games behind the Rays in the AL East. Of 30 major league teams, only the Rays and Braves have better records than the Orioles.

The Orioles! Last time they were good, Cal Ripken was their shortstop, and for fun I could play in pick-up basketball games. They just beat the crap out of us on Saturday and Sunday, but it was Friday night's game that made me think it would be fun to be a Baltimore fan. The score was 1-1 when in a middle inning the first two Twin batters reached. Byron Buxton then hit what looked like a 3-run homer to left center, but the O's centerfielder raced back, leaped just as he got to the fence, brought the ball back into the ballpark in his glove for the inning's first out. The runner on second tagged and advanced to third, so we still had runners at the corners and just one out, but of course the next batter struck out and the one after that made the last out of the inning. Another zero in the line score for the home team.

Sometimes, you're watching the game, the count might be 1-1, the batter takes a close pitch, the umpire calls it either a ball or a strike, and the color commentator goes on a jag about the tremendous difference between a count of 2-1 versus 1-2. Okay, cool, but maybe leave something in reserve for the difference between a 3-run homer and an out. The score was still tied 1-1 when the Orioles came to bat in the top of the tenth, the gifted runner on second base. First batter muscles one out into right center, looks like an RBI single. But the guy hauls ass right out of the batter's box, our right-handed centerfielder has to run toward right field to get the ball, then twirl, and the Oriole beats the throw to second base: an RBI, yes, but also a hustle double. The next batter advances him to third with a sacrifice bunt. The next batter scores him with a medium-deep fly. Two run lead, ball game. 

Fun to win a game like that. The Twins do not win games like that. 

In re Twins, Swifties

Younger daughter told me today, without evident irony or sarcasm, which is rare, especially in a speech act of hers containing the word "blessed," "I feel blessed to be alive at the same time as Taylor Swift."

I've not been doing monthly summaries of the Twins' progress through the baseball season, but I am paying attention, and, again thanks to Aaron Gleeman, I realized recently that I've been impressed, though insufficiently, with their pitching. We're now almost at the all-star break and they rank first in the major leagues—best of all 30 mlb teams—in the following statistical categories:

Earned Run Average
Strikeout rate
On base percentage against
Slugging percentage against
On base plus slugging against
Innings pitched per start
Quality starts (at least six innings pitched, no more than 3 runs allowed)

Alas, the best way to convey their woes at the bat is just to point out that, notwithstanding the above, their record for the season is 45 wins, 43 losses. I will add, however, that Twin hitters have struck out more than any other team—52 more times than the Giants, the team with the second most. The Giants meanwhile have struck out 47 times more than the team with the eighth most: that is, the gap between the Twins and the team with the second most strikeouts is wider than the gap between the team with the second most and the one with the eighth most. Three-hop grounders and bloops over the infield can be hits but it's hard to get lucky when you're striking out. 

Imagine how gaudy the stats for Twin pitchers would be if they ever got to pitch against the Twins. 

I'm too jaded to drop a word like "blessed" but I may spend more time than my favorite Swiftie scrolling around on my phone, finding music to, er, love. Never heard of Lake Street Dive until I typed into a search engine "covers of Prince songs" and found this (almost as fun as the bass fiddle and the voice of the lead singer is the horn player's impersonation, when it's not his turn to play, of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier):

 

Here's the genius performing it himself at a famous First Avenue concert, August 3, 1983, commemorating my 25th birthday:

 

One more Lake Street Dive cover. That girl can sing. Our country is full of talented people who are barely getting along, one reason C-SPAN is so depressing.

 

 

Three in a row!

Unlike 10,000,000 tweeters, I'm not an expert on Russian mercenary forces, their motives and the likely outcome of their march toward Moscow, so let me say a word about "my Twins," who last night beat the Tigers in Detroit, their third win in a row.

One good thing about being at the game, which I wasn't, having been sentenced to house arrest made torturous by Taylor Swift surround-sound augmented by the commentary of idolaters, is that you can look wherever you want, as opposed to being limited to what the camera shows, usually the lane between pitcher and batter. In last night's game, Tiger designated hitter Miguel Cabrera, a future first ballot Hall of Famer who's past the sell-by date, looped a soft liner to left that bounced ahead of Willy Castro. Base hit, Cabrera's on first, where he stays until there are two out and the count goes full on the batter. I should say that Cabrera, who's 40, looks like he spends his entire per diem, and then some, on steak, loaded baked potatoes, and pie ala mode, with cheesecake for dessert. Probably washes it down with a few IPAs. In this situation, guy on first, two outs, full count on the batter, basic baseball strategy calls for the "runner" to "take off" on the pitch, since if it's ball four he's entitled to second base, if it's strike three the inning is over, and, if the ball is hit fair, he has a head start: there's no risk of being put out, in other words, only the advantage of a head start. 

The batter hit, I believe, four foul balls in a row, which means, even though you couldn't see it on TV, that Cabrera "took off" on four consecutive pitches, only to have to return to first base so that he could "take off" again around 20 seconds later, as there is now of course a time limit between pitches to add stress to Migi's workout. It must have been quite the sight but on TV all we saw was the foul balls.

Aaron Gleeman covers the Twins for The Athletic. I don't subscribe, but his Twitter feed is a good source for statistical nuggets regarding the Twins. I learned from him this morning that, of Twin hitters with a qualifying number of at-bats, only Byron Buxton has an OPS (on base plus slugging percentages) above the league average—Byron's at .758, while the league average is .728.  On the bright side, our staff ERA is 3.67, the lowest it's been this many games into the season since 1992. As for individual pitchers, Griffin Jax, over his past 14 appearances, has not allowed a walk or an extra-base hit. He has struck out 13 and posted a "batting average against" of .133. He and Duran are a formidable combo toward the end of the occasional game in which we score as many as 3 or 4 runs and have a lead. 

At the old ball game

 

I was at Target Field last night with some of my favorite people, pictured. The game was not sufficiently entertaining—four hits all night for the home team—to divert my attention from the idiotic palaver of the drunk 20-something bros. sitting behind us, so I'm thinking all my pretty ones heard some of it, too. Boy, these guys really have a lot of sex. Good for you, Aiden! (I'm guessing at least one of them must have been named Aiden.) The high point, I mean one of the low points, came when someone asked whether anyone worried about pregnancy. Obviously the brooding deep thinker of the group.

"Oh no," answered the one I'm calling Aiden, "she pops birth control pills like candy."

Ya, quantity is a crucial and often overlooked consideration: if you want to be really safe, and you're having really a lot of sex, you better take several a day, I'm pretty sure that's how it works, Aiden. How did you find your way to the ballpark? I know I sound like an old guy, but I honestly don't think my friends and I were this dumb. And we devoted summers to playing softball, so it's not like we were just back stateside at the end of our Rhodes scholarships. 

By the way, the Twins are in first place by 3.5 games in the American League's Central Division even though their record, 22-18, is identical to that of the last place team in the Eastern Division. 

Rule 5.09(b)(1)

If you watched the Twins game tonight, you might like me be wondering what exactly the rule about avoiding a tag by running out of the baseline says. It's Rule 5.09(b)(1): A runner is out when

He runs more than three feet away from his base path to avoid being tagged unless his action is to avoid interference with a fielder fielding a batted ball. A runner's base path is established when the tag attempt occurs and is a straight line from the runner to the base he is attempting to reach safely . . . .

In the play in tonight's game, Cleveland had a guy on first when the batter hit a grounder to our third baseman, Miranda, who ranged to his left to field it. He then appeared to fumble the ball in his glove when trying to transfer it to his throwing hand and, by the time he finally got it to Polanco, covering second, the runner had slid in safely. That's when things started getting kind of crazy. Miranda by this time was closer to second base than third, and Polanco had the ball at second. The runner, having been called safe, popped out of his slide and headed for third, which was unoccupied by any fielder. So now, if you can picture it, there is this odd kind of situation where Miranda, half facing Polanco in order to receive a throw, is also retreating toward third as fast as he can. Meanwhile the runner, sprinting for third, is almost even with, and next to, the retreating Miranda. Knowing that Polanco will throw to Miranda, who'll then try to tag him, the runner begins veering toward the outfield, away from a direct path to third base, and also away from Miranda. Polanco throws, Miranda catches it and then lunges to tag the veering runner, who is by now too far away to be reached. There is no tag, the runner reaches third safely, and is not called out for running out of the baseline. Twins manager Rocco Baldelli argues long and loud and gets thrown out of the game. This play happened in the middle of an inning in which Cleveland scored three runs, and they eventually won the game, 4 to 3. 

Seems to me that the rule leaves a lot, probably too much, to the umpire's discretion. The runner is veering away from the fielder to avoid a tag. Did he veer more than three feet? Probably, except that the three feet has something to do with where he was "when the tag attempt occurs"—a vague phrase, though as to the play in tonight's game a lawyerly umpire would surely point out that a tag attempt cannot occur before the fielder even has the ball. On the other hand, the language of the rule would apparently permit a player who anticipated a tag attempt to leave the baseline by so much that the attempt isn't made, and that can't be right. 

If in tonight's game the runner had been called out, the Cleveland manager probably would have been tossed, the Twins probably would have won, and Cleveland's case for having been screwed by the umpire would have been, roughly speaking, as meritorious as the Twins' case is. Happily, there is another game tomorrow: new things to wonder at. 

Concerning discerning

Of course, this White House sides with the mob, not with the democratically elected government of Tennessee. These people would be defending January 6 if it was their party. https://t.co/NnDPmAB1kw

— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) April 6, 2023

@baseballcrank probably also has trouble distinguishing between a technical foul in a basketball game and Sherman's March to the Sea. The disease is going around. I see that wingers are pretty upset to discover that the judge in Trump's hush money case contributed $35 to a Democratic party campaign fund. Wait till they hear about Justice Thomas's vacations! 

I should just read the sports page, where to date the game stories about the Twins have been cheerful 71.4% of the time. 

My epitaph: "He watched a lot of sports on tv"

Nice start for my Twins. Though when we get to May it might be apparent that sweeping a series from the Royals doesn't belong on Line 1 of your resume. Still, in three games, you can't do better than three wins. 

I really like the pitch clock. Probably my house will be dirtier, as I used to move around during a telecast, washing a few dishes or scaring the dog with the vacuum cleaner, in the reasonable expectation that I'd be missing, mainly, the sight of someone playing with the Velcro on his batting gloves. Now I sit in the chair and scratch the dog's ears till the inning is over. Maybe I'm just older. The rule about where infielders can stand does not appear as if it will make Max Kepler a .400 hitter. He batted lead-off in every game and was 0-for-weekend. He's the Twin I love to hate and I hope he makes me look like an idiot before long. I waited all last season to look like a fool for running him down so am not optimistic. 

Today I toggled between the Twins and the women's championship basketball game—Iowa versus LSU. Didn't even realize the Timberwolves were playing, too. What a country! I don't know where Iowa gets their players, but they all look like they grew up on an Iowa farm, and the one named Caitlin—wow! I see that in the region final against Louisville she had a triple-double with 41 points. Then, in the national semifinal, against previously undefeated South Carolina, she scored 41 again, though she had "only" 8 assists and 6 rebounds. These games are just 40 minutes long. I guess LSU deserves their championship for holding her to 30 points and 8 assists. 

The Final Four teams in the men's tournament were a #4 seed, two #5s, and a #9. Everyone purports to be shocked by this, but I think there are so many good basketball players that the outcome of all games is at least somewhat in doubt. No reason to be shocked by "upsets," in other words—but this isn't the case in women's basketball. The teams in their Final Four were a #3 seed, a #2 seed, and two #1s, and this was considered a year of upsets: last year, for example, the women's Final Four had three #1 seeds and a #2. (The year before that, three #1s and a #3. And so on.) Think of the five best players on the top twenty teams in the preseason poll. In the men's game, the 100 best players on the next 20 best teams are essentially as good, but there's a real falling off among women players. That, anyway, would account for what happens in their respective NCAA tournaments, and it may help explain, too, how a player like Caitlin Clark can dominate even games played in the later rounds of the tournament.  A team good enough to win almost all its games might very well not have anyone who can make it hard for her to do whatever she wants. 

Wikipedia calls out a drinker

Because I "interact" with baseball posts on FB, a picture of the first pitch of the 1950 World Series appeared on my feed. No comment beyond "first pitch of the 1950 World Series." You couldn't tell—at least, I couldn't tell—who the teams were, let alone the pitcher and the batter. Looks like a breaking ball taken low and away for a ball—by Yankee left fielder Gene Woodling, it turns out, from Phillies pitcher Jim Konstanty, the National League's MVP that season. I was a little surprised never to have heard of a guy who won the MVP award in 1950. This was the Philadelphia team known as "The Whiz Kids." I'd have to research their identities, too. The Yankees swept them and you've heard of their stalwarts that year—preeminently, DiMaggio and Berra, but the AL MVP was their shortstop, Phil Rizzuto, and Whitey Ford was a rookie. 

But I wanted to flag something in the Wikipedia article about the 1950 Series. I love Wikipedia, partly because it is so often pleasantly quirky. The source of the quirkiness must frequently be the private obsessions of a co-author. In this case, you're reading along, it's all the runs and hits and errors, like box scores in prose, and then, suddenly, indent, new paragraph, almost certainly new author, and this:

In attendance at the game was Grover Cleveland Alexander, who had led the Phillies to their previous pennant in 1915. It was his first World Series game in 20 years. Ill from the effects of long term alcohol abuse, Alexander was generally ignored. He would be dead less than a month later on November 4, 1950, at age 63.

Not sure whether this is intended as a PSA on the evils of drink, or what. Next paragraph the colorless narration reasserts itself, but from now on, if anyone asks me about the 1950 World Series, I'm going to tell them the Yankees won and Grover Cleveland Alexander was a booze hound. 

A picture and fewer than a thousand words

I've looked into the question before of where the Polo Grounds, for many years baseball home of the New York Giants, was located: answer is Coogan's Hollow in upper Manhattan, adjoining the Harlem River just north of 155th Street. But I'd never realized how close it was to Yankee Stadium till I saw this cool photo from the Facebook group Baseball in Pics.

Yankee Stadium is in the foreground. Looking very much smaller, I assume because of some kind of distortion relating to camera angle, is the cavernous Polo Grounds, just across the Harlem River. Before Yankee Stadium opened in 1923, the Yankees and Giants both played at the Polo Grounds, which was owned by the Giants. The Yankees became more popular after they acquired Babe Ruth and so didn't want to be a mere tenant of the Giants anymore. It's said they chose a stadium site close to the Polo Grounds in order to taunt their former landlord with what they predicted, accurately, was an approaching era of hegemony. It was about a 10-minute walk over the Macombs Dam Bridge between ballparks. 

In the FB comments, someone points out that it would have been highly unusual for both the Giants and Yankees to be playing home games on the same night. Someone else hypothesizes that the picture was taken on the evening of September 17, 1954, when the Giants lost a home game to the Phillies and Ezzard Charles fought Rocky Marciano in a heavyweight championship match at Yankee Stadium. Maybe, but someone else observes that, farther in the background, the George Washington Bridge appears to be under construction, which would place the date somewhat later—the bridge opened in 1931 but construction on a new, lower deck began in June of 1959. In that case, it wasn't a baseball game at the Polo Grounds, because the Giants left for San Francisco after the 1957 season.

Probably the full story behind the photo is known to someone, but it's sort of fun to be forced by ignorance to speculate. The heavyweight fight at Yankee Stadium was one of the most famous in boxing history. In the sixth round, Charles opened a gash in Marciano's face and appeared headed toward victory by TKO before Marciano, covered in his own blood, rallied to knock him out in the eighth round.

In the picture, we're looking northwesterly across first the southwestern end of the Bronx, then northern Manhattan, then New Jersey. Not far out of the frame, at the upper right, is where the Harlem splits off from the Hudson River, forming Manhattan's northern tip. 

Twins at the end: shit the bed edition

Lots of ways to describe the Twins collapse, but to me perhaps the most vivid is suggested by this tweet from Aaron Gleeman, who covers the team for The Athletic. On May 24, the Twins beat the Tigers, 2-0, in a game at Target Field. The win lifted their record to 27-16, eleven games over .500. They lost their next two games and were never again eleven games above .500. They hung around first place into September, because divisional rivals Detroit and Kansas City were hapless, and the division's better teams, the Guardians and the White Sox, were, like the Twins, stuck around the .500 mark. These circumstances tempted some, certainly including me, to think that the Twins were possibly the best team in baseball's weakest division. But if you throw out those first 43 games, the Twins have to be grouped with the Tigers and Royals, not with the Guardians and White Sox. Here are the records of the division's 3rd- through 5th-place finishers over the season's last 119 games:

Twins     51-68
Tigers    51-68
Royals    50-69

I know, the first 43 games count too, but, from the time the weather warmed to the end of the season, the Twins were as bad as anyone in baseball's worst division.

Yes, injuries. I was watching one evening a week or two ago when, trailing by a run with the opponents batting in the bottom of the eighth inning, the Twins brought in a new pitcher, which elicited from play-by-play guy Dick Bremer the hopeful comment, "If Thielbar [or whoever it was] can work out of trouble, the Twins have due up in the ninth the middle of their order." I can't remember if the pitcher got out of the jam, but it hardly matters, because "the middle of the order" was Gio Urshela, Jake Cave, and Gary Sanchez. You can imagine the fire power lurking in the bottom of our batting order, on the off chance one of those guys reached base! Actually, Urshela had a nice year for the Twins, but he's not anything like a major league cleanup hitter. Cave and Sanchez? Nothing against them, but neither one hit .215 or had an on-base percentage of .285. By this point in the season, of course, the team on the Injured List could have beaten the team we were putting on the field, as Team Can't Play included outfielders Buxton, Larnach, and Kepler, middle infielders Polanco and Lewis, first baseman Kirilloff, catcher Jeffers, and most of our best starting pitchers: Maeda, Mahle, Paddack, Dobnak (and relievers such as Coulombe, Alcala, and Stashak). 

I don't know what to say about injuries. If you're hurt and can't play, you're hurt and can't play. See what I mean about having nothing to say? But I will say that guys sure seem to get hurt a lot! I feel guilty about enjoying professional football, as it's obvious the players are damaging themselves, but maybe I should feel similarly about baseball? Also, my dim fan's impression is that when a guy gets hurt, there is an official announcement concerning the nature of the injury and how long the player will be sidelined. Then, if it's two weeks, the two weeks pass, and then two more weeks pass, and when a month after that he still isn't playing, I've mostly forgotten the guy's on our team as there has been no updated diagnosis or prognosis that I'm aware of. It's as if The Injured List is a waiting room in another galaxy. 

I'm happy that Luis Arraez won the batting championship (though I can also imagine Aaron Judge complaining in his soul that he was deprived of the Triple Crown by a banjo hitter). The other Twin postmortems I've seen invariably name Jose Miranda as a bright spot, and who would disagree, but is rookie reliever Jhoan Duran invisible? He appeared in 57 games, pitched 67.2 innings, allowed just 14 earned runs (about one every five innings), had 8 saves, no blown saves, 18 holds, a WHIP of 0.98, and 5.6 strikeouts for each walk issued. Deserves a mention! 

Pitchers and catchers report for spring training in about four months.

Twins in August

The Twins in August were a .500 club, 14 wins and 14 losses. You might think that a team in contention for a divisional title would go backwards with a record like that over 28 games, but the Twins place in the Central Division standings did not change: they were a game behind the division leading Cleveland Guardians on August 1, and they were a game behind them on September 1, too. A local sportswriter, taking note of this fact, set out yesterday the records of the contending teams over the last 65 games:

Guardians  32-33
White Sox  32-33
Twins         31-34

Well, that's what it's been like all year. Here are the same teams over the course of the whole season, a couple days into September:

Guardians    68-62
Twins           67-64
White Sox    67-66

I was watching the Twins one evening in the middle of August when TV color guy Justin Morneau declared, "One of these teams is going to get hot and win the division." It's true that one of them is going to win the division. I have no idea why he thinks one of the teams is sure to "get hot." Over five months none has. Seems more likely to me that the sixth month will be like the other five. My candidate for color commentary is, "One of these teams is going to win the division by going 17-14 over a thrilling stretch drive." (It's your job to hype interest with expressions like "thrilling stretch drive.")

The Twins' problems aren't obscure. With Buxton and Polanco not playing, the bottom of their batting order is anemic. For the last couple nights, it's been Cave, Sanchez, Celestino. I love pulling for all three, as I have personal reasons for identifying with players who struggle, but facts are facts, and these guys' OPSs are, respectively, .674, .677, and .635. Since Sanchez is our regular catcher, and catchers aren't really expected to hit, let's swap him out for Kepler: day after day, then, we have in our outfield, at the start of "the stretch drive," Celestino (.635) between Cave (.674) and Kepler (.680). To help you get your bearings, the overall OPS in the major leagues so far this year is .707, and outfielders are expected to hit.

Then there is our pitching. After a good April and May, it's been a weakness, and the team was praised for adding three proven pitchers at the August 2 trade deadline. But the trio's results in Twin uniforms—maybe the word is "mixed." Jorge Lopez, for whom expectations were perhaps highest, has four saves but also a loss and two blown saves in 12 games as a Twin. Tyler Mahle got roughed up in Chicago tonight, his first start after being removed from an August game with a sore shoulder and diminished fast ball. Michael Fullmer has been good, not great, which is to say: he's added needed depth. I'm pretty sure we weren't expecting to have half our August games started by either Chris Archer, Dylan Bundy, or Aaron Sanchez, and it's fortunate that all three are doing about as well as could be reasonably hoped. We were 6-8 in their starts, 8-6 in games started by Joe Ryan, Sonny Gray, or Mahle. 

If the Twins weren't in contention, I'd still turn on the TV about 1.5 hours after starting time in hopes of seeing Jhoan Duran pitch. Omg, wtf, etc.! In the last week of August, he pitched in three games, one inning each time, nine up and nine down on four strikeouts and some weak grounders. For the year, his ERA is sub-2 and his WHIP barely registers. He has 11.5 strikeouts and two walks per nine innings pitched. These numbers, however, aren't as telling as the way opposing hitters will take a Duran pitch, then step out of the batter's box to share a laugh with the catcher and umpire. Apparently 102 mph with late diving action is detectable in person, too.  To have a chance, I think you'd have to be able to swing an ironing board. 

The Geek surveys many scenes

"Gleeman and The Geek" is a podcast for fans of the Minnesota Twins. Gleeman refers to Aaron Gleeman, who covers the Twins for The Athletic. His podcast sidekick, "The Geek," is John Bonnes, the proprietor of Twins Daily, an online news site for all things Twins. I have a friend whose knowledge of the Twins' farm system calls to mind the adjective "encyclopedic." He's also fond of informing me, for instance, that Luis Arraez is batting .260 against left-handed pitchers (.360 against righties) and that the opposing team's batting average against Sonny Gray on his third trip through their batting order is .320. I used to think the devotion to Twins Studies exhibited by such esoteric knowledge must exceed that of fundamentalists for the Bible, but, having now driven to Wichita with him by way of a Des Moines stopover, I realize that his secret is listening to "Gleeman and The Geek" in the car and perusing Twins Daily on his iPad while ingesting the morning dose of caffeine. If he can store for recall one morsel per session, a conservative estimate, it's still more than enough to amaze a more casual fan.

On the podcast, which is both smart and funny, Gleeman comes off as the bigger geek while Bonnes supplies the laugh track. I come to discover, however, that Bonnes is a nerdish number grinder as well, and not only on the topic of baseball. Both guys live in downtown Minneapolis, and Bonnes, judging by his social media posts, is highly annoyed with the Grand Old Party's narrative concerning a crime wave that's made our city center not just unlivable but dangerous for the courageous suburban sojourner who wants to go to Target Field and maybe enjoy a late meal with a few drinks after the game. His retort is a series of posts called Today's Dangerous #DowntownDawdle, which consists mostly of selfies of him and his wife enjoying themselves in crowded downtown establishments. He always calls out the business name, and usually in the background you can see a plated sample from the menu and a few dead soldiers—neither he nor the Mrs. appear to be teetotalers. The subtext is plainly, "Another fun night without getting shot!" He's also a pretty good photographer: a recent variation was a picture of the just risen sun glistening off the sides of Minneapolis's glassy skyscrapers—it concluded with a thank-you to his dog, whose weak bladder I guess accounted for him being outside with his phone at that hour. 

Since The Geek has a lot of followers, it was just a matter of time before some people started replying with links to news stories about our mean streets. What about the lead on KARE 11 last night? Your head's in the sand! Get real about crime data! Sure, it's great for you in the prosperous North Loop, but what about the less privileged? (Everyone knows Republicans care deeply about the less privileged.) Bonnes's response was an exercise in social sabermetrics: he applied Minneapolis crime statistics to demographic data and roughed out the probability of being assaulted in downtown Minneapolis. Executive summary: if you dare drive east into downtown on 394 from, say, Wayzata, you might as well go to the game/concert/play/saloon/restaurant/show because, once out of your car, by far the most dangerous part of the evening is over. He notes that his calculation overstates your peril considerably if you are not the kind of person to get into drunken arguments with strangers in bars. 

I see that Dr. Scott Jensen, the GOP candidate for governor, has interviewed some 70ish ladies from outstate Minnesota somewhere who say they are too scared to come to Minneapolis anymore. Well, yeah, of course they're scared: they've been listening to you, not geeky John Bonnes! Anyway, what is the Republican solution to the problem candidates like Jensen are loudly diagnosing? Their brief is a lie, inasmuch as the point seems to be that violent crime is a problem mainly in big cities in blue states with Democratic mayors and governors. Of the ten states with the highest murder rates in 2020 (the last year for which comprehensive data is available), eight have voted for the Republican presidential candidate in every election this century. Murder rates in Trump states were 40% higher than in states carried by Biden. The five states with the highest murder rates are, in order, Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, Alabama, and Missouri. Of the hundred biggest cities in America, only two are in these five states, but all five have a Republican governor and a Republican majority in their state legislature—not just for the last year or two, either. You can look these things up. It's as if the failing students were shouting advice about how the others should study. 

ADDENDUM

Tonight’s “Dangerous” #DowntownDawdle :
• #MNTwins win, duh.
• Nur-D album 💿
release party at First Ave
• midnight drinks 🍺 on O’Donovan’s patio
• a 2:30 AM walk (stumble?) thru downtown’s mean streets.
• Our status: yet again, still alive. 👫😉 pic.twitter.com/wTkjFcyE0W

— John Bonnes (@TwinsGeek) August 20, 2022

Twins: looking back and forward

The Twins haven't fared very well this season in games against baseball's elite teams. They just finished their season series against the Dodgers: four games, four losses, by scores of 7-2, 7-0, 10-3, and 8-5. They're 0-3 against the Astros. The scores of those games were 5-0, 11-3, and 5-0. Against the Yankees, slightly better: in a 3-game series at Target Field in June, the Twins won a game (and for what it's worth, not much, outscored the Yankees in the series). They have a 4-game series in The Bronx in early September and a 3-game series in Houston later this month.

In games against other American League teams likely to make the playoffs, the Twins have done pretty well: they won the season series against both Toronto (4 games to 3) and Tampa Bay (4 games to 2). If the season ended today, the Twins would finish out of the playoffs, a game behind the Guardians in the Central Division and a game behind the Orioles for the last wild card spot. We're 5-6 against the Guardians and 4-3 against the Orioles.

Perhaps the fairest conclusion to be drawn is that the Twins, while certainly not a great team, are good enough to be competitive against other merely good ones. If they can stay in contention through the end of this month, the start of September should be fun: a road trip to Chicago (the White Sox currently trail us in the Central Division by 1.5 games) and then on to New York for the series against the Yankees. After that trip, eight of their next eleven games are against the Guardians. 

Fine for fans to look ahead. I don't know if the Twins are changing hotels, but their next three games are also in Los Angeles, against the Angels. Tyler Mahle, one of three good pitchers acquired before the trading deadline, will be on the mound for game 1 tomorrow. We've lost three games in a row, not for the first time this season, but we've yet to lose four in a row. If the first half of September is to be interesting, better start winning the next game.  

Rules, rules

Rocco Baldelli started by describing the overturned call as “chickenshit” and got even more heated from there.pic.twitter.com/wrY2Yt4wE1

— Aaron Gleeman (@AaronGleeman) August 7, 2022

Baldelli holding little back in his post-game presser today. Contrary to his suggestion, however, the same call was made just a couple days ago in a game between the Rockies and Padres. Here's a video of that play. The clip includes a primer on the rule itself, which is 6.01(i)(2). There is addended to the rule the following "comment" that persuades me the Twins and Rockies both got screwed:

A catcher shall not be deemed to have violated Rule 6.01(i)(2) unless he has both blocked the plate without possessing the ball . . . and also hindered or impeded the progress of the runner attempting to score. 

Video of the play in today's Twins game is here, together with the real-time commentary of Dick Bremer and Glen Perkins. Twin managers have in my memory gone more woo-loo than Baldelli did today. I remember once Gene Mauch, having returned to the dugout after being ejected, started flinging bats onto the field at Fenway Park: video of that incident, here. Of course, Mauch had the enemy in front of him, whereas Baldelli's nemesis was some anonymous replay guy in New York City. 

An unorthodox but somewhat plausible take on the loss today would be that the Blue Jays won because the baserunner they were granted in the top of the tenth did a better job than the one the Twins were granted in the bottom of the inning. The guy who scored the winning run for the Jays had alertly tagged and advanced to third on a fly to medium-deep center. Buxton made a strong throw, and the Twins challenged the safe call, but the runner made it. When the next batter hit another fly ball, he scored what proved to be the winning, if disputed, run. Max Kepler was our runner, and when the first batter, Jose Miranda, lifted a ball to fairly deep center, he failed to tag and advance. Two outs later, the game ended with him on third base. 

Which reminds me that I'm a little puzzled by why Kepler doesn't seem to be the object of fan criticism to the degree that, say, Miguel Sano has been. Today Kepler was 0-for-4 and, despite never earning his way on base, still made a baserunning blunder in the tenth inning that may have cost us the game. For the season, he's batting .236 with 9 homers, 39 RBI, and an OPS of .714. Last year, he hit .211 with 19 homers, 54 RBI, and an OPS of .719. He's our everyday, 29-year-old right fielder. 

It's hard to play baseball at the big-league level, but Kepler has also shown that he'd rather miss three games in Toronto than be vaccinated against COVID—and getting vaccinated is easy.

Squirming while watching Twins

Sitting here watching the Twins blow another lead in Texas. In the first game of this series they scored 5 runs and lost by 1. Yesterday they scored 7 and lost by 2. Today they were ahead 3-0 before allowing a 2-out, 3-run double in the bottom of the second inning—this, after the number 9 batter walked on 4 pitches to fill the bases. Hard to watch if for some reason the atoms in your brain are arranged in a way that makes you care. Aaron Gleeman, the Twins beat writer for The Athletic, recently set out the following statistical tidbit under the heading Minnesota pitching ERA by month:

April         3.16
May          3.64
June         4.18
July          4.31

Reminds me of when I took "the calculus sequence" in college:

Calculus I       A
Calculus II      B
Calculus III     C

I could quit registering for math classes; the Twins have to play out the schedule. That 4.31 was before this game started. It's higher now. Gleeman just put out the numbers without comment but I think they explain why the Twins were 9 games over .500 at the end of May and 7 games over now.

If you like the Twins, but have enough of a life not to spend it scouring the Internet for news droplets about them, I can keep you filled in. Here's another courtesy of Gleeman:

Last 35 games for Jose Miranda

.312 BA
.348 OBP
.560 SLG
.908 OPS 
6 homers
9 doubles

Again, no comment from Aaron, just the facts, but I'm thinking Miguel Sano, who is currently on a rehab assignment in the minor leagues, may have taken his last at-bat for the Twins. If so, I will no longer have to avert my eyes when he's hitting with a 1-2 count.

Byron Buxton gets a lot of sneers for missing so many games, but, in his defense, he's played enough so that currently only four guys in the majors have hit more homers than he has (23). And he hits them when it matters: 14 of the 23 have lifted the Twins into the lead from either a tie or small deficit. According to the reporting of Do-Hyoung Park, who covers the Twins for mlb.com, he's also one of the principals in the following charming story. Around a month ago the Twins were playing Detroit, Griffin Jax on the mound, when the batter hit a rocket into the right-center gap. Buxton raced back, leaped on the warning track, extended his arm, and had the ball tick off the end of his glove just as he collided with the wall: a double, and the batter eventually scored, though the Twins won the game. That night, about 1 in the morning, Jax's phone dings. It’s Buxton, who has been stewing about not catching that ball, and he apologizes to Jax for the nick on his ERA. Park quotes the text, so I assume he saw it. Jax replies along the line of: that was a missile, if you didn't catch it the ball wasn't catchable, no one I'd rather have playing behind me in center field. Fast forward to the Twins' recent series in Chicago. Jax is pitching, two on, no outs, batter drives one into the right-center gap. The metric used to rate fielders' "outs above expected" says batting average on balls like this one is .820. The base runners seem to believe it—they both take off, but Buxton runs the ball down on the warning track, catches it, and, wheeling, throws back to the infield, where a triple play is easily completed. In the dugout Jax approaches Buxton and says he hopes he can now forget about the ball in the Tiger game.

Twins in June

The Twins in June, meh: 13 wins, 15 losses, their first losing month of the season. Could have been worse considering that the month began and ended on seasonal low points. On June 1 and 2, they lost games in Detroit, capping off a series in which they fell in four of five to the lowly Tigers. Their pitching staff was in tatters—just getting to the 9-inning finish line each day was a challenge, without regard to the question of winning or losing, and their next nine games were against the Jays, Yankees, and Rays, all playoff teams. Somehow they went 5-4 in those three series. They were bumping along like that till the end of the month, when they had another 5-game road series, this one in Cleveland against the Guardians, who are proving to be their main competition in the AL Central. They won two one-sided games and lost the other three, all after late-inning leads had been bollixed by the bullpen, the last two, on the 29th and 30th, by the walk-off homer method. 

The problem of just finding a pitcher to get you to the end of the game has again arisen. On June 30, locked in a tight contest against the team with the best chance to finish ahead of them in the division, the Twins were reduced to sending Tyler Thornburg to the mound for the eighth and ninth innings. Who, you might ask, is Tyler Thornburg, thereby making my point for me. He pitched to eleven batters, retiring five of them. Of the other six, three walked, one was hit by a pitch, and two got hits. Four scored, two in the eighth and two in the ninth, including of course the guy who hit the walk-off dinger. Thornburg threw 48 pitches in the game, and, of the 47 that didn't hit the batter, 26 were called balls. His place on the roster has now been taken by Juan Minaya, who was called up from the Twins' Triple-A affiliate in St. Paul, where he had compiled a 5.73 ERA over 22 innings pitched.

The Twins reportedly are in talks with other teams about possibly acquiring bullpen help. You might say that their desperation is partly their own doing. At the start of the season, they traded Taylor Rogers, a bullpen stalwart over the past few seasons, as well as prospect Brent Rooker, to the San Diego Padres for pitchers Emilio Pagan, Chris Paddack, and Brayan Medina. Pagan has been a leading figure in the bullpen collapse—he has an ERA north of 5 and a WHIP north of 1.4. Paddack hasn't pitched since early May and recently underwent Tommy John surgery. Medina is struggling in the low minors. Rogers has a 2.84 ERA and 22 saves for the Padres.

The Twins record against the Guardians this year has been crazy. In eleven games played so far, Minnesota has outscored Cleveland 61-45—and won just five times. The six losses have been by a total of seven runs. The Twins are one game ahead of Cleveland in the AL Central standings.

Though it's not as if there haven't been bright spots for a team that's still in first place. Luis Arraez continues to lead the American League in batting average (.343) and on base percentage (.421). Byron Buxton has played in just 60 of the team's 80 games but still has slugged 21 home runs—Aaron Judge is the only hitter in the majors with more than 23. The beleaguered pitching staff has received a respite from some unlikely sources, such as Devin Smeltzer, who in his last couple of starts has allowed just one run in 12 innings pitched. Jhoan Duran and Griffin Jax have both pitched well in relief all year. Alas and alack, there's a game every day, and they can't pitch in all of them. What did fans of the Boston Braves used to say? 

First we'll use Spahn
and then we'll use Sain.
Then an off day
followed by rain.
Back will come Spahn
followed by Sain,
and followed
we hope
by two days of rain.

But if you're calling in guys from the bullpen, it already hasn't rained.

Surfing

A hard day of surfing the 'Net can yield up some interesting morsels. I knew, for example, that Tony Oliva, who will be inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame later this summer, had a fabulous rookie season in 1964, and that one of the categories in which he led the American League that year was total bases. Yesterday I saw that he had 374 total bases in 1964—his 217 hits included 32 homers, 9 triples, and 43 doubles. Brooks Robinson, the American Leaguer with the second most total bases in 1964, had only 319. To catch Tony, Robinson would have had to hit, for example, 28 additional doubles. The guy in third place, Harmon Killebrew, had just three fewer total bases (316) than Robinson, and that's pretty much how it goes down the line. Tony-O lapped the field. Not sure anyone ever had a better rookie year. 

In an unrelated field, the spring of 1969 was the last time a majority of justices on the Supreme Court had been appointed by a Democratic president. That's 53 years now. In that time, 17 justices have been appointed, 13 of them by Republican presidents. Over the same period, Republicans won 7 out of 13 presidential elections (and got more votes in only 5 out of the 13). On the current court, 6 of the 9 justices were appointed by Republicans even though, over the time period they were appointed, Democratic candidates won more presidential elections. Seems obvious to me that the justices should serve for a set period of time with terms expiring at regular intervals—probably one every other year, so that two new justices are appointed during each presidential term. Take it out of the hand of God (who decides when justices croak) and Mitch McConnell (who, when a justice croaks, decides whether the sitting president gets to appoint the replacement). 

 

Talking myself off the ledge

Last night I was driving somewhere, Twins game on the radio—they're playing the Yankees, who have a win percentage so far of .714, the best in baseball—when a Twin hit a ball to right field. Don't know exactly what happened but whatever it was caused broadcaster Dan Gladden to exclaim, "Stanton cannot play outfield!" Before leaving to run errands, I'd been watching on TV when the Twins scored the first runs of the game after Stanton ran back on a deep fly, then decided to play it off the wall, which he did—after the ball had landed at the base of the fence. Gladden's declaration came after he subsequently turned another fly out into another double. Before I got back home, he made yet another bad play (according to Gladden).

My intention is not to pick on Stanton but just to point out to the anti-fans in my life that no team is without flaws. By "anti-fan" I mean people who, told that the Twins are doing "pretty good," or that Buxton had two more extra base hits yesterday, reply

When did they last win a playoff game?

or

He just came off an 0-for-30 streak, plus he's always injured.

Yes, I read about these issues in the Strib. But the Yankees, who are on pace to win more than 110 games, play a right fielder who might as well use a metal glove, and have you ever wondered when the Seattle Mariners last won a playoff game? Or consider the Los Angeles Angels. They have Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout, probably the two best players in baseball. A couple years ago, they spent a sum of money that would be regarded as nontrivial by the main sponsor of the Saudi golf league in order to sign a 3rd baseman, Anthony Rendon, who is currently batting .242 (and not playing on account of a balky wrist). Trout got a hit the other day that ended an 0-for-26 drought. Their current record is 27-31. They've lost 13 games in a row and just fired their manager. Their last season with a winning record was 2015. 

I'm mainly trying to talk myself out of a tendency I know I have—dwelling obsessively on the Twins' weaknesses, about which I'm intimately familiar since I follow them every day, and unthinkingly thinking that life must be perfect for the fans of other teams. It's not even perfect for Yankee fans, and maybe there's a life lesson here hidden in plain sight. Everyone knows what they're up against, but it's not like the rest of human experience is accurately reflected on Instagram. For that, we have literature—John Cheever's fantastical, enormous radio, for example, and I like too this poem by Thomas Hardy.

Twins in May (and early June)

The Twins were 18-12 in May, which raised their record for the season to 30-21. It's beginning to look like they may be the best team in baseball's worst division: they're the only AL Central member with a winning record, and the five teams in the division (Twins, White Sox, Guardians, Tigers, and Royals) have a dismal 61-85 record when not playing among themselves. Now, a few days into June, the Twins stand 17-10 against divisional foes and 15-14 in all other games. Everyone thinks the Sox are the team to fear. We'll see. They've been disappointing so far, and a case can be made that 50 or more games is enough of a sample to indicate what the other 110 are apt to be like. 

The Twins would be better than 17-10 within their division if, as May changed to June, they had not lost four of five games to the lowly Tigers in Detroit. Besides losing, the team was filling its roster with minor-league call-ups as first this regular and then that one had to be placed on either the injured list or the Covid list. Then, to make matters worse, the schedule called for them to travel from Detroit to Toronto for three games against the Blue Jays, and to enter Canada you have to show you've been vaccinated. It thus came to light that four Twins—right fielder Max Kepler and relief pitchers Caleb Thielbar, Emilio Pagan, and Trevor Megill—have declined to be vaccinated and had to be placed on the inactive list, thereby depleting further an already thin roster. In addition, Alex Kirilloff, who had been rehabbing in the minors from an injury, was not recalled. Since he would have been an obvious weekend replacement for Kepler, it seems likely he isn't vaccinated, either. 

Well, around 30 percent of the country is nuts, so why wouldn't a baseball team have a few kooks? It's sort of interesting to find out who they are, however. With the Twins, anyway, it seems to be the Caucasian God-Squaders who lead the way.  I'm a little mystified about the connection between religious faith, of a fundamentalist flavor, and opposition to the Covid vaccines, especially since submitting yourself to a shot is so easy and would help your team. To refuse seems selfish, a trait not generally included on lists of the Christian virtues. The culture wars come to baseball. 

Though it technically belongs to the June summary, I'm clearly a little late with May's and can therefore report that what looked like an imminent collapse coming out of Detroit took a more favorable turn in Toronto, where the Twins won two out of three over the weekend. After scoring a total of two runs in the last three games of the Detroit series, the Twins scored 17 times in the two wins against the Jays, who had won eight in a row before Minnesota limped into town.

On Friday, the Twins started one Chi Chi Gonzalez, a 30-year-old journeyman, mostly in the minor leagues, though with enough big-league experience to have compiled a 9-23 career mark with an ERA of around five-and-a-half and a WHIP of around one-and-a-half. He lasted three innings, allowing three runs, but was backed up by six innings of no-hit [sic] relief provided by five different members of the severely depleted bullpen. Meanwhile, the batters knocked five balls out of the park and the Twins won 9-3.

After getting trounced on Saturday, the Twins won the rubber game of the series yesterday, 8-6. Luis Arraez had four singles and a walk in five plate appearances, and the Twins collected a season-high 16 hits, including a 2-run homer by Gary Sanchez in the 8th inning, but it was the play of shortstop Jermaine Palacios that caught my eye. He's one of the call-ups, a beneficiary of shortstops Carlos Correa (Covid) and Royce Lewis (banged up knee) being unable to play. I understand that many consider Palacios to be the best fielding shortstop in the Twins organization, but he hasn't shown he can hit: so far this year, in 163 plate appearances with the Triple-A St. Paul Saints, he had an OPS of .701, which is only average. Yesterday, after the Twins scored three times in the top of the first, the Jays lead-off batter homered, and two of the next three hitters walked. The next guy hit a hard grounder that looked like a sure hit, but Palacios dove to his left, speared it, and from his belly flipped to Polanco at second, who completed an inning-ending double play. Without that fielding gem, eight runs might not have been enough. Palacios later drove in a run with a single and had a sacrifice bunt. It was his seventh game in the majors. If he forgets a single detail, it could only mean that he plays in at least 700 more. 

The Yankees are next, starting tomorrow at Target Field. They have baseball's best record, and not just by a little, but you never know what's going to happen.

I've been driving around with a fellow Twins nut, watching their minor league teams play. Executive summary:

Des Moines is a nice town, but the ballpark is only average. Wichita is sort of a dump, but the ballpark is beautiful. Buying cocktails at either park is not recommended: price is exorbitant and I can only assume that alcohol would be detected by sophisticated scientific instruments. I'm a little disappointed by the greeting from my dog after our first ever time apart. It was muted, as if happiness to see me was at war with resentment over having been abandoned in the first place. We may have trust issues going forward. 

Roger Angell, 1920-2022

As indicated here, I have for the past several Aprils felt an added gram of dread when Opening Day came and went without comment by Roger Angell, the editor and baseball writer at The New Yorker who turned 101 on his most recent birthday. I should have saved it all for 2022 as he died yesterday. New York Times obit here. His colleague David Remnick's "Postscript," in The New Yorker, draws upon Angell's breezy but weighty—it's alchemy—essay on advancing decrepitude, "This Old Man," which I remember made me laugh out loud while I read it one day in a Target Starbucks. It can be funny when it's not you—yet. Before his wits deserted him, my dad liked to say that old age was not for the faint of heart.

I subscribe to The Gray Lady and The New Yorker so preemptive apologies if some of these links take you to a paywall. Fyi, as recently as a few months ago you could get the Times for $3 a week and, for $12, a tote bag and 12 issues of The New Yorker. 

The Times obit mentions the "inventive imagery" with which Angell enlivened his baseball writing, and provides a few good samples, though not my own favorite: he said, of the effect made by an untouchable pitcher quietly accruing a string of strikeouts, grounders, and weak pops, that "the click of another passing inning is like someone closing a door in the next room." His wrap up of the 1975 baseball season, the one in which Carlton Fisk famously motioned from the batter's box for his big fly to stay fair, included what one might think of as an Answer to Critics:

It is foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially exploitative as a professional sports team, and the amused superiority and icy scorn that the non-fan directs at the sports nut (I know this look—I know it by heart) is understandable and almost unanswerable. Almost. What is left out of this calculation, it seems to me, is the business of caring—caring deeply and passionately, really caring—which is a capacity or an emotion that has almost gone out of our lives. And so it seems possible that we have come to a time when it no longer matters so much what the caring is about, how frail or foolish is the object of that concern, as long as the feeling itself can be saved. Naivete—the infantile and ignoble joy that sends a grown man or woman to dancing and shouting with joy in the middle of the night over the haphazardous flight of a distant ball—seems a small price to pay for such a gift. 

 

Twins out west

I've loved Twins games on weekday nights on the west coast for around 55 years now. It's at least 54, because I know I was listening, transistor radio under the pillow, on Wednesday night, May 8, 1968, when the A's Catfish Hunter pitched a perfect game against the Twins in Oakland. The box score for that game is here. Back then, the standard starting time for night games was 8:00, and I see that the game was played in 2:28, so it would have been about half past midnight in the central time zone when Rich Reese, pinch-hitting for the pitcher, fanned for the last out. Reese worked the count full, 3-2, then fouled five consecutive pitches before whiffing on the eleventh pitch of the at-bat. You don't fall asleep five minutes after that, and I wonder whether next day I was noticeably groggy in Miss Sime's fourth grade class at Highland Elementary. 

Last night's game against the A's started at 8:40 local time. My kids didn't go to bed till the seventh inning. You know you're old when you think every change seems calculated to remove the charm from life. At least I was able to cut the grass between supper and the start of the game. Also, the Twins won, which is rare: in the last ten years, their record in road games against the A's is 6-23. They've done better everywhere else, including at Yankee Stadium. It can't be the rabid fans urging on the home team. The A's have been a bad draw forever. The attendance last night was 3138. Hunter's perfect game was witnessed by 6298. A lot of the same in the intervening 54 years. Games in their stadium have a weird feel, even on TV. Not enough people to make the low hum of a baseball crowd, and there is so much foul territory that the few who are there, invariably bundled up against the cold, could as well be watching on TV themselves. 

My older daughter is reading for school A Midsummer Night's Dream, which I read again myself in order to talk about it with her. Hot take: Shakespeare's comedies are skillful and amusing but they leave no imprint, and I can't fault an 8th-grader's cold response to fairies in the woods squeezing magic juice on the eyelids of the wrong sleeping lover, etc. Were I in charge of the curriculum and determined to make 8th graders read a Shakespeare play, it'd be Romeo and Juliet, or maybe Macbeth, brutal but brief. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's noticed that the plot of "The Most Lamentable Comedy and Most Cruel Death of Pyramus and Thisby," the play put on by the ridiculous rustics in A Midsummer Night's Dream, resembles closely that of Romeo and Juliet, which was also written in the mid-1590s. It's amusing to think of Shakespeare not taking himself that seriously, and imagining his tragedy played as a farce. 

As a reward for subjecting myself to A Midsummer Night's Dream, last night in bed after the ballgame I started reading Unknown Man No. 89, almost the only Elmore Leonard crime novel that had somehow escaped my attention. The main character is a Detroit process server who, according to the following Chapter 1 description, is a good fit for his occupation:

He decided he liked process serving because he was his own boss. He could work two hours a day or twenty-four; and because he liked it, he usually put in at least twelve. He didn't mind being in the car most of the day. He liked to drive around and listen to music or, about a hundred days a year, a Detroit Tigers baseball game. It didn't matter what place they were in. 

Someone called Leonard "the Dickens of Detroit" but—assuming there’s autobiography in this chacterization—to me he's just my doppelgänger. By the way, though it doesn't matter, the Twins are in first.

Twins in April

At the start of the baseball season, the daughter who's a fan asked me how I thought the Twins would do this season.  She's just young enough to regard me as a reliable source of information, at least on some topics. Flattered, I adopted the oracular tone of an ESPN commentator and said something like, "Well, Lydia, this team will score some runs, and the question is whether their pitchers will be able to get the other guys out." They then lost their first game 2-1, and their second by 4-3. After a couple of weeks of a win here, a loss or two there, not a lot of runs scored or allowed, they went into Kansas City for a series in which, in three games, they held the Royals to a total of six runs and lost twice anyway. The win, on get-away day, was 1-0. Things have to change, I thought, or she's going to discount my opinions on a range of sensitive issues. 

They left Kansas City with a record of 5-8. The way I thought things would change, if they changed, is that the hitting would come to life just as the pitching came to earth, and they'd be losing 8-6 instead of 4-2. But in an instance of pessimism proving at least temporarily unwarranted, the run production ticked up (aided by some t-ball caliber fielding by the opposition) while the pitching remained stingy, and the team swept consecutive series at home against the Sox and the Tigers. That made seven wins in a row. The streak came to an end in Tampa Bay yesterday, but they beat the Rays today, and at the end of April the Twins sit atop their division with a record of 12-9. 

Let's dwell cheerfully on their pitching because it might be our last chance. Joe Ryan has been an ace. He's started four games, won three of them, and, in 23 innings pitched, has allowed just 10 hits and three runs. But he's not the only one: five guys have started 19 of the 21 games and the highest ERA in the bunch belongs to Chris Paddack, at 3.68. When in today's game rookie reliever Jhoan Duran entered in the middle innings, the TV flashed the message that he'd struck out 15 of the 35 batters he's faced this year. I cynically mused that that might be right around the league average—everyone strikes out all the time—but you couldn't argue with today's results: two innings, six up and six down, just 21 pitches thrown and three strikeouts. The success has been general. In their 12 wins, the Twins have allowed a total of 24 runs. I attended the public schools but I think that's two per game, give or take. 

Here's more math: if they go 12-9 six more times, they'll be 84-63 with 15 games to play. They aren't going to hit .219 (their current team batting average) all season, so maybe . . . .

[Leans back in chair, dreaming happily, almost falls backward.]

Dick Bremer speaks

Twins play-by-play guy Dick Bremer pretty much sticks to baseball, and in particular avoids controversial topics. I therefore pricked up my ears when, during the telecast on Jackie Robinson Day, he said he thought there was something about baseball's color line getting broken that isn't widely recognized. This turned out to be the impression a lot of people have that, once Robinson played for Brooklyn, the barrier was down and Black players began filling roster places on all the big league teams. According to Dick, this view, or assumption, is false. He didn't supply a ton of details—he was calling the game, too—but I just googled "first black player in mlb by team" and got referred to quite a helpful list in this Wikipedia article. No surprise, Dick's right.

Indeed it turns out that the pace of integration was slower than I'd imagined. Robinson played his first game for the Dodgers on April 15, 1947. In July of that season, two other teams, the Cleveland Indians and the St. Louis Browns (now the Orioles), had their first Black player take the field—Larry Doby and Hank Thompson, respectively. In the 1948 season, no new team had its first Black player, though it was Roy Campanella's rookie season with the Dodgers and Satchell Paige pitched for the Indians. The next year, 1949, was Monte Irvin's first year with the New York Giants. No other team had their first Black player that season. In 1950, one new team had their first Black player when Sam Jethroe played in the outfield for the Boston Braves.  The next season only the White Sox joined the list of integrated teams. When the Giants called up Willie Mays in May of '51, he became their fourth Black player—only the Indians, with five, had had more. By this time, Jackie Robinson was a five-year veteran and ten of the sixteen teams had still never had a Black player. When I was born toward the end of the 1958 season, Robinson had been retired for a couple of years and no Black guy had ever played for the home team in Fenway Park. 

So those are the facts justifying Dick's assertion. If he'd wanted to venture a controversial conclusion on Jackie Robinson Day, he might have suggested that, when the topic is race in America, we love to pat ourselves on the back for "the progress we've made" while keeping  hidden how much resistance there has always been to every grudging forward step. 

Kershaw pitches 7 solid innings!

I was in a bar on Wednesday afternoon—and there's gambling at Rick's!—while the Twins were playing the Dodgers. The TV was on, but I was only aware that the Twins were losing and didn't learn till later about the unusual circumstances: Clayton Kershaw, the Dodgers' starter, was removed from the game after pitching seven perfect innings and throwing just 80 pitches. I might be one of the three ardent baseball fans who doesn't have an ardent opinion about the wisdom or aptness of this move, but I've enjoyed some of the commentary. It's pointed out, for example, that in a game between the Red Sox and Angels on June 14, 1974, Nolan Ryan, who was 27, threw 235 pitches and then, after three days rest, beat the Yankees on June 18. He pitched for 19 more seasons after that one. I saw this in a social media post but have verified it here and here.

To a young fan, these box scores must seem like relics from pre-history, which, considering that I was a teen, is poignant to contemplate. Ryan's line for the June 14 game was 13 innings pitched, 3 runs allowed on 8 hits with 19 strikeouts, 10 walks, and no decision. His mound opponent, Luis Tiant of the Red Sox, was the hard-luck loser: he went the distance and was credited with 15.1 innings pitched—there was one out in the bottom of the 16th when the Angels scored the winning run. Carl Yastrzemski had tied the game, 3-3, with a 2-run homer off Ryan in the top of the ninth, so no closer to protect the lead and Ryan pitched another 4.2 innings after yielding the tying homer. The 16-inning game was played in 4 hours, 2 minutes—last year, the average MLB game lasted 3 hours, 10 minutes.

In the June 18 game against the Yankees, Ryan was taken out after pitching six scoreless innings. This seems an acknowledgment that his effort a few days earlier might have been a bit of a strain. The Angels won the game, 3-0, in an hour and 55 minutes. Ryan's opponent that day was Dick Tidrow, who pitched a complete game while taking the loss. In consecutive starts, then, Ryan's mound opponent went the distance and got the L. (Last year, there were 24 complete games pitched all season.) Ryan himself, in four days' time, pitched 19 innings, allowed 3 runs (2 on one swing of Yastrzemski's bat), and had 26 strikeouts, a win, and a no decision. 

Cooperstown calling Twin greats Oliva, Kaat

Twins players Jim Kaat and Tony Oliva, who it was announced over the weekend have been voted into baseball's Hall of Fame, possess opposing claims to the honor. Kaat was on a level below such contemporaries as Koufax, Drysdale, Gibson, and Seaver, but he was a reliable, top-line pitcher for most of his 25 big league seasons, finishing with a 3.45 career ERA, 283 wins, and 4530 innings pitched. The innings-pitched figure places him 25th on the all-time list. The players who pitched more innings than Kaat are all either already in the Hall (20 of the 24), or from a different era (pre-WW II), or tainted by steroids (Roger Clemens), or named “Tommy John.”  Knee injuries shortened Tony-O's career and kept him from compiling eye-popping numbers on his bottom line at BaseballReference. The bookends of his productive career are the 1964 and 1971 seasons. He was a rookie in '64, and I'm not sure any rookie has ever had a better year: he led the American League in batting average (.323), doubles (43), total bases (374), hits (217), and runs scored (109). Of course he was Rookie of the Year. The question is why he wasn't the league MVP (he placed fourth, behind Brooks Robinson and two Yankees, Mickey Mantle and Elston Howard). In 1971, his batting average (.337) and slugging percentage (.546) both led the league. The next year, 1972, he required season-ending surgery after playing in just ten games, and he was never the same after that. But during those eight brilliant seasons, he led the league in hits five times, in doubles four times, and in batting average three times. 

Back to Kaat. Scanning his career numbers at BaseballReference, I'm surprised by a few things. For one, I was under the impression that his career was in eclipse when the Twins traded him to the White Sox during the 1973 season. Au contraire! He won 21 games for the White Sox in 1974, and 20 more in 1975. He had won 25 games for the Twins in 1966, and at the time his 20-win season in 1974 set a mark for most seasons between 20-win seasons (with none in the intervening years). This record was subsequently broken by David Cone, who won 20 games for the first time in 1988 and then not again till 1998. It's a quirky little stat but indicative of Kaat's effectiveness over a long period. I'd also forgotten that back in the mists of yesteryear there was only one Cy Young winner each season, a fact that prevented Kaat from claiming the award in 1966, when he finished second to National Leaguer Sandy Koufax. He might have had another chance in 1972, when through the first half of the season he sported a 10-2 record with five complete games and a 2.06 ERA. Then, in a July 2 game in Chicago, his season ended when he broke a bone in his pitching hand while sliding. It's not surprising that Kaat was on base. When he wasn't pitching the Twins often used him as a pinch-hitter, and in fact he was 13-for-45, a .289 average, when his 1972 season abruptly ended.

Oh, yes, Kaat also won the Gold Glove Award an astounding sixteen times. 

There will be six new inductees this summer, and Kaat and Oliva, both 83, are the only two still alive. On hearing the news, Kaat said, "This is truly a gift. I truly never thought this day would come. But the added happiness I have is I get to share it with my teammate Tony Oliva, who I have known for so long since he came up as a kid and developed into a Gold Glove outfielder. For us Minnesota Twins, it's going to be a great summer." Another thing I'd forgotten!—Tony O earned a Gold Glove for his outfield play in 1966. He also batted .307 that season, with 25 homers, 32 doubles, 87 RBI, and 99 runs scored, but leave it to a pitcher to hone in on his fielding. 

Notes on sportz

It's been fun watching Eddie Rosario knock the ball all over and out of the yard this October, and I suppose some Twins fans think it's proof of another mistake by the suits. Not necessarily. For the season, Eddie batted .259 with an OPS of .740, which isn't very good, especially for a left fielder. Thus his WAR ("wins above replacement") of 1.1. Perhaps only the guy who wrote the article on WAR understands how it's calculated, but, to help you get your bearings, the Twins' Max Kepler batted .211 this past season, with an OPS of .719, and his WAR was 2.1. He's a better outfielder than Eddie and doesn't daydream while leading off base, not that either one of them regularly reaches base.

Is it my imagination, or in the postseason are guys suddenly willing to shorten their swing to hit grounders to the side of the field where no one's standing? Amazingly effective! Maybe it's that teams that make it to the postseason have guys who can do that. The aforementioned Max Kepler can't, or won't, I know that for a fact. Four million grounders to the "infielder" who's standing in shallow right field, and another three million to the guy standing where the second baseman stood back in the 1970s.

If another Gopher running back gets injured they're going to start scouting the intramural flag football teams at the U for talent. Nevertheless, no matter who they're down to in the back field on a given Saturday, the team rushes for 200 yards again. Don't know that much about football but am beginning to think our offensive line might be pretty good.

And the door is open in the Western Division of the Big "Ten." The Gophers and Iowa, both 3-1 in conference games, are tied for first. (In the Eastern Division, there are two teams, Michigan and Michigan State, that haven't lost all season, and a third, Ohio State, that hasn't lost a conference game.) Our schedule is favorable—we already lost to Ohio State and we don't play Michigan or Michigan State. If we could win our next two games, at Northwestern and home against Illinois, it would set up a Big Game in Iowa City against the Hawkeyes on Nov. 13. 

I too would have accepted Lucy's 9000th invitation to kick the ball out of her hold.

Had this conversation recently with older daughter:

Her:  Who's the greatest ballplayer of all time?

Me: That is a matter about which there is endless discussion and many different views.

Her: I see. But who is it?

I know that all kids say funny things, and people who don't have them must grow weary of the precious stories, but, hey, I'm not forcing anyone to read this, Surly Shirley. 

Twins last month

The Twins went 15-15 in September/October, which allowed them to avoid a 90-loss season: after winning the last game of the year, on Sunday, against the Royals, they stood at 73-89, last place in the AL Central, the weakest division in the league. They needed a mini hot streak to land that well, for they did not lose any of their last four series of the year: swept a two-game series at Wrigley against the Cubs, then came home and split four games with the Blue Jays (who were fighting for a playoff spot), won two out of three from the Tigers, and then travelled to Kansas City, where they won two of three games on the last weekend of the season.

I always find something to interest me, even in the last month of a losing season—often, the struggles or successes of some call-up who's excited to be getting a chance. Maybe the guy rolls one through the infield for a single and the TV shows his familial entourage going nuts in the sparsely populated stadium. This year, however, Jorge Polanco had my eye: on September 11, he hit two homers, his 29th and 30th of the season, and had 3 RBI, numbers 88, 89, and 90. Could he attain a 30-homer, 100-RBI season? Here are a few names from Twins history who never accomplished that feat: Tony Oliva, Kent Hrbek, Kirby Puckett. Polanco, however, went into a little RBI slump and I'd pretty much given up when he only had 95 entering the last game of the season. Then, in his first at-bat, he launched one with two aboard: 98, which is where he finished. I don't think he got another at-bat with a runner on base. 

Speaking of 30-homer seasons, Miguel Sano did it for the second time: 30 this year, 34 in 2019. Here is a comprehensive list of Minnesota Twins who have had more 30-homer seasons than Sano:

Harmon Killebrew (8)
Justin Morneau (3)

I'm as frustrated with him as anyone—he strikes out way too much, makes a butt-load of errors, and, notwithstanding all the dingers, has never driven in as many as 80 runs in a season. But can you give up on the guy? I feel he's a whisker away from a year in which he bats .260 with 40 homers and 120 RBI. Pipe dream? Well, here's another possibly unrealistic hope: Buxton plays in 150 games and has more than 600 plate appearances. Or how about Max Kepler rebounding?—he batted .211 and had 54 RBI, possibly the most feeble output of any everyday right fielder in the game. Can Garver stay healthy enough to bat 400 times? Because, if he does, he might hit 30 over the fence and another 30 that bounce against it. 

All fun to daydream about, but if none of those things happened, the team could still go from 89 losses to 89 wins with some steady starting pitching. In the American League, only the Orioles, who lost 110 times, allowed more runs than the Twins—and our relief pitching was more than serviceable. I don't know what their plans are but I'm confident that Bailey Ober, Griffin Jax, and three days of wet weather is never going to be a motto along the lines of "Spahn, Sain, then pray for rain." 

Twins in August

The Twins had a winning August—14 victories, 13 defeats. It was their first month with more wins than losses. Perhaps that's just a blip along the way of a mediocre team's long walk through a long season. Still, it's worth mentioning that their best month followed immediately upon having traded their best hitter (Cruz) and their best pitcher (Berrios) for players whose value is almost entirely prospective. Moreover, their schedule in August was their most difficult so far, and not just by a little: they had series against the Astros, the White Sox, the Rays, the Yankees, and the Red Sox. The highlight of the month, maybe of the season so far, came when, from the 5th through the 15th, they had consecutive series against the Astros, the White Sox, and the Rays, the three division-leading teams in the American League. A Twins fan looking ahead, in late July, to that stretch of games might have predicted the final implosion. Instead, they won 3 out of 4 in Houston, then returned home to win 2 out of 3 from both the Sox and the Rays.

Alas and alack, their next road trip was to New York and Boston, where the results were more in line with expectations. But they were competitive, and since they were relying on younger and unproven players, especially among the starting pitchers, this suggests they could be competitive in the future, too. 

Or not. If you look behind the wins and losses, you see, for example, that the Twins were outscored in the month by 29 runs in the 27 games. I said they were "competitive." Someone else might say they were "mediocre."  In the White Sox series, they lost 11-1 before winning 5-4 and 1-0. Winning close games (which they did) is a good sign. Getting pelted (which they also did) is a bad sign. Their success in close games may be attributed in part to effective relief pitching, but through July 31 they were giving up 5.3 runs per game, worst in baseball except for the woeful Baltimore Orioles, and in August they allowed . . . 5.3 runs per game. Starting pitching is by far the biggest question going forward. In that 1-0 victory over the White Sox, the Twins tied a major league record for most pitchers participating in a shutout (4), which seems more like a symptom than stray accident. 

If you follow the team, but your memory only goes back a couple of games, you probably think all this is crazy, because in those two games they gave up a total of 6 runs and lost them both. This was against the Cubs, who in their previous three games had allowed 30 runs. (One was a shutout win; in two losses they allowed 17 runs and then 13 more.) You never know what will happen! Who will play shortstop for the Twins next year? What is Luis Arraez's best (or least bad) position? Can Byron Buxton stay in the lineup? If so, can he play all year like he played this April? And who can get guys out at the start of the game, like 16 or 18 of them?

 

 

Baseball fans discuss

I know my older daughter has my DNA because

a) she has a sweet disposition; and

b) during today's Twins game she said to me, "Dad, if the Twins were behind by one run in the 8th inning and had the bases loaded with two outs, would you rather have a hundred percent chance of a base hit or a 50-50 chance of either a grand slam or a strikeout?"

Fyi, I opted for the base hit after clarifying that it was the bottom of the 8th inning. Harder call in the top of the 8th, but I still might take the sure hit. Can we assume that it's to the outfield and two runs score? 

Dick Bremer, Twins play-by-play guy, has probably forgotten as much baseball as I'll ever know, but he said something during the game that I think I disagree with. Miguel Cabrera, of today's opponent, the Tigers, recently hit his 500th career homer, and he's also closing in on 3000 career hits. Dick said when he gets his 3000th hit, probably next April, it will be a more amazing achievement than his 500th homer, because (I paraphrase), "Everyone hits homers now but, geesh, 3000 hits: that's 200 a season for 15 seasons!"

Yes, 3000 is the product of 15 and 200, but does he realize that 25 (homers) x 20 (seasons) = 500 home runs? I liked the 8th inning single in my daughter's poser, but there's something to be said for 25 homers a season for each of those 15 seasons and then 125 more homers in the five seasons after that. The history of baseball suggests that, as achievements, it's at least a close call. Thirty-two players have gotten 3000 hits; counting Cabrera, only 28 have hit 500 homers. 

At the old ball game

Daughters and I went to the Twins game last night. One, age 13, is a fan. The other, age 10, is not, and to accommodate her I bought tix for a particular section, to the side of the pavilion in dead center field, where last night your ticket came with a pass for all-you-can-eat "ballpark fare." My supper was two hot dogs, a bag of peanuts, two ice cream sandwiches, and two cokes. I spurned pop corn and the corn tortilla chips with "cheese" dip. The 10-year-old spurned all the free stuff. I bought her a $7 pretzel for supper. Oh, wait, she didn't spurn all the complimentary items: I think she drank around four cokes. I'm not saying I'm sorry I brought her. I had reserved a spot in a ramp beforehand, a move that necessitated scanning a QR code on my phone at the ramp entrance. She showed me how to do that when the line behind us grew to three cars. Before that, she was giggling. 

Luckily, there were some drunk 20-year-olds within sight and earshot to occupy her attention during the game. The group was composed of around half a dozen males and one female who, for the occasion, had donned shorty shorts and cowboy boots. Based on my observations, I'd guess there was an informal competition under the terms of which the young man who shouted the drunkest most witless obscenities at the Indians' centerfielder was to be rewarded by bedding Rodeo Girl later last night. I'm so old as to regard with distaste the mating rituals of the young, but 10-year-old was actually enjoying herself, for once. 

In the ballgame, the Twins, despite four fielding errors, won on a walk-off hit by Polanco in the bottom of the tenth: decent pitching throughout, especially four innings of shutout relief from Gant, Minaya, Colome, and Thielbar. It was the Twins' eighth win in their last eleven games—the first ten of which, 13-year-old observed on the walk to the car, had been against first-place teams. To get out of the ramp, I had to scan the QR code again, which this time I accomplished without incident. 

This 'n that

I took a picture of my window box on about Memorial Day and laughed at myself as the flowers were barely peaking out: not enough dirt, or short plants, or something. The above was taken this morning. Someone (Jan), encouraging me back in May, said that in a couple of months we wouldn't be able to see out the window. To the degree that's true, it's because of paw prints in dog drool on the glass, but the flowers are doing well enough. You can see them from the street now. Next year, maybe I'll go for more colors and the creeping, flowing, tumbling, luxurious effect. See if I can screw that up.

Regarding the dog, whose name is Cooper, affectionately Coopsie: he is the source of the following hilarity, played out once or twice a week:

13-year-old: Oh, no, Coopsie, I can't believe you did that!

10-year-old: What'd he do?

13-year-old: Come look!

[Sound of running feet]

10-year-old: Oh, God, gross. I can't believe he did that.

Me [from another room]: WHAT NOW? WHAT'D HE DO THIS TIME?

One Of Them: Nothing, he's sleeping on the porch. 

Both Of Them: [Gleeful laughter.]

Jeopardy! has been in the news. I don't have any opinion about the guest hosts, or the recently announced winner[s] of the audition, but the current champion, Matt Amodio, has caught my attention. He's been the champion for about three weeks now and has won more than a half million dollars, which I guess places him third on the all-time money list, behind only Ken Jennings and James Holzhauer. Jeopardy! groupies are put off by his tics, such as his way of using "What" in his answers, including when "Who" would be more appropriate. Whatever. I was a little annoyed by his penchant for ringing in, then pausing before answering, as if the correct response had slipped his mind but then always replying correctly just in time. It seemed like maybe the affectation of a drama prince, but my new theory is that for him being the first to buzz in is more of a challenge than knowing the answer—he knows practically everything—so lots of times he hasn't even entered the question into his mind when he presses his buzzer. He then has to think of the answer, the easy part for him. 

Shohei Ohtani is the Matt Amodio of baseball—an outlier of the outliers. I feel like in my youth I paid insufficient attention to the likes of Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, and Roberto Clemente and that now Ohtani is flying beneath my radar too. I mean, I know about him, but why am I not more amazed? In the Angels' game last night, he batted lead off and pitched. At the bat, he had a double, a walk, and scored a run. Ho-hum, since he leads the majors in home runs with 38 and has an OPS north of 1.000. He pitched six innings, allowing 3 hits and 2 runs. He fanned 6, got the win, and his ERA for the season actually rose a smidgen—to 2.93. He's such a unique player that, like Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain in  basketball, he raises questions about the rules. Does the designated hitter have to bat in place of the pitcher? Or can you pitch Ohtani, put him in the batting order, and use the designated hitter for the weakest hitter among the other eight? I see that in last night's game the Angels went without a DH, and it looks like that's how it has to be if Ohtani is going to pitch and bat. And why wouldn't he bat when he pitches?  He's pretty near the best in baseball at both. 

Twins in July

Uff da.

Eleven wins, sixteen losses, their fourth losing month of the season (of four), and the worst since April. Cruz and Berrios were traded before the deadline (along with Robles and the hapless J. A. Happ), and Buxton and Rogers are hurt, so, if you want to watch prospects in action, Target Field is now an expensive substitute for the Saints' home field in St. Paul.

Speaking of Happ: he was the starting pitcher in one of the team's more memorable losses of the season, this past Wednesday, when they scored 14 runs and still came up short by a field goal, 14-17, against the Lions, I mean Tigers. I heard it was the first game in major league history in which one team hit seven more homers than their opponents and lost anyway. Happ's line for the game: 3 innings, 10 hits, 9 earned runs.  That the Twins were able to trade him for two beating hearts is something of a mystery to me. I guess it's because he's left-handed? Kids, if you have a  baby, and it develops that he's left-handed, make him work on his curve even if he'd rather be in the chess club: major league minimum salary is $570,500, and the pension is more than serviceable.

It's not only the pitching. Here is the Twins' batting order in that game against the Tigers, with the guy's 2021 batting average, after it had been fattened by the unlikely outburst, in parentheses:

1. Kepler (.214)
2. Rooker (.212)
3. Polanco (.266)
4. Sano (.208)
5. Larnach (.227)
6. Astudillo (.257)
7. Gordon (.259)
8. Jeffers (.205)
9. Simmons (.214)

For shits and giggles, I just added the averages and divided by 9: .229. But hitting is so depressed around baseball that there has been talk of banning infield shifts and moving the pitching rubber farther from home plate. Only the Twins' pitchers can't get batters out.

Just so that I'm not all Negative Nellie, Jorge Polanco is having a decent season. If he stays on his current trajectory, he'll bat about .270 with 25 homers. Also, he's been durable, especially by team standards. Hope I haven't hexed him by saying that.

I'm watching today's game as I type this. I kind of like pitchers having to take their turn at bat. The Cardinals' starter, Wainwright, has two sacrifice bunts in the game. His other at-bat (so far) came after the Twins intentionally walked the #8 hitter to put runners at first and second with two out. Wainwright then worked the count full, hit about four fouls in a row, and then smashed one down the third base line: Arraez was so startled that it went in his glove that he bounced his throw to Sano, who failed to scoop it, and a run scored. By the way, only one team (the Marlins) has committed more errors this season than the Twins.

Feller dishes

 

I managed to write a bit about Bob Feller without mentioning that he is the source for one of my favorite baseball put-downs of all time. He lived into his 90s, never leaving the Cleveland area. Like Kaline in Detroit, he was a local institution, going to games, mixing with fans, following the Indians, and baseball generally, very closely. Unguarded and opinionated, he was good copy for journalists. He might have been one of these guys who thinks everything was better when he was young and is now in precipitous decline. I find I have more and more patience with this tendency. Anyway, in Florida once some baseball people were enthusing about Michael Jordan, who had quit the Bulls and was in spring training with the White Sox.  Feller was present and for a few moments listened to encomiums regarding Jordan's athleticism, etc. He then interjected his own verdict, which was that anyone who thought Jordan could play in the big leagues had to be an idiot.

"He couldn't hit a curveball with an ironing board," Feller said. 

Bob Feller and the war years

Was looking forward to the Twins' doubleheader today in Detroit but it's been postponed. The single game scheduled for tomorrow will now be a doubleheader, weather permitting, and the second lost game will be made up at the end of August. The Twins won their last four games before the all-star break, which is four days long, and today's postponement means it's now been possible to feel good about "how the Twins are playing" for at least five straight days—some kind of a record for this dismal season.

My makeup activity has been scrolling around baseball-reference.com looking at player records. Somehow, I lit upon Bob Feller, the Indians' great pitcher of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. I always think of Ted Williams as Exhibit A of great players whose lifetime statistics were diminished by military service in World War II. Williams did not play in 1943, 44, or 45, which were the seasons when he turned 25, 26, and 27 years old—the front-end of most players' prime. He finished his career with 521 home runs, so, barring injury, would almost certainly have hit more than 600 homers but for the lost three years. Only nine players have hit 600 career homers. At least three of them (Barry Bonds, A-Rod, and Sammy Sosa) are probable steroid users and a couple more (Albert Pujols and Jim Thome) hit a lot of their homers as designated batters. Williams's career batting average was .344, and if it had stayed right there during the missed seasons, he'd have the highest batting average of players with 600 home runs. Only the Babe, at .342, is even in the same neighborhood.

But Feller is Williams's rival in this regard. Both men were 23 years old on 7 December 1941. Feller enlisted two days later and missed more time than Williams did—all of the 42, 43, and 44 seasons, and almost all of the 45 season, when he returned to the Indians in August and pitched in just 9 games. To give some idea of what he might have done in the years he missed, during the 1941 season, his last before going to war, Feller pitched 343 [sic] innings, struck out 260 batters, won 25 games, and had an ERA of 3.15. Then in 1946, his first season back, he pitched 371 [sic] innings, struck out 348 batters, won 26 games, and compiled an ERA of 2.18. If we interpolate, filling in the missing years with the rough averages of these bookends, Feller accrues, conservatively, 90 wins and 1100 strikeouts. His career totals in these categories would then stand at 356 and 3681, respectively. On the all-time list for wins, he rises from 37th place to 8th, and for strikeouts, from 31st to 6th.

Feller's contemporary Warren Spahn pitched briefly in the major leagues for the first time in 1942  before serving in the Army during the 43, 44, and 45 seasons. His was not easy duty—according to Wikipedia, he saw action at the Battle of the Bulge and was awarded the Purple Heart. When asked what he might have accomplished in the years he missed, Spahn modestly but plausibly speculated that the saved wear-and-tear may have extended his career at the back end. People speak of Williams batting .388 in 1957, when he was 38, as the greatest season by an old guy, but Spahn, age 42 in 1963, pitched 22 complete games for the Milwaukee Braves while compiling an ERA of 2.60: his won-lost record was 23-7.  Spahn's point amounts to a caveat concerning the aptness of filling in statistics for missing years and adding them to career totals, as I've done with Feller. But what are you supposed to do when it's raining in Detroit? Spahn, by the way, is one of the seven pitchers who stays ahead of Feller on the all-time wins list even after you give Bullet Bob an additional 90. 

Jottings

Tweet: Re-realized for 10,000th time that my kitchen floor is exactly the same color as a spaghetti noodle. 

But I can't tweet because I'm banned from Twitter. Funny story. Someone I follow was traveling in Iowa and tweeted about the aggressive friendliness he encountered in diners and motels. I replied that if he thought he was being suffocated in Iowa, do not cross into Minnesota cuz "we will kill you." He "liked" the tweet but Twitter's algorithms did not. Lifetime ban!

Daughter told me a joke. What's the difference between Trump and a bird? A bird can still tweet. Almost confessed to her my own sentence. Her dad and Trump: both too depraved for Twitter. But I don't think Trump's ban is for the term of his natural life. 

Same daughter just said, "I'm going to Henry's house." I said, "Fine, go to Henry's." She said, "I wasn't asking you, I was telling you." 

I'm enjoying Jim Kaat as a color commentator during Twins telecasts. Today, I think he's mentioned around 18 times that in yesterday's game there were 18 full counts. I'm thinking he gets paid by the game, not the hour. Justin Morneau, on the other hand, is paid by the number of words he speaks. He says some smart-sounding things but I attribute this to the Law of Large Numbers. 

Kaat just said that when he was struggling with his control Twins catcher Earl Battey would set the target in the middle of the plate and then do the sign of the cross. 

Earl Battey! An under-appreciated figure from the early history of the Twins. He grew up in the Watts neighborhood of LA. I don't think many kids are playing baseball there nowadays. My daughter—older one, not the smart ass—has observed that all the Black players speak Spanish. (She's enough of a fan to keep the TV on during "Twins Live Postgame," when they interview players.) Anyway, Battey: he was a 4-time all-star, won 3 gold-glove awards, and finished in the top-10 of the American League's MVP balloting 3 times as well. Except for Mauer, best player at his position the Twins have ever had. 

Some baseball illogic

I meant to work something into my post about the Twins' poor June but then forgot. Here goes:

There's a staple of learned commentary about baseball that I think is unadulterated baloney. Since Twins' color commentator Justin Morneau is one of its advocates, I'm constantly being annoyed by its promulgation, and the time has come to try and exorcise my misery by the usual method: venting. Contrary to what Morneau and a million others believe, there is no reason to think it's a lot better to be behind by only 4 runs, as opposed to 5 or more, in a baseball game. The idea is that if you're behind by 4 you can catch up on "one swing of the bat"—a grand slam home run.  But being behind by 4 runs in a baseball game is not at all analogous to being behind by 7 points in a football game. A grand slam is not its own thing, like a touchdown. Other things have to happen before a grand slam can be hit, and those other things make it more likely that a 3-run deficit, or a 5-run deficit, will be overcome, too. The utility of an extra run is the utility of an extra run. Some aren't worth more than others.

The way this often comes up during a broadcast is that the home team, maybe Minnesota, scores a run in the bottom of the eighth inning to go ahead 7-2. Morneau then rhapsodizes about what a "key" run this was, since now, in the ninth inning, "one swing of the bat" can only make the score 7-6, whereas before it would have tied the game. If the Twins are ahead by 2 runs, they can be caught with a 2-run homer; if ahead by 3, they can be caught by a 3-run homer; and, if ahead by 4, they can be caught by a grand slam; but a 5-run lead?—in the clear! That seems to be the "logic."

Actually, you're "in the clear," so to speak, as long as the tying run doesn't come to bat. If you're ahead by a single run, the lead-off batter is the tying run—one swing of his bat can tie the score. If you're ahead by 2 runs, someone has to get to base before "one swing of the bat" can tie the score. If you're ahead by 4 runs, three batters have to get to base safely before "one swing of the bat" ties the score. If you're ahead by 5 runs, four batters have to get to base safely before the tying run bats. The likelihood of these things happening is a smooth downward progression. There is no "jog" in the graph when the deficit goes from 4 to 5. 

Twins in June

A few weeks ago, a fellow Twins fan asked whether I thought there was any chance the team gets back to a .500 winning percentage this season. Um, no, assuming one's rooting interest isn't allowed to overwhelm the rational faculties. At the time the team had played around 60 games. What reason was there to suppose the remaining 100 would be very much different? I know these month-by-month summaries are a little artificial, but by the time three are up it seems reasonable to think a pretty realistic portrait has come into view. This is why, according to lore (and reality), the team in first place on the Fourth of July usually finishes in first place, too. Three months of games is a representative sample.

In April the Twins were 9-15. Then in May they went 13-16. In the month just finished, they won 11 games and lost 14. They aren't a fifty-fifty team.

Yes, key players have missed a lot of games with injuries: Buxton, preeminently, and Garver just when he'd begun to smack the ball all over the yard. Others too, sure, but it happens around the league. I think the  real culprit is their starting pitching. Here's a selection of pitchers who have started at least five games this season, with ERA in parentheses:

Happ (5.83)
Shoemaker (8.06)
Maeda (5.56)
Dobnak (7.83)
Ober (5.84)

They've played 78 games and one of these five guys has been the starting pitcher in 48 of them. Hard to win when you're allowing runs at these kinds of rates. Within their division, only the first-place White Sox have scored more runs than the Twins, but no one has allowed more.

One can still take pleasure in individual performances. It's fun to watch Luis Arraez play baseball. Berrios has pitched well. Nelson Cruz is laying claim to being one of the great late-bloomers in baseball history—it's his 41st birthday today, and he leads the team in batting average (.307), OPS (.963), homers (18), and RBI (44). It looks as if guys like Kirilloff and Larnach have a chance to be good major-league players and it'll be fun to watch them get better (I hope they get better). At the other end of the spectrum, Miguel Sano, who so far this season has struck out 83 times in 200 at-bats, is now riding the pine most of the time. At least he has 14 homers and 34 RBI, both second best on the team. Kepler, I think, has been underrated as a bust: he's hitting .199 with 6 homers and 27 RBI. It's not that hard for a 41-year-old to be producing more runs than those two guys!

T-ball bloopers

 

As a teenager, I had a summer job coaching youth baseball in my hometown. I remember once, in a t-ball game, a kid hit a weak grounder to the first baseman, who fielded the ball in front of the base. Instead of touching first base, the first baseman decided he'd tag the batter as he ran past him. So the the kid who hit the ball just stopped in the baseline. For a second or more, the two boys contemplated one another from a distance of a few feet before the first baseman, evidently having forgotten that he only had to touch first, advanced toward the stalled runner to tag him. The kid who hit the ball then retreated toward home. This baseball play ended with the first baseman throwing the ball to the catcher, who tagged the runner as he slid into home from the first baseline.

The parents were hootin' and hollerin' and I guessed they might be wondering what the coach was teaching their kids about baseball. But check out the above video of a play earlier this year in an mlb game, Cubs versus Pirates. No reason for me to have felt bad about what my t-ballers did. Fyi, there were two out (in the Pirates-Cubs game). I like how the broadcaster, when the craziness apparently had come to an end, shouts, "Run! Keep running!" That's what parents, understanding that no one in the field can throw or catch, yell at their kids when they stop at a base before the other team has corralled the ball.

Twins in May

The Twins logged their second consecutive losing month in May. They were 13-16, a bit of an uptick over April, when they were 9-15. For this we can thank the Baltimore Orioles, who are currently on a 14-game skid, four of the 14 courtesy of the Twins. The Twins have won seven of their last ten games, so you can see where we were before the O's filled our dance card. When I was first old enough to follow baseball, Baltimore was a fixture near the top of the American League standings. I can go around the field: Boog Powell at first base (succeeded by Eddie Murray), Dave Johnson at second, Mark Belanger at shortstop, Brooks Robinson at third base, Frank Robinson in right, Paul Blair in center, Don Buford in left, Elrod Hendricks behind the dish, a pitching staff of perennial all-stars and occasional all-stars, the fixture being Jim Palmer. Manager was Earl Weaver. If you want some fun, search "Earl Weaver" at YouTube.

You can see I'm putting off a discussion of the Twins. Here's a statistical nugget: in the American League, only the Toronto Blue Jays have hit more home runs than the Twins, yet the Twins have been out-homered in their games, 71-73. Yikes! During today's game, when a Twin stepped to the plate and his batting statistics flashed across the screen, I said to my daughter that it seems everyone on our team is hitting .225. She replied, "Sano ain't." Indeed he is not: .163, to be exact. He had a nice game yesterday, four at-bats, three strikeouts and a rally-killing double play grounder with the bases loaded. Three more strikeouts today. For the season so far, he has 129 at-bats and 58 strikeouts. Yikes! Yikes! When he's behind in the count, you want to avert your eyes, same as if a school bus was rolling toward an oblivious 7-year-old. But, pick a guy more or less at random and discuss his shortcomings. It happens that Sano rankles my daughter.

I'd make an exception for the newbies. I'm thinking of Larnach, Refsnyder, Kirilloff, Garlick. None is setting the world afire, but they all look like they belong in the major leagues, and they're apt to get better. I don't think Josh Donaldson (for example) is going to get better. He's the guy I'm down on. Maybe it's partly the dyed blond hair with modified Mohawk. But it's more this kind of thing: he's on third base, a guy also on first, one out; batter hits grounder to first; first baseman tags first as Donaldson jogs toward home; then first baseman throws to shortstop who tags runner for third out when Donaldson is still a couple of strides from home plate. No run. I guess he doesn't get paid enough to sprint. I forget who the runner on first was, but, after the first baseman made a putout on the batter, he's the one who should have stopped running. Did these guys start playing baseball yesterday?

Well, Donaldson had three hits today, including two doubles, plus a walk. If he could keep that up, I think I could look past the foppery and the mental lapses. I have a feeling, though, that I won't have to surrender my grudge.

Byron Buxton is arguably the most exciting player in baseball. If only what kept you on the edge of your seat didn't include worrying about when he'd miss three more weeks after bumping his head or injuring himself running to first base. He hasn't played since May 6. Everyone's amazed by Cal Ripken's record but perhaps no one more than Byron's mom. I can just imagine: "It's ok, sweetie, you'll be able to play outside with the other kids next month, when you feel better!" 

Going back to the days of my early fandom, the Los Angeles Dodgers were probably the best team in the National League. Losing streaks are rare when half your games are pitched by Koufax-Drysdale. The current Twins need a winning streak but aren't apt to go on one for a related reason—it's hard to make it once around our pitching rotation without someone getting rocked. Leads in the late innings aren't safe, either. It's baseball, however, and there's a game tomorrow in Baltimore. 

A day in the life

I always correct my younger daughter when in text messages she fails to distinguish, for example, "your" from "you're." This annoys the crap out of her. "Six hours of school per day is more than enough," she's been known to reply.

This evening we got in the car to drive to her piano lesson. Just as we were backing out of the garage, I got a text from her older sister, whose sports practice was ending. Since we weren't going to be early to music, I gave my phone to the younger daughter and told her to text with her sister. As we drove along, she busily tapped out messages in the back seat. When we were almost to the music lesson, she announced that she had never revealed  her identity and that the whole time her sister had thought she was texting with dad. "I keyed slow and used a lot of punctuation and stuff," she explained, deadpan.

What is the fun of suffering through yet another extra-inning debacle by the home team Twins if you're not even allowed to partake of some 20-20 hindsight? Innings past the ninth now commence with a runner on second base. I thought I'd hate it, but you know what?—the games are long enough. If you play nine innings, and no one is ahead, it's ok if the rules shift toward the chintzy.

In the top of the tenth of today's game, the Rangers' runner advanced to third on a wild pitch while the first batter was up. The Twins then brought their infielders in to the grass in front of the base lines in order to try and cut down the go-ahead run at the plate, but the batter foiled the strategy by hitting a hard grounder through the drawn-in infield to score what turned out to be the winning run. My inclination would be to play the infield at regular depth, especially with no outs. Give up a run, get the batter out, avoid a big inning. Your half of the inning will start with a runner on second, too. It's all new and I don't think the managers have figured out the best strategies yet.

Or maybe there's something wrong with my way of thinking. Tonight, when we were all reunited and headed out to our favorite neighborhood joint for supper, I noticed a bus with a giant advertisement on its side panel: SOBERING REALITY, A DWI WILL COST YOU $10K. I thought I should repay myself for never having had a DWI so I enjoyed an extra drink with supper before driving us all home. Still $9993 ahead. 

 

Twins in April

The Twins in April were a disappointing 9-15. Despite the poor record, they outscored their opponents by two runs, 111-109, a circumstance owing largely to the last two games, yesterday's and Thursday's, which they won by 10-2 and 9-1. They've had some agonizing losses. On April 11, against the Mariners, they built a 6-0 lead through five innings before losing, 8-6, on a 3-run, 9th-inning homer off their closer, Alex Colome, whose ERA for the month was 8.31. That was just a warm-up for a 3-game series in Oakland a week later. The first two games were a double header, and the Twins were swept, shut outs in both games. Next day, they scored 12 runs and lost anyway, 13-12, in 10 innings. The Athletics tied the score at 10 in the bottom of the ninth. In the top of the tenth, Byron Buxton hit a 2-run homer.  In the bottom of the tenth, Colome pitching, the first two batters made outs. The next two walked, loading the bases (extra innings now start with a runner on second base). Here we go! The next batter grounded weakly to second, where Travis Blankenhorn, who had entered the game as a pinch runner, booted what should have been the game-ending out. A run scored, cutting the lead to 12-11, bases still loaded. The next batter hit another routine infield grounder, this time to 3rd baseman Luis Arraez, who threw high and wide to first on what should have been another game-ending out. The tying and winning runs scored as the ball bounded through the back 40 acres of the Oakland Coliseum. Uff da.

The Twins played 5 extra-inning games in April and lost them all. They also played two double headers, which are now 7-inning games, and they lost all of those as well. Another curiosity of their season so far is that they are 9-6 in 9-inning games and 9-15 overall. I'm surprised they haven't yet lost any games shortened by weather but it's a long season. 

On the bright side, this is not looking like the season in which 40-year-old Nelson Cruz is suddenly too old: he's batting .325 with 8 homers, 21 RBI, and an OPS ("on-base plus slugging" percentages) of 1.049. An average OPS is around .750, and anything above 1.0 is fabulous—which tells you something about the season  Buxton, whose OPS stands at 1.307 after going 0-for-3 today, is enjoying so far. Yesterday, Dick Bremer, the Twins tv play-by-play guy, pointed out that only two players in major league history are known to have had an OPS higher than Buxton's at this point in the season. Ted Williams is one. The other is Mickey Mantle. In the game that day, Buxton's streak of hits in consecutive at-bats came to and end at 7, but he made two spectacular catches, one racing in and to his left, then diving to rob someone of a bloop hit, and then a few innings later racing back and to his right before leaping at the wall to turn a home run into an out. Really fun to watch him play baseball. I like how when a ball is driven into the gap, and he takes off after it, you can tell the moment when he knows he has it measured, the dead sprint almost imperceptibly down shifted into a glide and you know it's going to be an out, not a double. 

 

Now pitching. . . .

 

I went to bed last night after the grand slam in the bottom of the seventh made the Twins' deficit 3-9 and so missed Willians Astudillo's pitching performance in the bottom of the eighth. You can watch it above. Changing "speeds" and painting the corners, he retired the Angels 1-2-3 on seven pitches. Worked quickly, too. Two of the outs were liners to the third baseman and the third was a 3-hopper to shortstop. As honest pitchers have confessed, just throw it over the plate and batters will get themselves out. Plus, it's not as if there aren't seven guys with gloves standing behind you within the right angle where batters must hit the ball. 

The great ones always make it look easy.

In another strong pitching performance last night, Max Scherzer, of the Nationals, allowed four base runners—two hits and two walks—over seven innings, no runs, 10 strikeouts. He remains winless this season. The only run in last night's game scored on a solo homer in the ninth. 

I wish I had seen Bob Gibson pitch more, and I wonder whether the youth of today will wish they'd paid more attention to Scherzer. Probably not: youth and baseball are wasted on the young. Scherzer is a machine, however. Someone recently set out on social media his road-home splits over the course of his career so far.

	Home	Away
Games Started	184	185
Innings Pitched	1182.0	1181.1
Win/Lose Record	87-45	88-48
Strikeouts	1395	1398
Hits Allowed	979	979
Opponent BA	.223	.224
Opponent OPS	.656	.656
Hits as a Batter	39	39

Coincidence accounts for some of this, and perhaps an artful selection of statistical categories, but still. 

Henry Aaron, 1934-2021

Hank Aaron, who died today at age 86, has as strong a claim as anyone to being baseball's GOAT (greatest of all time). Let's run through some statistics, indicating his place on the all-time list:

Games played—3298—3rd (behind Pete Rose and Carl Yastrzemski)
At bats—12364—2nd (behind Rose)
Runs—2174—4th (behind Rickey Henderson, Ty Cobb, and Barry Bonds)
Hits—3771—3rd (behind Rose and Cobb)
Home runs—755—2nd (behind Bonds)
Runs batted in—2297—1st
Total bases—6856—1st
Extra base hits—1477—1st

His lifetime batting average was .305. While in his 20s, he won three gold glove awards. His cumulative career statistics were compiled without benefit of any eye-popping season. He never won the Triple Crown. He was league MVP just once. He played for one World Series champion, the 1957 Milwaukee Braves, and in his career played in only 17 post-season games—he batted .362 in those games, 25-for-69 with 6 homers and 16 RBI. He never hit more than 47 homers in a season (but hit at least 30 fifteen times). His biggest RBI year was 132 (but he averaged 100 per season over his entire 23-year career). Compared to his National League contemporaries Willie Mays and Roberto Clemente, he seemed almost determinedly unflashy. He wasn't at all physically imposing—6 feet tall, 180 pounds—and, in my memory, was so relaxed in the batter's box as to appear almost sleepy. He'd wait longer than most hitters and then flick his quick hands: in keeping with everything else, no tape measure shots, just one vanilla home run after another, about 35 a year for more than 20 years. 

I think I've talked myself into it: he's the GOAT. Look over those eight pretty fundamental statistical categories again. He's no farther down the list than fourth, all-time, on any of them, and he's at the top of the list for RBIs, total bases, and extra base hits. Of the players whose names appear ahead of his in more than one of the categories, two, Rose and Cobb, were compared to him just banjo hitters, and another, Bonds, used steroids. Mays was better than Aaron in the field and on the bases. Ted Williams walked more, had an even higher slugging percentage, and, were it not for time lost to military service, might have had career numbers to rival Aaron's. Everyone's case for being the GOAT requires some special pleading, but the case for Aaron seems to me the most straightforward. The guy with the third most hits had the second most homers, the most total bases, and the most RBIs.