I can't get this quote from Bull Durham out of my head when thinking about the Twins recent run. It's the voiceover by Annie Savoy when the Durham Bulls start playing well:

For one extraordinary June and July, the Durham Bulls, for whatever perverse reason, began playing baseball with joy and verve and poetry. The two sides of my own brain were all jumbled up and cross-wired...while one side was being neglected,  the other was in paradise watching our Bulls play like Big Leaguers...We swept a four game series with Kingston, back to back doubleheaders with Winston-Salem, and kicked the holy shit out of Greensboro in a three game series...

So my question is, did Michael Cuddyer lead the team in running the bases with the sprinklers on in Detroit after the June 1st loss? That's a serious question. #Itshappening

Spring training inspires hope for the upcoming season, but for the true baseball fan, it brings forth all the emotions of romantic love.  It's no surprise that it inspires poetry of the finest caliber.  Enjoy this piece:

I live for this, all 30 teams,

And countless ambitions of childhood dreams.

The little league bats that grew into lumber,

The jerseys they wore of their role model’s number.

They’re heroes, they’re goats, they make grown men cry,

They can drive us to madness with one dropped pop fly.

Two leagues, 6 divisions, one World Series mission,

I live for their tribute to raw competition.

That's just one verse of seven.  Go read the rest, and remember the next time that you spit vitriol at Yankee fans that there are good ones out there including ones that write like this.   

I see you driving 'round town with the girl I love and I'm like,
Fuck you! Oo, oo, ooo
I guess the change in my pocket wasn't enough ... I'm like,
Fuck you! And fuck her too!

Like any heart broken soul, I've been looking for answers these past couple days.  Many of us thought this was "The One" year where the stars aligned and we had a story book ending like those of yesteryear.

Analysts have been attributing the Twins 12 consecutive playoff losses to many different reasons.  But please, don't tell us, "It's not you, it's me." We're beyond believing that load of crap. The Yankees being "clutch" and "play-off experienced" are popular lines of dribble, but what exactly does that mean? We appreciate the softening blow, but we're looking for cathartic answers here that will help us move forward.  Obviously, the Yankees are good, but I thought this year was the year we were just as good, if not better, than they were...   what went wrong?

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Despite being a big tech geek, one analog indulgence I still cling to is my print magazines.  You can't leave 5 Kindles laying on your coffee table to signal your interests to visitors.  I like throwing them in my messenger bag and being able to pull them out on the bus or at lunch or in line to get my morning coffee.  The longest running subscription I have is Sports Illustrated, to which I have subscribed on and off since I was getting Sports Illustrated for Kids in the early 90s.  

The latest issue (April 19, 2010) includes an article on our giant closer, Jon Rauch.  (It doesn't appear to be online)  The author Joe Sheehan makes a case that the rational thing for Gardenhire to do with the Twins closer situation is to do what the organization flirted with for a couple days in spring training: Closer by committee.   Sheehan makes the observation that Gardenhire has a very deep and diverse bullpen.  Rauch, Pat Neshek, Jesse Crain, Matt Guerrier, and others, when healthy, all have great strengths that could be leveraged based on match-ups in the late innings.  Sheehan claims that the position of closer is an anomaly existing due to the save statistic. His point is that it's inefficient for managers to base their bullpen decisions on anything but the best match-up.

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Alright, don't shoot the messenger here.  Stacey Brooks is a sports economist and blogger (Hawkonomics).  He's also a co-author of the book, The Wages of Wins.  He and some colleagues have studied the productivity of NHL goalies and they have produced a Wins Above Average stat that rates productivity.  I believe they are relating this to how valuable each goalie could be to teams, thereby giving them an idea of how much cap space should be dedicated to them.

The results may surprise Wild fans.  Apparently Niklas Backstrom rates as the NHL 5th *WORST* goaltender using this metric.  He is given a -1.999  WAA rating.  Josh Harding rates higher than Backstrom, but still not very productive with a -.4155 WAA.

What say you, Wild fans?  If you don't like his methodology, do you have a better one?

I have an idea.  It's probably a stupid one, but I'm prone to saying stupid things, so here it goes.

With today's news of Joe Mauer winning the 2009 MVP, all of Minnesota is wondering how in the world this little franchise that could is going to sign its second MVP in 4 years.  With holes peppering the infield and a starting rotation that scares no one outside of Kansas City, the Twins cannot afford to spend all their limited resources on one player.  Franchises that spend more than 20% of their total payroll on one player have not been successful, and for good reason.  It's still a team sport.

Jesse broke down what Mauer's market value might be earlier.  Even at a home town discount of ~20%, Joe could still be worth $30 million a year.  So, even if the Twins were to go crazy and up their payroll to $150 million a year, Mauer would still be at 20% of the team payroll.

So, here's my crazy idea:  Make him a partial owner of the Twins.

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From Kelly Thesier, it looks like Michael Cuddyer will bat clean-up tonight, while Jason Kubel will be hitting 5th.  In last night's epic battle, Carlos Gomez came in for Kubel as a defensive substitute as he has been doing most of the year.  That in itself is a good move, but it also left Gomez hitting behind Joe Mauer.  No sane manager will pitch to Mauer with runners in scoring position while the light hitting is Gomez on deck.  It happened last night, and Mauer was given the intentional pass. 

With Cuddyer and Kubel swinging the bat almost equally well at this point in the season, this is the right move.  There is no way Cuddyer is coming out of the game, because our 1st base options after him are very slim.  Not to mention he is playing outstanding defense of late there.  He's making the wild throw-tag the runner out play look like it's the status quo. 

Kudos to Gardenhire who is at least learning from his mistakes.

Jeff Passan at Yahoo Sports has a great post up entitled, "25 things you didn't know about baseball". It's a great post of surprising stats he has uncovered at FanGraphs. 

There are two Twins mentioned in his post, the first is #9, tonight's starter Francisco Liriano.  Apparently the stats show that his slider is just fine, but his fastball sucks.  It sounded like he was having trouble locating it tonight, so that actually makes some sense, but it's not what I've been hearing from the experts.  

The 2nd Twins player is Joe Mauer, who is one of 6 players who does not have a weakness at the plate.  Yawn.  That's about as surprising as Sid Hartman referring to someone as a close personal friend.

Read the whole post.  There's some interesting stuff in there.  My only question would be about giving an individual pitch an ERA.  I would put forth that pitchers use some pitches to set up other pitches.  They have their strike out pitch, but it's only good if its used in the right way.  From what I can tell, they are only taking into account what the count is, and not what type of pitch preceded it.  As a former catcher, this seems incredibly important to me.  By changing speeds, eye level, location, etc. the pitch sequence matters, not just the pitch selection.

Borzi at MinnPost has some very interesting quotes from the M&M boys.  First, Justin Morneau pretty much apologized for criticizing the front office last week when he said the front office needed to do something at the trade deadline:

"Maybe I shouldn't have said as much as I did," Morneau said. "I don't think it made much impact anyway. They were going to do what they were going to do regardless. Sometimes you get frustrated and say more than you need to.

"At this point, we want to be selfish and win this year. At the same time, they've got to build a successful franchise. What if you trade all your prospects and then you don't win? Then you have a team that's got nothing coming for five years."

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