56 thoughts on “August 31, 2011: The Other Foot”

  1. At the State Fair last night, I close enough to the 1500 building to hear Gladden broadcast one pitch: the De Aza homer. Good times.

  2. Like most everyone, I'm disappointed by Mauer's output this year. What ever the cause, injuries, lack of will, whatever, I expected more than what we got.

    What I find interesting, though, is the organization's unwillingness or inability to fend off what has increasingly become a PR nightmare. They hitched their wagon to this guy to the tune of $184 million. He's responded in the past with an MVP year and three batting titles (I think a pretty good argument can be made that he's deserved three MVPs). He's never embarrassed the organization off the field. Quite the opposite, in fact.

    Given Mauer's past production, you would think he's built up some good will within the organization. I find it interesting that the organization hasn't bent over backwards to prop this guy up. They are either idiots, or Mauer is a class A jerk. One or the other.

    1. You had better believe Cuddy would never get trashed in the press this like.

      1. Did you see that throw Cuddy made last night? Terrible. He should have manned up and said, "My bad." Look at the account of that play in the newspaper:

        But the White Sox capitalized on a throwing error at first base by Cuddyer, scoring five runs as they sent 10 batters to the plate in the fifth.

        It was 6-4, with the bases loaded and one out when Alejandro De Aza hit a bouncer to Cuddyer, whose throw to second was low and wide. Tsuyoshi Nishioka didn't even reach for the ball as it zipped into left field, and two runs scored on the play.

        "I was just trying to get an out," Cuddyer said. "I guess the throw wasn't good enough."

        I don't think it is accurate that Nishi didn't reach for the ball. I think he tried to get it, but the ball was in a tough spot to get. The Twins whiffed on Nishi. That's not Nishi's fault. This is a minor point, but that throw was Cuddy's fault. To suggest that Nishi didn't care about that ball is not accurate I don't think and it is unfair. And "I guess" is the wrong answer. "The throw wasn't good" is the correct answer. I'll cut Cuddy some slack here (Nishi is under the bus, though), but that's sloppy reporting.

        1. That throw wasn't just low and wide - it was on the wrong side of the bag. Nobody makes that play unless they're just incredibly lucky.

          1. Right, Nishi would have had to reach across his body and avoid the runner to catch that. It wasn't happening. "I guess it wasn't good enough." That pisses me off.

            2. Yeah, regardless of the effort of Nishi, a real leader would say "that was my bad throw," even if it wasn't off by much.

        2. That can be read as the throw was so bad that Nishi didn't try for it, but FWIW, that's not really accurate because he did try for it, he just didn't dive for it. Most likely because he didn't want another encounter with a base runner barreling into second base to break up a double play.

        3. I think that's just interpretation. It does say that it's an error on Cuddyer's throw, and the way I read it, Nishi didn't even reach for the ball because the throw was that bad.

          I'm getting the feeling that the Twins organization isn't stepping in on the bad Mauer PR because all the focus on Mauer is keeping the spotlight off the organization itself.

          2. Yes. Bill Smith wants to keep his job. If the focus remains on your MVP catcher who has been battling injuries all season, the fans won't look at the bullpen, the starting rotation, or the other mistakes BS made in the starting 9. They are beating up on Mauer because it's safe to do so without changing the situation.

        4. Mauer has played 3 defensive positions this year--the same as Cuddyer (minus one inning pitched). Mauer keeps to himself, doesn't criticize anyone, and plays it close to the chest. Cuddy s$!* talks everyone on the team and is the most popular guy around.

          Makes sense, right?

          1. He's every writer's buddy, so it makes perfect sense when no one is willing to call out their easiest source for a good quote.

    2. as i said before, i'm sure it's very convenient for them to have such a prominent scapegoat.

    3. Speaking of bad PR, this is not going to help matters.
      httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2CzHUbYNaM&feature=player_embedded
      (Yeah, I know, it was probably filmed in the off-season. But the timing of it is doing no favors to number 7.)

    4. Could not agree more and from the beginning. Bilateral leg weekness should have been he'll be back when he's healthy.

      And Gardy just sounds cya all the time. How many players will fit under his bus? It's infuriating.

  3. Gotta tell you, it feels like Friday. Eighth day in ND in a row, going home tonight, worked all weekend. I have to work tomorrow and Friday, but I'm looking forward to pulling into the driveway tonight.

  4. Michael Beasley allegedly suffered from an asthma attack while playing in an arena in China where people in the stands were smoking. Yep.

  5. Jesse Lund alerted me to the fact that the Twins are now sporting the worst run differential in all of baseball and have the worst road OPS in the AL. Oy vey.

      1. Seattle with a .629 OPS. The Twins are second with .679. Seattle's road OPS is .661 compared to the Twins' .655.

    6. And I'm back. I'll have you know that I have some serious old lady appeal. I'm totally going to be the next half time assistant to the regional manager at the university mail room. Beer money and an excuse to leave my house for 20 hours a week.

        1. What's funny is that the supervisor's supervisor started off saying, "well, we have a lot of applicants, and we're wondering why someone with your education, experience, and ... education... would want to have a part time job here..." The interview ended with the supervisor saying, "I think we'll be seeing you in a couple of weeks". I'll take that as a positive sign.

  7. I just got done handing over the keys to my place. I ended up taking a half day so I could finish cleaning. I look forward to a long sleep tonight.

  8. Today is the transfer deadline in soccer. Michael Bradley has been sold to Serie A team Chievo, and Clint Dempsey is rumored to be a target of Arsenal.

  9. Spooky, what's up with the sudden security measures. Did the health care peddlers strike again?

    1. I think he said he was porting a couple of past games' archives into the current blog, and so he had to take it down/turn it off so it didn't send a bunch of auto-emails with all of those posts going up all at once.

  10. cc to Beau: send me a message on Trillian when you get a chance. I'm away from it right now, but when I tried to reply to you earlier, it came back with an error saying you were offline, even though you were clearly online.

    Weird.

  11. Nothing like getting a wisdom tooth pulled to start your day out right. I was going to make a joke about it being preferable to watching the Twins since I get Novocaine to numb the pain for a while, but then I saw that they actually won today. So, maybe I'll crank up the DVR and watch while eating my yogurt lunch.

      1. Well, I know the final score, so I'll probably have a good idea of what parts to skip.

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