91 thoughts on “April 16, 2012: Expectations”

    1. I disagree. I don't think these games have really shown what the team is all about yet. They won't come even close to contending, but 80 wins still isn't out of the question, I don't think.

      If we can build a bit of a team around Clete Thomas and Jeff Gray, we could do alright.

      1. I will say that I've been impressed with Willingham so far. If he can keep up the offense while Mauer and Morneau get going, they could make for some interesting games (Thursday's Angels being one). Doumit hasn't shown me anything so far. But there's time.

        The starters are also a concern. Now with Baker out and Liriano struggling in his first starts, I don't really see the Twins holding the opposition to few runs.

        But it is early and the Twins have done unusual things in the past and have won when no one expected them to.

        1. Did anybody catch the idiocy of Dick praising Gardy for splitting Morneau and Parmelee in the lineup to prevent an opponent from doubling up on them with a LOOGY while failing to note that an opponent can double up on Mauer and Morneau with a LOOGY? Move Consuela to cleanup.

          Also, what's the point of having Plouffe around if he's not going to pinch-hit for Clete Thomas against a lefty in the seventh inning of a one run game.

          1. Please tell me that Bremer actually used the term LOOGY.

            Also Willingham to clean-up between Mauer and Morneau is a great idea. Does anyone think Gardy would actually do this?

            1. I think that Morneau's leash will continue to get shorter in the coming week or two as the hype that he had built for himself in the last couple of weeks in spring training dwindles. I would guess Willingham will be cleanup by June.

              1. I was commenting to the wife yesterday that M-W-M would make a lot of sense right now. Hopefully Gardy makes that move soon if Morneau doesn't start picking it up a bit.

                2. well, there you go

                  Rhett Bollinger ‏ @RhettBollinger
                  Justin Morneau is playing first base for the @Twins today. Mauer at DH with Willingham batting fourth ahead of Morneau.

                  2. I'm okay with this. I still think Mauer should hit second, but Carrol is better than most of the speedbumps that they've batted second the last several years.

                    1. I don't think hitting Mauer second solves much of anything. For most of the game it just puts him closer to the bottom of the lineup.

          2. Maybe Dick is being subversive? (Okay, I got a good laugh out of that idea, too.)

            And probably Plouffe didn't get to PH because Gardy really has trouble trusting rookies with pinch hitting duty.

            1. It's just stupid. You've got both Plouffe (right-handed) and Doumit (switch-hitter) who can play RF sitting on the bench while you leave in a lefty (the 25th player on your roster) to face a left-handed pitcher. It's stupid to have a 12-man pitching staff that leaves you with one fewer bullet on your bench. It's even stupider not to use the bullets you have available.

              1. Talking yesterday about how Perkins is already being overused made me think about, even with a big bullpen and a short bench, I almost wish they would get one more reliever in there (assugreying they had any good ones), since even with a short bench, they've got one guy who's not any good (Burroughs) even though he supposedly fills a unique role (lefty pinch-hitter - the drop from Thome beginning the season in that role two years ago to Burroughs now is staggering) and one guy who's probably not any good and seems redundant with the rest of the roster (Hughes).

              2. OTOH, it is somewhat surprising to me that he'd leave Doumit on the bench, since he really loved Bobby Kielty as a PH since he could switch-hit (and Kielty also acquitted himself well in a few spots.) I think he likes the idea that he can put in a switch-hitter as a pinch hitter and not feel obligated to switch that guy out because a pitching change was made in reaction to the pinch hitter.

                1. I'll always remember fondly Kielty's PH homer off Zito in 2003 that I predicted to the fans sitting next to me in the LF seats.

              3. I'm reasonably confident that Gardy looked down his bench, offered someone the chance to pinch hit, they said "no thanks, I'm afraid of the Yankees hitting" and so he had to leave in Kubel Thomas.

  2. I taught Mrs. Hayes how to change the oil on my '67 F100 on Saturday. I showed her the steps, but she did all the work herself. She did a pretty good job, other than dropping the plug onto the drain pan when it came loose and getting a little oil on the driveway.

    1. I'd estimate I've changed oil close to a hundred times in various vehicles, and I've dropped that damn plug in the drain pan probably about a third of those and gotten oil on the floor/driveway just about every time.

      1. It's easy to do. I think she got more oil on her arm than on the ground before she got the pan in the right place. It was a little funny to watch, because I've been there. I'm sure when I learned my stepdad laughed at the same thing.

        One nice thing about changing oil on the truck is that I don't need a jack or ramps. I can't quite get under the I-beams with the creeper, but if I lay on the ground I can reach and do it all mainly by feel.

      2. Soooooooooooo... things are going well in Boston.

        ”I don’t really understand what Bobby’s trying to do. But that’s really not the way we go about our stuff here. I’m sure he’ll figure that out soon. We’ve got Youk’s back. He’s played his [butt] off for us for a long time …”

        Asked if he thought Valentine’s comments could have been meant as a motivational tool, Pedroia didn’t sound impressed.

        “Maybe in Japan or something,” he said,

          1. Using the average of the last 5 yrs of dates for the Red Sox' Game #81*, the line is then July 1, 2013.

            avg(July 1, July 3, July 5, June 25, July 1)=182.8 days, rounded to 183=July 1

      3. The clarification on that is interesting. Isn't Youkilis widely known for being really demonstrative when he has a bad AB, at times to the distraction of his teammates? Sounds like Bobby V thinks his swing is messed up and that when he's not hitting well, he's putting everyone else on edge by getting all angry after his unsuccessful at-bats.

        But I think that Craig Calcaterra makes a good point in terms of the players not wanting distractions. If there is anything that Ozzie Guillen does well as a manager, it's that he makes himself a distraction so the media hardly has time to notice any of the players struggling. I'm not really sure if that's his intent (he certainly plays the role well enough that this could be an incidental benefit), but I'm sure that there's more than one White Sox hitter whose slump went more or less overlooked because everyone was distracted by Ozzie biting the head off a bat.

        1. I'm sure Adam Dunn was thankful no one noticed his 2011 season (insert winking emoticon).

          1. Ozzie could have managed games in the nude and Dunn still would not have been able to hide.

  4. Apropos of nothing, I will bet TEN HUNDRED MILLION THOUSAND DOLLARS that the Twins will beat the Yankees tonight.

    1. I think #8 is my favorite although #5 is pretty close. #2 also does a pretty good job of showing the awkward way I drop everything to try to change the station when tUnYaRDz(CAPITAL!!1!ELevENTy!1) comes on.

    4. viewed those while listening to the new Lee Ranaldo album. Some fit really well. Others don't at all.
      I've probably been there, but never in daylight. The dark of clubs hides many sins.

  6. Just caught part of the Boston/TB game. Punto let a dribbler down the line roll by, hoping it would go foul. It hit the base and stopped. Mike Aviles ran over, picked up the ball, and set it on the foul side of the line. I laughed. 2 batters later he dropped an infield fly in front of him, in the hopes of convincing the runner from first to go, and getting the double play. Infield fly had been called, but I still appreciated the effort. I hate Boston, and all of their players, but I kind of like this Mike Aviles guy. He seems to get that it's a fun game.

    3. You read my mind, I had just looked up his stats and was going to post them here, but luckily checked today's CoC first. That Benson dude's off to a pretty weak start, too.

      In lieu of what I was going to share, I switch to my avatar to see how he's doing. I think he's only made JeffA's highlights once, which is not a good sign. Let me see...

      Ok, an OPS of .870, which is close to his career OPS of .894. Only 17 ABs for Oswaldo so far, though...

  8. The fine monks who brew Westvleteren 12 have announced that they're going to release a gift pack in the states this summer. At 85 bucks it's the cheapest you'll find a westie 12 in the states, but it's still out of my price range.

    1. Wow... that's remarkable. And was not surprised at all by the last line... they're already working on a movie.

  11. well...sigh. from the PiPress

    John Shipley ‏ @shipleykid
    Terry Ryan: MRI revealed inflammation in Perkins' forearm. Will be in Minn. at least two days. #Twins

    1. it's getting T-wolvesesque. At this rate, we'll be watching the Minnesota Rock Cats by the A-S break.

      1. I've started an infirmary list on my whiteboard at work. I'm writing small so I can make sure I can get everything on there.

  12. This week in awesome reader comments:

    written by nathan, April 15, 2012
    Shouldn't it be possible to convert the carbon produced by this process into diamonds? The diamonds could be sold for profit instead of going into the atmosphere as CO2 pollution.

    from this story, "Solar Thermal Heating Could Eliminate CO2 Emissions from Cement Production"

  14. From the well thought out analysis at Bleacher Report 9 Things the Twins Need to Do Know
    Among the hightlights:

    Move Jamey Carroll to the bench
    Give Luke Hughes a good look
    Let Ben Revere play more
    Sign Roy Oswalt
    Call up Scott Diamond
    Lay down a bunt!

    Yeah, this should help.

    2. I'm OK with calling up Diamond and signing Oswalt, but sheesh, if they really think more bunting is the solution, maybe I should re-think agreeing with them on any of their points.

      1. Don't treat BR as a "them". There are a handful of staff writers (one of whom is my brother-in-law), but mostly it's non-staff content. And the content the staff does come up with is all assigned list stuff, designed to generate page views. It's a content factory.

        1. You're right, I should have checked the byline. I assumed it was a writing staff or something like that, not user-generated stuff.

          1. Bahahahaha. After all that, I did check the byline. It was a "featured columnist" (which means, at the very least, someone who gets a small stipend from BR, so... "staff"). Yup, that's awful.

    3. Your first mistake was reading BR. As Phil said, most of the writers are unpaid monkeys who churn out volumes of crap for page views. But for every person like me who doesn't read it, 10 do and that pays the bills. It's a numbers game, and it works for them. Unfortunately for the few good writers that probably inhabit the place, I'll never know who they are because I avoid the entire site.

      1. The good one(s?) are trying to get out. Anyone know of any baseball writing jobs for my brother-in-law?

    1. also, Baltimore beat the White Sox by scoring 6 in the 10th inning. Mauer With Power hit a grand slam to cap off that inning

  17. I tuned in to Baseball Tonight for the first time this year. Terry Francona and Nomar Garciaparra on set and the show just did 5 minutes talking about the Red Sox and finally got to the highlights of the game. sigh.

    1. Hey, the Yankees and Red Sox play this weekend. Did you know that? They had to talk about the Red Sox for 5 minutes, otherwise when they show the games this weekend there might be people who have never heard of them. Don't worry, they'll talk a lot about the Yankees too. Have you heard they're playing a series this weekend? Can you believe how lucky we are to witness this in our lifetimes? The Red Sox and the Yankees. The greatest rivalry in all of sports. On ESPN! Yankees! Red Sox! Rivalry! A-Rod! Sox! NY! ESPN! Rivals! Babe Ruth! Jeter! Boston! ESPN! Pedroia! Rivalry!

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