Category: General Blogging

This is a general blogging category.

What just happened?

Here is what the May 29 Twins GameNotes say about yesterdays game:

The Twins lost to the Rays yesterday by a score of 8-6 in 15 innings, losing the three-game series two games to one. At six hours and 26 minutes, the game marked the longest game in Target Field history and the second-longest game in the history of the Twins (longest: six hours and 36 minutes on May 7, 1995 at Cleveland). The loss to Tampa was Minnesota’s longest game by innings since April 24, 2016 at Washington (16 innings). The Twins/Rays game was the longest game in the major leagues this season (previously: 6:05 by New York-AL at Chicago-NL on May 7).

It marked the Twins first loss in which Minnesota led in the ninth inning (previously 25-0).

Twins pitchers struck out a season-high 17 batters, their most since recording 19
strikeouts August 19, 2007 vs. Texas.

Mauer

Joe Mauer drew three walks to pass Kent Hrbek for second on the Twins all-time list
(840), trailing Harmon Killebrew (1,321). Mauer hit his 133rd career home run, moving him past Jacque Jones for 11th place on the Twins all-time list. He recorded a season-high
four hits and reached base a career-high seven times, becoming the second Twin ever
to reach base seven-plus times in a game, joining Rod Carew (8 times on May 12, 1972
vs. Milwaukee).

Some other facts about the loss to Tampa yesterday:

The announced crowd for the game was 28,951, Twins manager Paul Molitor guessed about 1,500 stayed to watch what turned out to be a bitter ending for Minnesota.

Twins used nine pitchers tying a franchise record equaled on five other occasions.

The total pitch count for the Rays and Twins was 553 pitches (289 by Minnesota).

With a burnt out bullpen the Twins made two moves this morning, putting Justin Haley on the 10-day DL and sending Kennys Vargas to AAA Rochester. The Twins called up pitchers Drew Rucinski and Jason Wheeler who has yet to make his big league debut.

Box score for Twins vs Rays game on May 28, 2017

Just a few notes and thoughts this morning

Brad Hand

San Diego Padre (and Minnesota native) left-hander Brad Hand is supposedly on the market. Hand led the NL in appearances in 2016 with 82 pitching 89 plus innings and striking out 111 while giving up just 63 hits and posting a 2.92 ERA. The 6’3″ 27 year-old Hand blossomed last season when he became a full-time relief pitcher. Hand is making just under $1.4 million this season and is arbitration eligible for the first time in 2018. Did I mention that Hand held left-handed opponents to a .123/.234/.221 batting line in that time but also shut down right-handed batters to the tune of a .219/.295/.350 triple slash. You would think that with San Diego rebuilding, the Twins would have someone they could part with to have Brad provide a Hand in the Twins bullpen……. I am not big normally on making up trade proposals but if the price is right, this is a no brainer. Don’t forget, prospects are just that, this is a “Brad in the Hand”. Am I on a roll or what?

Trevor May

Apparently Trevor May isn’t spending all his time rehabbing and based on this article he doesn’t seemed to be too down and out about his injury and TJ surgery.

Glancing Back, and Remembering Bernie Allen is a nice little piece about former Twins 2B Bernie Allen in 1960s baseball, a site I really enjoy. They also have a cool report called “The Top Ten Minnesota Twins (or any team for that matter) of the 1960s” that you can download for free. Take them up on their offer, you can’t go wrong. Click on the book cover to download.

 

Although the following “According to ELIAS” post is not Twins related, any time you get 20 strikeouts in a nine inning game it is worth mentioning.

MLB records tied: Kimbrel 4 SO in 9th, Red Sox pitchers 20 in game

Craig Kimbrel was credited with four strikeouts in the ninth inning on Thursday night, tying a major-league record and boosting the total of strikeouts by Red Sox pitchers to 20 in their victory over the Rangers, tying the major-league record for strikeouts by a team in a nine-inning game.

Nomar Mazara, first up for Texas in the ninth, swung and missed at the third strike, as the ball apparently hit his left foot. Although he would have been automatically out had that been the call, he ran to first base and was permitted to remain there, as the umpires apparently did not rule that the ball had hit him, so that when it bounced toward the third-base dugout, it was still live. No sweat for Kimbrel, he just struck out the next three batters to join AJ Burnett, Zack Greinke and Chuck Finley as the only major-league pitchers who have struck out more than three batters in an inning more than once. (Kimbrel also did it with Atlanta in 2012; Finley had three such innings in his career.) Red Sox pitchers have now accounted for three of the six instances in which a team accumulated 20 strikeouts in a nine-inning game. Roger Clemens accounted for the two other cases personally, against the Mariners in 1986 and at Detroit in 1996.

I really don’t care who you vote for the 2017 All-Star game, except…..that I do urge you to vote for Twins third baseman Miguel Sano. The man is having a tremendous season and he deserves to represent us Minnesota Twins fans along with Ervin Santana in Miami in July. Click on the image to vote.

 

Vic Albury, former Minnesota Twins Pitcher passes away at the age of 69

Vic Albury pitched for the Twins 1972-1976

I recently learned that former Minnesota Twins pitcher Vic Albury who was born on May 12, 1947 in Key West, Florida had passed away on April 18, 2017 in Tampa, Florida from a stroke/heart attack at the age of 69.

Vic Albury was a ninth round selection by the Cleveland Indians in the 1965 June amateur draft as a first baseman out of Key West High School. Albury started his pro career in 1965 but found himself out of baseball from 1966-1968 serving his country in the military. When his military service concluded Albury resumed his baseball career but this time as a pitcher. Sometime prior to the 1969 season the Indians sent Albury to the San Diego Padres where he pitched in their system for two seasons before the Minnesota Twins drafted him in the November 1970 Minor league draft. 

Albury, a chunky left-hander, made his big league debut at Met Stadium on August 7, 1973 in a blow-out loss to the Orioles 10-4, pitching 2 innings of relief and giving up one run but followed that up with 10 consecutive relief stints without giving up a single run. In 1974 Albury was used primarily as a starter but a mid-season shoulder injury slowed him down and he posted an 8-9 record with a 4.12 ERA. In 1975 Albury split his time between starting and relieving but his best work was out of the bullpen. The injury bugged continued to plague Albury in 1976 and he was out for three weeks after being hit in the left leg by a George Brett line-drive and Albury finished the season and what turned out to be his big league career with a 3-1 won/lost record and a 3.58 ERA in just 11 games, all in relief. 

In his four-year big league career as a Twins pitcher Vic Albury was 18-17 in 101 games and 32 of them as a starter. In 372.2 innings Albury had a 4.11 ERA and a 1.50 WHIP primarily caused by his 5.3 BB/9. Albury left Minnesota after the 1976 season and pitched in the minor leagues in the New York Yankee system and for the Indians AAA team in 1979. Albury also pitched briefly in 1979 for the AAA Puerto Rico Boricuas in the Inter-American League.

Todate nothing has been published regarding his Obituary or where he may be interned. Thank you for the memories and our condolences to Vic Albury’s family and friends.

Minnesota Twins 2005 first round pick dead at the age of 30 from cancer

Henry Sanchez

Former Minnesota Twins minor league player Henry Sanchez passed away on April 30, 2017 at the age of 30 after a four-year battle with a rare soft-tissue cancer called synovial sarcoma. Sanchez was one of San Diego County’s great sluggers while attending Mission Bay High School. 

Henry Thomas Sanchez Jr. was drafted by the Minnesota Twins as a first baseman out of high school in 2005 as a supplementary first round selection and 39th pick over-all in what a very good draft with numerous 2005 first rounders playing in the big leagues today. The Twins used their first pick in round one to select RHP Matt Garza 25th over-all. Only 11 of the 48 players picked in the first round in 2005 failed to reach the big leagues, unfortunately; for Sanchez and the Twins he was one of those unlucky eleven players.

Henry Sanchez signed with Minnesota for a reported $900,000 and reported to the 2005 Twins Gulf Coast League Twins to start his pro career. Injuries derailed the big league hopes of Sanchez who was compared to big-league sluggers Andres Galarraga and Prince Fielder but Sanchez never appeared in more than 60 games in a season and never hit more than 6 home runs. The power that Sanchez had never had a chance to blossom and his baseball career came to an abrupt end when the Twins released him in 2009. Sanchez was suspended by MLB for 50 games in April 2009 after testing positive for a drug of abuse in violation of the Minor League Drug Prevention and Treatment Program.

Services for Henry Sanchez were held May 7, 2017. Our condolences to all of Henry’s family and friends.

Former Mission Bay baseball standout Henry Sanchez dies

Henry Thomas Sanchez Jr. Obituary

Sam Mele – First Twins manager to take team to a World Series gone at the age of 95

Twins manager Sam Mele

Sabath Anthony “Sam” Mele was born in Astoria, New York on January 21, 1922 and passed away in his home in Quincy, Massachusetts this past Monday at the age of 95. Sam Mele‘s parents were born in Avellino, Italy although they met in America. Mele’s mother was sister to big league brothers Al and Tony Cuccinello. Sam Mele was a natural all-around athlete and a Queens Park baseball legend and went on to attend New York University where he excelled as a basketball and baseball player before serving his country in the Marines during World War II. But Mele wanted to play pro baseball and was signed as a free agent by the Boston Red Sox in 1946. In his first year of organized ball, Mele played 119 games for Scranton (A ball in the Eastern League) hitting .342 with 18 home runs before being moved up to Louisville in the AAA American Association where he played all of 15 games. Mele made his major league debut with the Red Sox the following year against the Washington Senators on April 15, 1947. His rookie season may have been one of the best of his career as Sam hit 12 home runs and knocked in 73 runs in 123 games while hitting .302. Mele would never hit over .300 again in his 10 year major league career. During his playing career spanning 1947 to 1956, Mele, who batted and threw right-handed, saw duty with six major league clubs: the Boston Red Sox, Washington Senators, Chicago White Sox, Baltimore Orioles, Cincinnati Reds and Cleveland Indians, batting .267 with 80 home runs in 1,046 games. Sam Mele played his final major league game as a Cleveland Indian on September 16, 1956. Mele played AAA ball with for the White Sox and Athletics in 1957 and 1958 but never returned to the majors as a player.

Sam Mele in his playing days
Continue reading Sam Mele – First Twins manager to take team to a World Series gone at the age of 95

The Pen is Mightier says Tom Verducci……. Back in 1999

When you turn on the MLB channel which has replaced ESPN as the go-to baseball channel at any point in the day you will quickly learn that the trend according to today’s baseball so-called experts is that the bullpen is now the key to having a winning team that will do well in the playoffs. The Cleveland Indians and Andrew Miller are a prime example they say. But Tom Verducci wrote a story for Sports Illustrated back in September of 1999 expounding on the virtues of relief pitchers. 

Rangers manager Johnny Oates

The importance of the bullpen was not lost on managers back in 1999 either as this quote from then Texas Rangers skipper Johnny Oates attests –

“Getting from two outs in the sixth inning to the ninth inning is the most important part of the game,” Oates says. “That’s where you’ll win or lose the pennant. It’s even more important in the playoffs, when every run is magnified.”

I guess it just goes to show that what goes around comes back around but like everything else in life, the game of baseball is slow to learn from history.

Twins Express bus gets benched

I have taken the so-called Twins Express bus to Target Field numerous times over the last few years from 394 and County Road 373 and found it an easy and inexpensive way to get to Target Field and not have to worry about finding and paying for a parking spot. With the Minnesota Twins playing poorly since 2010 it turns out that ridership had dropped from about 100,000 a season to just 25,800 in 2016.

According to the Star Tribune article on March 30th:

Ridership on Route 679 is down so much that the agency has decided to drop the service that for the past six years has ferried fans between Target Field and the park-and-ride at Interstate 394 and County Road 73.
“We have done everything we can to get that route going,” Kelci Stones, a specialist in Metro Transit’s marketing department, told the Met Council this week. “We couldn’t continue the service this year any further.”

The service offering a round-trip ride for $5 debuted in 2010 with the opening of the new stadium and generated nearly 100,000 rides. Since the Twins won the division title that year, the team has struggled on the field and at the box office. Consequently, Metro Transit has seen a steady decline in fans taking the express bus. Last season, ridership fell to an all-time low of just more than 25,800 for the 81 home games.

It is a shame that this service has been discontinued, hopefully once the Twins start playing a better brand of baseball and fans start going to Twins games again that this service can be revived. I will miss this service.

Metro Transit drops Twins Express service for 2017 season

 

“Grin and bear it cause good things are a-comin”.

Like most baseball fans I can’t wait for the 2017 MLB season to begin. I have been excited for every baseball season to start for over 60 years now so that tells you that I am no rookie fan, you might compare me to the old veteran player that is looking to hang on for another season.

Spring brings hope as the weather warms, spring rains fall, the grass turns green, the leaves start to form on the trees and somewhere off in the distance you hear that yell that your ears have yearned for during the cold winter months, PLAY BALL!!

The home town Minnesota Twins ended spring training on Friday and flew to Minnesota after their final exhibition game which ended in a 3-3 tie against their AAA Rochester team. Spring training wins mean very little, in 2016 the Cubs finished their exhibition schedule with a 11-19 record and won the World Series. The 2016 Twins finished with a 19-11 record and when they looked at the standings when the season ended they saw a “59” in their W column. The 2017 Twins were 16-13 in this springs meaningless games.

This is the first season for the new Derek Falvey and Thad Levine regime and the third season as the Twins manager for Paul Molitor. Much has been said and written about Falvey and his approach to running a team and how appreciated he was in Cleveland. The consensus is that Falvey has taken over a tired old organization that time has passed by and a complete house-cleaning was in order. But Falvey and Levine have not done that, they have actually made very few moves both on the field and in the front office. I think that tells us something.

To me it sends a very clear message, the Minnesota Twins organization coming off a disastrous season in which they lost 103 games is not the pile of s*%# that everyone says it was and that the team has a bright future and all they need to do is fine tune it a bit and stay out of way to make sure they don’t screw it up. Falvey didn’t leave the Indians and Levine the Rangers to end up in some dead-end team with no hope, they came to Minnesota because they see what this team can and will be in the next few years. Believe me, the Twins organization is far from perfect and there will not be any playoff games played in Target Field in 2017 but this years team will not be the sad sack Twins of 2016.

The major weakness the Twins have is their relief pitching and Falvey and Levine did nothing to speak of to address that problem, that will come back to haunt the team this season. Can the starters be worse this year than last? I think not so I am expecting much more from that group in 2017. The young position players are just getting to the stage of realizing that they can play and compete at the big league level and they will be both fun and at times frustrating to watch. The Twins motto for this season should be “Grin and bear it cause good things are a-comin”.

My 2017 American League Central Division prediction

Here is how it is going to look after the 2017 season ends.

 

The 2017 American League pennant winners will be the Cleveland Indians and the National League pennant winning Washington Nationals will play in the 2017 World Series with the Indians winning in 6 exciting games. Enjoy the season.

Does QS=BS?

Everyone talks about their starting pitcher putting up a Quality Start which means they want their starter to go at least 6 innings and give up 3 earned runs or less. The best team in baseball in 2016 the World Champions Chicago Cubs won 103 games and had 100 QS’s of which the team won 74 of those games or 74%. On the other end of the National League spectrum we had the Los Angeles Dodgers who won the NL west with a 91-71 record had the NL fewest QS’s with 60 and they won 46 of those games for a 76.7%. The Dodgers had one more QS than the worst team in baseball, the Minnesota Twins who won 59 games and had 59 QS’s of which the Twins won 35 of those games for a 59.3%. Hard to believe but the Dodgers had one more QS than Minnesota and yet they almost made it to the World Series and won 32 more games than did the Twins. WOW!

I see Quality Starts as one of those baseball numbers that does not mean a lot, it is one of the contributing factors to a win but a QS in itself doesn’t ensure an addition to the “W” column. Looking over the entire history of the Minnesota Twins since 1961 I found that they have had 4,401 QS’s and the team has won 3,024 of those games for a 68.71%. That appears to mean that when your pitcher puts up a QS you will win about 2/3 of your games and that is not bad at all, if your team has .666 winning percentage you are in fat city because your baseball team has won about 108 games. But we all know that the Twins have lost more games than they have won since they moved to the Land of Sky Blue Waters in 1961.

The 2016 Minnesota Twins had the fewest Quality Starts in their history with 59 in the years that they have played the full schedule of games. The Twins have had three seasons when they have had 100 or more Quality Starts, in 1968 they had 100 QS’s and yet they finished 79-83, in 1967 they had 105 QS’s and finished 91-71, and in 1972 they only played 154 games finishing with a 77-77 mark but had 114 QS’s.

2016 American League Quality Start totals

2016 National League Quality Start totals

 

Bottom line? Kind of shows you that QS=BS.

59 wins and yet no starting position player battles for jobs

What is going on here? L-R – Jim Pohlad, Michael Cuddyer, Derek Falvey, and ?

The Minnesota Twins find themselves in a strange position this spring. The team is coming off a record-setting 59-103 season and yet there are really no position battles waging in Ft. Myers this spring. All the starting position players are pretty much the same as last season except for the catcher Kurt Suzuki who left via free agency and the Twins signed free agent Jason Castro to replace him and handed him the starting job.

How often does that happen? Usually you lose 103 games and everyone is fighting for a job but that is not the case in the spring of 2017 at the CenturyLink Sports complex where the Twins are preparing for the 2017 season. As I watch the team go through its spring routines there doesn’t seem to be much urgency and the players are acting as if they are all veterans just waiting for the bell to ring in a new season. I can see the players going through the drills but I just don’t see that they are working hard to get better. This team is young, and talented but have they had enough sand kicked in their face yet to really want to win? I hope so.

I am still convinced that Joe Mauer playing first base limits the Twins from taking that next step. Mauer is the grey-beard among the position players at 33 and then Brian Dozier and Jason Castro follow at 29 and the rest of the starting line-up is 25 or under. 

If you look at the spring training stats and I know they don’t mean a hill of beans when the season starts BUT this team appears to be a team that can score some runs but will hit for a lower average than what fans might expect. Mauer’s .300 plus days are in his rear view mirror and I am not expecting Jason Castro, Byron Buxton, Max Kepler, Miguel Sano, Jorge Polanco, or Brian Dozier to hit .260 or above. I expect a higher average from Eddie Rosario this year but he too is still unproven.

In spite of what I have written this team should be fun to watch but you must be prepared for those “what the hell just happened” moments. This team will continue to improve as the season progresses and but so much will depend on the teams pitching staff both from the starters and the relievers. 

I was used to seeing GM Terry Ryan out next to the fields checking out the action but this year I have not seen Thad Levine at all and Derek Falvey just once and that was this morning. A different style I guess, particularly since all I heard early on about Falvey was how closely he worked with his manager. But you are right, it is still early.

After horrible starts to the season the last two years, how will the Twins leave the starting gate in 2017? Another bad start could would be a serious problem for Paul Molitor and his boys.