High Five Friday

While Junior Griffey’s 2005 line of .290/.371/.546 looks suspiciously like his career line of .292/.377/.559, restoring his trade value to a meaningful level, I’d still be surprised to see the Reds trade him before the deadline. Remember that he signed his big contract at a hometown discount, so he’s worth a lot to them if he’s playing at his normal level. He still has tremendous drawing power, and is probably the second best player in the five man logjam in the OF and at 1B for the Reds. Ideally, they would be able to trade Sean Casey’s salary for the next two years for a middling prospect, or a rock, but they’ll probably have to settle for getting rid of one of the OF. If I was a betting man, and I am, I would bet on Pena based on the Reds’ track record of moves. Pena is the least proven commodity of the bunch, leaving the paranoid Dave O’Brien with three outfielders of whom he can be more certain. A big swinger, he seems like he would be a good fit in another NL Central bandbox like Houston.

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As if Livan Hernandez needed to solidify his place in my heart, he now joins the elite ranks of the completely insane athletes. Throwing 250 pitches per start makes him really fun right away, but leaving a game, then threatening to have elective surgery in retaliation for a mysterious offense from an anonymous team source that will be revealed after the season? One or two more outbursts like that and he’ll jump into my upper echelon of athletes who are so crazy I can’t help but love them: Rickey Henderson, Ricky Williams, Ron Artest, Rueben Patterson and the greatest of all time, Mike Tyson. For those of you who don’t follow Livan, he employs a unique style of pitching that went out of style sometime around the ‘50s. He doesn’t show his best stuff to the majority of the hitters, saving it for the other team’s sluggers. Supposedly, this approach is the reason he throws so many innings without injury. Now that he has decided not to have surgery to fix his knee, I think it’s fair to say that Livan wears his war wound like a crown. With any luck, he’ll soon have a son and name his Jesus, because he likes the name.

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Johan Santana was far from exceptional on Thursday against the Tigers, striking out only 3 on 5 shaky innings to kick off the series. Maybe he was on cruise control with a big lead; it’s hard to say what effect that has on a pitcher’s psychology, but for those looking for a repeat of last year’s second half: don’t hold your breath. That player doesn’t exist. He was simultaneously channeling Sandy Koufax and a young Roger Clemens, which simply has no precedent. If we have a 3.50 ERA lefty who can approach the league lead in Ks for the rest of his contract, I’d call it a bargain with the current SP market.

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I feel like we’re about to hit stride at the right time. The Twins don’t have a great record in 5-game series the last few years, but those were mostly in October, not mid-July. We got lucky a couple nights in a row against the Orioles, and if they can carry over some of the confidence as they seemed to on Thursday, it would help put them in better postseason position. Although I’m speaking wholly on intuition and have nothing solid to justify my optimism, I felt hopeless about this team a week ago, and that despair is rapidly leaving. If they beat the tough lefty Maroth tonight behind Mays (in what may be his last start for the Twins), it would be four in a row against decent competition. It’s hard to argue that a team on a four game winning streak is in dire straits.

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I know it isn’t all that important, but could the Twins front office target more predictable players? Rick Reed, Bill Mueller, Bret Boone and Todd Jones somehow seem to me to have had pretty much the same career. They were all decent but boring for a long time, spiked for a year or two to become one of the better players at their respective positions, then fell in a funk before the Twins went after them. Perhaps I’m reaching here, but they Boone, Mueller and Reed even look alike. (Hilarious side note: the first three pictures of Reed on my image search were pictures of people running with titles such as, "X rounds the bases after homering off of Rick Reed." What a legacy.)