Mixed Emotions

This is what it all comes down to: the Twins are really good right now. After their terrible start, they need to win 4 of their last 7 to secure the franchise’s best record since a 98-64 campaign in 1970. To get there, they have had to play the majority of the season at better than a .600 clip, spending the second half as hot as Detroit did the first. As the record indicates, this team is almost certainly stronger than the ones that won division titles from 2002-2004, with a much more complete offense, fewer holes on the roster, and a roster construction that reflects a more balanced organizational philosophy between run scoring and prevention.

However, there are two problems. First, this exceptional team is missing its second and third best pitchers, and if you believe in chaining- and it is hard not to believe in chaining- you see that the impact of losing two starters at the same time is much worse than losing one at a time for two separate times. Dropping two starters necessitates more playing time from not only the 6^th, but also the 7^th starting pitcher. This effect can be seen in the poor starts from Matt Guerrier and Scott Baker making every fifth day more difficult for the Twins. Even with quite a bit of pitching depth at the start of the year, losing three of their top six options from the start of the season- including Lohse- puts an incredible amount of stress on the system, no matter how efficient it is at churning out starting pitchers. And even if the team’s record does not look much worse, the extra strain on the bullpen will show up sooner or later- Reyes, Rincon, Neshek, Perkins, and Nathan were all used at least twice in last weekend’s Baltimore series.

Now, the playoffs present an interesting difference since they will no longer require a fifth starter. It would clearly be a preferable situation of one of their two missing pieces was a fifth starter whose role would be marginalized anyway, but since they have to promote the four, five, and six starters (likely Silva, Bonser, and Garza) into more meaningful jobs, the postseason provides no comparative advantage. Whether the effect of losing the 2-3 starters is more meaningful in the regular season or the playoffs probably depends on how much one values postseason success relative to regular season success, and those values are pretty subjective. The more pressing question is how the available starters will be used after Johan, a topic on which I will touch later.

Even compensating for the injuries, the Twins are probably the third best team in the major leagues, behind the Yankees and Mets if you want to evaluate momentum and roster construction going into the postseason, or behind the Yankees and Tigers if season-long performance is more important. The second major problem for the Twins, though, is that their early swoon puts them in a position to play the one team that is clearly better in the first round of the playoffs. The Yankee super-lineup is one of the best of all time, and even a diminished Randy Johnson makes for a solid 3^rd starter in the playoffs behind a strong 1-2 combination of Mussina and Wang. With Scott Proctor, Kyle Farnsworth, and others setting up for the hammer of God, the bullpen is a strength, leaving only a suspect defense as the team’s weak link. From Gardenhire’s position, there are a few strategic tools that I would engage to maximize the team’s chances of winning the short series:

1) If possible, start Silva opposite Wang at Yankee Stadium. If Mussina goes opposite Santana in Game 1, Silva should be the obvious choice over Bonser, if only due to the park effects. The Yankees supposedly go to great lengths to make sure conditions are optimal for Wang’s sinker at the Stadium, including longer infield grass and lots of wet dirt in the infield and the batter’s box, and his 2.88 home ERA against a 4.35 road number supports that theory. Of course, Silva would have to be getting groundballs for the field conditions to matter, which has not been a given in the recent past.

2) Dance with the lady that brung ya. The patience of the Yankee lineup is legendary, and a huge strength in a postseason series that puts stress on the bullpen. On the other hand, the Twins pitching staff has a good deal of control over that part of the game, and they need to come out throwing strikes, no matter how good the lineup may be. Hard as it may be to go after Damon, Jeter, Abreu, Giambi, A-Rod, Posada, etc all back-to-back, they are all going to bat, and it is easier to do it without putting runners on for free, and with the best pitchers on the mound.

3) Maintain an aggressive approach at the plate. This suggestion may seem counterintuitive, since wearing out the Yankee bullpen seems reasonable given Torre’s penchant for overuse. Contrarily, the Twins offensive strength is in getting lots of hits. Mauer, Punto, and Castillo will see plenty of pitches, but if Hunter, Cuddyer, and Morneau change their approach to fit the playoffs, they will probably do more harm than good.

In conclusion, the Twins face a couple of big challenges nearing the end of the 2006 season, despite the terrific year leading up to this moment. As the Twins learned in 2003 and 2004, facing the Yankees in the playoffs is never easy, and doing so without two of the team’s top three starting pitchers is even more challenging. But with some short-series luck and a commitment to the strategies and tactics that make this team successful, they could have even more good times on the horizon.

A Note

I have started writing for a site called WriteOnSports.com, which conglomerates amateur and professional contributions from all major sports. It is a new site, just out of the development phase. Most of the writing I have seen is from people who are very qualified to be freelance journalists and the like, and their writing is quite good. Go check it out when you have a chance. As for me, I will continue writing for Minnesota Baseball Central, but will focus more on the Twins for this site, and general sports topics for the other. On the whole, I think the new opportunity will only increase my output.

Up for the Down Stroke

Everyone knows that players who hit line drives are generally better hitters. Line drives are harder to field, go for more hits, and generate less outs, making them more valuable to a team as a whole. As ground balls and fly balls go, fly balls are usually more offensively valuable because their upside is a homerun, whereas a groundball will seldom turn into anything better than a single. The relationship here harkens to the comparative value of on-base percentage and slugging average- the best thing a batter can do is to not make an out; after that, the more bases the better. Thus, teams that hit more balls in the air should be the best offensive teams, right?

Look at the AL GB/FB data for offenses, a few numbers stand out. The Red Sox are a low outlier, hitting .95 ground balls for every fly ball, whereas 11 of the 13 other teams fall between 1.13 and 1.28. Their offense is very successful, scoring the 5^th most runs in the league, continuing a trend of strong offenses in a very hitter friendly park. Indeed, I believe the fly ball-heavy offense in Beantown is entirely by design: Theo Epstein and his extremely create brain trust know that the team will play 81 games a year with a very short porch. Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz already fit the profile of power hitters who frequently put the ball in the air, and the players added to the roster since the World Series victory further reinforce the fly ball first hypothesis. Check out these players with relatively low career GB/FB numbers who have recently joined the lineup:

Mark Loretta: 1.16

Eric Hinske: 1.01

Wily Mo Pena: 1.32 (1.00 in Boston)

Mike Lowell: 0.68 (!)

Kevin Youkilis: 0.70 (!)

Coco Crisp: 1.39

See a trend here? Mostly right-handed, mostly fly ball hitters, clearly with an eye to the Green Monster. Hinske is left-handed, and Crisp was supposed to be a defensive specialist, but the rest of the group creates loads metallic thuds off of the Monster. Loretta’s year is particularly instructive of this bit of strategy. Before the season, Kevin Towers explained that he unloaded Loretta for Doug Mirabelli because Loretta had lost enough bat speed to age that he could no longer get the ball out of the park. In giant Petco Park, medium-length fly balls would not play for a hitter who hits bunches of flies. In Fenway, on the other hand, those medium-length fly balls could become long singles and doubles instead of outs. The result? 30 doubles this year to 16 last year. He still is not hitting home runs (4 instead of 3), but the extra 20 points of slugging are worth something. And the funny thing is, Kevin Towers was probably right: Loretta would most likely have been abysmal in San Diego this season. The 35-year old’s decline phase was fully in swing last year, and for him to actually gain back a little bit of OPS is a pretty remarkable instance of putting a player in the right conditions. It would be easy to dismiss his season as one big park effect, and not a reflection of Boston’s planning. Ultimately, the improvement is due to a park effect, but only because the team lined up its situation with a player whose skills fit it like a glove.

Understanding the context of ground ball and fly ball data is crucial. Chicago and Texas follow Boston in AL in terms of hitting the ball in the air. Both teams have good offenses, and both teams have parks that reward hitters who put the ball in the air. Adding guys like Carlos Lee and Jim Thome fit the profile perfectly, so it is no surprise that both teams are able to score runs.

It would stand to reason, then, that the other end of the spectrum would exhibit some of the worst offenses. So it comes as no surprise to see Kansas City leading the AL and Chicago leading the NL in GB/FB ratio, mirroring offenses that are inept on the whole. Oddly, though, the other high outlier in the AL is the Minnesota Twins, a team that has surprisingly scored the sixth most runs in the league. Sure, even though Justin Morneau hits for power, the Twins are not built on a foundation of bombers like the Red Sox or White Sox. They find their runs in different ways. But if hitting the ball in the air creates runs by preventing outs, then how can a team that hits three ground balls for every two fly balls have a successful offense?

I think it would be helpful to consider how the Twins offense functions by design. Terry Ryan has essential built the lineup that Billy Beane has been trying to design for the last couple of years: the Twins almost never strike out, and draw a pretty average number of walks. Tautologically, that means the avoid striking out by avoiding third strikes, which probably means they choke up, go to the opposite field more frequently, and stop trying to hit homeruns. Just like baseball before Babe Ruth, this approach means less strikeouts, less homeruns, more balls in play, and, apparently, more groundballs (since most players cannot pull the ball in the air as frequently with a shortened swing). For most of baseball history, this strategy has proven less effective for scoring runs than trying to get on base and hit for power, a la Earl Weaver or the aforementioned Red Sox.

The one notable and extended exception to the strategic evolution away from hitting the ball on the ground came in the late 1970s and 1980s, when players like Vince Coleman and Willie McGee not only found jobs, but won awards. What was different in that era? Obviously, the playing surface. Playing on turf radically changes the game by allowing high-bouncing infield singles, more difficult infield defense- which was clearly at play for Luis Castillo during his adjustment to the Dome early in the year- and some would-be singles to shoot the gaps, generating extra base hits for fast players. Yes, the Twins have more groundball outs. Yes, they hit into a distressingly high number of double plays (3 off the league lead). They also shoot gaps for extra base hits, and run aggressively, creating runs by the Whitey Herzog model. Having studs like Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau makes a big difference, but a team with limited resources has to find value at the margins, and the Twins have plugged in players who maximize the value of a funny playing surface by putting the ball into play and using their speed. Just as Loretta may struggle for another team in another stadium, this “piranhas” business would not fly in a place like Oakland that punishes ground balls and foul balls.

You know the saying, “different strokes for different folks.” Well, in baseball, it is not quite so egalitarian. Certainly, different playing contexts privilege different types of players, so smart general managers find marginal talent that fits into that context. What works in Minnesota may not work for Kansas City, a grass-surface team with ground ball tendencies. Really, avoiding outs is the name of the game, and it is a general manager’s job to exploit any advantage that the home field provides in terms of offensive strategy. Not surprisingly, the best GMs are the ones who have the most nuanced offenses, and the ones who win the most games.

…And I Feel Fine

I once heard an urban legend that R.E.M.’s song, “The End of the World as We Know It” was written about competitive debaters brainstorming apocalyptic scenarios, listing imaginable natural disaster or tremendous human error. As baseball fans, we are all very familiar with the sort of alternate universe that our hobby-cum-obsession occupies, and there are naturally apocalyptic scenarios that frighten us to the brink of paralysis. We experienced one such meltdown in 1994, when the league shut itself down over million dollar quibbles. I remember reading about Dante Bichette sitting in the Colorado clubhouse, drinking a beer in his jock strap on the brink of tears, wondering what would happen for the next month. As great a game as baseball is, there are most certainly problems on every level, so fans are naturally disappointed from time to time.

Yes, disappointment. That has to be the word of the day for Twins fans. While we are on the subject of the apocalypse, I am reminded of what Matthew Broderick’s character says in WarGames, “I don’t believe that any system is totally secure.” Going back to the days of the dead ball, many very smart baseball people have prophesized that pitching and defense are the two most important elements to a successful baseball team. Even supposed revolutionaries in strategy like Earl Weaver and Billy Beane knew to start with good pitching and good defense, and to exploit the shortcomings in scouting, player acquisition, offensive strategy, or other fields- the winning formula seldom starts anywhere but run prevention. The White Sox recently built a smoke-and-mirrors offense that was buoyed by an exceptional ball-catching unit, and rode that combination to a World Championship. For most of my life, the Twins have subscribed to the same doctrine, but of course, even that system has its cracks. None of us need to be reminded that pitching at the major league level has a disproportionate number of occupational hazards. When pitchers go down with injuries, the run prevention equation becomes quickly unbalanced. Ask the Yankees of the last few years how it feels to put resources into a pitching staff, only to see it dissipate before your eyes. The result is, if you will, apocalyptic.

Even within striking distance of the division lead and a hold on the wild card large enough to withstand a bad day, Twins fans have to be feeling the weight of a season crashing down on them today. For all of the grandiose dreams of postseason glory on the horizon, it seems much less optimistic without the 22-year old saving grace coming in to save the day. Even though the Twins have played at a high level without Liriano for the last month, everyone’s high hopes relied on the notion that two aces would give the Twins a massive advantage down the stretch and especially in a short series. Now, the organization faces the unpleasant reality of beginning the postseason with a number two starter- Bonser- who has repeatedly yo-yoed in and out of the starting rotation. Even with a part of the season on the bullpen, Liriano leads the AL in all sorts of rate stats, including ERA, K/9, and BAA. He is even tops in RA+, showing that he has played above a defense that has been less than optimal for most of the season.

Maybe the worst feeling comes from the long term possibilities presented by Liriano’s re-injury. As a player with a history of elbow problems and a rather violent delivery, we knew that Liriano was an at-risk youth and had to keep in mind the possibility that his dominance would eventually come at a cost, a sort of deal with the devil. Losing Liriano for the rest of the year is bad enough, but he said he heard a pop in his arm, and everyone seems to believe that Tommy John surgery will follow shortly, handicapping the Twins for most of a season. Keep in mind that for every Francisco Rodriguez defying mechanical reasonability and medical history, there has to be a much larger group of players like Kerry Wood, Mark Prior, Carl Pavano, A.J. Burnett, and innumerable would-be stars who never even make the bigs- even if their pitching skill is on point, they lack the injury prevention skills to make it play. Mentioning Kerry Wood in a discussion of a recently injured young pitcher might be a massive jinx, but I feel that proper restraint would tell us not to expect a productive career out of Liriano from here forward. Hope? Yes. But expectation is a horse of a different color, one that is far more likely to lead to letdown.

Yet somehow I do not feel so bad about the disaster, since we can hardly say that we could not see the relapse coming. Liriano’s first injury of the season was the start of a long, slow crawl to unhappiness, but not to hopelessness. Maybe Bonser would not make it as a number two starter for most good postseason teams, though I have thoroughly enjoyed watching the Twins return from the dead to make a run of it this season. Liriano’s injury does not change the fact that we all got to enjoy a phenomenal comeback, it does not undo the magic that he did in his 15 starts, and, most importantly, it does not end their postseason hopes. It will certainly be more difficult for the team to win in the postseason, like I said earlier, but the difference between this year’s Twins and the ones who lost in 2002-2004 is that this year’s team has an offense. In 2002, a team built to sustain Doug Mientkiewicz, Jacque Jones, Luis Rivas, and Christian Guzman made it to the ALCS with Rick Reed and Kyle Lohse as the two most frequently-used starting pitchers. Although this year’s team could have even better pitchers if Radke and Liriano could start the rest of the time, I still think this team is better than the one that came within one series of making it to the World Series. Plus, what has this series been about if not overcoming multiple and perverse challenges? Liriano was only in the rotation in the first place as a plan-B. Now that plans C-F have seemingly been exhausted, it is time for Terry Ryan and Ron Gardenhire to earn their money, creatively responding on the fly. I do not mean that I am happy that Liriano has gone down, and if Santana followed him to the DL, I may not be able to maintain my perspective and my optimism. In the meantime, though, let’s try to see the injury for what it is: a predictable bit of misfortune at an extremely bad time. It is hardly the end of the world.

I Choose to Ignore the ’05 Indians

Let’s face it: as they stand today, the Twins are a better team than the Tigers. Things as a small as a two game deficit or a slightly harder remaining schedule should not really pose too great an obstacle. Certainly, in the first half, the Twins struggled with the Tigers, much like they struggled with the league at large as long as the likes of Tony Batista and Juan Castro occupied positions of importance on the team. The turnover changed their fortunes across the board, and proved especially poignant versus the division-leading Tigers, who have experienced a corresponding period of attrition.

One development exemplifies the closing of the gap more than any other, the defense. Where the Tigers started the season as a red-hot team built on pitchers who keep the ball in play and a defense that converts those balls into outs at an exceptionally high rate, the Twins tried to mimic that formula, giving up too much at the plate. Unlike nearly every aspect of offensive performance, defense is very questionably quantifiable- even though all sorts of very smart people have developed very advanced statistical metrics for defense, we are still at the point where our eyes occasionally tell us more than the numbers. Remember when Tony Batista’s glove was going to make up for his lack of OBP? In any case, Dave Dombrowski did a better job than Terry Ryan at identifying the underrated defenders and stockpiling them in his big ballpark. Placido Polanco, Marcus Thames, and Carlos Guillen all came cheaply because he saw their strengths and used them to complement one another. He paid a premium for Magglio Ordonez and Pudge Rodriguez, though the money was well spent, because the pieces fit into the larger plan, a fact which was lost on me and many in the analysis community before this breakout season.

Nonetheless, these two seemingly disparate rosters have found some common ground atop the AL Central. The Twins defense has improved consistently since mid-May, part of a larger trend toward becoming one of the four best teams in the major leagues. At the same time, the Tigers have regressed from other-wordly with the leather to simply very good, a difference which has brought them back to the pack in the division. The Twins dug such a hole before reforming their evil ways that even three months of superior play has not made up the difference. This short weekend, though, made big strides toward achieving that goal, cutting the Detroit lead from 4 games to 2 and tightening the screws on a team that is hardly on the right path. The series was crucially important for its timing and one-sided result, but the Twins’ wins came from such different places, exemplifying such different skills, that a look back at the weekend tells a lot about who they are.

Friday- Minnesota 9 Detroit 5:

Coming off a loss on Thursday, the Twins were looking at a series split if they could take two out of the last three, and with Matt Garza on the mound, they could hardly consider a strong start a given. After falling behind 4-2 through 4 ½ innings, the Twins were under a lot of pressure, facing the prospect of going down 6 games in the division, and possibly falling behind the White Sox in the division. The turning point came when Justin Morneau doubled in two runs in the bottom of the 5^th, scoring Mauer and Cuddyer, eventually scoring the go-ahead run on Hunter’s follow-up single. Morneau, Mauer, Cuddyer, Hunter. Those four have led the offense at different times during the last year, but any time that they combine to turn the game around, all seems right in the universe we call Minnesota. Together, they reached base 13 times in the game. The whole piranhas thing is nice, but the Twins also have legitimately good offensive players to go with their fluky ones. If they are going to overcome bad pitching performances from time to time, these are the guys who will be largely responsible for those wins.

Saturday- Minnesota 2 Detroit 1:

The Twins won Friday night with patience at the plate and their best hitters hitting. By design, they are supposed to win with strong starting pitching and good defense. Without Radke, Liriano, or a functional Silva (although he has supposedly rediscovered his sinker, like a twenty dollar bill left in a winter jacket after it was packed away for the spring, instead of the riding-a-bicycle method used for most skills), they have had to cobble together their innings like a pair of hand-me-down jeans. Baker has been a total let down from the start of the season to the point that management has decided to retry a slightly modified Rick Aguilera experiment with Matt Guerrier, debuting on Tuesday against white-hot Oakland. Kyle Lohse is contributing, just for the wrong team in the wrong league. At very least, Boof Bonser has seemingly made the leap at exactly the right time. I am going to give credit to Rick Anderson, because the difference between the struggling Bonser and the successful one comes down to two factors: improved pitch sequencing, and better command of his breaking pitch, two of Anderson’s trademarks. On Saturday, he dropped the hammer over and over, keeping the Tigers off balance at times where he was a much more predictable pitcher earlier in the season. The bullpen versatility came into play, as well, with Neshek dominating three righties in the eighth. With a total of only seven hits, I would hope the Twins do not have too many games like this one the rest of the way, because there is a lot that can go wrong, but having such a strong pitching staff goes a long way toward filling in the gaps left by offensive inadequacy.

Sunday- Minnesota 12 Detroit 1:

If Friday was the classic comeback, and Saturday was the classic pitchers’ duel, then Sunday was the classic blowout. The Twins scored 12 runs on 15 hits, but Cuddyer and Morneau were only 2-8 with 3 K’s and no XBH’s. They got an even output from the rest of the lineup, including Nick Punto’s 4 hits. The greater story was the starting pitching, where Johan Santana took a big step ahead of the pack in the Cy Young race, and showed why so many pundits think the Twins are dangerous in the playoffs. Santana’s invincibility in August and September is becoming legendary; he has been completely unbeatable for three straight years. Even Gardenhire impressed me in the game, leaving Santana in long enough to protect his pride, but taking him out on a high note after recording his eleventh strikeout on his 108^th pitch. He even leveraged his bullpen, using Will Eyre instead of pressing his most important relievers going into the next big series. Beating the likes of Jeremy Bonderman is satisfying in itself, but doing it so thoroughly and in so many different facets of the game warrants a special tip of the cap to the whole Twins lineup.

Perhaps the most telling aspect of the series is the fact that games 3 and 4, the ones where the Tigers had a chance to redeem themselves and even up the series, turned on defensive mistakes by a team that built its dominance on its defense. Both of the Twins runs on Saturday came by virtue of defensive shortcomings, and they took the lead on Sunday when Perez could not handle a grounder in the first. Two games remain between the Twins and Tigers in the standings, but this weekend’s games served as a microcosm for the last few months by showing that the team the Twins are today may be good enough to pay the checks that the weaker version nearly bounced earlier in the season.

Woefully Off Topic

Here we are, in the midst of a pennant race where the home team is making one of their most exciting runs of my lifetime. And what do I have to contribute? Last time out, I managed about 1,500 words on college football and random baseball stories, with very little about the Twins. Today, I am taking another step in the wrong direction, settling on an entirely frivolous topic, laying to waste the beautiful material that the Twins have generated in the last few months. Instead, I have a few sports observations that have little to do with anything, other than their common intersection with my current state of consciousness.

1. Kirby Puckett Syndrome: I know I am not the only one who has noticed how many former athletes gain a ridiculous amount of weight after retirement. So why do we keep making them wear suits? Puckett, John Kruk, Charles Barkley, innumerable former NFL linemen- all of them seemingly forgot every lesson learned about living a healthy lifestyle, preferring to focus on wonton indulgence. Correct me if I am wrong, but wearing a suit is supposed to be a standard symbol of neatness, professionalism, and self-confident. When I see these guys “dressed up,” my first two reactions are embarrassment on the player’s behalf, then feeling put off by his utter slovenliness. The suit is antithetical- it is neither neat, nor professional, and the players’ discomfort entirely undermines the notion of expressing self-confidence. Take a cue from the fat football coaches who look grungy-but-acceptable in those baggy warmup pullovers. Nobody asks Charlie Weis to wear a suit, and there is a good reason for that: we would gouge our eyes out. These are not businessmen with a reputation to protect. Let’s do the reasonable thing and lower our expectations for them, just this once.

2. Stationary Bikes: Terrell Owens has seemingly made a career change from football player to professional (immobile) cyclist. If he spends any more time on that bike, he is going to have to send a backup urine sample to the World Anti-Doping Agency. Some people find his antics obnoxious, and I agree, but that does not mean that I want him to stop. First of all, I hate the Cowboys and want to see them fail, and the sooner he implodes, the better (as long as he holds it together long enough to return to Philadelphia, where he may or may not be gang beaten to death with stale cheesesteaks). Secondly, he looks absolutely preposterous on that bike day after day to the point where I want to see other parts of life adopt the stationery bike. Imagine the possibilities- someone in an office botches a project and gets relegated to the bike for the next couple of days. If all of your buddies buy a round of drinks at the bar except for one guy, get on the bike! A mechanic tells you that changing the spark plugs or some insignificant thing is going to cost $400, you guessed it… TO THE BIKE! This movement has to start from the ground up, so if you see a stationary bike, pick it up and put it to use.

3. Excessive Use of the Turbo Meter: You know how watching a funny movie or a stand-up comedy routine typically gets less funny with successive viewings? I think I found a similar effect that helps quantify the effect in a voodoo sort of way. Anybody who has ever played a sports video game is familiar with the concept of the turbo meter. Players can run faster in short bursts, but as the turbo boost is consumed, it replenishes more and more slowly. Additionally, after using it for a while, it can never return all the way to the top of the meter. Watching a great, but straightforward comedy, like Wayne’s World, follows the same formula. The first viewing is the best, and the next few views are pretty awesome, as well. But as you watch the movie time and again, it gets further from that original point of comedic purity, never to return. Just like the video game, taking a prolonged break from the movie (or the turbo boost) refreshes it considerably, although not to the point of its original fullness. Think of this effect as that weird in-between state of recognizing a joke, but not being able to generate the punch line. It may seem like you don’t actually know the joke, which is a bummer, and is compounded by the fact that you miss out on the payoff of laughing at the punch line. There remains the curious case of the movie that gets funnier with every watching. People include really clever movies on that list, such as Caddyshack, The Big Lebowski, and Anchorman. My suspicion is that these movies are like video Allen Iverson, so good that you do not immediately notice the depreciation. Video AI can run by anyone, shoot threes, make crazy layups, and shoot off-balance shots, so you can progress from one infatuation to another. These classic movies have enough jokes, that it takes time to pick up on each one, staving off the time until they become expected and less amusing. The metaphor is growing forced, so I will move along.

4. Cop-out Injuries: I watch a lot less tennis these days than I did when I played tennis in high school and cared about Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi. Still, the U.S. Open has enough intrigue to encourage a few viewings each year, especially with the sentimental value of Agassi’s retirement. With a White Sox blowout over the Red Sox, I switched on Maria Sharapova versus someone named Golovin, two of the top seeds in the suggestively dressed gorgeous women bracket. It really seemed like both of them went shopping for prom dresses at a wholesaler, chose their favorites, and had them remade out of lycra with Nike swooshes added for effect. Naturally, it is compelling television. That is, until Golovin got down 3-0 in a tiebreaker and decided it would be a good time to take a break. She complained that she had a blister on her left foot, and spent ten minutes getting what looked like a pedicure from the finest athletic orthopedist Queens has to offer. After several unfortunate close-ups of her mangled athletes’ feet (not as in the fungus, but the condition that arises from running in sweaty, tight shoes for hours every day), Sharapova became annoyed and started hitting practice serves. I couldn’t help but thinking that this would have been a perfect time for a stationary bike. It would not have been particularly notable for her to disrupt that match’s momentum with a bogus injury- Sharapova once left for two bathroom breaks in the same match- except that the male commentator openly questioned whether she had a legitimate injury. He even mentioned that NBA players deal with far worse foot injuries every game, to which the female color commentator responded that NBA players do not work as hard as women’s tennis pros, whose matches sometimes last under an hour. It was a tennis battle of the sexes the likes of which have not been seen since Bobby Riggs puffed a cigarette while walking into the sunset. Personally, I do not believe that women’s sports are the locus patriarchal domination. Eliminating sexism does not depend on hyper-masculinized women imitating the men who still dominate their industries. I digress. The greater point here is that the tennis rules stupidly let players who are losing take an indeterminate break to repair non-injuries, and that rule makes no sense.

5. Game pacing: Anyone who watched college football over the weekend probably noticed that the games were decidedly speedier due to the rules changes that start the game clock sooner after first downs and changes of possession. For better or worse, the faster game is a good thing for most sports, since Americans value time, frequently at the expense of pleasure. Why can’t baseball find a similar way to make the games quicker? I know the overall game time has decreased slightly in recent years, though I think a few minor rules could make the game go a lot faster. I have heard others mention that pitchers who enter mid-inning should be required to stay in through the inning to prevent the Tony LaRussa trademark ass-dragging. I think we should also take the suggestion from college football and speed up the transitions, limiting the time spent between innings, possibly by starting a clock when the third out is recorded, rather than when the other team takes the field. I recognize the lost commercial time as an obstacle here, so I don’t expect that one to take hold. Also, I would like batters’ timeouts curtailed. Once the batter goes in the box, he should not step out until the at-bat ends. Who on earth benefits from Nomar Garciaparra’s endless fidgeting, including Nomar Garciaparra. Everyone probably remembers fans counting down from 10 during Karl Malone’s long free-throw routine. Now imagine if Malone was allowed to wait nine second, then say, “you know, I think I’m going to start over.” Fans would stay away in droves. Where else, besides tennis, do players get to waste as much time as they want? Even Sergio Garcia gets put on the clock when he does his human rain delay routine.

6. Abandonment- That’s Where I’m a Viking!: Bill Simmons wrote a column a few years ago outlining what needs to happen for a fan to abandon her or his home team and adopt another allegiance. Without going into the specific details, the gist of Simmons’s article was that your home team has to go beyond mere struggling to warrant a divorce, such as indifference on behalf of the ownership, or outright offensive behavior. Around the same time, Rob Neyer wrote an article supporting the hypothesis that the Vikings are the most insufferable team in all of pro sports, and this was before the Red Sox won the World Series. My theory has long been that the Vikings enjoy finding new and creative ways to disappoint their fans every season. At first, they were content to fill the role of “always a bridesmaid, never a bride,” with four Super Bowl losses. From there, the team built up to the most disappointing Conference Championship loss in recent memory after a 15-1 season that got everyone’s hopes up. A couple of years later, they had that hideous 40 point loss to a mediocre Giants team in the NFC title game- agonizing, but distinctly different. The ensuing Mike Tice era was doomed to incompetence from the start, probably because he looks more like Grape Ape than any human I have ever seen. The draft foibles were historically stupid. The disappointment became so customary, that they had to come up with things that had never been done in history, like missing the playoffs after starting 6-0. Throw in a constant feeling of hopelessness prevalent throughout the entire fan base, and it seems reasonable that I could abandon the franchise. On top of all of that comes an argument that may independently convince some people of the Vikings’ failures, the behavioral challenges. There was Moss running into the cop, mooning fans, and saying dumb things in interviews, team fights and constant missed curfews, arrests, and suspensions, a coach who had no control over any part of it, and the inevitable culmination aboard the Loveboat. I am not one to make moral judgments, and I typically do not care what athletes do off the field. Here, though, it was apparent that the behaviors became distractions on the field, and indicated Tice’s total lack of control. Plus, I do not want to have to sift through dozens of non-sports related content to get to an article about my team. I don’t need that from football, I get more than enough of it from Eddie Griffin. What I’m getting at here is that I have given up on the Vikings, and I think I am more than justified in doing so. Upon moving to Philadelphia with the rabid football culture surrounding the Eagles, I decided that I would fully join their fan base. I know that I cannot entirely give up on the Vikings; no divorce is that clean. Still, if the Vikings and Eagles play, I will cheer for the Eagles. In other cases, I will cheer for the Vikings. How serious am I? I have already bought an Eagles hat, and am currently shopping for a Thomas Tapeh jersey (failing that, an Orange Donovan McNabb one from Syracuse) and tickets to a tailgate-worthy home game at the stadium two miles south of my house. And don’ say I am jumping on a bandwagon. Even though any team looks good compared to the Vikings, the Eagles are coming off a 6-10 season with tons of bad press. Many more people have jumped off the Eagles bandwagon in the last year than on it. E-A-G-L-E-S EAGLES! By the way, I am already catching hell from my housemates who managed to move to Philadelphia without being tempted by the fruits of a foreign franchise. And just so we’re clear, this would never happen with the Twins. Baseball is far more important than football to me, and the Twins have already done far too much for me to ever abandon them.

7. As a closing note, Joe Sheehan recently called the 2007 San Francisco Giants “Linden and the Liver Spots,” which is good. I think I can do even better. Here’s my initial offering: the San Francisco GerIAtric geNTS.

Bemused?

The start of the college football season is one of the few occurrences in sports that excites me as much as baseball, and several key points throughout the season also measure up pretty well. In fact, college football could have been my favorite sport had I grown up in a football-rich environment, even though its appeal differs almost entirely from baseball’s. College football relies on blind allegiance, perpetual optimism, fast action, split second decision making, and stars coming out of nowhere. Baseball, on the other hand, is almost like an exercise in binomial probability, meticulously testing match ups over and over to encourage the cream to rise to the top. The manifestation of the difference can be seen in a team like 2001 Ohio State, who ran the table, came up big against Miami (and with the refs, obviously) in the title game, even though anyone could see during the year that their one dimensional offense made them the fifth or sixth best team in the nation. Sure, that uncertainty can be frustrating, but it also contributes to the feeling that any team could win it in any season. At the same time, certain trends repeat themselves every year, creating the sort of inside joke environment that makes me also love the WWE. Purdue’s offense always looks good for the first five weeks before going into the tank. The second best PAC 10 team always lays a major egg early in the season, perhaps never to recover. At least one running back from the MAC will put up a big number against a Big 10 team, exposing a rush defense that will be a problem all year (NIU’s Garrett Wolffe played that role against THE Ohio State University). Miami has amazing safeties. Texas runs for about 900 yards per game. The teams with the best-known QBs get the most attention, often causing them to be overrated (Brady Quinn at Notre Dame). Some of the intrigue comes from the possibility that one of these fixed realities somehow falls, like it did for Texas last year, finally winning a meaningful game. In a roundabout way, I guess I am getting at the fact that I want to write a few words about college football, and since nobody edits or reviews this column, I will do just that.

One of those peculiar, repeated realities in college football is the Minnesota Gophers’ ability to generate running backs so consistently. Tapeh, Jackson, Barber, Maroney, Russell, and the train keeps running. Maroney was highly regarded coming in, but the rest lacked that pedigree. Then, to no one’s surprise, a recently-converted LB filled in for the academically ineligible Russell, rushing for 155 yards and 3 TDs, and last year’s no. 3, Amir Pinnix, went over the century mark, too. I don’t even care what the starter’s name is, because I am convinced that he could have been any reasonably athletic human being with a few weeks of practice behind the Gophers’ o-line could get 1,000 yards. I tried to think of an analogous situation in sports, and the most comparable example I considered was Pete Sampras playing in the French Open. In both cases, the most intuitive result never, ever happens, and nobody truly knows why. The average sports fan could probably explain that the Gophers have a unique blocking scheme, and the Sampras played a serve and volley style that did not fit on a clay court, though very few really know much more detail. And here’s the kicker: just when these hypotheses started becoming truisms, they were entrenched to a whole knew extreme. The Gophers build their offense around a linebacker, while Sampras had an inexplicable string where he was invincible on grass and would lose in the first two rounds of the French Open every year.

Let me reiterate: I watched a lot of football this weekend. The main theme that struck me was the lack of dominant teams across the country this season. Texas still looks really solid, as well as USC, LSU, and Tennessee. Still, there is no team on the level of some of the Texas, Oklahoma, USC, Miami, LSU, and even Nebraska teams from the last several years. Nobody has the complete roster that could dominate a game 80-0 for three quarters like OU did three years ago. As a result, a team could lose a game or two and stay in the race, because even the teams at the top will face some very difficult games along the way. Can OSU really get through Michigan, Iowa, Texas, and Penn State? I say no, but they may need it, either. With a gun to my head, I will take USC over FSU for the national title. And, no, Notre Dame is not in the same class; they are a team heavy in well-known skill players, which is a formula to be permanently overrated.

In baseball news, the Twins remain on life support without falling behind the pace in the Wild Card race, thanks to the resurgent Kansas City Royals playing spoiler across the board. Maybe he has not acquired the players who will make the Royals contenders, but Dayton Moore’s pickups have made the team far more palatable on a game to game basis, and that has to be worth something. Gaithright, Shealy, and Odalis Perez are all bad players on good teams. The Royals, however, are not a good team, so having a bunch of cheap, young-ish, decent players (the Dodgers are paying for most of Perez) is preferable to burning money on Mark Redman and Mark Grudzielanek. At least now there is some upward projectability beyond the next few weeks, and I believe that retreat from hopelessness is valuable for the team and the fans alike.

My friends and I used to joke that the Twins should just start Johan Santana every day. That option looks better and better as a thin pitching staff goes Nicole Ritchie on its fans. If you asked me to imagine a bulimic pitching staff before the season, I am not sure I could give much of a response. This season’s pitching staff has crystallized that uncertainty for me, as the team cannot seem to help but punish itself. Recall the opening day rotation:

Santana- Another Cy Young season, and it could not have come at a better time, though he has had some injury troubles that have mitigated his effectiveness from start to start.

Radke- He’s probably killing himself with the Cortisone at this point. His arm is like a wet noodle floating around in a Spaghetti-O of a shoulder. We can only hope that he lives through the season with all of his appendages, forget about on-field contributions.

Silva- Exceptionally unique players are usually either remarkably good or flukishly anomalous. Silva’s 2005 fits into the latter category. Simple observation would confirm that he is not physically superior to other hurlers who fail to miss bats, and now the statistics agree, as even his strong spell in early August was constantly shaky.

Lohse- Maybe Krivsky’s thinking was that if he picked up enough ex-Twins, at least one would pan out and he could take credit for the scouting. Mays, Castro, and Guardado have been less than stellar, so Lohse’s success may be that redeeming grace.

Baker- Great minor league stats almost always predict major league success. Not for Baker, who keeps yo-yoing between the majors and minors with good starts in the minors and terrible ones in the majors.

Liriano, Bonser, and Garza have been the primary reinforcements, with varying degrees of success. Bonser, especially, seems to be growing into his starting pitching role, looking better in every successive start. Radke’s recent added injury makes Liriano’s return even more imperative.

Another interesting happening in the National League: the Dodgers’ James Loney hit his 5^th triple of the season in only 70 at-bats. A triple every twelve at-bats is a big number for a prime Christian Guzman, or Ty Cobb, and Loney is a first baseman. He is no snail- he ran out 12 triples in four minor league seasons-, though five triples in a few weeks is a crazy stat.

Finally, Barry Bonds picked a pretty good time to start being Barry Bonds again. Although his knees and back may be as temperamental as he is at this point, he is hitting .567/.658/1.000 for the last ten games, helping bring the Giants into the Wild Card race. The team does not have a lot around Bonds, since wasting draft picks on free agent signings like Mike Matheny has left them old, slow, and thin. Nonetheless, if there is one player in the game who can make up for a shoddy supporting cast for a week or two, I will still go with Barry. At two games out of the playoffs, the Playoff Odds Report pegs the Giants as having a 12% shot at the postseason, but the possibility of watching Bonds play meaningful games before walking away is as compelling for the competitive aspect as it is for the walking away aspect.

Not So Bad

There have been a handful of Chicago Cubs games this season where Dusty Baker did not trot out a single offensive player that other teams would (or should) legitimately covet. Aside from Derek Lee, Michael Barrett, and Aramis Ramirez, the Cubs managed to build a wholly unsavory offense on a pretty substantial payroll. That said, Phil Nevin was not the major cause of Chicago’s offensive mediocrity; Neifi Perez, Cesar Izturis, Ronny Cedeno, and Juan Pierre carry that torch for him. Nevin has not been a good hitter for a first baseman or a DH, and has probably been about average for a third baseman, where his glove no longer plays. But keeping in mind the notion of true replacement level, his contributions to the Twins may still yield a little value down the stretch, and I cannot blame Terry Ryan for making a move to shake up an offense that has barely kept its head above water for the last three weeks or so.

To put the trade in perspective, I had a shockingly similar reaction to the two trades made by Minnesota teams yesterday. The Twins added Nevin, and the Vikings added Brooks Bollinger. Neither player could conceivably be a star for his new team, and the upside is something just south of league average for his position. On the other hand, they probably both stand to do more for their new contending teams than the would have done for their previous, non-contending ones. I would say that neither trade was particularly bad, and I would excuse fans for being mildly excited about either one, but I maintain that fans should not wan their teams to be in a position where they have to be excited about getting this type of player.

Keep in mind the reason that we have a low excitement threshold for Nevin- Rondell White has been horrid this season. His .200/.200/.300 act has finally worn thin with the front office, about three months after most assumed he would be cut to make room for other players. With roster expansion, there is no reason to release him now, but he will likely find himself relegated to the far end of the bench for the rest of the year. After what looked like a resurgence in July, batting .373/.407/.608 in 51 July at-bats, he came back to Earth, or whatever subterranean depths spawned this season for him. That stretch in July was mostly buoyed by a six day stretch, where he had four multi-hit games and six extra-base hits. This is the point in the column when I would usually remove a small segment of strong play to show just how bad he has been the rest of the year, but White’s cumulative line does that anyway, since he is hitting .215/.242/.308 for the season. Ugh.

So the Twins have essentially picked up Phil Nevin for the last few weeks while Jason Kubel rests his knees as much as possible and Lew Ford tries to channel whatever made him good in 2004. Statistically, one could have expected Nevin and White to have similar seasons in 2006, coming from very different backgrounds. Nevin was a corner guy white lots of power and no speed, while White was a decent outfielder who could not stay healthy. Their divergent paths have led them both the Twins, who may have an unfortunate redundancy on their hands if Nevin reverts to his AL form from his stint with the Texas Rangers. I hasten to credit the AL’s dominance for every individual statistical anomaly, and it is hard to distinguish how much Nevin’s NL improvement is due to the league factor alone, but he has definitely had two distinct seasons. In roughly equivalent playing time, Nevin hit .216/.307/.415 with Texas, and .274/.335/.497 for Chicago. The Twins could really use the latter stat line, but could probably get the former our of Ford and Kubel, no matter how badly they struggled. One has to wonder how much of a factor luck played in changing that stat line across leagues when the peripheral stats change very little: a walk every 10.6 plate appearances in Texas and every 12.5 in Chicago, and ISO of .199 in Texas and .223 in Chicago. The number that really jumps out at me is leap in BABIP, from a horrid .227 in Texas to a good-but-realistic .322 in Chicago. He has reduced his ground balls by about 4% (44.5 to 41.4), and increased his line-drives by about 1%, neither of which is all that impressive in under 200 at bats. Due to his struggles with hitting balls directly at the defense early in the year, I would suppose that the Twins can expect him to hit about .260/.320/.450. Those numbers coming from a DH would not impress anyone, and they’re probably less than a win better than what Kubel and Ford would produce, if the team was truly ready to throw in the towel on White.

When assessing a trade this late in the season, you have to also consider the intangible effect it has on the team. Philadelphia sports radio hosts love talking about how trades impact the tone or the chemistry of the locker room, as if they have a concrete idea of how that translates into on-field performance. Specifically, several of them have repeatedly asserted that adding Jeff Conine and Jamie Moyer will have more of a positive effect on the team’s psyche than any statistical influence, simply because it shows the players that ownership thinks the team can win. Did they never see the movie Major League? Honestly, though, players do not stop trying based on subliminal messages from the front office. On the other hand, there is a definite emotional and psychological effect on players when their teams add new pieces for the pennant race. The team has been seriously dragging at the plate for the last three weeks, scoring 3 runs or less in 10 of the last 19 games. With a hollowed out shell of a pitching staff, that probably will not get them into the playoffs. Adding Nevin might have the effect of “shaking things up,” changing the collective momentum, or at least the perception of momentum. Many bad sabermetricians would scoff at this notion, saying that there is no such thing as an on-field effect of psychology or chemistry. Better sabermetricians, though, would acknowledge that the effect certainly exists, but that nobody knows precisely how to quantify them just yet. Perhaps improvements in cognitive mapping with help yield better baseball stats. I do not mean to say that I know how much of a positive effect the addition of Nevin will have on the team’s psychological state, or even that the effect will necessarily be positive. I do believe that we have clear evidence that the lineup the Twins have been using is not producing enough, and adding even a modest upgrade is worth the effort, especially considering the intangible rewards that just might come with it.