twins/mlb
Jim Souhan analyzes the local sports scene and advises you to never take his betting advice. He likes old guitars and old music, never eats press box hot dogs, and can be heard on 1500ESPN at 2:05 p.m. weekdays, and Sundays from 10 a.m.-noon.
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Posts about Professional baseball
Prepping at the Dome
Posted by: Jim Souhan Updated: October 25, 2012 - 5:10 PM
Catching up on the local sports scene:
-Vikings. I'm at the Dome, where I'm picking a typical grind-it-out victory for the Vikings. Tampa Bay has scary weapons in Doug Martin and Victor Jackson, but the Vikings have a number of advantages in this game.
Their defense has excelled at taking away the best skill-position player or players on the other team, with Larry Fitzgerald being the most recent example. The Vikings have been able to run the ball on pretty much everyone, and are smart enough not to veer away from their strengths, even though Tampa Bay is much better against the run than the pass.
Most of all, though, the Vikings appear to be the superior team at this juncture, and they're getting to play at home, presumably in front of a loud crowd, against a team that doesn't play often on turf. And the Bucs had to play on Sunday and spend Wednesday traveling. NFL players just don't bounce back that easily and quickly, not most of them.
My sure-to-be-wrong prediction: Vikings 23, Bucs 16.
-Twins: In September, I heard that the Twins would make major changes to their coaching staff. The only surprise, among the recently-announced changes, is that Terry Steinbach will be the bench coach. I hadn't heard Terry's name previously, and he wound up taking the position I had heard was reserved for Triple-A manager Gene Glynn.
This lineup makes sense. Glynn is very valuable where he right now, and Steinbach should be a good foil for Ron Gardenhire. Gardenhire is hyperactive on the bench. He needs someone to slow him down and offer all of his options. Gardenhire's first instinct is to act. Steinbach's job will be to make sure Gardenhire has thought every move through thoroughly as possible.
Whatever the changes to the coaching staff, the success of the franchise will depend on finding pitching. With word that Scott Boras client Kyle Lohse may be looking for a $75-million contract, it's more apparent than ever to me that Terry Ryan is going to have to try to get lucky with trades or low-level free-agent signings that will not impress anyone initially.
-Wild: Remember when we had an NHL team in our town? Me, neither.
-Gopher football: I want to like Jerry Kill. I really do. He's making it difficult, though. I've already ripped the removal of North Carolina from future schedules. I'm also disturbed by the removal of redshirts from several key young players.
The last time I went to one of Kill's press conferences, he emphasized the importance of patience. Removing the redshirt from your freshman quarterback at midseason and telling him on Friday that he would be starting on Saturday is not patient. It's an act of desperation.
Jerry: Recruits can smell desperation.
-Gopher basketball: As tough as I've been on Tubby Smith on many fronts, I won't bash him because his son got a DUI. While I believe driving while intoxicated is absolutely wrong and reckless, I also know a million people who have done it at some point in their lives. Saul Smith made a terrible mistake, but let's not play the ``leader-of-young-men card.'' He's an assistant coach. Let's not pretend that an assistant coach getting a DUI is going to alter the lives of a dozen college basketball players.
-Here are a few notes on tonight's game, courtesy of Vikings media relations:
-Matt Blair will enter the Vikings' ring of honor tonight.
-Percy Harvin ranks second in the NFL in receptions, with 53. His 271 receptions rank second in franchise history for a player in his first four seasons. He's caught a pass in every NFL game in which he's played.
-Kicker Blair Walsh leads the league with 27 touchbacks. He's tied for third in the NFL with 16 field goals.
-The Vikings' 72 sacks and 25 forced fumbles since the start of the 2011 season are the most in the NFL.
-Jared Allen has a sack in five straight games.
-Kyle Rudolph is tied for the lead league among tight ends with 5 touchdown catches.
-Please follow me on Twitter at @Souhanstrib. I'll be on WJON at 7:15 a.m and 1500ESPN at 2:05 p.m. tomorrow to talk about the game.
More on Vikings win
Posted by: Jim Souhan Updated: September 24, 2012 - 10:34 AMI wrote about the obvious trust between Christian Ponder and Kyle Rudolph in today’s paper.
This might sound trite, but trust matters in the NFL. It matters a lot.
NFL teams ask their players to risk their health during short careers for the good of the franchise. For players to be eager to do so, it helps if they have reason to believe in the key people in the organization. And, during the season, the two people they have to trust the most are their head coach and quarterback.
Who knows whether beating the 49ers will mean anything in a few weeks? If the Vikings get whipped in Detroit, and that is a very real possibility, with Calvin Johnson facing a still-suspect secondary, then we may wind up viewing this victory as an aberration.
But it could matter no matter what happens this week, because Leslie Frazier and Christian Ponder gave their team reason to trust them on Sunday. Frazier’s vision of a physical team that wins with a running game and a stout defense materialized against the NFL’s gold standard in those departments. And Ponder displayed the ability to make clutch plays and beat a good team in his 13th start in the NFL.
His peers on the roster – young teammates like Kyle Rudolph and John Sullivan – rave about Ponder’s leadership abilities. But if you don’t win, the whole team won’t buy in. Ponder and Frazier moved closer to instilling faith in the roster on Sunday.
-One of the reasons I wrote about Ponder's three touchdown plays today is because so many NFL games turn on one, or two, or three big plays. Had Ponder executed poorly, or made poor decisions, on his three touchdown plays, the Vikings could have wound up with three or six points. Instead, Ponder produced 21 points. That's how upsets happen.
And had Ponder's worst pass of the day turned into a 49ers' touchdown, we might be talking about a loss today.
That's why the NFL is so unpredictable. And that's why I don't bet on sports.
-I can't remember being less interested in a Yankee-Twins series since 2000.
-Stat geeks favor Mike Trout as the AL MVP. Players and old-school writers favor Miguel Cabrera.
I think Trout is the more valuable player in theory, because he does everything well while playing exceptionally well in the field at a pivotal position. But within the context of this season, Cabrera's more valuable, simply because Cabrera has been exceptional while playing in more games. He's simply produced more for his team.
It's not Trout's fault that he wasn't with the Angels from Opening Day on. But the time he missed made him a less-valuable commodity over the course of a six-month season. And while Trout is far superior in the field, Cabrera's willingness and ability to play third base, however poorly, opened up first base and DH for the Tigers, making them a stronger team. That mitigates his fielding woes.
Cabrera has produced far more runs that Trout this season. He has a higher slugging percentage. Their on-base percentage is a virtual tie. And while stat geeks are correct when they say that RBI is not a good statistic for evaluating offensive efficiency, it is a very important stat within the context of a season, and an MVP race.
Games are won and lost based on whether a hitter can produce runs. Cabrera has excelled in that category over six months. He's the MVP.
-I’ll be on 1500espn at 2:05 today. My Twitter handle is @Souhanstrib.
What a lousy game
Posted by: Jim Souhan Updated: September 11, 2012 - 10:51 PMTwins lose, 9-1, tonight. The Twins announced 28,993, which might have been within 10,000 or so of being correct.
It was ugly. Josh Willingham says he lost a fly ball in the twilight. That led to a three-run inning that goes on Scott Diamond's record. And that was about all that happened.
A few tidbits-
-Ben Revere continues to play with a lot of life. He went 3-for-5, his 38th mutli-hit game. Joe Mauer leads the team with 43. Revere also made a fine running catch in left-center.
Revere got a handshake and a few sentences of praise from Tom Kelly in the dugout before the game. Kelly doesn't offer false praise.
I think Revere should be this team's centerfielder next year. But I've been saying that for a while.
-Justin Morneau went 2-for-3 and is hitting .326 in his last 62 games and .357 in his last 17 games. Some of my insiders say he still struggles to cover the whole plate, but I see him getting hits to leftfield, which is always the sign that he's staying back and swinging well.
-The Twins have scored one run or fewer 24 times this year. While their rotation is the most important area of concern, that's a pathetic statistic for what should be a professional lineup.
-Scott Diamond allowed four runs in six innings, but I thought he battled pretty well despite Willingham's mistake and without his best stuff.
-Pedro Florimon continues to dazzle on some plays, but I see him being a little too lax on relays. He could have thrown one or two runners out at third tonight had he been alert on one play and had he thrown accurately on another.
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To chime in on a popular national debate, I think the aspect of the Stephen Strasburg debate that is too often missing is that the Nationals aren't shutting down someone who would likely have dominated in the postseason. They're shutting down a young pitching coming off Tommy John surgery who likely would have been hitting a wall in October, even if the Nationals had rested him to stretch his workload into the postseason.
In my view, it's unlikely he would have pitched well against top competition while fatigued. The Nationals have a deep rotation without him. Whether or not the Nationals handled Strasburg correctly, they'll be better off with starting pitchers in the postseason who aren't reaching their physical limits.
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I'll be on 1500espn at 2:05 p.m. tomorrow. Please follow me on Twitter at @Souhanstrib.
Bonus TK
Posted by: Jim Souhan Updated: September 7, 2012 - 10:24 AMI covered Tom Kelly as a beat writer for five years, all of them losing seasons, and worked as the Star Tribune’s baseball writer at-large during Kelly’s last years as Twins manager.
Kelly will have his number retired Saturday at Target Field, and I have a column in today’s paper on him. Anyone who knows Kelly knows that if he is inspired to speak, he has a lot to say. He's one of the most intense thinkers I've encountered in sports.
He had a lot to say to me the other day at his house, so I’m including here his thoughts on a few topics that didn’t make the column, including what I find a hilarious take on his work as an announcer. (That’s near the bottom.)
Kelly was known for being hard on reporters. He was very good to me. We had our disagreements and bad days, but over the years he acted as a de facto baseball tutor to me, sharing insights I couldn’t have gotten anywhere else.
These days, there are many more reporters in the Twins' clubhouse and less access to the clubhouse. When I covered the Twins, Kelly waived the rule that reporters couldn't be in the clubhouse more than 3 1/2 hours before the game. I had many of my best conversations with him at 2 in the afternoon, when he had time to talk about the game in general before that night's game consumed him.
Kelly and Paul Molitor are the two smartest baseball people I’ve ever met.
Terry Ryan has a unique eye for judging talent, but Kelly and Molitor could see a pitcher’s glove twitch and know what the next pitch would be.
That I watched this baseball savant manage so many awful teams is one reason I don’t appease the masses by calling for Ron Gardenhire’s firing. I do believe managers need to be fired occasionally, if they lose their competitive fire, or their control of a clubhouse. I never saw that as a problem with Kelly, and I don’t see that as a problem with Gardenhire.
Managers control only so much. Kelly and Gardenhire are proof that no manager can overcome a bad pitching staff.
Here’s some bonus Tom Kelly on the day before his big day:
-On long acceptance speeches: ``I’m going to try not to thank everybody in the world. I’ve heard enough of those. There’s always a few mandatory people you’ve got to thank, but other than that let’s keep it moving.’’
-Who took losing harder, you in the ‘90s or Ron Gardenhire the last two years? ``It bothers him. I think he takes it harder than I did. I remember once in Baltimore, one night back then, Andy MacPhail said to me, `You know, I’ve given you the worst team I’ve ever given you, and there hasn’t been any in-house fighting or one guy stabbing another in the back. That’s pretty good, he said.
``I think you’ve just got to be realistic. In the spring, when everyone gets together to talk about how many games you’re going to win that year, and the manager says 82, and the GM says 81, and the owner says 79, well, then, OK. But if somebody says 92 and you think 72, now we’re going to have a problem.
``I didn’t have any of that. But I’ve talked to managers who went through that.
``You know who has it figured out? The people in Vegas. They should be running the country. They’re within a game or two. They’ve pretty much got it nailed. That’s why they’re in business for so long.
``Once you know what the number in Vegas is, then you’ve just got to go beat that number. And we did that for a lot of years. I used to hang my hat on that. If they had you down for 64 and we won 66, I was sort of happy.’’
-Did he have any regrets about his career? ``Only one, to be honest. Andy and Terry Ryan, they wanted to change players more than me. I guess I was stubborn, where you come out of spring training with your 25 guys, and these are the ones you picked, and you go with them.
``After the fact, they were right. They were absolutely right. I should have been more willing to change players, just watching how things operate now, especially with the bullpens.
``This (Jeff) Gray, the reliever, he’s been a wonderful addition. Wonderful. Don’t misunderstand. These kinds of guys, him and Fien, they’re borderline pitchers, whatever you want to call them. They’re pitching well and then they ‘re going to hit some bumps and get worn down, and you’ve got to change them out.
``You have to bring someone else in and get some mileage out of the new guy and then, boom, he’s done, and you bring the other guy back. You’ve got to keep maneuvering and keeping people fresh.
``That keeps a lot of interest at the other (minor-league level). To think you’re going to go through the whole season with the same 12-13 pitchers, it’s just not going to happen. I’m told from a couple of the convesations I’ve had this week that some of the Yankees are falling apart. So nobody’s immune to this.
``That’s why you have to have a good farm system to keep bringing these guys up. Like Terry and Rob (Antony, the Twins’ assistant general manager), did this year, and (minor-league field coordinator) Joel Lepel, did, too. They were able to get some six-year free agents and add some depth. Really impressive.’’
-How does he like working as a TV analyst? ``It’s hard. It’s not easy. You have to get your points across fairly quickly. I tend not to do that. I sometimes need a little time to explain it. They’d like you to speak to the dad and the son who’s sitting there watching the game, and he’s 8-10 years old, and you have to try to speak to the 8-10 year old and explain what happened.
``That’s not easy to do, in my mind. Your partner there, he’s calling the game and now you try to get it in there what you think , and sometimes it’s a little different, the way you see it. And you have to try to explain that in 18-20 seconds and here comes the next pitch.
``When the game’s good, it’s easier. When the game’s not so good, it’s hard. A couple of years ago, we’re in Chicago, and Nick Blackburn is having a hard time. He didn’t pitch good.
``Marney (Gellner, the FSN reporter) said, `Well, he’s back in Chicago, let’s remember he pitched that great game over there.’ And he did. And I tried to explain to Marney, `That don’t mean anything.’ I tried to say it nicely. Well, I don’t do that too well. I’d rather just tell you. It’s easier.
``Blackburn was awful, but he won the game, even though he could have been out of the game in the first inning. It was hard to say in that first inning, when Dick (Bremer, the Twins’ play-by-play announcer), kept asking, it was hard to say eight different wants that he stinks.’’
``I’m not kidding anybody. If you’re watching, you can see he’s getting his rear handed to him.’’
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I'll be on 1500espn at 2:05 today. Please follow me on Twitter at @Souhanstrib.
The all ex-Twins team
Posted by: Jim Souhan Updated: August 28, 2012 - 12:13 PMSo I'm watching the Twins live last night, and the Orioles and White Sox online, and I couldn't help but notice how many good former Twins were playing in the latter game.
A.J. Pierzynski. Lew Ford. Francisco Liriano. J.J. Hardy. Jesse Crain.
Then I flipped to the Rangers game and watched Joe Nathan look as dominant as his old, All-Star self, while blowing away the Rays in the ninth.
So here's a first draft of an all-former Twins team. If I forgot someone significant, and I'm sure I did, please email me at jsouhan@startribune.com to remind me, and I"ll update later when I'm at tonight's Twins game.
C A.J.
Dh: David Ortiz
1b: Michael Cuddyer (who probably will play there next year for the Rockies.)
2b: Nick Punto, the key to that big Red Sox-Dodgers deal.
Ss: Hardy
3b: Danny Valencia (Sorry, it's not a perfect team. At least Danny adds some ``Swag.'' Whatever that is.)
OF: Jason Kubel, Torii Hunter, Delmon Young. Torii has to play CF again.
Starting rotation: R.A. Dickey, Johan Santana, Kyle Lohse, Francisco LIriano, Jason Marquis. Santana's hurt and Marquis is not very good, but how many teams have fully healthy and dominant rotations?
Bullpen: Joe Nathan, Jesse Crain, Matt Guerrier, LaTroy Hawkins, Jon Rauch, Craig Breslow
Bench: Wilson Ramos, Carlos Gomez, Lew Ford, Jason Bartlett, Orlando Hudson.
OK...now who did I forget?
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