New Twins Uniforms and Bill Smith Disappoint Me.

Not only are the Minnesota Twins moving into a new stadium next year, they will also be sporting new away uniforms, a 1961 throwback home uniform,  and new patches commemorating their 50th year and the inaugural season at Target Field.

http://www.startribune.com/galleries/70201377.html?elr=KArks:DCiUHc3E7_V_nDaycUiacyKUUr

Personally I love the throwback, which they will wear for the home opener, but don't like the other choices at all.  First of all, the new away uniform looks exactly like the Detroit away uniforms, in my opinion.  Just replace the Twins red outline for orange (not a big difference) and switch the city names and presto, the Twins uni is now a Tigers uni.  Secondly, my favorite uniforms from last year were the home white ones without pinstripes, which it looks like will be absent from the rotation this year.  So, in conclusion, Bill Smith has made another bad move, and our favorite team will look worse for it. 

Since we're on the subject of Bill Smith, I also am not as enamored with the JJ Hardy trade as everyone else in Minnesota.  Assuming Hardy can regain a batting average that will get him on base more than Nicky 'Nails' Punto, I think that at best this trade will be a wash.  Here's why:  not only are the Twins no longer one of the best defensive teams in the league, they aren't even in the top 20.  The departure of Carlos Gomez creates what I call a triple whammy effect (it's a technical term, don't bother yourself with it) in the outfield. 

Whammy 1: Denard Span is now our full-time center fielder, which creates a legitimate decline in center field defense.  I know, everyone loves Spansy, and so do I, but even though he is quick, he doesn't cover near the ground Gomez did, and has about half the arm strength.  The combination of less speed and weaker arm will definitely be noticeable.  We might not have one outfield assist from center in 2010, put it that way.   

Whammy 2: Delmon Young is now promoted to full-time left fielder.  For an explanation of this one, consider the drop off from Gomez to Span a mole hill and the dropoff from Span to Young K2!  Our beer league softball left fielder is ten times the outfielder Young is.  You just can't get better by taking significant declines in 2 out of the 3 outfield spots.

Whammy 3:  I'll start this one as a question, how often over the last couple years did Young play in the outfield (outside of the last few weeks of last year when Young briefly flashed the potential that keeps him north of Rochester)?  Right, probably a couple games a week.  Whenever any of the three functional outfielders needed a day off, Young would come in and bobble the ball around in the corner for them.  Our new Delmon Young is Jason Kubel.  If you think Young is uncoordinated and can't run in the outfield, wait until Kubel is our primary backup at left and right field.  It's going to be scary, and not Joe Nathan thinking about a lineup with Jorge Posada batting ninth for the Yankees scary; more like brain hemmorhage scary!  We will all likely be sitting in our prime seats at Target Field yelling, 'stop the bleeding,' to the sound of Jason Kubel shredding a knee and/or Delmon Young losing his last shred of dignity.

And who's going to DH when Kubel is 'playing' the field??..

On the other hand, Hardy is an upgrade defensively at SS..  But couldn't we have avoided this whole mess by just keeping Bartlett and Garza??

Target Field!

From the MPLS/St. Paul Business Journal:

Target Corp. has signed on as the naming-rights sponsor for the new Minnesota Twins ballpark, which will be named Target Field.

Under the 25-year deal, the plaza area between Target Center and Target Field will be called Target Plaza.

“We are excited about our partnership with the Minnesota Twins and the opportunity to continue our long history of community support,” Target President and CEO Gregg Steinhafel said in a statement. “We are confident that Twins fans and community residents will enjoy this wonderful addition to our area for many years to come.”

In addition to the naming rights for the ballpark and plaza, Target also will receive extensive marketing and promotional opportunities.

The ballpark is scheduled to open in time for the start of the 2010 season.

Pitching v. Hitting, Take Pitching

With the Twins struggling to win 3 of their last 10 I thought I'd dive into some AL stats.

As a team the Twins rank 3rd in batting avg and 4th in runs in the AL. But they rank 12th in ERA and 14th in both opponent batting avg and OPS. There is no doubt the Twins posses the greatest collection of singles hitters in baseball. But it may be time to forget hitting and start building pitching. Pitching wins games, pitching wins championships.

The Texas Rangers are an offensive juggernaut year after year yet never win anything. This year the Rangers have the #1, #4 and #8 AL batting avg leaders. They have the #1, #2, #3 and #6 AL run scorers. They are 1 game under .500. When the year started everyone was picking Detroit to do major damage. One problem - no pitching.

On the flip side, the division leading Chicago White Sox have the #6, #7 and #8th ranked AL ERA pitchers. No other team has 3 pitchers in the top 20, the White Sox have 4. Minnesota has 1, Nick Blackburn at #17 with a 3.87 ERA.

Potential Reason? The Twins have a draft policy of taking High School players. They always try to draft HS talent. There is no doubt this strategy has worked in finding some great singles and doubles hitters, defensive players, all around great athletic players. But the strategy has failed miserably when it comes to finding home run hitters and pitchers.

Two of the great pitching finds (Santana, Liriano) came from the collegeless Latin America. Is it possible that projecting pitching talent in High School might be too difficult? We know projecting power hitting is. I think it's an important question to ask. Is the draft strategy or coaching to blame?

One other small market team with no lack of finding and developing pitching is Oakland. Over the last 10 years Oakland has been a pitching powerhouse although they can only afford to keep their pitchers for a couple years. Oakland's draft strategy? College Players.

Minnesota Twins 2008 Predictions:

Ok, with Denard Span being sent down to AAA and Joe Nathan being inked to a 4 year, $47 M payday, the Minnesota Twins opening day roster is rounding into shape.  Here are my predictions for the upcoming season.  The opening day lineup will look like this:

1. Carlos Gomez, CF
2. Joe Mauer, C
3. Michael Cuddyer, RF
4. Justin Morneau, 1B
5. Delmon Young, LF
6. Craig Monroe/Jason Kubel, DH
7. Brendan Harris, 2B
8. Mike Lamb, 3B
9. Adam Everett, SS

The best case scenario is that Carlos Gomez becomes Jose Reyes, Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau play like they did in 2006, Delmon Young plays like Torii Hunter did last year, and the 7,8,9 spots can get at least 3 combined hits a game.  Worst case scenario is that Carlos Gomez bats .232 like he last year with the Mets, Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau play like they did in 2007, Delmon Young is still a couple years away from being a superstar, Craig Monroe remembers that he is old and Jason Kubel continues to deliver nothing on the hype that I have heard for the last 4 years, and our 7,8,9 batters consistently give the Twins only 18 outs to outscore our opponents who are getting 27 outs to play with. 

How about the pitchers.  It looks like the Franchise is going to start the year on a rehab assignment, and Baker will be given as much time to get up to speed as possible; so here is how I see the opening day rotation:

1. Livan Hernandez

2. Boof Bonser

3. Kevin Slowey

4. Nick Blackburn

5. Scott Baker

 Eventually, however, the rotation will look more like:

1. Francisco Liriano

2. Scott Baker

3. Livan Hernandez

4. Boof Bonser

5. Kevin Slowey

Either way, the prospects for keeping opponents under 5 runs a game don't look good.  Blackburn and Slowey are essentially unknowns at this point.  They are both regarded by those outside of the Twins organization as decent pitching prospects.  To put it into perspective, the Rays didn't want Slowey or Blackburn for Delmon Young, they wanted Matt Garza.  So expecting either of them to be better than Matt was would be irresponsible.  Boof and Baker both showed signs of dominant pitching last year, but those signs were all too often scattered in between 4 inning outings.  The same goes for Liriano.  He made the all-star game in 2006 after arriving on the baseball landscape like he was shot out of cannon.  Unfortunately, it's almost impossible to know how his elbow will respond to the Tommy John surgery, not to mention the complete transformation of his delivery mechanics.  To me, it looks like the smart bet would be that Liriano will get back to peak form by the end of spring training next year. 

As you can probably tell, I see the rotation as the biggest question mark.  One which could sway the Twins performance this year by 40 games or more from best-case scenario to worst-case scenaro.  If the starting rotation is a high yield junk bond, rife with risk, the bullpen is more like an index fund; solid performance with less risk exposure.  Joe Nathan is a top 5 closer in the league, Neshek was a top 5 set-up man before he had to take all of his innings and Jesse Crain's innings the second half of the year.  Speaking of Crain, he is coming back healthy and will be able to spell Neshek and keep him fresh throughout the season.  Blackburn/Perkins/whoever else will be decent long-relievers for those times when the starters show their inevitable inconsistency. 

So, here comes a prediction.  The way I see it, we will be good enough to win 25% percent of our games against Detroit, Cleveland, New York Yankees and Boston.  So that gives us 10 wins in 38 tries against the Detroit/Cleveland and 3 wins in 12 tries against NY/Boston.  I think we are good enough to play .600 baseball the rest of the way in the 112 remaining games against the NL teams in interleague play and the non-elite AL teams.  So this would give us 67 more wins in 112 tries.  Therefore, my prediction for the overall season is 80 wins, 82 losses.  Unfortunately, 80 wins in the AL Central is probably only good for 3rd, depending on if the White Sox can come back to form and pass us.  This is by no means gospel, so if you have any thoughts/opinions/arguments/gripes we would love hear what you think!