Boof and Livan

…Are toast.

Seriously. I wasn’t as ready as others to jump on the “Livan is terrible” bandwagon, but the way I see it, there are much better options for the Twins to fill the spot with, most notably Francisco Liriano, who continues to be spectacular in AAA. My hesitance was in that Livan kept managing to accumulate wins and would occasionally pitch pretty well. Now it seems irrelevant that he pitches okay sometimes because Liriano is fully ready to take his spot. Not to mention the fact that those good outings have become less frequent.

Boof on the other hand has been lousy pretty much the whole season. After it became evident he wasn’t cutting it as a starter, he was moved to the bullpen and he’s done nothing to redeem himself there. His ERA seems to rise every time he goes out, and any way you slice it, he’s not cutting it in the bullpen either. The rumored Rich Aurillia for Boof Bonser trade looks pretty good to me, considering I’d just release him, so getting something in return makes it even better. I guess we’ll go ahead and consider him the weakest link of the AJ Pierzynski for Liriano, Boof, and Joe Nathan trade. I still think the Twins won that trade though…

I considered doing some sort of statistical analysis here to back-up my claims of worthlessness, but I just don’t think there’s a lot of disagreeing going on with any of this. I am not stating an uncommon opinion.

Thoughts on Lincecum

I watched Tim Lincecum pitch for a few innings yesterday for the first time. He’s a very exciting young player and a lot of fun to watch, and so far has a had a pretty spectacular season. His 2.78 ERA and his 9.84 K/9 are pretty sharp numbers and he hasn’t shown a lot of weakness thus far. His fastball is simply incredible, and in the first few innings of the game yesterday, the Diamondbacks didn’t stand a chance. Most of them looked pretty foolish as he just reached back and blew it by. Sure, maybe it had something to do with the 6:05 start time of the game and the resulting shadows, but either way I was impressed. Frankly it made me want to pitch, something I haven’t done in any way, shape, or form in several years.

Lincecum has been particularly impressive when he gets in trouble, which is reassuring in a young player like him. With runners in scoring position opponents are hitting just .152 against him, as opposed to .289 with none on. Clearly part of the reason he’s been able to be so successful is for this very reason, and of course a pitcher can afford to get into a little more trouble (i.e. the relatively high .289 with no one on) when he has such an ability to strike guys out. Lincecum certainly has that ability as evidenced by his 13 Ks in 7 innings.

I’m not sure why people are more willing to accept situational stats for pitchers than hitters, I could be imagining it, but it seems a hitters ability to hit with runners on, or in some sort of clutch situation is often considered nothing more than random variation on his overall ability. Personally I think these stats are valid for both pitchers and hitters as long as they’re taken from reasonable sample sizes. And obviously past performance is no guarantee of future performance, but that doesn’t mean that past performance isn’t valuable and that it shouldn’t be considered when evaluating a player.

Gomez Batting 9th

There’s been some talk recently about putting Gomez in the 9th spot, or even dropping him down to AAA.

The general thought is that him and his .281 OBP is no where near good enough for the leadoff spot.  Of course that’s an entirely reasonable argument, and at no point has Gomez really had the makeup of a typical leadoff hitter. Coming into the season the Twins knew he was going to strike out quite a bit and that he was pretty unlikely to walk, and actually I think they were pleasantly surprised when he batted around .275 for much of first half. I assume the logic of putting those kind of terrible leadoff numbers in the leadoff role was that he’s a) fast, and b) exciting. I see this as more reasonable logic than it seems on the surface because I think there is value in having these sort of “loose canon” type players in a role to get things started. Unfortunately his ability to get things started recently has been quite debatable.

In general I support moving him to the end of the order and having Span and Casilla in the 1 and 2 spots (in either order). If Gomez can start hitting a little better, learn to take some walks and avoid striking out as much, I think he could move back to leadoff, but those are pretty sizable ifs.

As for moving him down to AAA, I don’t think that would be a good move at this point. If his struggles get worse, Cuddyer comes back, and Span is still doing well, then maybe.

Now as I write this I see that Gomez is in fact batting ninth tonight. I’m a little surprised that it happened, but I’m glad to see Gardenhire was willing to make that move. Hopefully it’ll pay off.

Welcome to the Year 2000

I may be a bit behind the blogging trend, but I guess that should be no reason not to start. And thus I whole-heartedly welcome you to my new blog, temporarily entitled “Thoughts ‘n Stuff”. Hopefully I’ll come up with something better. The content is sort of yet to be determined. The only thing I definitely intend to write about is baseball, specifically the Minnesota Twins, but it may evolve beyond that into the other things that interest me (Music, Apple Inc., skiing), who knows?

So yeah, hi.