Everyday Eddie Moves On

Fun loving "Everyday" Eddie Guardado is finally retiring. The long road for his rubber left arm has come to a close. "I think its time to go home and be a daddy," Guardado said after announcing his probable retirement at the end of this season. Becoming a full time dad to his three children aged 4 through 12 will bring an end to his 17 year career which began in 1993. Guardado is a character that many teams seemed to have had once upon a time ago, but characters today in baseball are in short supply. Guardado's always been known for practical jokes. The kind that keep teams loose. He'd move players cars, put peanut better in their shoes and hot sauce in their jocks. Once while with the Twins Guardado took David Ortiz's shorts. Ortiz wondered aloud where they went and Guardado told him to check the freezer. They were folded nicely, but freezing them was not enough for Guardado. He had smeared peanut butter on the inside of the shorts before freezing them. Ortiz was so pleased to have his shorts back and thawed out he never saw the peanut butter coming. As is tradition a prankster must be paid back and an unnamed Twin once took all of Guardado's belongings in his locker and bolted them down onto the floor: glove, spikes, shower shoes and even his toothbrush. It took 20 minutes to unbolt the items while Paul Molitor, Terry Steinbach and Bob Tewksbury laughed at his predicament. I'm sure it was a prank Eddie Guardado was envious of...envious that he didn't come up with it first.


For those that have a long memory go back in time to 1993 when Eddie Guardado was first called up to the Minnesota Twins. The Twins were currently going full circle in the standings: worst to first and back to worst again and again and then again. Guardado came to the Twins in 1993 as a young pitcher who had a bad case of acne. The kind of acne that keeps a 16 year old from seeing the outside world on the weekends. The acne went away, but Eddie remained a Twin through 2003. In the beginning the Twins wanted him to be a starter and he did as he was told starting 25 games on those disastrous Twins teams in 1993 and 1994. He didn't have a starters mentality or the arm strength and settled into the bullpen pitching in middle relief and saving the occasional game. In 2002 the Twins were threatened with contraction and Guardado was given the task of closing games on what could have been the final assemblage of players called the Minnesota Twins. Everyday Eddie took to the closers role better than I and many others expected that season and he saved a superlative and league leading 45 games. Without undue hyperbole Eddie Guardado and the 2002 Minnesota Twins literally saved the franchise that year. They won 94 games, their division and played baseball that mattered. A feat Twins fans had not seen since 1992. If you witnessed Eddie G pitch you know it was never easy for him. He desired and even thrived on the pressure of extracting himself from an inescapable situation. Usually those situations were of his own volition. Never was his rollercoaster ride to a save more in effect than in the crucial Game 5 of the 2002 ALDS versus the Oakland A's. Brad Radke had pitched his greatest game as a Twin on the road that afternoon going 6.2 bulldog-like innings. The Twins carried a perilous 2-1 lead into the top of the ninth when AJ Pierzynski hit a soon to be vital 2 run home run and the Twins pushed the lead to 5-1. Guardado pitched the final inning trying to close the door. The door resisted and his line for the ninth inning was an unsightly 4 hits, 3 runs and 1 home run given up. It was an inning that resembled a car wreck. You know you shouldn't look, but at the same time can't resist. Mercifully for Twins players and fans Guardado coaxed Ray Durham into hitting a foul ball flyout to Denny Hocking to eliminate the 103 win Athletics and put the Twins into the Amercan League Championship series. In 2003 Eddie saved 41 games, but the Twins probably felt like most fans did. The high wire act could only go for so long before crashing down and Everyday Eddie moved along to Seattle. He hopscotched from Seattle, Cincinnati and then to the Rangers. Last season the Twins tried saving a beleaguered bullpen by trading for Guardado late in the season, but it felt forced like a blind date. Eddie G knew he wasn't the same guy who saved 45 and 41 games in 2002 and 2003. He had a 7.71 ERA in 7 innings for the Twins and went back to the Rangers last off season. On Monday Eddie Guardado made his 906th career appearance tying him with Cy Young on the all time list. A rubber arm indeed and ending a career alongside Cy Young is not a bad way to go out, especially for a prankster.

Too Much Joe Nathan?

Women are said to have a biological clock, most sports are ruled by a clock and each and everyday we all have our day divided up into segments according to a clock. As we know baseball is the one sport that resists being a slave to the ever moving hands of a timepiece, but while the game has no clock, the players do. A clock is governing all of their time in uniform. Time is always ticking for a baseball player, but for a closer time can't move quick enough. The less time a closer spends on the mound the better. Managers and fans want their saves quick and without mess. Joe Nathan is the greatest of all closers to wear a Minnesota Twins uniform, but even he would agree we've seen a little too much of him lately. Nathan is like ice cream. Two scoops of it brings a smile to many faces, but eating a gallon in one sitting may leave many of those faces doubled over in agony. I think it's time to go back to two scoops of Joe Nathan. Nathan's September ERA of 4.35 is a problem and the reason for its rise is simple. While his pitches per outing are roughly the same, the amount of batters he faces per inning pitched has risen as the season progressed.

May: 3.88 batters faced per inning

June: 3.57 batters faced per inning

July: 4.0 batter faced per inning

August: 4.5 batters faced per inning

September as of 9/24: 4.4 batter faced per inning

As fans we happily had two scoops of Joe's ice cream through June, but starting in July we began getting more of Nathan flavored ice cream than we'd prefer. As we enter October Nathan has made many of us adjusts our belts in the wrong direction. He typically begins well by getting an easy out or even two, but then he allows a runner through a walk, hit or some other unfathomable event. Nathan has always been full of ticks (insert clock joke here), but they have become too much a part of his routine. He often will get the ball and try to crush it with his hand through a continual heavy massage. Then he slowly gets into place on the rubber, eyes the runner and throws a pitch that nibbles around the strike zone or misses it be a foot or more. Instead of attacking a batter he prolongs the matchup by dancing around the strike zone when ahead in the count. Meanwhile fans at home are left wanting to just leave the room and come back in a few minutes with the now messy save situation hopefully resolved and a Twins win being analyzed by broadcasters. Too often the ninth inning is an extended exercise in how to increase one's heartrate. Why has watching Joe Nathan pitch become so challenging? Because he has faced nearly an additional batter per inning since June, which puts a runner on base and a lead further in doubt. In addition, Nathan's twitchy idiosyncrasies and unhurried manner of pitching creates tension in fans longing for a quick end to another close Twins game. As the season comes to a close Twins enthusiasts are desperate to cut back on their ice cream intake. Bring back the June flavor of the month: Joe Nathan lite.

Delmon's Departure

As we sit currently the Minnesota Twins are 3 games behind the Detroit Tigers in what has become a doggie paddle contest to shore for the division title. This season has shown fans a spectrum of play that can only be described as unbelievably unexpected and at times remarkably unwatchable. Putting both descriptions together and whipping them with a kitchen utensil of your choosing you have another season of Twins baseball that has kept you watching to the end despite your mind erasing them from being in contention at least half a dozen times. Sitting in my living room chair watching the middle innings of Friday's game against the Tigers I watched Brian Duensing try to hold on to a slim 2-0 lead in the 5th inning. Marcus Thames led off with a slicing hit to left field. I quickly realize Delmon Young is in left field and watch as he allows the ball to ricochet off his glove and to the wall a short distance behind him. It is generously ruled as a double, but my eyes see it as a single with an error. Thames never scores and the play is forgotten as the Twins win the game in an efficient manner 3-0. On Sunday Young fields a Placido Polanco single in the first inning and drops the ball while exchanging it from his glove to his hand for an error moving Polanco to second base. Watching Delmon Young and his encounters with plays like these the past two years has been an education on how good Jason Kubel's outfield defense is. Which is a little like saying my hail damaged shingles are still effective because I don't need an umbrella while watching TV. He came to the Twins with possible attitude problems, but surprisingly that has not been the issue. To the surprise of no one reading this his inability to generate runs is his greatest foe. Followed closely by his outfield play which often takes the same route to a ball that a pencil takes in the hand of a child trying to print their first letter. Curvy and random, but never straight. Delmon has his supporters that say his potential is still unreached and the Twins should keep him for some future payoff, but lets look at his record thus far.

• In 1,779 career plate appearances he has hit .287/.319/.407. He has walked 72 times in his career with 9 of those being intentional passes.
  


• Young's on base percentage has gone from .316 in his first year with the Rays to .336 last year and finally this year's regression down to .288. Delmon Young has had 344 plate appearances this season and has walked an amazingly minuscule 10 times. To give that number some perspective free spirit and free swinging Carlos Gomez has walked 21 times in 327 plate appearances. Delmon Young walks 2.9% of the time compared to the league average of 9.1%



• He has scored only 38 runs this year which can be a function of those around him, but his .288 OBP is a much more attributable reason for scoring so few runs.



• His UZR/150, which is runs saved above average per 150 games played, is -18.5 this year after being -14.9 last year.



• Baseball Prospectus' VORP (value over replacement player) metric places Young at a -5.1. The VORP statistic does not take defense into consideration. This simply means the Twins could call up a Triple A outfielder and that replacement would be worth 5 runs over what Young has produced for the Twins with his bat.
  

The Twins and Bill Smith were hoodwinked to say the least in their trade for Delmon Young, especially since they gave up their starting shortstop in the deal. Never mind that Matt Garza was involved in the deal and will have a lengthy career as a starting pitcher in the upper half of whatever rotation he is a part of. With that being true Delmon Young is an affable guy according to many people, but it appears he is what we have seen for two years. A free swinging outfielder who lacks power and has no discernible outfield instincts. Truthfully, the fielding can probably be tolerated to a certain degree by the Twins, but the number that screams it's time to move on is the 10 walks this year and .288 OBP. Having a player who so seldom gets on base cannot be accepted especially when other positions on the team have not done their job getting on base. Delmon Young is said to have great potential, but the Twins should realize by now his potential is something no one has seen with any regularity. Don't let potential fool you into viewing a player as what you want him to be, when really he's what you have been seeing all along.

Ron Mahay is just like most of us

Ron Mahay is probably the least regarded of the pitchers that reside in the Minnesota Twins bullpen each night. He was sent to baseball extinction by being designated for assignment by the (ugh!) Kansas City Royals earlier this season. This is code for you're not needed anymore and please place your belongings in the provided cardboard box and leave the premises. Mahay must forever be indebted to the Twins for giving him a chance to unpack his box and receive resurrection back into the world of Major League pitching at the age of 38. As a Minnesota Twin his role is well defined. He's a situational lefty that will often only pitch to one or two batters with little margin for error. His scope of responsibility is squeezed into about 15-20 pitches per outing at most. What a lot of people don't realize is Ron Mahay is a lot like most of us. He must do one thing well and do it consistently. Slip ups of any measure will cause him to lose the last pitching job he'll likely ever have. The rest of us who don't throw a baseball for a living go to work each day knowing, especially in this economy, that our jobs can be gone as quickly as Mahay can again be designated for assignment. Stars have built up leverage against job loss, we haven't and neither has Mahay. Baseball has its stars as it always will, but there are more Ron Mahays in the majors than Derek Jeters or Josh Becketts. We all have more Ron Mahay in us than Joe Mauer. Everyday we do our job. Sometimes well, sometimes very well and sometimes not up to the standards our jobs require. In reality, all of our employment futures are uncertain. So next time you see Mahay pitch realize he's like the rest of us and give yourself...I mean him a cheer.

Observations of a Season's Sunset

Another baseball season is approaching the finish line. Before this one departs my dad and I made the trip to the Metrodome earlier than normal for the 12:05 start time for the Minnesota Twins versus the Oakland Athletics last Saturday. Our early arrival downtown was needed because of President Obama's lunchtime speech at the Target Center in conjunction with neverending 35W construction concerns. Why not have an early lunch at Hubert's located right across from the ballpark we thought? I had never been in the restaurant/bar and thought this would probably be the last chance I would have due to baseball games moving across town to the shiny new Target Field next year. Inside Huberts one gets the atmopshere everyone deserves when they enter a sportsbar. There are pictures of Twins and Vikings that are no longer around in body or in uniform and framed magazines are mounted on walls that have held those same magazines for at least a decade. Walking around the bar you see players who defined the games of your childhood, but soon we had to journey across the street to see players that the youth of today will see up in a sportsbar 20 years from now.

The funny thing about baseball is as a fan you just want a chance to play for something. The Twins entering the game had barely a 10% of making the playoffs. Those are good enough odds for a baseball fan. They don't need anymore than that, they may want more, but 10% is enough to watch a game and think it is meaningful. Not just a meaningless piece is a 162 piece puzzle. As Jeff Manship labored through the first inning my dad and I wondered who the best Jeff was to wear a Twins uniform. Jeff Reed, Jeff Reboulet, Jeff Reardon, there's no doubt it had to be Reardon we thought as Manship got through the first inning without giving up a run. As Manship struggled through 4 innings the family in front of us faced dilemmas of their own. Bringing the family of four to the ballpark always sounds like an enjoyable experience until the reality that baseball's leisurely pace wasn't designed for children under 4 years of age. The mom and dad struggled with occupying their children with treats brought from home. They were quickly rejected as unsatisfying. A Reeses peanut butter cup was soon found, but little chocolate fingerprints on the back of mom's pink Twins shirt showed all around who would win today . The family disharmony was repaired with a big helping of cotton candy that both children kept their attention focused to. Smiles returned to the parents, but they knew they were outmatched and left after Manship called it a day in the fourth inning.

A word on Manship. He with the strong jaw line seems to be the kind of pitcher that appears in control of himself with the willingness to go deep into a game. It is a false front. When he loses it, "it" is gone in a hurry. No 100 pitches for him. At about 65-75 pitches he peters out. The life of a relief pitcher may be what he tells his grandchildren about.

The Twins snooze through much of the game. Moments that stand out are the startling catch a fellow fan makes 15 feet away from us on a line shot. He decided to bring his glove and will never leave home for a ballgame without it. He snagged the line drive with ease that left my dad and I wondering if we would have the same success if put in a similar situation. Another snapshot is of Justin Morneau. He has decided to try and slug his way out of his current batting slump. He takes Herculean swings that would make Ruth blush. Those swings often result in him badly miss timing the ball and evoking oddly angled foul balls into the stands. Sluggers never try to ease their way out of a slump. What fun would that be?

The Twins are losing 4-2 in the 6th inning and second and third base are occupied with Athletics. Jesse Crain let two runs score quickly erasing the work the Twins did in catching up the prior half inning. Mijares makes his point as one of the best relief men in baseball by shutting down the A's in 1.2 innings with 4 strikeouts and giving his team a chance to win. He's a few sizes larger than he ought to be, but for the Twins he along with Matt Guerrier have solidified a bullpen teams had been punching holes through earlier in the year. Now the Twins enter the most unsettling part of the year with Mijares. The offseason. He'll be out of country and most likely not turning away many meals. They can only hope he makes it to Florida in "a shape" somewhat similar to the one he is currently. The Twins lose the game 4-2, Mijares kept them in it, but their bats were never in it. Those playoff chances sink below 10% and fans turn their thoughts to the Vikings playing the next day. But wait, the Tigers lose that night, the Twins clobber the A's the next day 8-0 and hope becomes a flicker again.

Improve the Middle and Wins Will Follow

Many wise baseball people have said a good team is strong up the middle of the field defensively and with the bat. Strong teams have a good catcher, shortstop, second baseman, and center fielder. Look at any of the playoff contending teams this year. They have a strong middle defensively and offensively. In truth, the Twins have struggled to field a strong middle of the field in any one game this season.

Starting with catcher the Twins easily have the best in Joe Mauer. With the bat and the glove he has no peers maybe in the history of the game. Unfortunately that is where the strengths end. For the sake of argument I will include the Twins third basemen in these statistics since it has been more or less underperformed by those that have played there this year. For the season all players that have played 3B, SS, and 2B for the Twins have hit a puny .229 and more devastating to the team their On Base Percentage is a dismal .297. The Twins are the worst in the majors at 2B production. Second basemen have hit an unbelievablely low .200 for the Twins. They are 24th in SS production and 24th at the 3B position as well.

Centerfielders for the Twins this year have hit a combined .270 with an OBP of .344. If Carlos Gomez (.237/.293/.348) performed at even an average level at the plate the centerfield numbers would be more than respectable. Regardless, the centerfield numbers place the Twins in the middle of all Major League teams in terms of batting production with a large contribution coming from Denard Span's at bats.

How active the Twins will be in the free agent market this off season remains to be seen. Looking at the numbers the middle of the field have produced this year it is imperative they look to the outside for solutions to at least two positions. All reports indicate Danny Valencia will be the starting 3B next season. That leaves 2B, SS and CF. Carlos Gomez is going nowhere, although I wonder what his value is to other teams via a trade. With Delmon Young departing, the outfield should have Span in LF, Gomez in CF, and Cuddyer in RF. That leaves the Twins needing to fill SS and 2B with free agents. There will be good free agents available at both those positions and especially at 2B. What the Twins can't do is settle and hope someone on the team will come up with a big season playing SS and 2B. We've seen what Nick Punto, Brendan Harris and Alexi Casilla can do over the long haul. Fans deserve to see a new middle of the infield at Target Field. Doing nothing to fix an obvious problem cannot be an option.

Blackburn, Perkins and the Magical 4.5 Strikeouts

In Bill James' nearly 1000 page book The Baseball Historical Abstract he has an article on page 289 detailing a simple statistic that determines a pitcher's effectiveness and career longevity. Does the pitcher have at least 4.5 strikeouts per 9 innings and/or is he close to the league average in the strikeouts per 9 innings category. Simply put James says to be an effective pitcher with the ability to stay in the majors for a substantial time a pitcher must have a K/9 ratio of 4.5 or better. You may look at any number of statistics in terms of a pitcher's ability, but the K/9 ratio tells the whole story. It's a story Nick Blackburn and Glen Perkins may not want to read. Neither has shown the kind of strikeout ability that leads one to believe they will have long and successful careers. Last year Blackburn was thought of highly for having a promising rookie season which included going 11-11 with a 4.05 ERA and pitching brilliantly in the division tie breaking game versus the Chicago White Sox. Surely he would improve as a pitcher in the following seasons? Not necessarily. Last year his K/9 was 4.47 while the league average was 6.83. In other words the average pitcher was getting 2.36 more strikeouts per game than Blackburn was. In addition, opponents batted .292 against him compared to the league average of .265. His promising year may have been a result of the league never seeing him before and some luck. This year he has trended in the wrong direction. His K/9 has sunk to 4.00 (league average: 6.96) and opponents have hit .297 (league average: .263) off him. Strangely, Nick Blackburn may have peaked already as a pitcher. He can't be effective with the pitches he possesses right now. Not striking out at least 4.5 batters per nine innings will catch up to every pitcher. Unless Blackburn develops another pitch and increases his strikeout totals he has a limited future. The Twins would be wise to trade him now while his value is highest. All of the above can be applied to Glen Perkins as well. His K/9 in 2008 was 4.41 and this year it is 4.20. Has he pitched well consistently? No, and injuries have now become a part of who he is. The Twins would be wise to move him as well. Feel free to read Bill James' article concerning the magical 4.5 strikeouts number, but James has done the heavy lifting regarding the research. Nick Blackburn and Glen Perkins should not be a part of the Twins future plans. The simple number 4.5 explains why.

Morneau's Late Summer Swoons

As this Twins season comes to a disappointing conclusion Justin Morneau is ending his season in much the same way he has for the last five years. He seems to be lost at the plate and out in the field. I'll excuse his fielding as an aberration, but his lack of hitting as the summer comes to a close has become an unfortunate pattern. The numbers speak for themselves.

• 2005: Batted .211 after the All Star break going 52 for 247.



• 2006: The pattern breaks with Morneau slugging the Twins to a division title and he earns the American League MVP.



• 2007: In August he bats .227 going 25 for 110. He dips even lower in September hitting .215 in going 20 for 93.



• 2008: The Twins lose the division by one game and Morneau going 25 for 103 in September for a .243 average is a main reason they come up short to the White Sox.



• 2009: In August the Twins' pitching falters badly helping Morneau hide his 18 for 82 slump and .220 average for the month.

As summer ends Morneau's hitting simply collapses into the .220 range. This trend has occurred 4 of the last 5 years and has to be concerning to management. Currently he seems impatient at the plate and pressing himself to make something happen. With 28 games left in the season Morneau needs to see he still has an opportunity to end the year on a positive note and regain some self confidence by being more patient at the plate.

Say Goodbye Griffey

I pains me to read that Ken Griffey Jr. is thinking about coming back for the 2010 season with the Seattle Mariners. It hurts because I was sixteen years old when he broke into the majors in 1989 and collected his rookie cards just knowing he was going to be a star. He was a star at only nineteen when he roamed centerfield for the Seattle Mariners. He made some of the most amazing catches I have ever seen. One stands out from his early years. He was playing a shallow centerfield in Yankee Stadium and had to run full out back to the wall and jump high above the wall robbing someone of a home run. Griffey ran back to the dugout waving his glove in the air along with a big grin on his face. Junior was just a young kid playing baseball. Soon he played with his father, Ken Sr., and they both had the ultimate father/son moment when they hit back to back home runs. Years went by. I went to college and he got older, gained a few pounds, hit more home runs, ran into walls and his body began to break down. He missed far too many games than he deserved because of injury. His prominence faded in fans' minds, but he kept playing. He was switched to right field in Cincinatti because it required less ground to be covered. Seeing him as a Cincinnati Red never felt right. In 2008 he was traded to the White Sox and threw out Michael Cuddyer at home with a dynamite throw in the 163rd game of the season. The White Sox won the game 1-0 and the division with Griffey's throw being the most important defensive play of the game. That is how it should have ended, but great players seldom just walk away. They remember being that grinning kid playing baseball two decades before and try to catch that magic again. It doesn't happen.

Ken Griffey Jr. is currently batting .219 with 14 home runs for his original team the Seattle Mariners. He has 625 career home runs putting him in the elite status of baseball players while never being mentioned in steroid conversations. Ken Griffey Jr. is an icon that I want to remember as a superstar, not what he is now: a .200 hitter who doesn't play everyday. It's time to call it a career, retire and go to the Hall of Fame in five years. Don't hang on trying to capture that one last ball before it goes over the wall. Wave goodbye and let fans realize how lucky they were to watch you play baseball.

Twins OPS vs. Yankees OPS

I once didn't like the concept of OPS (on base percentage + slugging percentage) as a statistic because it combines two aspects of baseball that are relatively unconnected. Now I see it as a valuable way of judging how complete a player is in terms of helping his team by getting on base and driving in runs. I wondered how the Twins main hitters compared in OPS to the Yankees main hitters. Granted, the Yankees have more big "name" hitters than the Twins, but I had to pick five hitters to compare from each team. On the Twins it was easy. I looked at Span, Mauer, Morneau, Kubel, and Cuddyer. Basically their first five hitters in their lineup. With the Yankees I took Damon, Jeter, Teixeira, Rodriguez, and Matsui. I simply added together the OPS numbers. These statistics are from August 30th.

Yankees OPS:

Damon: .891

Jeter: .875

Teixeira: .923

Rodriguez: .908

Matsui: .888

Total: 4.485

Twins OPS:

Span: .800

Mauer: 1.054

Morneau: .923

Kubel: .890

Cuddyer: .849

Total: 4.516

The results are interesting, if not surprising. Many fans think of the Yankee hitters as giants among the rest of the league's hitters. This isn't the case when compared to the Twins main hitters. The overall OPS numbers show the Twins are the equal of those five Yankee hitters. The Yankees are obviously getting more production from the bottom of their lineup than the Twins and their pitching is far superior which accounts for the difference in victories between the two clubs. In my opinion, the OPS numbers show that the Twins are not far away from being a top five team record wise in the American League. With the addition of hitters who are productive at the bottom of the lineup and having two more reliable starting pitchers the Twins wouldn't be the Yankees, but may not be that far away either. The core hitters of the Twins may be the best in club's history. Now the front office needs to compliment that core by filling in holes that are keeping this team from reaching its ultimate potential.