July 27th, 2006 by Jimmy Bones
Minnesota Twins: Have they Finally Figured it out?
The Minnesota Twins are rolling. They’ve won 34 of their last 42 games and vaulted themselves right back into playoff contention. In fact, with today’s win, their 3rd straight over the White Sox, they’ve moved into a tie for 1st in the Wild Card race with New York and Chicago. Everyone knows why they’ve turned it around (Francisco Liriano, Brad Radke, Justin Morneau, etc) and what they should do in the future, but no one looks back at why they were stinking up the joint early in the season. The fact is for the 1st two months of the season, the Twins were doing what they always do, they were shooting themselves in the foot with poor personnel decisions.
Just look at the Twins opening day lineup, it featured scrubs like Juan Castro and Tony Batista while guys like Jason Bartlett and Michael Cuddyer were either sitting on the bench or in the minors. Francisco Liriano was in the bullpen because the Twins had to have Kyle Lohse and Carlos Silvia in their rotation. The Twins seem to have this aversion to hurting the feelings of veteran players. They have to absolutely stink up the joint in order to lose their job no matter if a much more talented guy is waiting in the wings.
This isn’t a new thing either. Let’s not forget that this is the same team that had Johan Santana in the bullpen for a year and a half even though he was obviously the best pitcher on the roster. And I’m sure all Twinkie fans still have nightmares about the worst decision the Twins ever made. They decided to stick with Doug Mientkiewicz at 1st and cut David Ortiz. Just think about that for second. They cut Ortiz, who can hit 50 home runs in a season, for a guy who’s hit 59 homers in his entire nine-year major league career.
These decisions weren’t exactly brain teasers either. Its not like guys like Bartlett and Liriano need more minor league seasoning. Bartlett hit .332 with an OBP of over .400 last year in AAA. Liriano had a 1.78 ERA with over a strikeout an inning at Rochester in 2005. These guys were obviously better than Castro and Lohse, so why did it take the Twins so damn long to figure it out? Who knows the answer, but for all Twins fan’s sake, let’s hope they’ve learned their lesson.
We’ll know the answer soon enough. The Twins have a couple of uber-prospects in Matt Garza and Kevin Slowey on the way up. They are both currently dominating in the upper minor leagues. Sometime next year they’ll be ready to push their way into the rotation and if the Twins are ready to push guys like Carlos Silvia aside, we’ll know they’re finally ready to take the next step. The Twins wasted the early years of this decade screwing around with their roster when they could have won a championship, it looks like they’ll soon have another chance to show how it’s done.
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2 Comments
July 27th, 2006 at 9:53 am
“They decided to stick with Doug Mientkiewicz at 1st and cut David Ortiz.”
Ortiz was a perpetual underachiever and was consistantly hurt or dinged up when he was with the Twins. He is an entirely different player with the Red Sox.
July 27th, 2006 at 10:11 am
He is obviously a better player since he’s been with Boston, but when a player gets injured it sometimes takes them a while to get back in the groove, look at Justin Morneau this year vs last year.
Ortiz struggled when they gave him his shot, but giving a guy who obviously had serious power potential only a month to prove himself, in order to give the job to Mienky, was a terrible decision.
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