Endurance factor

I was probably the only one sad in Minneapolis to see Livan go. Despite his abysmal ERA, I thought that he brought a few things to the club. My take is that he taught by example that grace under pressure can make a difference. They knew when they acquired him that the guy gave up a lot of hits, and he sure lived up to that end! But he was often able through his slow, calm style to get out of difficult situations, and despite all the hits he had the best record of the starting rotation at 10-8. Don't get me wrong - I take a healthy Liriano over his sage wisdom anyday, but lets not berate the guy for doing exactly what they said he would do.

But where I think they will miss Livan is in the endurance factor. Our young rotation seems to go the six innings for the win, and then they are done. I didn't have a lot of time, but I took a quick look at how many games the pitchers went into the 7th and the results were fairly interesting. Livan went into the 7th or further 11 of his 23 starts for 48%. Blackburn does well on this as well going 10 of his 22 starts for 45%. The rest are: Baker (33%) Perkins (18%) Slowey (24%) and Liriano (0% for obvious reasons). When I get time I want to redo it for going into the 8th inning.

My point? Considering how our bullpen is struggling and how they are being used heavily (Guerrier has played in 55 games), we should be looking for ways to strengthen and reorganize there. And quickly...

Collateral damage from Thursday's White Sox game.

I guess someone figured since they didn't have a hat to throw on the field that chocolate shake would work just as well. It got all over our clothes, hair and even in Allie's eyelashes! Eewwww....

Chat Room - Part Deux

I said I would give it another try, and I actually gave it four or five.

So one evening I sit quietly observing the chat room, not participating, but just trying to keep up with all the different conversations. The room is moving incredible quickly with conversations all over the place and about several topics.

Then the unthinkable happens.

An IM window pops up on my screen saying a simple, yet so complex, "hello"!

Pure, unadulterated panic! What do I do? Have I been busted as a voyeur? Is that wrong? Is this person gonna scold me? Or worse... is this some cyber bot thingee that will take over my PC and infect it with some horrible virus? Is someone gonna start to cyber stalk me? What to do... what to do? Heart pounding, sweaty palms, I do the only thing I can think of. I type back the truly thought provoking response, "hello."

And then I wait for an eternity. What will happen next? Twiddle my thumbs, wipe the sweat dripping from my forehead, say a prayer or two. Hours go by... okay, I guess it was a few seconds. Another window!!! Oh no!!! Dare I open it?

"What is your favorite team?"

Whew! My PC unscathed, I start up what turns out to be a good friendship with (I cringe as I admit this) a White Sox fan.

But what has this friendship taught me? I realized that while I had started looking into the game of baseball more, there was one avenue that I did not go down. I have always thought of our team in a vacuum. We were the team in second place, but I never really cared who we were behind or thought beyond the upcoming game. Now as we went into the White Sox series I was paying attention to the other team, their strengths, weaknesses, players and what all of those factors meant to our team. We talked baseball for hours. I have to tell you the series took on a whole new character. I learned a ton about the other team and I started to think more about the long term. Who do they face next vs. who do we. Of course the best part was that I could poke fun at the new friend when his team lost 3 of the 4. We hoped for each other successful games (although I am guessing we both held some of our good wishes in reserve.) We congratulated each other for good games and lamented bad plays. It was so much fun to talk about! I was at the game on Thursday (the hat kicking day) and will blog about that later (I can't post a picture from the PC I am on.) No drug could have made me higher than being at that game. And part of the thrill was getting to really rub it in! Yes, I do have an evil side!

I have done the same research now for the Indian series and it has the same effect - minus the hours of chats. How fun would it be to have a friend from every team? (But I guess I would have even less of a life due to always chatting with someone!) Yes, it takes more time to look into the other team, but knowing how batters do against the expected pitcher, and visa versa, and what to look for makes the game so much more enjoyable.

Well, even if the friend it brought me was from the enemy, my chat room experiment was actually a success and I will go back.

Go Twins!
(Watch out Sox!)

Chat room "info"

Ok - so I decided a great way to pick up more info and to speed the learning process was to sit in on a chat room discussion. Yahoo has an MLB room that always seems to have a lot of people on it, so I figured I would give it a go. I spent several hours listening in, the room has both regular chat and voice chat.

Drum roll please... here is what I learned:

• A girl named Melissa (I believe that was the name) used to invited 4-5 guys for a chat and strip on her webcam.
• If you strip on a webcam someone will take a screen shot.
• Said screen shot will then be posted as a link on the chat room at a later date.
• Said screen shot will then be discussed ad nausium and rated in not so complimentary ways.
• Despite having to enter the character recognition password, 1/10 of the people in the room at any time only seemed to be able to type, "Are there any men in here who would like to see me take off my shirt?" I think over the course of the experiment I blocked 20-30 of them. (Are those bots?)
• The main purpose of the chat room is to listen to someone make crank phone calls and give him suggestions as to who to call and provide their numbers. It is also a game to see if you can trick him into crank calling the police station.
• You need to be at a minimum tipsy to participate and it is sooo much better if you are plastered.
• When someone dares to ask a baseball question, the only acceptable response is, "I dunno, I only follow football." There is, however, one exception to the rule. When asked who will start for the Red Sox in game 1, about 8 people in the room will quickly reply with the same answer.
• If you have several hours to waste... find a chat room!

In all seriousness, I might have picked a bad time (it was from 10pm - 2am), but I was on for about four hours and literally saw only a momentary glimmer of baseball discussion. I will try it again sometime. So if anyone has a good recommendation on where to go, I would love to hear it!

drum roll please...

With a week to go before the trade deadline, rumors abound about what moves, if any, the Twins will make. Personally, the way I see it, we are in a fantastic spot to be in this year. Our talent is still raw and undisciplined, but it is showing improvement. We have an abundance of players who are batting ok and have speed and flexibility. Once players return, I think there will actually be some difficult decisions to be made as to who to send down or platoon. I see one weak area and agree with those who are pitching (pun intended) for any deals to center around 8th inning pitching. Blyleven made a comment today about LaTroy as a possibility. Now how fun would that be to have him return? But I think that the current team has a chemistry and I know that they have been reluctant to mess too much with a chemistry that is working. It is going to be a fun week of speculation!

Whoa - where did Punto come from?

Gotta admit, I never completely jumped on the negativity bandwagon when it came to Punto when he faced the most derision. This is a game of hot and cold, and sure he was luke-warm to cold a lot at the end of last season, but I never thought he was done for like lots of my friends. But I never expected to see him play like he has lately. Seems like when he gets played he makes at least one really nice play, and sometimes comes up with a huge surprise. For example that little barely above ground shove pass to Cassilla the other day that continues to be replayed over and over. (Moment of negativity - had Cassilla missed the catch or not been able to keep his foot on the bag stretching out that far, or had it been someone else who was involved in that play, would the press have been so hot?) Personally, while he will never be one of my favs, I like the guy, think he can do some good, and with the competition he is facing for positions think he is stepping up his game. We can overlook the daily errors in judgement by Go-Go, why not give Punto a break and see what the guy can do?

Update: 7:40pm 7/5
Case in point - Punto just made a fantastic catch in the 5th robbing Carroll of a nice hit. WTG Punto!!!

Sticky Situations

Ok - a few weeks ago after watching a game where three bats went flying into the dugouts, and seeing Go-Go kissing and talking to what appeared to be a pure white virgin bat I started wondering what was the scoop about pine tar. Out of curiosity I googled it and found more than I expected. I assumed that there wouldn't be much about it. I was more curious on why some batters seem to have bats black with the stuff and matching helmets, while others don't. What are the pros and cons? How much do they "need" and are the results consistent. Instead I found debates on which pitchers are using it illegally, and a story of George Brett and a controversial home run.

The Pine Tar Incident - The rule is that batters can use tar but it can only go up 18" from the tip of the handle. Back in 1983 George Brett hit a winning home run against the Yankees, that had the Yankees question the amount of tar on his bat, that it went too far up the bat. It was a little known rule and the officials were unsure how to handle the infraction. The run was deemed an out. The ruling was appealed and over turned with the game finishing at a later date and the score holding. It is an interesting story to read.


The other side of the debate is about pitchers, who are obviously not allowed to use it. One blogger said to look at Nathan's hat. I will out of curiosity now, but I would assume that any official at the stadium would be able to also see it and that we would have heard more about it. My question is how do they handle that in the NL? Does a pitcher have to wash his hands following an at bat to be sure no tar remains on his hands?

I was hoping to find out what players expect to get out of the tar, since even the well tarred bats go flying into the dug outs every once in a while. I didn't get the answers I was looking for, but it is an interesting read anyway...