All Hit, No Run

1. List of Twins that didn't get a hit today:

(Blank)

List of Twins who scored today:

(Blank)

There's a Yakov Smirnof joke in there somewhere.

1a. Also, The innings in which the Twins did not have a hit:

(Blank)

2. To keep the lists short, here are the players and coaches who do not get a share of the goat of the day:
2a. Jason Bartlett: not once did he produce an out when there was a runner on base (including himself). His fielding of late even sounds slick.
2b. Kyle Lohse: Mike Wood is no King Felix, but your luck is the hardest.
2c. Juan Rincon: Didn't leave any batters on base or run the Twins out of a decent scoring opportunity or put in Mulholland, which is more than I can say about anyone else.

3. Putting Mulholland in was a white flag from Gardy, right? "We've won the series and playing for Pride." I can't imagine how that run does not score. I seriously cannot. JC had a way better chance, even off of throwing 6 pitches last night.

4. Denny Hocking did not have a good mugshot. I think he lost at least 30 pounds since spring.

5. King Felix vs Unit tonight. Go Felix!

Bruised Bananas

1. I don't know, I feel like I've been away for a long time even if my last post was Friday. I've just been confused about everything. I see the Yankees on TV and I have fits. Hats? Black. Undershirts? Blue. NY? Black. Lettering? Blue. Maybe. I'm very confused. And Fans are no help with BP hats and equal amounts of Blue and Black stuff. And then, MTV decided to play videos for a week. And I was subjected to, for the first time, Gwen Stefani's "Hollaback Girl." I do fine with barely english dancehall lyrics and postmodern lyrics from bands like Underworld, but somehow, a song about spelling "bananas" gets lodged in my head and I just shut down.

2. 1 ER over 7 innings and a ND? Welcome to the rotation, Mr. Baker.

3. I think the baseball player whose autobiography, once written, I would most like to read someday is Jose Lima. I don't kow much about his history, but I'm sure there's some big things in his. And he just intrigues me. He has such an air of "crazy" around him.

3a. Can Lima find work next year? AAA with the Pirates affiliate? Tampa Bay? Twins bullpen when Mulholland retires? Do bench coaches coach or are they basically cheerleaders, b/c Lima would be a great dugout cheerleader.

4. Can Joe Mays find work next year?

5. As I see it, the Royals have two "definite starters" in their "young guys" list (a/k/a "everyone but Lima"): Greinke and Runny Hernandez. I think Burgos will always be a reliver, but how Wood and Carrasco are starters while Sisco and Gobble are relievers is just maybe because that's what was needed when they were called up?

5a. Gobble is a Lefty, but not a Loogy, just like our JC.
5b. Is the Loogy dying? I flipped to the Dodgers-Cubs game* during commercial breaks and saw that there was one lefty in the sum of both bullpens.
* Cubs won on a Henry Blanco 2 rbi 2-out single.

6. I love Burgos's blue glove, especially with the handsome KC home alt unis.
6a. E is still dead-set against Ambiorix for the name of PTBNL, now due in a scary-close 3 months, and we're no closer to a name than we were when we started.

7. I could see Silva giving up those runs in the 7th (i mean, he just doesn't throw that many pitches), but I just kept hoping for the inning-ending double play.

8. I think I'm going to Friday's game just for the stocking cap. I spent last winter looking for a good one and couldn't find one. What time do the gates open for 7:00 games?

9. Assuming the Twins don't make the playoffs, I'm hoping for an Indians-Braves WS. I wish MLB would do like the NCAA and ban offensive cartoons from postseason play, meaning the Indians will just have to wear the "I" hats and jerseys. I personally have no problem with the team names, (I think the Indians even took the name from an Indian player when the franchise was new), but Wahoo is a crude stereotype that really should be retired.

Wren

1. Pitching note: We don't go up against the Gambler tonight, but Kameron Loe. Thank you baseball Gods for another great matchup! K.Loe vs K.Lohse. After Chacon vs Chacin yesterday. Maybe we can still see De Los Santos vs De La Rosa this year...Nope De Los Santos is back in AAA. Dang.

1b. Hopefully, Lameron Koe shows up tonight. (Batgirl type joke... heh heh.)

1. I just saw this guy's gamecast from this afternoon against the Cubs. Cruising for 5: 3 hits, 0 runs. Fell apart in the 6th: 6 hits 5 runs 2 outs. I think he might be the sister from Disney's "Even Stevens" based on looks.

Pitchers

1. Best matchup of the year: Chacon vs Chacin in NY yesterday. The guy without glasses won.

2. Even the Strib's "Twins Notes" section mentions that Mays may be dropped from the rotation. If it's mentioned there, it's already done.

3. Has any team ever tried to contend with non-pitchers with these batting lines starting games:

.202/.261/.310/.571 (Ryan)
.220/.246/.330/.576 (Tiffee)
.245/.306/.341/.647 (Punto)
.239/.305/.348/.648 (Bartlett)

Hey, I like these guys, and most have had few ABs, but man have they produced little in their chances. I was gonna include Abernathy, too, but he's got a comparatively respectable .271/.345/.354/.699.

Translation

Joe Mays: "I don't blame them. I'd boo myself right now, too. I haven't done my job. I pretty much stunk the past 2 1/2 months."

Means: "It's okay, coach. You can skip me next time or give Baker the start."

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday Carl! Many people have disagreements with you on the things you tried to do and failed at. I don't care that much, as you've had a nicely selective nature with failure (failing at the things I prefer you fail at, succeeding at most of the rest). What I do know is that you give me a baseball team that makes me very happy and I don't give you a whole lot. I've attended 4 games in five years, don't believe I've ever bought anything advertised on broadcasts, and only have four small pieces of officially licensed merchandise. Plus, I think our goals are nicely aligned right now: winning and a pretty stadium not far from where I work. Here's to your continued health and success on and off the field this fall! Once more, happy brithday!

La Tierra de Pitcheos

1. I remember an old Nike commercial about the DR. "La Tierra de Mediacampistas," which is either the land of shortstops or infielders. With Johan, Garcia, Silva, Rincon, Liriano, and probably 8 others, Venezuela should be the land of pitchers.

1a. Check out the top Venezuelan sports story:

Un cuadrangular de Jacque Jones rompió un partido sin hits de Freddy García a la altura del octavo episodio y permitió a Johan Santana salir airoso de un espectacular duelo monticular que culminó con una victoria de 1-0 para los Mellizos de Minnesota frente a los Medias Blancas de Chicago.

I got these Spanish vocab words:
"cuadrangular" = "homerun"
"Mellizos" = "Twins"
"triunfo" = "win"
"Juego de Estrellas" = "All-Star Game"
"incogibles" = "hits"
"rescate" = "save"
"entrada" = "inning"
"error de Pablo Ozuna" = "Pablo Ozuna's error"

1b. I didn't realize that the 700 club was still in existence. Aren't there some dictatorships in soccer-loving countries we can worry about before going after our misguided brothers-in-baseball who just happen to be murderous thugs? Does Pat Robertson have an anti-baseball bias? WHY DOES HE HATE AMERICA (and its pastime)?

2. I was really hoping Mikey Ryan could get that sac fly and score Cuddy from third. Then the Twins would have had the lead with Garcia still dealing a No-hitter. I'm sure I could look, but I doubt that CG, 0 H, 0 ER, L performances are damned rare.

2a. What do you call Cuddy's "hit"? A two-base fielding error sounds weak. How about a double on an error?

3. SBG would have to go find and post a picture of a guy wearing a Yankees Batting Practice cap (actually navy blue instead of allegedly navy blue). He thinks he can pull one over on me.

4. This site isn't about to turn political, but i've been hearing a lot of guff about the Alaskan pork in the transportation bill. Two billion dollar bridges, one from Ketchican to an island and another from Anchorage to across the Cook Inlet/Knik Arm. Can I object to that on aesthetic grounds? I was just there in June and one of the coolest things about Anchorage was how close it seemed to be to the lowlands across the water, but how danged far you would have to drive to get there. And I don't believe there's anything there to get to. I don't live there and can't say with authority that it's not needed, but a bridge across the water would greatly mar the beauty of Cook Inlet and with it Anchorage

5. C and I ran some errands on Monday night, and we listened to pop radio:
Song 1: "Get Low" by Li'l Jon & the Eastside Boyz. Do you like this? "No" Why not? "It sounds mad." True enough, although I was trying to get her to say "I like crunk."
Song 2: "How Bizarre" by OMC. Do you like this? "No, It sounds sad." It sounds sad? "Change it daddy."
Song 3: "Pon De Replay" by Rihanna. "I like this song. This is happy music." Good. She likes dancehall. Step 2 is complete.

Color Poll

What Color is this Yankee's Cap?
	Blue
	Black
	Off-Black (a shade of Blue)
	Off-Black (a shade of Black)
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Off-Black

To explain my comments on team colors (and lack thereof), I consider "Yankees Blue" to be a shade of black. Specifically, "Off Black" or "Bruise." I don't know of any colors closer to black than that, except for black itself. Go to http://newyork.yankees.mlb.com/ and look at the most recent photo gallery (featuring the White Sox) and honestly tell me you can see a difference between the Sox caps and the Yanks caps.

I was not saying that they were bad uniforms, I actually think they are damned nice, especially compared with the ugly that the White Sox can do with the same premise but sleeveless on the home "alt2" jersey. I personally don't like it when teams don't have players' names on the back of Jerseys, especially road jerseys, but it bothers me a whole lot less when the Yankees do it as opposed to the Giants or Dodgers or whoever the hell else has started that crap.

I just realized that I am less sympathetic to a team with no colors in their jerseys and that I include the Yankees in that list. And the Rockies are getting dangerously close to that point, too.

Big Boi, plus the guy from OutKast

1. Matthew Lecroy, thank you for doing what you do without having to field.

2a. Last night, I had an invitation to meet some friends at the game but instead went to a concert at First Ave: Big Boi (half of ATL rap group OutKast). It was a damned good concert. Lots of energy, everyone on stage looked like they were having fun. Marginal OutKast-ers like Killer Mike and Sleepy Brown were there and performed their singles. Four-piece horn section. Four dancers. Basically played "OutKast's Greatest Hits" except, of course, for that one that was all Andre ("Hey Ya") .

2b. When the double album came out, I really thought I would prefer Andre's disc, but I didn't. Big Boi can be sufficiently weird on his own, but I think Andre needs Big Boi to keep him making good music (as opposed to Prince variations). Big Boi found contrast between party and introspection. Andre found more sexiness. Big Boi's half is much more interesting.

2c. AMR's Pythagorean formula for quality of a rap concert: Quality = Talent / Microphones. There were usually 2 mics, but whoever had the second mic laid off most of the time. Opener, Bizarre, the overweight shower-cap wearing member D12 (Eminem's band) was pretty bad. Less talent, and 3 mics, and hangers-on basically rapped all the verses alongside Bizarre. And his songs really didn't have hooks. And he was vulgar and crude without being shocking. Boringly misogynistic. The crowd got more excited for a Big Boi Roadie's soundcheck than for almost anything in this set.

2d. I was spoiled at my first rap show. Rhymesayers at the Entry. Beyond's "Comparison" release party. January 1997. Beyond (now Musab, one guy) was pretty much on stage with just his one mic. Even though Atmosphere had played earlier (back when they had 2 MCs), I was sure that Beyond must be the TC's best rapper. Close quarters, intimate and intense, not shouting, no hangers-on with mics for no reason other than to frustrate listeners. I like rappers to be more like singers-songwriters with a different skill, probably because of that concert. Be quiet and let people hear all your abilities.

3. Somewhere in the Chicago series, I realized I'm biased against teams with no colors on their unis. Yankees, ChiSox, Spurs, Raiders, and maybe the Rockies and Canucks.

4. I keep rooting for Toronto to get into this WC race with the Twins until I see thier ugly unis on sportcenter.

5. If anybody's praying to Tony Gwynn tonight, please put in an extra plea for the Royals. They need to have some success against the A's. Lima v. Harden, Wood v. Zito, and Runny H. v. Blanton.

6. Before the Marathon game, C and I were hanging out and she wanted to listen to a CD. She picked out Massive Attack vs. Mad Professor "No Protection" because the spine was pink. I played it. "Daddy, I like this music." "This is called dub music," I said. "I like dub music, daddy." Yes! Step 1 of my music-taste programming plan is now complete.

7. Damned Sudoku in the Strib has me hooked.

Still Here

I haven't died or anything. I've had a bad virus attack at work, a long game, and a nite out with friends (structured around watching the second half of last night's game). Maybe I have some thoughts other than "winning is good" and "So is not losing 18 straight."

I just want to note that even though the Twins used Juan Rincon for one batter, we still won the war of pitcher attrition, thanks much to Matt Guerrier's 4 stellar IP and Romero coming in with a clean slate instead of inherited runners. Had we not scored against Adkins, JC could have gone another inning maybe and we still had Nathan around to maybe eat 2-3 innings before we'd have to get to Mulholland. And Mulholland could have given us 1-2 before the dinger. So, had we not scored, we definitely would have lost in the 21st inning.

C's Sunday

1. I try not to get into too much name-calling with other teams and their players, especially those that aren't names. I respect them and realize that typically they're just trying to do thier job. But man, does Aaron Rowand bug me with his batting stance. Is he constipated? Does that [constipation] help his mechanics?

2. The Phenom in Seattle got another win today. 8 IP, 3 H, 1 ER, 11K, 1 BB. 0.86 ERA and 21 K in 21 IP over 3 starts. Of course, it was against the Royals. He got 11 runs of support. If I'm an M's fan, I'm so excited I'm worrying.

3. Juan Rincon, man, Juan Rincon.... You wanted to feel sorry for those batters he K'd. They had no chance. Everyone knew what was gonna happen, but they could not make contact or stop swinging.

4. Some of the Twins underperformers you get frustrated with and want the club to give up on (Rivas, Boone), others you want to just figure the damned thing out. I so want Kyle to be the pitcher he can be, if its with another club in the future or whatever. Sounds like he got hit hard (I picked up the game in the 6th right as Konerko was tagged out at 2nd), but hell, 2 ER and a win sounds pretty damned good for a bad outing, even if it only was 5 1/3.

5. Sunday morning, Grandparents P took C to the Como Zoo. C liked Aunt A's purse. Aunt A took the picture.


6. Sunday night, C wanted to read in the car. So we did. I read the newspaper and C read a little book but pushed a lot of buttons and pretended to drive. E took a picture.


7. Then, after swimming in her wading pool, I picked C some seeded out dandelions and she used them to be a family. The big sister flower put the baby brother flower into his crib so he wouldn't cry. And then they sang "A Baby, A Baby, A Baby." Here's a picture.

Tough Luck

1. Three complete game losses over the weekend. Danny Haren pitched 9 in losing to the Twins 1-0 on Friday.
Toronto's Dave Bush pitched 8 losing to the Os 1-0 on Saturday. Jose Lima pitched 9 losing to Detroit on Sunday.

Plus, Dontrelle lost 1-0 through 8 innings on Friday. Clemens got a ND from 8 scoreless on Saturday. Cliff Lee got a ND from 8 scoreless on Sunday. Rich Harden pitched 8.0, 1H (Michael Ryan HR), 1 ER in a ND.

2. Joe Mauer and Michael Cuddyer have been making me very happy lately.

3. Either Duchscherer has one hell of a pickoff move, or Jason Bartlett shouldn't have been pinch-running yesterday.

4. 2 out of 3 ain't bad.

Where are the Muslims?

Looking over baby names today, I came across Muhammad, which is pretty clearly a Muslim name. I could not think of any baseball players with that name or Abdul or Kareem. I could not think of a single MLB player ever who had a Muslim name or is even Muslim. (I could easliy be missing someone. Maybe the whitest* guy in baseball, Khalil Greene?) Where are they?

I mean there are dozens of NFL players named Az-Hakim and there is a famous NBA player named Abdul-Jabar among many others. Hell, there's even Ramzi Abid playing in the NHL (although he seems to be ethnically Arab rather than an African-American convert or son of converts as most Muslims in the NBA and NFL). Is this just a function of the dearth of African-Americans in baseball, especially those from big cities?

Running through some African-American players I can think of off the top of my head:
Torii, Arkansas
Jacque, San Diego
Shannon, Cincinnati
Carsten C, Vallejo, CA
Coco, LA
Dontrell, Oakland
Dmitri, Mississippi
Rickie, Daytona, FL

Maybe dearth from northern and eastern big cities.
Also interesting that I can get by with using their first names.

I don't know what I'm getting at here, but if anyone can think of any Muslims in MLB or AAA, I'd just be real curious.

BTW, Who Is Mike Jones?

* I mean whitest as in palest, I have no knowledge of his ancestry, but I really thought he would be black with that name.

Kyle

1. Dear Kyle Lohse, you rock my world. You are an awesome pitcher and now we all know it. Too bad you are in the AL and can't show your teammates personally how to figure out the phenom. I'm sure you would have hit a homer or at least and RBI double. I was disappointed that Gardy didn't send you out there for the complete game loss. Forget about the L, here's your line: 7.0 IP, 4 H (9 TB), 2 BB, 7 K, 1 ER. That's Johan's line, dude. Again, you rock!

2. The Strib reports that it was hard to get scouting on Hernandez because the game wasn't televised. Their advance scout "noted how Hernandez through [sic] a high percentage of curveballs." Hello, MLB.tv? You can watch it over and over again.

2a. I didn't need to quote there, but just wanted to use "[sic]."

3. KC gave up 11 runs (3 earned) in the 9th to blow a 5-run lead against Cleveland. [I'm not quite sure how ERs work, because the team gave up 3 ER, but Macdougal gave up 7 (3 ER) and Jimmy Gobble gave up 4 (all earned) but they were after 3 errors should have gave them the 6th out of the inning.]

4. I watched the inning-by-inning Rochester Red Wings updates for yesterday's morning game. Fransisco Liriano looks pretty good. Is he starting Sept 1? If the Twins are totally out of it by Sept, maybe we should send some of our guys like Bartlett back down and let the Redwings go on a title run. They're only a half-game out of first. Oh, and we'd better call Rivas back up. He's quite the rally-killer in AAA too, but yesterday he only came up during rallies in which the RedWings had already scored.

Back

I wasn't sure if my absense made a difference or not. Went 1-3 against Oakland but 2-1 against Boston. But losing to Seattle by a walked-in run, made me feel like my absense wasn't helping at all. So I guess I'm back.

If Lohse gets lit up tonight, I'm gonna hate myself.

1. This Guy is in prison for being a terrorist, extradition, whatever. I don't know if his alleged crimes were recently committed, but if I were his defense, I would use tape of his work in centerfield for the Red Sox as an alibi. Hopefully, the jury isn't made up of Yankees fans.

2. With the demotion/release of Pat Borders, the only catchers on Seattle's 25-man roster are named "Yorvit" and "Wiklenman" (known as "Wiki"). I doubt that kind of thing is quantifiable, but if it were, that's got to be a record.

2a. Still looking for a name for my PTBNL. "Wiki Abiorix R"? "Runelvys Yorvit R"? Nope, still looking...

3. Speaking of names, "Rodriguez" must be the most blessed surname in all of baseball: Alex, Francisco, Ivan, Felix, Luis, John. And as far as I know, none of these guys are related.

4. If I could rejigger lineups to get matches, I would see to it that Valerio De Los Santos (FLA) would get to start against Victor Santos, and then have Jorge De La Rosa relieve Santos.

5. Yay for Dustan! In the day game of yesterday's doubleheader, he had an awesome catch in the 11th and won the game with a walk-off 2-out HR in the 12th. Look at his season line: .214/.269/.489. He's not hitting frequently, but averaging 2.3 bases per hit. If he wasn't striking out 35% of the time, he'd be damned good. Before this year, he was striking out only 26% of the time. (Shoot, I just realized those might be Coors-influenced numbers. Yep. Home .242/.305/.611, Away: .184/.220/.356 in similar numbers of ABs. His strikeouts are close to equally bad both home and away.)

6. Note: less posting this week, my 5th anniversary is Thursday and I'm going out of town.

Gone.

As I said in the previous post, I am a former blogger as of my posting of this post. Should things not turn around, I will know that the whole damned things was not my fault and I will come back. Here are my measurements:

Twins Record: 54-50
AL Central: 14.5 gb CWS, percentage points above CLE, who is 0.0 games behind us.
AL Wild Card: 4.0 gb OAK, 2.5 gb NYY, 0.0 ga CLE, 1.0 ga TEX, 1.0 ga TOR.

I will not return if our standing improves by more than 1.5 games in the division or 0.5 games in the WC, unless I determine that "We did real good" anyways.

Bye all, it's been fun.

Who to root for?

1. With all the suck that this team has been producing, we're still only 4 out with 10 games left against the WC leader. Thank you every other team for having your own periods of suck also. Is there a possibility this team could turn it around and make up the difference? I doubt it. I don't feel it, but we've got some players that if they ever figure out what they did at one point in the last two years, we could at least be fun. How about a WC run even if we just miss it in the last weekend rather than in the first week of August?

2. When did this season fall apart? June 10, the first game against the Dodgers, the first of our three lost series against the NL West. Anything else happen on June 10? That's right, the whole damned thing is my fault. This series agains the A's is important, so I will stop posting today, August 1, at 11:00 am. If the Twins keep losing through the 7th, I'll come back, but if the Twins start winning in my absense, I'll go away until they aren't playing meaningful games anymore. I'll still post comments on others sites, though.

Baseball Gods Note: amr is no longer a blogger but a former blogger as of 11:00 am CST on August 1, 2005. You can let the Twins be good again.

3. Say the Twins do continue the crashing and burning, who do I root for? BOS and NYY is like rooting for Goliath over David. CWS is like rooting for the guy who stole your girl to have a long happy life with her. OAK or ANA (excuse me, LAA) or STL? Yawn. Anyone in the NL West? No, they suck and they started the Twins' reeling. Which leaves me with: ATL, WAS, FLA, and HOU. I'm thinking ATL because I kindof like them and I can see most of their games on TV and they're who I wish the Twins were (35 consecutive titles, not including the strike year, but including 15 "rebuilding" years, including 2004 and 2005). WAS is also a leading candidate just because of Frank Robinson's "choking" gesture when Luis Rivas hit that foul "HR" in the olympic dome in 2004. I loved him from that point on.