Streak due to small-ball?
I just read the article by Jason Williams in the Pioneer Press. Here is the headline "Small-ball style works". The article is claiming that the Twins have just won 7 games in a row to get to .500 by using the tried and true ways of small-ball.
Where does he get this? He focused on yesterday’s game by looking at the fact that Castillo got an infield single and Punto laid down a bunt that was misplayed for an error as evidence that the Twins are playing small-ball.
Yes Jason, they scored 8 runs in the last 3 innings playing small-ball. Let’s see Hunter tied it up with a homerun. Then the next inning the really big hit was a base loaded double by Morneau. Is that small-ball?
The article hints that the Twins are on this streak because they are playing small-ball. This couldn’t be further from the truth. What is small ball? It is basically stealing bases and bunting. So I looked over the past week’s stats to see if it really was small ball winning the last 7 games. It wasn’t. In fact, small-ball is costing us runs. In the last 7 days we have 3 sacrifices, 2 stolen bases and 4 caught stealing. So we have lost 4 base-runners due to small-ball this week. With the sacrifices, small ball has cost us a total of 7 outs. Nice work.
In fact, we have been playing the opposite of small-ball. We have hit 9 homeruns and have an OBP of .357 in the last week. That is not small ball. That is how baseball should be played, get on base and hit a homerun.
Never, in the article, does it mention the real reason the Twins have won 7 in a row, pitching. The ERA for the last week is 1.74, leading the league in that time.
Do some research before you write an article for a paper. I did 5 minutes of research and figured out how wrong Jason’s article is.
posted by Todd @ 7:08 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
I was surfing the net and came across this unvisited site and thought I would pop in. I see that someone is bashing the writer on an article.. If you would have done your homework you would see that it is not SMALL-BALL or HOMERUNS that are helping the twins win.. It is Gemini coming into Taurus in the early cycle of the full moon, when translated [Gemini = Twins, Taurus = Bull, Moon = Butt ], means the twins are full of B.S.
GO SOX!!
If its BS that is helping the Twins win we should have a dynasty.
Garenfire is full of BS!!!!
Exactly, it's all about the pitching... hopefully guys like Silva and Radke can get on track and get back to their form from last year.
He wrote that article a week ago now and it still irritates me to no end. And the kicker to it is that Jayson said it was a combination of youthful small-ball, demonstrated by three old farts that played that 'small-ball' over the course of 3 total combined at bats. Could we get him to admit that he didn't actually watch the game? Why do some of these beat writers come off as comeplete idjits, you'd think if you watched and reported on the game daily that you would somehow HAVE to absorb something!
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