Its over

The Twins were swept in a 3 game series at home against Detroit. Detroit is a good team and they were all 1 run games so if the Twins would have had a little luck they could have easily been the sweeper rather than the sweepee.

Wait, they did have a little luck, Leyland still insists to use the very below average Todd Jones as his closer. I liked the Twins chances to come back in every one of those games. He is not a good closer, he allows way too many baserunners and has way too high of an ERA.

It would be like using Rincon as the Twins closer!!!

It shouldn't have been difficult to come back on Det with their best too relievers on the DL. What a choke-fest. Did somebody tell them that this was the playoffs?

Dick gets it wrong again.

The Twins completed a very good sweep of the Oakland A’s. They pitched well and hit OK. Basically, everyone did pitch pretty well. Did they pitch well or are the A’s just that bad offensively? Probably both.

Speak of the A’s bad offense did you hear Dick talk about the 3 worst offenses in the league on Friday night. It was another example of him not understanding what the important elements at scoring runs.

He went on and on about Texas, Chicago and Oakland being the worst offenses in the league.

That made me curious, were they really? Knowing Dick I figured he did not really mean the worst offense but he probably meant the worst hitting team ranked by batting average. I was right.

Sometimes the worst hitting teams are indeed the worst at scoring runs, but not always. As most of us know, it takes more than batting average to score runs. In fact, OBP and SLG are much integral than AVG at determining the amount of runs scored.

So how bad are the bottom three teams that Dick was talking about? Well Texas, Oakland and Chicago are indeed the worst hitting teams. But Texas is a much better team at scoring runs than the other two teams. They rank 7th in the league at runs scored but are in a virtual tie with four other teams for 4th in runs scored.

Chicago and Texas play in hitters parks while Oakland plays in a pitchers park. So Chicago is indeed the worst offensive team in the league

DH answer?

The Twins called up Garrett Jones again and started him at DH. But he is not the answer at DH. His minor league numbers show that he does not have a very high OBP. And so far this season at AAA it is .317.

With that being said he is still a better choice at DH than Tyner or Ford. He has some homerun potential at least.

Its time for Terry Ryan to decide if he wants to make a run at the playoffs or not. Shit or get off the pot!!! As they are now, the Twins are not good enough to make the playoffs. The rotation is young but decent and they have some quality hitters but they have some huge holes to fill at third and at DH.

Finding a DH should not be that hard. Either you want to make run this year or wait until next year. But next year Torii probably won't be with the Twins so there will be 1 more hole to fill in the lineup. So this is the season to make the run. Trade a young pitcher and get a quality DH and third baseman here.

If not trade Torii for some decent prospects and give up on the season. They are going no where with the lineup as it is now.

Today's matchup Blanton vs Santana. I have the Twins as the 69% favorites.

The Twins need another hitter. They need either a 3B or LF/DH. Those are by far their weakest positions. I think Kubel will eventually be a decent leftfielder so 3B and DH are the biggest need.

There has been a lot of talk of trading for Wiggington. I am not a big fan. He does have some pop in his bat, he has 13 homeruns so far, but his OBP isn’t much higher than the current Twin’s 3B. His numbers are .268/.316/.439, with an OPS of .755. And he creates 4.59 runs per game. And the worst thing about him is his very dramatic platoon splits.

His OPS vs lefties is .976 and it is .300 points less vs righties. He creates 3.68 R/G vs righties and 7.25 vs lefties. There is no bigger upside for Ty. This is his average season and he is too old to all of a sudden make a dramatic improvement.

I don’t see this as much of a step up from Punto. Ty obviously has much more power but not so much that he is worth trading a prospect for.

Punto has better defense and will most likely improve at the plate over the rest of the season. Punto has a Zone Rating of .722, Ty’s is a dismal .636.

While Punto is not the answer at third Wiggington does not solve the problems the Twins have at that position. Trading for him would be a knee jerk reaction to a poor situation.

The best bet would be to somehow get Adam Dunn on the Twins. But according to Jim Souhan this morning, Dunn is overrated. Yeah, who wants a player with a high OBP and SLG? The Twins really need a truly overrated 3B.

Dramatic Chipmunk

You need sound to really appreciat this one.