Gary Gaetti

Aaron Gleeman reposted his Twin's rankings on Gaetti so I decided to write about him today also.

I always loved Gaetti and his '88 card in Pursue the Pennant was awseome except for the fact that he was injury prone.

Like most Twins, his '88 season was actually better than his '87 season.

I don't want to blame it on religion, but there was talk of religion taking away his focus from baseball. Which is fine with me, I am not judging.

After he was hurt in '88 he found god during rehab and fell out of Hrbek's clique and into Gagne's "clique" and he became a born again christian.

Again I am not judging, I think it is perfectly fine and exceptable to find god.
In fact, it might have been a good thing for his career. He probably wouldn't have lasted as long if he would have kept drinking and smoking.

My only regret for him is that he and Hrbek grew apart. Up intil the injury they had been inseparable.

I rememeber the All Star game (I think it was '88) where Gaetti played and wrote T.Rex on his hand in honor of Hrbek and showed it to the camera as he was introduced.

T. Rex was Hrbie's wrestling name.

They were a cute couple.

I told you so

Baker has done it again. He pitched a great game, shutting out the powerful Cleveland Indians for 8 innings.

Like many young pitchers he has been inconsistent. He has hade a few bad starts but he has had many good and some great starts. His ERA is abaout average. So he isn't a star but as he pitches more I believe he will just get better and be a very big part of the Twin's future success.

His Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) is 3.84. So if he his defense was playing better he would be having an excellent season.

He will probably suffer from the long ball as time goes on, much like Santana. But if his strikeout to walk ratio improves from the already great ratio of 3.7:1, he will be a quallity pitcher for years to come.

I would say that the league should watch out for the Twins but I don't really think the league has to fear a team who has Tyner as a leadoff hitter. Or a team that has a manager who thinks Tyner is a leadoff hitter.

One positive is that Tyner is having the best walk rate and homerun rate of his career!!! He has already walked 11 times!!! He is only 4 walks away from his career high of 15 in 2001 which is the only season he played more than 100 games.

Catch up

I have been very busy the last few weeks but I will be back soon.