Ron Gardenhire's Dirty Secret

Last night's game started at 7 and was over shortly after 9, and that was largely because Matt Capps came in to throw a few pitches, give up a run and make sure that Dick and Bert got to do all their in game plugs.

Even though the Twins lost, and team manager/life-sized garden gnome/prototype for crusty managers everywhere Ron Gardenhire looked like he was having a furious internal debate about whether to take a couple

tylenol or a couple shots of tequila, he also looked pretty darned pleased to be leaving the park so quickly. Maybe it was because he got to go for drinks with rival manager/polar opposite/walking twitter feed Ozzie Guillen, maybe it was because he really wanted to watch Real Housewives of Orange County in his hotel room, or maybe it was because Mark Buehrle was pitching.

Mark Buehrle does the things that make Ron Gardenhire happy. He throws strikes (65% of all pitches). He pitches to contact (84% of all pitches, with batters stuck with a .293 average on balls in play). And he makes quality starts (65% of all his starts). This season the Twins staff was a little worse than Buehrle in all those categories (63% Strike Rate, 82% Contact rate, .304 BABIP, just 51% of all games are Quality Starts). Now...Gardy doesn't know or care about any of those stats...he focuses solely on the GSQ: Gardy Scrappiness Quotient. And whereas Buehrle (by virtue of his defense, endurance and beard) rates 94.8/100, current Twins pitchers earn a meagre 51.6/100.

At the end of the day, I can help but imagine Gardy sitting back watching the game, dreaming of the offseason when Mark Buehrle is a free agent, and Gardy can confess his deep and abiding admiration for him. And Buehrle admits that, deep down, he has always wanted to be a Twin. And he signs a fiscally sensible contract, and dons the red, blue and white, and anchors the Twins rotation and leads us to glory and through it all Gardy never has to drink away the sadness and the world is a bright and happy place again. But of course Buehrle wears the black and white, and all Gardy can do is fantasize. Fantasize about Buehrle.

Home Sour Home

So the Twins, our loyal boys in blue, are spending the next few days in Chicago, which must come as a relief after having to spend 11 whole days at home.

I'm not quite sure why, but the Twins sure didn't seem to enjoy their respite from the road. In the 9 games the Twins lost this past home stand they averaged 1.5 runs & 6.5 hits per game, that's clearly down from the season overall, where they've averaged 3.8 runs & 8.4 hits per game. But it's not all declines against the season average! In those same 9 games the pitchers went from averaging 9.5 hits & 4.4 runs per game to 11.8 hits & 6.1 runs per game. (Note: I tried to find a more Sabremetric-y stat as per my older brother's suggestion but I'm still a novice at that...suffice to say: "something, something, something, you'd be better off putting Larry, Curly and Moe at the bottom of the order than Tosoni, Tolbert and Butera")

But enough of this silly math stuff. Clearly the Twins have lost track of what makes playing in Minnesota so special. It's not the number of pretty girls who profess their undying love for Joe Mauer in sign and shirt form. Nor is it the giddy kids, seniors and drunk guys who always find something to cheer for even in the darkest days.

Perhaps it's because they're working, instead of watching tv during the games but perhaps they simply have missed this catchy jingle espousing the greatness of the Land of 10,000 Lakes:

So next time you're in town we encourage you guys to do the things advertised in this ad and more. Perhaps Brian Duensing needs to go camping, maybe Jason Kubel could take a kayak out on Lake of the Isles, maybe Ben Revere and Alex Burnett could start an emo/hip-hop fusion band (hemo?) or maybe our local renaissance man, Michael Cuddyer, should make time for a trip to the Minnesota Renaissance Festival.

Whatever the case guys, please come back ready to win some more games...it's a little tough to watch when you play like Joe Mauer sings. For now, just beat the White Sox and we'll all be happy.

(I'm sorry, that was mean and not constructive...but seriously Joe, I thought singing four part harmony was part of Minnesotan citizenship. Maybe you can slip some voice lessons into your offseason routine.)

What are we doing with the other 54?

If you're a baseball fan you're probably already familiar with two kinds of comments--the hyperbolic, and the cliche. If you want to see the hyperbolic just read a twitter feed with the "Twins" hashtag after yesterday's game and you'll see things like: "Season's over" and "Winning this series means nothing--we will get swept in Chicago", and more insults to Joe Mauer's manhood than there are lakes in this state.

While fans erupt in hyperbolic fury, players and coaches tend to rely on cliches to soothe the savage beasts and make things seem a little rosier. These are things we've all heard like "we gotta take them one day at a time", "they really battled their tails off out there", etc., etc., etc. These simple, familiar phrases that are at least partially true but are also so overused that eventually you ignore them all together lest your eyes start to bleed.

But cliches are part of baseball, and just because they're hackneyed doesn't mean they're wrong. Tom Kelly spouted one of my favorite cliches yesterday: "Every team's going to win 54 games, every team's going to lose 54 games, it's what you do with the other 54 that matters". Like all cliches it's partly true (in the past 50 years only four teams have lost fewer than 54 games, and 7 non-expansion teams have won fewer than 54), and since this year's Twins are neither as awesome as the '69 Baltimore Orioles nor as hapless as the '03 Detroit Tigers we can assume it will hold for our current season too. So I wondered, if I did the math could I see whether we should cling to the hope in that little cliche, or join the torch and pitchfork carriers?

So, let's look at the math in the Twins' record so far. Right now the Twins are 38-47. Of those 47 losses, 19 have been one-run losses; games where a different bounce a different call might have altered the play of the game enough to give us a win. Of course 18 of the wins have been one-run wins that might have gone the other way had an ump made a different decision. So let's say that these one-run games fall into the "What you do with the other 54" category.

Taking away the one run games the Twins are 20-28. Now we could put all those games in the "54 you're going to win/54 you're going to lose" categories, but that might be a little too simple (after all--some one-run games you're totally overwhelmed by a great pitcher, and some two or three run losses all pivot on a blown strike three call). But I think we can definitely put the blowouts (wins/losses of 5 runs or more) in these categories. The Twins have gone 10-16 in blow-outs, giving up 63 more runs than they score. So we've definitely got the "losing the 54 games you're supposed to lose" thing down; hopefully we'll figure out the other thing in the second half.

Take away the blowouts and the toss-ups and we have just 22 games left. The Twins are a nail-biting 10-12 in those games. For the sake of my argument (and considering that we gave up 12 more runs than we scored) let's say 7 of those games we won like we should have, and 8 we lost like we ought (I might be wrong...but how would anyone know?). The 7 games that could have gone either way seem to have broken 3-4 against us.

Tally it all up and we have cheered for 17 of the games we were bound to win; we've fallen in 24 of the games we were doomed to lose; and in the final 54? We've gone 21 and 23--leaving just 10 toss up games left. If we balance everything out from here on in, winning 37 that we're supposed to, losing 30 we're supposed to we'll be at 75-77.

If we can win our 10 remaining toss-up games will get to 85-77, not our best record, not a guaranteed play-off berth, but definitely a positive outcome for a team that floundered for the first two months. Maybe it's foolish to break the wins and losses into a silly cliche. Maybe I'm pulling these numbers out of my butt [okay, not maybe...definitely] but when I break down the numbers in this little corner of the blogosphere, there's no reason to turn off the games or bury the team just yet.

Hyperbole might be more fun to write than cliche; but honestly, Tom Kelly is probably right "you're going to win 54, you're going to lose 54, it's what you do with the 54 that matters".