Is Korecky a starter?

Looks like it’s Liriano on his way down. Korecky probably got on a plane last last night of this morning, I’m not sure if he’ll be available for tonight’s game.

I’m putting together another pitch selection post this weekend, it’ll be intriguing to see how the data turns out on a lot of these guys-particularly Mauer. Hopefully this is just a slow start, and he’s probably being pitched around a little bit-but even if that’s the case, then he should be able to coax a few more walks. He’s hitting half as many line drives, a lot more ground balls, and his walk rates have been cut in half. The strikeouts are down too, but they were never going to be high to begin with.

You’re right, Mauer deserves as much blame as anyone right now.

Please don’t take a comment out of context from another thread and paste a portion of it here. What I said was essentially that Mauer got a free pass on Tuesday and Wednesday when he rolled over eight outside pitches for week grounders to second, four of them on the first pitch of the at bat. Finally, in the ninth on Wednesday he took one the other way for a double. But all the scrutiny was on Gomez when Mauer was also struggling. Gomez actually saw more pitches than Mauer, one was 0-10, the other was 1-10.

The point of saying that Mauer is one of the greatest players in Twins history (which I do believe) is even he struggles at times. But for some reason Gomez is a lightening rod for scrutiny every time he starts to struggle. Why do we expect him not to struggle and let the stars pass muster when they struggle? Everybody struggles in this game. Even the best guys fail two thirds of the time.

The only thing I can think of is, when Gomez struggles, he looks really ugly doing it. I used to have a vendetta against Greg Gagne because, when he was in a slump, he couldn’t make contact with the ball to save his life. I remember a 2-69 slump in which his two hits were bunt singles. But gradually over the years, he grew on me. He was very steady in the field, and he could carry the team when he got hot. I now consider him to have the best career of any shortstop in Twins history. (Zoillo was the best, but his career was short.)

Another guy who looked really ugly when he struggled was Torii Hunter. It got so bad one year that they had to send him down. But he came back strong and put up a pretty good career here. What bugs me is people focus on Gomez’s struggles and draw conclusions like, “he can’t hit” or “he’s an athlete, not a baseball player”. Then when he actually does something good, like homer on the sixth pitch of a lead-off at bat, one blogger said “It was bound to happen, someone was bound to throw a pitch in Gomez’s swing.”

Give the kid a break. He’ll be fine if everyone stops jumping to conclusions every time the kid struggles.

The Rochester papers are announcing that Bobby Korecky has been called up. The Twins only need four starters for the next week plus. So they’ll have an extra arm for the bullpen until they need another starter. Then it seems like Slowey would be next in line for a rotation spot. When that happens, it’ll be between Korecky and Bass to go down. But Bass is out of options, so I would say Korecky is up for a 10-day cup of coffee.