He is overpaid, but given that he is on the team now, he fills a void as a 4th OF who can play some CF, and offers some pop off the bench or against lefties.

He’s a young, platoon DH - no one’s goal when they are playing in high school - whose OBP this year is helped by some bloop hits. He’s been worse than his numbers – one nice game a month ago distorts a modest season. He was never more than adequate in the field even before he got hurt. The Twins have taken the injury and his limitations into account and brought him along at a pace that has been beneficial to him, and it looked like they might be rewarded given his showing after last year’s All-Star break. But his OPS is a steady, downward line this season. He’s going to have to show more against off-speed stuff, and maybe he’s finally mature enough to adjust. We will see. He seems to get a fire under his butt at 0-1, for instance, but if a pitcher can get past that he’s going to win the battle almost always because the pitcher will give Kubel junk. He’s a real odd guy who makes an argument for clutch hitting. This year, he has come through in some clutch situations, but he’s not going to start a rally for you and seems like he can’t even get interested in batting in most other game situations. That probably sounds good to novice fans, but it’s not. You see that and wonder if he just doesn’t care much of the time.

...to earn his salary. And he’s not going to be as good as Ortiz, either. But all of the complaints about Kubel not seeming motivated enough seem rather lame to me. We heard the same stuff about Morneau when he was in a funk back in 2005. You may question Kubel’s desire, but I question your ability to measure Kubel’s desire.

And I, for one, don’t think Kubel is anything special—I just think he can be a league average hitter, maybe slightly better, but he can do it cheaply for the next 2-3 years and be the best DH option the Twins have had in quite some time. He’s going to have slumps lik e he did in April, but I’m not worried any more about Kubel’s demeanor than I am worried about all of Joe Nathan’s nervous tics when he’s on the mound in the 9th.

Way to catch me on that. And that was exactly the next comment I was going to make. You read me just like you can read ballplayers.

I wonder, you seem to be pretty good at judging a player’s desire. Could you maybe update us weekly on the desire levels of all the players on the team? Sort of a “whites of their eyes” index? I would especially like to know which players have the most fire under their butt on 2-2 counts vs. left-handed pitching, and who leads the league in butt-fire, anyway? And which guys are the least interested in starting a rally when the game score difference is more than three runs?

And when Kubel was hitting great at the end of last season, how was his fire then? Totally stoked? Pitchers were probably just throwing him all fastballs, since major league pitchers do that a lot. Or maybe he just worked that magical 0-1 count every time he stepped to the plate.

My point, which I have now tried to make without comparing Kubel to anyone else, so as not to offend your delicate sensibilities, is that we hear this kind of crap about players all the time, but mostly it has jack and squat to do with how they perform on the field in the future. It’s not that a player’s mood or emotions can’t affect his play, though, it’s that you can’t judge his emotions from where you’re sitting, and for that matter, most of the time people let a player’s results dictate their impression of his emotions.

So when Kubel’s hitting, no one complains about his attitude or effort. And when he’s not hitting, I hear that he’s disinterested and lazy. But most of the time, slumps are just slumps, and it’s not about the attitude, the effort, or the interest level-it’s just that hitters don’t come neatly packaged with .28 hits per at-bat, and there are bound to be ups and downs-even ups and downs that happen for no good reason at all.

[And for the record, should the record matter at all, last year when the score margin was 4 runs or more, Kubel hit .312/.341/.584. This year, with the score margin 4 runs or more, Kubel has hit just .133/.133/.133. So is it really that he just stopped caring about hitting in those situations, or that he’s had 15 at-bats in those situations so far this year and you can’t figure out anything about a player over 15 at-bats?]