There's Something About Jose Mijares

Ugh.

Gravy can really add some volume. Way better than conditioner.

The combination of this post and the Something About Mary picture above is making it very difficult for me to not connect the dots and post some kind of highly sophomoric joke…

But this is a family site cmath, a FAMILY SITE.

My brother, CarterHayes (in the blogging world), is a Marine – final year inactive duty. He went on a tour of Iraq for eight months and when his squad returned, they walked through airport security with bayonets, M-16’s, ammunition, etc….yet, the security guards would not let one of his squad members board, because he had a nail clippers in his carry on.

Its crazy…Marines walking through the airport with M-16s and one gets stopped because of a stupid nail clippers? Hello, an M-16 can do a lot more damage than a nail clippers!

He’s all “F this, dudes, no Dome Dogs? What’s the rush?”

Is the guy who deals with housing issues.

And that’s part of the reason I’m excited to see him pitch this year. I want to see if he comes close to these kind of splits again, or if it is just a matter of the small sample. There’s a lot that goes into it.

but supposedly the Twins do have a good system with their different academys and even rookie-league ball to help out-of-the-country players learn to deal with such issues, as well as language and diet issues, etc…….

I admit I do poke fun at Mijares. But we don’t know all the details here. It’s not a big issue, we can cut the guy some slack.

need more seasoning in AAA. I am betting the Twins break camp with Condrey and Mijares in their bullpen. Mijares has too many good numbers that cannot be overlooked simply because he showed up a DAY late.

I’ll be simply shocked if the Twins go with guys like Slama and Delaney over a guys with some proven track record like Mijares. Mijares has been a good reliever, I don’t see any reason to sour on him…

I think you need to do a little more research. In his last 33.1 innings last season, from July 24 to the end of the season, he layed down a 2.70 ERA, holding hitters to a .205/.312/.274 line, striking out 29 in the process. He only gave up 3 homers in 51.2 innings last year.

Outside of an injury-riddled ’07 and a slow start in ’09, the guy has been a pretty good pitcher.

Where I might sort of agree with you is how Crain handles pressure. If you look at his splits—from 2009 or in his career—he doesn’t do as well in high-leverage situations. So it’s not that Crain “should have been traded four years ago” or doesn’t have upside, but I’d probably change how he was utilized.

Crain is a great guy to bring in at the start of the 6th or 7th inning—bases empty, and he can just do his business—good strikeout rates, good walk rates, generally a very good relief pitcher. But he’s not as effective pitching from the stretch.

We’re talking about today, not years gone by. Overweight at 25??? are you kidding me? He or any other Twin shouldn’t be overweight till they hit their 30’s.

from the business side, I would have traded him a year ago. Relief guys come and go, it’s hard to keep someone unless they produce everytime out. Look at the guys at Rochester ready to come up.

Cherry-picking Crain’s last three months makes sense in context – Crain was sent to AAA in June and apparently corrected some issues while he was there, because he was solid after he came back. It makes more sense to base our expectations on that part of the season when there is a material reason to believe that something changed at that point.

Also, “lousy and unreliable” is pretty harsh for a guy who put up around a 3.5 ERA in two of the three years you’re talking about (it’s probably accurate for 2007, if you count being injured as “unreliable”).

So, you know, the hope is he’s finally worked out the bugs following rotator cuff and labrum surgery.

I also referred to most of his career, thus this line: Outside of an injury-riddled ’07 and a slow start in ’09, the guy has been a pretty good pitcher.

He was lousy for three months, so what? It happens. And if by “generally lousy and unreliable the three years prior” you mean “he was bad in 2007”, then I agree.

I do think he’s probably overpaid for what he does, and because of that I’m pretty sure he’ll become a free agent after this year when he’s no longer under team control. But you’re definitely generalizing Crain’s career for the negative when, in reality, it hasn’t been that horrible.

He was a dominant set-up guy who hurt his shoulder and tried to pitch through it, which hurt his numbers in 07. When he finally went under the knife, they found a lot more problems than they expected. Still, he came back in 08 and was mediocre. I was encouraged by that because most guys just plain suck the year after that surgery. But in the process of working through it, his mechanics got out of whack, so he also struggled last year. Then he was sent down to work on his mechanics and when he got back, he was pretty much the dominant reliever we had prior to the injury.

I expect him to be back to the dominant Jesse Crain in 2010. If not, we can trade him and call up Slama, Delaney, Gutierrez, or Burnett.