Monday Breakfast & Baseball: Notes, Notes, And More Notes

He’s taking shorter leads and still nearly getting picked off. He’s getting such poor jumps because he’s afraid to take off early. He made the most inexcusable mistake recently—getting picked off first on the fake-to-third-throw-to-first play. Announcers often say, “I don’t know why they do that, it never works.” Well, with D-Span on first it does. After that incident, they tried it again a few games later. He was nearly picked off again! Replays showed he was actually tagged before his hand got on the bag, but the ump called him safe.

His head is so screwed up with base running, he’s the fastest station-to-station ball player in the game.

Why is this an issue? Hello. We just returned from a road trip in which we scored a grand total of 13 runs in 7 games and nearly half of those runs in one game. We lost three of the four games by one run. You damn right it’s an issue, especially when the lead-off guy has a .336 OBP.

but his case is head related

Few more links:

The Daily Dish has a vote going as to who won the Young/Garza trade here

And fangraphs suggests that Ramirez should be worth about one win for the Sox in his final 100 ABs and says that was definitely worth $4million here

But I’m not worried about him. When he hits like he did last year, he can be one of the best lead-off men in the game.

He’s obviously got the talent to hit well.

As for his defense, I was happy he didn’t dive for that ball yesterday…conservative play to allow only 1 run to score rather than missing on the dive and allowing 2 right away.

I mean, WTF is Casilla doing there? Is his left arm holding back the right arm becuase he is afraid of destroying his teammates’ arms in a high five with his super-human strength? Or is that really a grimace of pain because his right arm is broken and he needs to use the left arm to prop it up for post game celebrations?

here’s a full on bj from a Seattle sportswriter…

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/stevekelley/2012758451_kelley30.html

I agree with you cmath. However, I think the manager might see a little bit more in and about a player when they come up. I certainly like all the guys you mentioned and thought when they were rookies (and young players) that they should play more. Interestingly, all four have become good players, so maybe the slow and patient approach is the best approach.

It will be interesting also to see what the Twins do at second and third for 2011. Will they trust Casilla and Valencia or will they bring back Hudson or another veteran infielder? They are letting Valencia play and until the little bruhaha in Seattle, Casilla had played extremely well and was getting much more playing time than he was early in the year.

My humble opinion is that while both of the young infielders have exceeded expectations this year, the Twins should have a reliable backup plan in the event that one or both of those guys fizzle next year.

I read that Span stat last night…ecccchhhh. Who, for the record, is our best base-stealer this year?

The Twins need his bat in the line-up because he can drive in runs but his defense is so bad it has cost Twins’ pitchers on a number of occasions. He is responsible for Pavano’s loss. The ball was hit three feet in front of him. It seems as if he is so scared that the ball is going to go over his head that he always takes two steps back before coming forward. He did the same thing on Longoria’s pop fly and cost Capps a save. Maybe he should play a bit shallower so that when he takes his two steps back he can still recover??? I dunno…it’s frustrating to say the least!