The Blame Game

Thank you.

Not an injury or any real pain, but like a little cut on his lip or something. Like the kind you get in the winter from chapped lips, then you eat something spicy like chili or pizza with crushed red peppers on it, and it stings, but it stings in a way it feels kind of good. So every now and then you find yourself pressing it a little with you tongue, or gently biting it, just so you can get that sensation ‘cuz you kind of like that feeling, y’know? Then one day you wake up and it’s gone and you say you’re glad but really you kind of miss that little cut on your lip.

I’m also sick of fans complaining about Wilson Ramos, or JJ Hardy, or any trade that didn’t go our way. Beating those trades to death is as frustrating as the trades themselves. Enough already. It’s over. We know.

It’s like selling a stock at $40 and watching it go to $50. You can sit there and count the money you would have made, or you can learn from your decision and move on. Complaining about it has the same effect as beating your head against a brick wall: it won’t change the past and it makes your head hurt.

That is all.

I thought the Twins were trying to come in last so we can get a high draft pick each round in next year’s draft to stockpile our farm system…. I just figured that win streak was just so the team could say “see, we’re not tanking it.”

See, at least in this scenario in my head the Twins are wildly successful.

The FO made bad choices that bit them in the ass. Yet fans had expectations.
Then the team stunk and injuries highlighted those bad choices so fans bitched. Thats what fans do to a team that was expected to win. The alternative is apathy.

If the Twins were the perinial losers of the 90’s fans would expect this and just be glad they had a pro team to follow. But this is a team that won 94 games last year and its right for fans to bitch and moan.
That shows they give a damn and expect a certian brand of baseball. True folks go over the top but that is what happens in the age of the faceless internet.

It’s frustrating enough to see hear (live in DesMoines, not on TV down here, have to listen to them on radio…..probably a good thing, but still pisses me off) the Twins play like this, but it’s compounded with the debbie downers out there. There’s a lot that we can complain about, but it’s pretty simple this year: The Twins aren’t that good. With the new stadium we all have the hopes of having the Twins play in the World Series outdoors, at HOME. But c’mon peeps, this is getting a little out of hand. Any true Twins fan should have known how large the uphill climb was this year. And that was before Mauer, Jimmy, Kubes, and the host of others had their injury issues. Personally, I like to keep the faith. No expectations. Take what we can get. Maybe make another run to close out this season. Let’s be honest, if we can get/keep the distance down to about 6 or 7 games back, with how pathetic the rest of this division is, we got a shot.. We need what has won us our division crowns in the past: limited errors, good baserunning, timely hits, and solid pitching. We just need to improve a little bit in each category. If we do that, we’ll start blowing teams out 3-2.

And, considering that the player/staff salaries are hugely bolstered by public money, I think some of that anger and criticism is valid.

Much of the Mauer criticism, however, comes from media “experts” (hello, Souhan) saying their insider knowledge gives us insight as to Mauer’s being a lazy self-obsessed prick. This might be true. It might not. Since we don’t have access to the same information, we don’t know for sure.

If Mauer’s a prick, it’s good information to know. It would affect how much emotion we put into the team. But if Souhan et. al. are just assuming Mauer to be a prick, based on his lack of interaction with them, that doesn’t tell us much. (Ted Williams didn’t like sportswriters.)

I don’t buy into the “you don’t own the team, you can’t get angry about how it’s run” argument. We don’t own it, but we pay taxes that go into its cash register. We are justified in voicing our negative opinions.

I do agree that the personal attacks need to be backed up by hard evidence. Saying Mauer’s contract was too high based on predicted future production, or saying it was a good signing, are valid opinions. Saying Mauer’s a soft and lazy prick needs some proof to back it up, not just guesses as to the nature of his character because he’s had a bad season so far. I think Bill Smith is in over his head as GM, but I have nothing against him personally, and I think at worst he should be demoted back to his old job.

On the other hand, if Mauer started slapping little kids around, would those personal attacks be unjustified? No, they wouldn’t. He’s not likely to do that, which is what makes the anti-Mauer vitriol seem like it comes from out of nowhere (or sportswriters’ needs to create controversy to sell papers in a so-far dull season.)

In short, I don’t think fans are wrong to feel frustrated. And some of that frustration can probably be deservedly aimed at specific front-office decisions and certain players (Delmon seems to not be a max-effort guy.) But to wholesale demonize people is mad and wrong (Delmon might be the greatest person ever outside of his lackadaisical fielding effort, I don’t know.)

This tendency towards simplifying everything is out there, and it’s something this technology makes easier to do. Going forward, we’’ll have to deal with that.

Our expectations are high because of that. ( Even SI picked the Twins to win big this season) The spate of unfortunate injuries has frustrated fans and players alike. No one can control or predict injuries. The team has done well considering the number of AAA players on the roster every day, but people who have purchased tickets don’t receive a discount even though the product they are getting isn’t what they initially paid for. Fans feel they are being cheated a bit maybe.

One of the great things about being a sports fan is knowing your team and rooting for them. Do any of us know anything about Rene Tosoni? I wouldn’t recognize him if he sat next to me. We’re hesitant to take the time to learn about these guys because they’re just temporary…until our guys come back.

Granted, some people are not happy unless they are complaining or make themselves feel bigger by tearing others down, and these folks will gripe no matter what. But even true fans are angry. I think a lot of frustration might have been alleviated if there had been better communication from the FO and Gardy. Mauer was just gone for all that time and we never heard from him or got any regular updates. Maybe they thought they were protecting him but they really did him a disservice by keeping quiet. His private life is his own, but his status as a Twins player is in a sense, our business. When the message we get from the FO is silence, then the rumor mills fill the vacuum. We’re fans. We care about our guys. Inquiring minds want to know.

One other thing that makes it easier to criticize the front office is the lack of players the Twins system has produced lately. Back in the 90s and early 2000s, it seems like the Twins had a rookie of the year or ROY candidate about every year or every other year.

Now, we’ve gone about 3 or 4 years or longer without a true breakthrough guy coming up through the system (maybe Span, but he hasn’t shown to be as good as Torii was). So, the front office has to get more creative and spend more money. More money leads to increased expectations, and when you have a bad half-season (like now) that leads to unhappiness.

I would think more people would just sit back in the “beautiful Target Field” environs and just chalk this year up to bad health. And Souhan needs to move to New York or somewhere where he is expected to stir the pot.