#-1: Twins (Last Week: -1). The big news of the week came Sunday and Monday, when the club announced they had signed what probably was the best remaining free agent in Major League Baseball, slugger Kendrys Morales, for the rest of the season.
How did the Twinks do it, especially when other teams such as the Yankees, Texas, Milwaukee, and the team that Morales was with last year, Seattle, were in hot pursuit of him as well, all places that seemingly are better than Minnesota? I've been scouring all over cyberspace for the answer, and it seems to have stumped all the baseball scribes as well.
Morales will immediately be inserted into the heart of the lineup, probably playing Designated Hitter. He could not fare any worse than the players that had been DH'ing: Chris Colabello, who started off the season with a fantastic April but has since been demoted to AAA; Josh Willingham, who started off the season on the disable list and has been lukewarm since rejoining the team; and Jason Kubel, who was brought back to the team he broke into the majors with but has been so awful that he was the person they cut loose in order to sign Morales, and who may be one of those guys who starts holding onto the dream of baseball by playing in an independent league.
So far, not a complete disaster: Since he was inserted into the lineup starting Monday's game in Toronto, he has one run, three hits, a walk and two strikeouts. (They lost to the Blue Jays on Monday but shut them out -- thanks to the outing by oft-maligned Kevin Correia?! -- Tuesday.) That might be good enough to flip for some minor players come the trade deadline, but I think for the Twins to be playoff contenders (which they are on the fringes of right now), they need Morales, who was a Poor Bastard in June of 2010 for missing the rest of the 2010 season after breaking his leg while jumping onto home plate to celebrate his game-ending grand slam, to do more.
Meanwhile, the squad went through a second straight 3-4 screening week. They split the two games against Milwaukee played at Target Field, they lost two-of-three over the weekend to Houston, probably the only team that was worse than the Twinks over the past three seasons but whose fortunes may have exceeded those of the Twinks with the rapid promotion and production of their blue-chippers such as George Springer and Jon Singleton. After playing the rubber match against the B. Jays this (Wednesday) afternoon), they'll have all day Thursday to travel from Toronto to Detroit, where they'll start a three-game series against the Tigers on Friday. They will finish their road trip with a trio in Boston starting Monday.
Oh yeah -- the rotation has regressed somewhat after starting out mediocre. Correia has been a disaster, even with his sterling performance against Toronto Tuesday night. Ricky Nolasco has barely been above average, Kyle Gibson is still wending his way through the majors, and Samuel Deduno has been shelled recently. Only Phil Hughes has been as good as advertised. The other storyline on this organization is the lingering questions over Joe Mauer's hitting. Seriously, what the hell is wrong with him? Brian Dozier might be the best player in the lineup after hitting his 16th home run on Tuesday. Is his conversion from Catcher to First Base to blame? Mauer is hitting around .260 right now, and his struggles have many worried that he'll never come around this season.
#-2: Timberwolves (Last Week: -2). The news with the Woofie Dogs is that Flip Saunders will take on not only his duties as team President (and part-Owner, a role I did not know he had until recently) but also that of Head Coach. It'll be the second time he's coached this team. His first tenure coincides with the best years in Timberwolves history, ending unceremoniously when former good friend Kevin McHale fired him midway through the season after the T-Wolves made the Western Conference Finals.
He may bring the franchise back to greatness. Then again, I thought Rick Adelman was going to be that guy. But the thing that irks many people is that the coaching search went on for many weeks and had a lot of candidates -- Dave Joerger, Vinny Del Negro, Sam Mitchell, George Karl. But then, all of a sudden, the search, headed up by Saunders himself, stopped, apparently while Saunders was looking at a mirror, where he suddenly went, "Ah, fuck it, why don't I just do it?"
A lot of people, including the Common Man, thinks that was all bullshit -- that the new HC of the Woofs was always going to be Saunders, and that they misled the public and the remaining Wolves fans into believing the front office was doing its due diligence when they knew what they were doing without telling us. Jury's out on whether Saunders can turn around the fortunes of this team on the sideline, but he and the rest of the braintrust could use a lot more transparency.
But hey, look on the bright side: At least there hasn't been any Kevin Love sightings in cities other than the Twin Cities, trolling the fanbase and sticking the fact that he's leaving as soon as he can in our eyes.
No comments:
Post a Comment