Jesse Crain is garbage

Jesse Crain is garbage.

Jesse Crain is garbage.

Jesse Crain is garbage.

Jesse Crain is garbage.

Jesse Crain is garbage.

Jesse Crain is garbage.

Jesse Crain is garbage.

Just wanted to make sure Google got that.

Nothing Says Yankees v. Red Sox Like...

Sidney Ponson v. Paul Byrd.

What, it was too late to get Ramon Ortiz off waivers? Someone made a claim on Livan Hernandez? The Mariners wanted too much for Carlos Silva?

Bottom of the 14th...

Orioles lead by one. Two on, two out.

Griffey coming up.

Pop quiz, baseball fans! What should you do with Griffey here?

1. Pitch to him, because he is a pathetic shell of his former self who will undoubtedly hit a dribbler back to the mound.
2. Intentionally walk him, because you forgot it is 2008 and not 1993.

They got out of it, but still. That has to be the stupidest thing I've seen all season, and I've seen an awful lot of Punto.

Double Your Fun

I'm sorry for the double, but Eddie is back and I think we should celebrate. Post your favorite Eddie G. moments if you so desire.

My favorite was the time against Oakland that he entered the 9th leading 5-1, gave up 3 runs, and we won 5-4. I don't know what stat they use for that kind of heart-stopping performance... but it certainly isn't a "save". Maybe a "Thank the fuck christ it's over".

Eddie had a lot of those.

He can't be any worse than Crain. Or Guerrier.

Oh my . . .

He has a gray beard now. He is a Twin again. I credit "The Brass" for addressing a need, however, they traded away some guy with the last name Hamburger. So, there is less hamburger in the Twins organization right now. Not good.

How to beat the Twins

Have the Twins starting pitcher throw about 20 pitches per inning.

Q: How will we score for the first 5 innings?

A: I wouldn't worry about that.

Live Diary of Today's White Sox Game

The announcers make reference to the White Sox being the "darlings" of the American League. I don't... I don't know what to say about that. Other than that I don't look at Jim Thome's ludicrously large head and face and think "darling".

A Radio Shack ad. Always reminds me of this:

Radio Shack

Quick first inning for the Rays, as they prefer to strike out more than to hit the ball. I don't know who 7 of these guys are, and if they keep swinging at slop like that, it will be a short honeymoon.

Little League world series is Hawai'i v. Louisiana. The pitcher for Hawai'i is almost 2 bills. I thought he was the DH. He looks like mini-Prince Fielder.

Every single thing about the White Sox is annoying. Including the D-Bag they have read their starting line ups. Good luck against Kazmir today, failures.

Speaking of, Kaz brings it high and tight to Orlando Cabrera, hitting the handle of the bat in his hands. I love seeing these in slow mo. You can actually watch Cabrera's bladder loosen up as the ball runs in towards his face.

OC hits a grounder to the second baseman, who throws to first. Which means 3 players who will be out of MLB in 4 years are involved in that play.

Swisher pops out. In related news, the sun rose this morning.

Carlos Quentin, another guy who stand in the box like he's sitting on the Tilt O Whirl, steps in. I think I saw this guy last night at Williams playing Golden Tee 2005 Tournament Edition.

Jim Thome - the announcers begin with the typical hall of fame talk, debating back and forth, and then he strikes out on a pitch that hits the plate. Can a man go to the hall of fame if he is physically incapable of hitting anything other than hanging curve balls for home runs?

Jermaine Dye launches a bomb for a 1-0 lead. Ramirez follows that up with a triple, which is nice, because it's going to hurt that much more when the bullpen pisses this one away.

Vazquez loses the no-hitter, then gives up two more hits because he's really not that good of a pitcher.

Dye bombs another one. Threat level in the White Sox bullpen right now: Orange.

And there goes Vazquez, slapping the ball in his hand in frustration. Is he frustrated at this game, or his life?

The wheels. They're awfully wobbly...

8th inning. Dribbler through the infield, they're loaded, and the dark clouds are falling. Mini-Ichiro to the plate.

Aaaaaaaaaaand it's a walk. Matt Thornton is the best you guys could do here? Seriously? The path to the central championship has never looked clearer.

BJ Upton to the plate. If he makes contact, we'll have to see if he runs or just jogs to first base.

Orlando Cabrera pulls a "White Sox" move and chooses to not catch the baseball that was hit right to him. We're tied, and there's still nobody out. Talk about failing on an epic scale.

Oh my. Oh my dear.

It's a 4 run inning right now. Pena lines one to right, Vazquez heads to the locker room, presumably to smash something (hopefully it's his head) and it's time to lower the boom.

Ozzie on to make a pitching change (what, you got Tony Fiore in there) as the rain starts to drop. This has been such a typical White Sox game, I'm just waiting for the three run hogg here to seal the deal.

The White Sox can't even execute a run-down properly. They take so long to catch BJ Upton that it leaves runners on second and third. Toby Hall is immensely overweight.

The Rays go down in the 9th, and Fox reminds us that Jermaine Dye is due up in the bottom of the inning. Is that supposed to be scary? They're forgetting... now the at bats actually MEAN something. I think Old Man Dye will find a way to pop this one up.

-----

Done.

Jim Thome up next. Here comes a strikeout.

Done.

And now for Griffey. Hmmm, let's go with "weak grounder".

Not quite. He fouls out, like Dye before him. God, when the game is on the line, I will bet against the White Sox every single time.

And that does it. The failure is complete, in front of a national audience. Anyone who thinks the Sox are going to be able to sustain success going forward needs to take a long look at the faces of this team.

Some Numbers For You, White Sox

Baker - 3.74
Blackburn - 3.71
Slowey - 3.78
Perkins - 3.90

So, I guess, technically, that makes Liriano the... weak link? Hmm.

Let's see how that plays out.

Oooooooooold Grey Beard, he aaaaaaaaaaaaaaain't what he used to be!

Brian Bass was sent down

Ok. Good start. I have a list of guys I would *also* like to be sent down:

1. Boof Bonser
2. Jesse Crain
3. Matt Guerrier
4. Craig Breslow
5. Dennys Reyes

Is that possible? Can we make it through the rest of the season with just Nathan?

A Question for Joe Nathan

Do you believe in giving up runs? Ever?

I'm Sorry, I Must Be Mistaken...

This man has a WHIP of .90? This man has an ERA of 1.19?

We can't get our bullpen to pitch one strike without it being fatter than a Moons Over My Hammy, and the Rays pick up THIS MAN off our trash heap, and he leads them to a division championship?

I'm sorry. I just don't get it. HIS NAME IS BALL FOUR.

Christ.

Twins Notes

Hey Bullpen:
Stop fucking up.


Hey Seattle:
Ouch.


Hey Joe Nathan:
You are quite a good baseball player.


Hey RA Dickey:
You might want to go back to the drawing board. Try throwing the ball so the catcher can at least, you know, catch it.


Hey Nick Punto:
Your career as a Twin cannot end soon enough.


Hey White Sox:
We ain't goin no fuckin place.

Terry Crowley

For those of you who don't know.

Delmon Young

What if Delmon Young got "hot" and is "starting to figure it out"? What if?

Discuss.

King Earl

I strongly encourage everyone to click on the King Earl link on the right. Not at work, though.

Faces of Twins Fans

When Boof Bonser, Brian Bass, Jesse Crain, Dennys Reyes, Craig Breslow or Matt Guerrier pitch, I feel like this:



When Joe Nathan pitches, I feel like this:



That is all.

Twins Status Report or "Why This Thing's Going To Be Easier To Take Than We Think"

The Twins are back in first, and it's about goddamned time. If you've watched them since June, you've known that this day was inevitable, as predetermined as them winning the division.

That's right. It's not only likely, it is their destiny.

Comparisons to year's past will come and go, but let's not lose sight of what is happening collectively as a team. Yes, you can draw parallels between now and 2006, 2004, hell even 2002. But those people don't live here anymore. This is a team without a true #1 starter, without a true lead-off man, and besides Justin and Joey Joe Joe, a team without any true hitter that has proven himself for extended periods of time. Forget everything you knew about Twins teams of yesteryear. Here are some observations as to why and how the Twins are in this position right now, and why they are all but guaranteed to win the division this year.

Oh, and lyrics from The Predator, to help you along.

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"Nigga with the third album, how come he don't fall off?"

First of all, our thinking about this whole thing has been wrong all year. For those of us who watched 4 young children and a big fat man open the season as the rotation, we were all waiting for the "learning curve" to set in, and for these guys to "take their lumps" and see which of them would survive down the road.

For us, the pessimists, Nick Blackburn would like a few words.

When I see these 4 young colts grabbing the ball and shoving it down the throats of opponents, I'm reminded - as I am in MANY Twins situations - that they are FAR too stupid to know how to lose consistently. They throw strikes. Then they throw strikes more. Then, when they have the bases loaded, they throw it right down the pipe and get you to ground out. They don't stop and think about what might happen, consider the chances that if a grounder to the right side.... whatever. They throw strikes. They may not strike opponents out at a wonderful clip, but they trust their defense and they never get rattled. In the effort to compare this year to year's past, I ask you... where is the Carlos Silva in this bunch? Where is the Kyle Lohse? Where is the guy who lacks the mental capacity for pitching, to such a degree that he routinely acts out on the field and in the clubhouse, and who can't put a runner on first without peeing in his pants? I'll tell you where they are... in Seattle and St. Louis. And good goddamned riddance.

I believe the point of this is to say: there is absolutely no way this team is "falling off" in any sense of the phrase. They may drop a few in a row, and they may slightly slump, but their pitching is too consistent to break. We're in August... if it were to happen, it would've happened by now.

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"I'm almost certain I'm a put on the hurtin / Bitch, it's curtains"

Cleveland.

Wow, that sure did blow up, didn't it? Dazzle talked today about how he saw the Indians come in to take fielding practice this morning and he saw them lazing around in the outfield and how the coaching staff was not hitting them "game speed" ground balls but rather slow rollers that they casually flipped about the infield. He said he noticed a huge difference between them and the Twins, and the way they got after it both before the game and during. To me, I've seen the same thing from this team all year long, and curse you if you put their wasted season on a few injuries. They went from being a game away from the World Series last year (a game they had 3 chances to win) to basically starting over next year. Cy Young winner, gone. Bullpen in absolute shambles. Starting rotation who can't seem to do anything well (unless your last name is Sowers and you get to pitch against the Twins). And a group of position players who like Hot Dogs more than they like playing baseball. Seriously, Jhonny Peralta? Instead of a major league baseball player, I see a guy who likes the monthly "special" at Mannings: Schooner of Grainbelt, specialty burger and plate of fries for 10 bucks. Now they stake their future on Cliff Lee (decent), Victor Martinez (overweight and doesn't like trying), Hafner (the eyes, dear god, the eyes) and Sizemore ("meet you at the Bulldog for Buckhunter, puss!"). What looked like a bright future a year ago now looks like the bottom of the central for at least this year and next.

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"Don't do the crime if you can't do the time / But I'm rollin, so that's a fucked up slogan"

Detroit made some pretty big moves in the offseason, and boy oh boy, did we ever hear about them. First, they "won" the Dontrelle Willis sweepstakes. And with that, they also "won" the Miguel Cabrera sweepstakes. To top it all off, they were able to sign Mr. Jacque Jones aka Mr. Can't Seem To Settle On An Approach At The Plate aka Mr. Everything I Ever Learned, I Learned From Torii Hunter Including Swinging At Sliders. What a glorious offseason!

Flash forward to right now. They traded away Pudge, for Kyle Farnsworth, which should be the punchline to a joke but it is not. Miguel Cabrera has proven himself to be a winner... at buffets all over the Detroit metro. And Dontrelle Willis may never be good again, and he will NEVER be great. Oh, and it took them all of a month to release Jacque Jones, who is currently being paid good money to not play baseball.

The Tigers have enough depth in both starting pitching and slugging to keep them afloat, but their problems have been their complete inability to stay consistent in any one facet of the game and the fact that their closer was a 40 year old rock'n'roller who was never really that good even when he was supposedly good, if that makes sense. Injuries are no fun, but again, shame on you if you think the Tigers season was derailed by injuries. It was derailed by coming too damn close to winning it all in 2006, and making silly moves since then.

Good thing you didn't give up everything in your minor leagues for two players who contribute next to zero for your team. Wait...

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"Goddamn, another fuckin payback with a twist, the motherfuckers shot but the punks missed"

And so that brings us to the White Sox.

Today was perfect. Just absolutely perfect. It represented the vast difference in talent, intelligence, management and collective mentality between the organizations. In fact, down to more fine of a point, I would say if you were looking for a microcosm of why the White Sox are absolutely doomed to failure this year, look no further than AJ's hair.

There are many reasons why it's a long slide down from here for the White Sox, but I'll hit a few. First, the bullpen is absolutely garbage, just trash that should be brought to the dump. Boone Logan likes to turn around and watch balls go over the fence. Matt Thornton hates getting people out. Wasserman is a knuckle dragger. As Dazzle said on the radio as the Twins were winning the inevitable 3rd of 4, I know that they have low ERAs and that the unit as a whole has had success. But I'm looking at them right now and saying they are not very good.

Me too, Danny.

Then they go get Griffey, which caused me to laugh for 2 minutes unbroken.

I watched his second game, against KC, yesterday. Early in the game he made a "diving catch" (it was more like a "stumbling catch", but he's a HOF centerfielder, so whatever). This was a play that almost every centerfielder would've made simply by jogging in towards the infield and catching it on the run. Griffey just BARELY got there. Of course, this elicited the usual "That's A Hall Of Famer Right There" talk, which is what you say if you're not very smart and like doughnuts more than thinking. But that's fine, it's Griffey, so yeah. But then the next inning, a lazy flyball was hit out between the shortstop and centerfield. It was very high, and the wind was insignificant. The shortstop, thinking that the centerfielder would be making this catch, elected to not even chase the ball. Neither did any other player. Griffey, in what could only be described as a "hitched gait", careened towards the ball, and pulled up about 20 feet short. The ball dropped onto the outfield grass like a duck during hunting season. The comments that followed were predictable - "There's nothing he could do" - but I have to tell you, he is going to cost the Sox many more runs than he is going to produce. And that's assuming that he DOES produce any, which remains to be seen. Overall, getting Griffey was the equivalent of getting Bonds, except at least you can DH Bonds. You can't do anything with Griffey. You've already got two good corner outfielders, neither of which can play centerfield. Hey! Let's go get a guy who can BARELY PLAY ANY OUTFIELD POSITION! He did it 18 years ago! Why not give it another shot????

In their favor, the Sox have a decently balanced lineup and experience flashes of quality starting pitching. Contreras being hurt does help them, because he likes to throw it to the backstop. But this team is built for implosion. The frustration and pressure on them has mounted, once again, and the team that is going after them this year is the one team that represents everything that they are not. It's the one team that the Sox will be unable to vanquish, because they are built for stretch runs. It's the one team that does not allow the failings of the White Sox to go unpunished.

They had their run, and when the Twins pulled up in the rearview, they needed to take off and create some distance. They shot, but they missed. And now they brawl with the Royals after beaning a batter to force home the seventh run of the game. The blade is falling, and there will be no pardon.

You can't stop what's coming.

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And if that's not reason enough:





Done.