Friday, January 5, 2007

Pitching Dilemma

Right now, my projected Twins pitching rotation:
1: Johan Santana (duh)
2: Carlos Silva
3: Boof Bonser
4: Matt Garza
5: Scott Baker or Glen Perkins?
Obviously the bottom of the rotation has some problems. I've never seen anything good out of Scott Baker, he only does anything good when he faces the Yankees. He had a 6.37 ERA last year, which is not good enough for a spot in the rotation of the Twins. He just doesn't have any nasty stuff to throw at hitters. He's a right handed and throws over the top, you can find a million of these guys in the majors. I don't see what the Twins see in him. There's nothing there. 114 hits in 83.1 innings is not good. I don't wanna see him in the rotation. The sad thing is, at this point we have to have him in the rotation with the loss of Radke and Liriano. I'd even take Lohse back at this point, and he's one of those players that falls apart in ten seconds if something remotely bad happens. At least he had some games where he went out there and shut down the opposing team. Baker only does good at all against the Yankees giving up only 2 runs in 2 games against them last year. So we have a pitcher who at best will give up 3-5 runs a game against most teams, and maybe one or two against the most feared line-up in the Major Leagues. Odd. I say, give him a chance, but don't be afraid to pull the plug after a few bad starts. He can always just stay in the pen or the minors until he's ready to jump back into the rotation.

As for the other question mark, Glen Perkins. We haven't seen enough from him to warrant a spot in the rotation, but again, we have no choice right now, seeing that Terry isn't getting anyone. Anyone good that is, I don't want Sidney Ponson anywhere near my beloved twins. He assulted a judge and has 2 DUI's on his record. Not a character thats good for the Twins. Its a snake-filled plane crash waiting to happen. He'll go the way of Tony Batistia or however you spell it. Back to Glen, all that I've seen is that one and a third inning performance against the Red Sox last year and the 3 inning stint against the other colored sox. Both were good outings, not enough to show what he's like, only 5 and 2/3 innings last year with only one earned run. The good thing is though, he shows potential. He's a lefty that throws some wicked stuff, he's thrown a total of 3.2 innings full of right handers and only one of those 12 batters reached base. He gave up his other 2 hits against lefty batters, and his only given up RBI. I don't think thats enough to show that leftys totally kill him, but its safe to assume that he's gonna have some trouble against his own kind. Overall I think he's a great young (for baseball, looks funny when I type it, since I'm still in high school) prospect, who has a legitimate chance of succeding in the majors, he just needs some more bullpen time to get him up to speed.

Overall I like Perkins more, he has better stuff, he's a lefty and he hasn't shown us any problems. Thats just the reason I would rather have Baker be our fifth man though. We haven't seen anything of Perkins. 5.2 innings? Thats nothing, We need Baker to keep the seat warm for him while Perkins gets accustemed to the majors. Who knows? Baker might come out of the gate strong, and Perkins might stay in the pen all season. I would love to see that, but however I think that either Garza or Baker is going to falter early, and I would put my money on Baker being the one to fall. So right now my vote goes to Baker over Perkins for the fifth game of the season.

Ah, The first post

Well, here I am, starting my blog. I won't even try to type about anything that happened before 2007. We all know that the 2006 season was totally awesome, with the exceptiong of the playoffs. I'm just going to talk about 2007 and on, so for now, I'll just talk about anything baseball, nothing much is happening. Oh and I'll talk about the general Minnesota sports scene all the time. Just don't expect anything about the Minnesota Thunder or St. Johns University.