Twins fall to Yankees no reason for panic
By John Gilbert
If you’ve been watching the 2010 Major League Baseball playoffs, you’ve seen pretty much everything the game has to offer. Great pitching, great hitting, great defensive plays, and, on the other side, some surprisingly lousy pitching, some ineffective hitting, and some botched defensive plays. Unfortunately, the overriding factor you take away from a lot of the games is how some blown umpires calls can affect the outcome of a game, or in some cases, a season.
The Minnesota Twins just happened to be the prime example. But not the only one. The Twins had Game 2 of their three-and-out series with the Yankees take an ugly turn when a clearly blown strike three call that would have ended the seventh inning was called a ball, and the next pitch wound up triggering a rally that sank the Twins 5-2. It was fun to watch the other games, with the Phillies handling Cincinnati much the same as the Yankees handled the Twins, and San Francisco stifling Atlanta in the National League.
When Texas went to Tampa Bay and beat the Rays twice, I winced, because I like to watch the Rays. In that series, an ump called a ball on a checked swing, then asked the third-base ump for verification, and he, too, said there was no swing. The replay showed clearly that the head of the bat had gone across home plate, so both umpires blew it. It happens, because they’re human. Often, you watch a baseline umpire seem too eager to call a strike when it appears the batter holds up, only to have slow-motion replays vindicate the call by proving the bat crossed the plate farther than what the viewer would have guessed. This time, the umps were unusually conservative, and, as fate would have it, the next pitch — bang! — game-changing hit. That call was vitally responsible for the Rays to go down 2-0 in games and having to go to Texas, just as the Twins had to go to New York down 2-0.
The difference, though, was the Rays erupted, found their old groove, and beat Texas both games. That sent the series back to Tampa Bay for a deciding Game 5. Texas won Game 5 with a strong performance, meaning the road team won all five games. But it doesn’t matter who won at that point, it wa’s a great series. Just as, if the Twins had beaten the Yankees twice in New York, forcing Game 5 at Target Field, even Minnesota fans could have lived with whatever outcome evolved.
As for the Twins, before the playoffs I suggested a major concern about the series. Twins manager Ron Gardenhire, a man I greatly admire, had given a number of Twins time off during the last two weeks of the regular season, and the Twins wound up losing eight of nine. Joe Mauer, who might be the best hitter in baseball, was rested, and probably needed it. But he had been the hottest hitter on the hottest team before the late swoon. I mentioned that when a hot team is hot, there’s no susbstitute for that rhythm of success, but when the hot hand goes away, there is no way to automatically get it back.
I identified my concern as a bad premonition if the Twins were to falter against the Yankees, and I think that’s the best explanation for what happened. You could say the Twins always seize up against the Yankees at playoff time, and that would be correct. You could point to pivotal umpire calls, which turned an inning, a game, and maybe a series. But mostly, there was no rhythm, no semblance of the red-hot Twins we got to know and love from the All-Star break on. And Joe Mauer, the face of the Twins, had an expression of concern throughout that series. He looked like anything but the best hitter in baseball.
For 162 game a year, Joe’s habit works: He always takes the first pitch, and if it’s a ball, he generally keeps taking pitches until he gets a strike. Then he hits with amazing frequency. I’ve seen the trend of Mauer’s habit turn into a formula for opposing pitchers. It has allowed pitchers to establish a “book” on Mauer. They groove a fast ball for strike one, then get serious and deal with him. It makes Mauer’s achievements more noteworthy, because he is essentially giving himself only two strikes to hit. If I could counsel Joe Mauer, I would suggest that he makes one small alteration in his habit. In one at-bat of each game, he should go to the plate with the idea that he’ll load up for the first pitch. If it’s anything but perfect, take it, as usual, but be looking for a fastball down the middle, and if you get it, swing from the heels. First of all, he’d probably double or triple his home run total, but more importantly, opposing pitchers would suddenly realize they no longer had a freebie on the first pitch. They’d become more careful on the first pitch, and Mauer would end up with a lot more 1-0, 2-0 and 3-1 counts, than always facing 0-1.
In the playoff series, looking out of sorts and still taking that first strike, Mauer looked awful at the plate. He struck out three times in one game. Granted it was CC Sabathia, one of the best left-handers in the game, who did it, but he did it with an easy first strike and then a bunch of breaking balls. In the final game, when Mariano Rivera came in to close it, Mauer led off. I was silently pleading for him to hit the first pitch. He didn’t. Rivera grooved less-than-his-best fastball for strike one, then threw three tough sliders that broke down in the dirt, and Mauer struck out.
Mauer wasn’t the only problem, but he was the poster boy for the Twins struggle. As a group the Twins were not hot. They played well in Game 1, taking a 3-0 lead, as Francisco Liriano outpitched Sabathia through five innings, but we knew the Yankees would come back, and they did, turning the game around and winning the opener. In Game 2, Carl Pavano matched Andy Pettitte in a 2-2 duel. Pavano walked Jorge Posada, and with two out was facing Lance Berkman. With a 1-2 count, Pavano threw a 91-mph fastball on the inside corner. Great pitch, impressive strikeout. Incredibly, umpire Hunter Wenderstedt called it a ball. The replay with the little strike-zone box showed the pitch was clearly over the plate, an inch or two in from the left edge, and it was belt-high. A textbook strike. Pavano, who had taken a stride toward the dugout, sure that it was a strikeout, stopped and went back up on the mound. Next pitch — bang! — line drive over Denard Span’s head in center. Instead of an inning-ending strikeout, there was a tie-breaking hit. Couple guys later, Derek Jeter singled in another, making it 4-2, and it wound up 5-2. Gardenhire came out to settle down Pavano and the team, and when he tossed his opinion of how Wenderstedt had affected the game, the ump threw him out.
Naturally, going to New York down 0-2 was different than being 1-1, and it wasn’t a second guess that I thought the 0-2 situation called for Gardenhire to alter his series plan. He had tabbed Brian Duensing as the starter. Duensing had been elevated to a starting role back when the young Twins pitching staff was terribly inconsistent. His off-speed southpaw hurling was effective in letting the Twins get by for many games. Later in the season, when the Twins got hot, I thought harder-throwing pitchers such as Scott Baker, Kevin Slowey and Nick Blackburn all had gotten things together pretty well. At least until that late, reserve-filled stumble, when more than the starting pitching was lacking. Starting Duensing if the series was 1-1 would have been an intriguing experiment. But down 0-2, with the season on the line, I would have been more comfortable with Baker, Slowey, or Blackburn starting. All three of them can throw harder than Duensing, who might have been a huge improvement from what was going on in the bullpen.
Listening to the national ESPN radio broadcast of the games, where John Miller again proves he’s the best play-by-play man in baseball, former pitcher Orel Hersheiser was his color man.In the fourth inning, when the Yankees were up 2-0, Hersheiser mentioned that at that point, Duensing had not yet thrown a single strike where the Yankees had swung and missed. Now, that is insight. Sneaking around the corners for a strike is one thing, but every time a Yankee swung at a Duensing pitch, there was contact. Ouch! Sure enough, the Yankees shelled him. Baker came in to relieve and threw an impressive 1-2-3 inning, and even though he later gave up a home run, at least he threw a half-dozen pitches right past the Yankee hitters. The damage, however, had long been done in a 6-1 loss to end the Twins season.
When it was over, all the cynics jumped on the Twins as being woefully inept. No, they weren’t. They weren’t on top of their game, but still they were only a solid hit here, or a good umpire’s call there, away from winning a game or two. Winning one, at any time in the series, might have gotten the Twins untracked. True, the Yankees have the Twins number, but everyone is acting as though the Twins are awful, and that the Yankees are invincible. In reality, the Yankees are very good, and they rise up to play their absolute best at playoff time. Suddenly the pitchers all look good, and their lineup suddenly looks potent throughout.
But the Yankees were the American League’s wild-card team, losing the East Division race to Tampa Bay. That was one reason I was pulling for Tampa Bay to beat Texas. The Rays are NOT intimidated by the Yankees, and they could — and I think would — beat them head-on in the league final. Texas did the job anyway, proving to be cool and poised, and it was interesting to watch the Yankees appear less than supremely confident in that series.
In the National League, the Phillies, with the best starting pitchers in baseball, needed a four-error meltdown by Cincinnati to overcome a 4-0 Reds lead in Game 2, and went on to eliminate the National League’s best scoring team in three straight, while San Francisco knocked out Atlanta. That made for a great National League final series, where the Giants unseated the Phillies.
As usual, the World Series promised to be a fun party. Too bad the Twins misplaced their invitation.
The critics continue to insist that the Twins need wholesale changes. They don’t. It’s all in the attitude, and the doomsayers who are demanding wholesale trades because of the playoff setback are more fragile than the Twins. In fact, without a single change, the Twins will be easy favorites to repeat as division champs. There is no rule that the Yankees must play better than they are against the Twins, or that the Twins must face the Yankees with the attitude that a safe is about to fall on their heads from the top of the Empire State Building. If Justin Morneau comes back from the lingering concussion effects, we can count on that young pitching staff to be better, incrementally, and the Twins will be fun to watch. It would even be fun to see a rematch against the Yankees in the playoffs.
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About the Author
John Gilbert is a lifetime Minnesotan and career journalist, specializing in cars and sports during and since spending 30 years at the Minneapolis Tribune, now the Star Tribune. More recently, he has continued translating the high-tech world of autos and sharing his passionate insights as a freelance writer/photographer/broadcaster. A member of the prestigious North American Car and Truck of the Year jury since 1993. John can be heard Monday-Friday from 9-11am on 610 KDAL(www.kdal610.com) on the "John Gilbert Show," and writes a column in the Duluth Reader.
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