My wife and I went to Sigel last night to see what ended up being Stark's last game of the season. Stark outscored Sigel 4-1 in SIX of the innings last night.
The problem is that the fifth inning looked an awful lot like a Mike Pelfrey fifth inning for the Twins earlier this season.
Stark's pitcher last night was actually pretty good. I won't mention his name so that I don't embarrass him, but I know him as the kid who bags my groceries at the local grocery store. I went to high school with his dad, and I play basketball with him occasionally in the park. He's a good athlete.
BUT, he also has a tendency to get tired because he throws hard, and when he gets tired he starts trying to throw even harder and as a result he gets pretty wild...
...and then the roof caves in. He pitched four very good innings last night and I was surprised (and a little worried) to see him come back out in the fifth. I don't think he's pitched more than four innings in a game all season. Stark has a couple other pitchers who are very good as well. Since they pitched against Sleepy Eye on Monday, I guess the coaches decided to let this starter try for a fifth inning.
That was a bad decision by the coaches. To make a long story short, Sigel scored 6 runs in the fifth. A very good 4 inning performance was wasted and Stark ended up losing 7-4.
I don't blame the pitcher. He gave everything he had for four innings. He simply had nothing left to give them in the fifth. The sad thing is that the starter of Monday's game finished up the last inning for Stark and he had no problems at all. I sure wish they would have brought him in an inning sooner. I'm pretty sure the outcome would have been very different.
Oh well, Stark ended up the season on a high note either way. They ended up winning two of their three playoff games and finished above .500 on the season. I think they won just ONE game all last season so they have improved, as a team, quite a bit. Now it's time for the coaches to pay a bit more attention to their players and see their tendencies. Everybody learns together at this level.
But, speaking of Mike Pelfrey...
Despite Gardy's best efforts to destroy this man's confidence by having him pitch too late into the game in the early weeks of the season, Pelfrey is giving us very good outings almost every time out now. Last night he left the game in the sixth, trailing 2-0.
The Twins rallied late to pull off the 3-2 win.
It's hard for me to get excited about individual performances right now because almost anybody could get traded over the next couple of weeks.
At the same time, Pedro Florimon certainly had a good game Friday. Three more-or-less spectacular plays in the field, with a hit, a walk, and two runs scored on offense.
His play yielded this Trevor Plouffe line about Florimon's defense: "I
never realized how bad I was at shortstop until I watched someone like
him."
I hope that the Twins try SIGNING Pelfrey to a long-term deal, at this point, instead of trading him. The problem is that other teams need a dependable starter who can give you 5 or 6 innings of pitching, and the Twins only signed Pelfrey to a one-year deal at the beginning of the season because of his Tommy John surgery.
I think Pelfrey and his agent know that his value is going up as the season progresses and the Twins are probably not even thinking of re-signing him. He's got to be traded or we lose him to free agency.
Bummer.
Oh well, we're all waiting for the trades to begin. I'm just wondering how many players on the 40 man roster we're going to lose in the next couple of weeks. It could be and awful lot of them.
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