Gardy No Longer Managing Twins

Technically, Gardy was not fired. Much like Tom Kelly before him, Ron Gardenhire was asked to take a different position with the Twins to make room for another manager. Gardy would still like to manage, so the Twins granted him his release.

There's a difference.

Either way, much like I said a couple of days ago, the Twins need better starting pitching. The manager won't make much of a difference before that happens. Maybe that will happen next year. Nolasco might be better. Pelfrey may find his arm finally healed. Or they could bring up somebody or they could acquire someone new. Or we'll have to sit through several more seasons of losing baseball until we achieve baseball's holy grail: An above average starting rotation.

In baseball, you're only as good as your starters. The Twins simply do not have enough of them.

It would be a great time to go with a larger bullpen rotation and skip the starters entirely, but baseball isn't ready to embrace that idea yet. The Twins will find another traditional manager. They will do traditional things. And we will continue losing until the year when a good starting rotation finally comes together again. Since all the other teams are looking for (or seeking to maintain) that goal, it could be awhile.

Instead of embracing change after 4 horrible seasons, they will keep trying the traditional way. And we'll simply wait until the we have the right hand dealt to us.

Four aces.

A good manager would try something different and be backed by the organization.

The words "good" and "traditional" may no longer go together in the modern era. So we may have an awfully long wait since all of the candidates mentioned so far are traditional baseball people. One of the primary reasons Gardy was unsuccessful was that he too was traditional. Baseball is changing. Those teams who don't see the need to change when circumstances dictate that change, will continue making the same traditional mistakes.

Who knows, we may be dealt four aces next season. But anyone who plays cards knows the odds aren't in our favor. That we MAY have a couple of aces right now certainly helps the odds.

One last note, since I mentioned Tom Kelly, Tom had a stroke late last week. As I've personally found out, that could mean a lot of different things. The effects left by a stroke are wide-ranging. He'll be in my prayers.

Twins Lose

I'm just acknowledging the end of the season. The playoffs start today and there are a substantial number of small or medium market teams in the mix. That's good for baseball.

A year without the Yankees and Boston IS a very good thing. Ratings will be in the sewer, but it's still a good thing.

Ponder Leads Vikings to Two Late Scores in Vikings Win!

What a game! It truly was"Teddy Time"  as the Vikings looked sharp from start to finish. Well, except when Ponder took the reigns at the end of the fourth quarter. For the brief time he was the in there, the Vikings quickly reverted to looking like last year's team, going nowhere and settling for two field goals, including a beautiful 55 yard masterpiece by Blair Walsh to seal the win.

Bridgewater was fantastic. No turnovers while throwing for over over 300 yards, he looked poised in there. Scrambling when he had to but usually just finding and hitting the open reciever, he even had a nifty touchdown run.

And it wasn't just Bridgewater. Great kickoff returns and punt returns often led to superb field position to start drives. The TANDEM of Mckinnon and Asiata at running back produced over 200 yards rushing on nearly 40 carries, taking the pressure off Teddy's passing game. The cool thing? Neither back danced behind the line of scrimmage waiting for a better block leading to multiple negative yardage plays. They went FORWARD every time.

I've always maintained that a multiple back offense leads to greater team success than one predictable runner with the ball. We saw that yesterday. I think the Vikes can build on that in future games.

And the defense played their hearts out. I don't mind that they got burned a couple of times. They were without their field general in Chad Greenway, and they are young and inexperienced. But they kept pressuring Ryan over and over again. Eventually they cracked him. That's no little feat.

Vikes/Packers Thursday. Teddy has a sprained ankle. The suspense is building...

Minnesota Football

The Vikes take the field today down several starters against the Falcon's high-powered offensive attack. I don't have high hopes for this one, but I should be able to watch most of it. If it's close, I will. Bridgewater gets his first start. Here's hoping his receiver corps remembers how to catch passes.

Th Gopher football team is starting to look pretty good. They're 4-1 now after beating Michigan Saturday. Normally that would get me excited, but Michigan is looking terrible so far this year. That the game was AT Michigan makes it a bigger deal. The final was 30-12.

Twins Kick Tigers 12-3

The Twins have averaged 7 runs a game against the Tigers this season. Last night they scored 12 including a 6 RBI night by Eduardo Escabar. Dozier blasted another home run, too.

Rocky Nolasco finally recorded another win for the Twins, his first since July 1st!

The Royals lost last night so they are still a full game back with one to play.

The Twins still hope to play spoiler with Gibson going for his fourteenth win.

Stat of the day: The Twins lead all of baseball in runs scored since August 1st.

Greenway OUT

He played with a broken left hand for most of the season, but now he has a broken rib, and the team has decided it's time that Chad Greenway takes a game or two off to heal. He's played in 90 straight games as a linebacker for the Vikings. That figure alone is amazing.

He's been the team's leading tackler for nearly all of those games.

Boy, are we going to miss him this Sunday against the offense of the Falcons.

Spoiler?

The Royals made the playoffs last night, but only the "sudden death" version that wild card teams make. They'd prefer to win two more games and for the Twins to beat Detroit a couple of more times to give them the division title.

I'd like to see that as well.

IF Detroit and the Royals tie for the division title, I think they'll have a one game play-off to see who wins the division, the loser will then have a one-game playoff in the wild card game.

That means the team that wins THAT game will have to pitch their THIRD best starter in the regular play-offs against a rested division winner. I've always said that system seems incredibly unfair to to the wild card team. Especially since, in some cases, that team may have a better record than some division winners.

All the teams that make the playoffs should be on equal footing. Home field advantage being the only exception.

You know what I hate? It's baseball season and ESPN has today's soccer matches listed on their main web page scoreboard instead of last night's baseball scores. They could have easily had today's college football match-ups listed too. Why soccer? Those European team can't possibly be as interesting to their regular readers, can they? Idiots.

The Twins bats came to life last night. Dozier hit his 22nd dinger of the season and Arcia got number 20. When was the last time TWO Twins had at least 20 home runs in a season?

Stat for stat, the Twins have the thirteenth best batting average in baseball. That means there are 17 teams WORSE than the Twins. They are SIXTH in runs scored. Offensively, it has been a pretty good season. Considering the hodgepodge of players we've had, some would say we had a great season on offense.

Defensively the Twins are 12th in fielding percentage. That stat surprised me. Our outfield alone is so suspect. But the infield has improved dramatically this season, especially Trevor Plouffe. Plouffe has been solid at the plate and in the field this season. If you ignore the homerun totals, you could argue this has been his best season as a Twin.

So WHY are we so bad? We finished 29th out of 30 teams in ERA. You can't win with a pitching staff that gives up that many runs.

What's the most important thing in baseball? Pitching.

What's the second most important? Pitching.

The teams with the best pitching win the most playoff games. They also have the best records.

The Twins need pitching.

I don't know if Gardy will be around again next season, but with or without him, the Twins won't be winners until we get better pitching.