Opening Day's Potpourri
April 5, 2005
I don't really have a topic to cover, but there were a few things I
wanted to address about the first couple of days this season.
First up: I love Dmitri Young and not just because he's on my AL Tout
Wars team. He had a fabulous Opening Day against the lowly
Royals, becoming only the third person - the others were George Bell
and Tuffy Rhodes - to hit three homers on Opening Day. But that
isn't the reason he's one of my favorite players. He's been one
of the tops of my list since a game a couple of years ago I was scoring
a game in Baltimore. On May 6, 2003, entering the ninth inning he
was one double away from hitting for the cycle. He had already
hit two homers and was 4-for-4 when he came up to bat for the fifth
time in the game. Facing Buddy Groom, he laced a line drive to
the left-center gap. Now if you remember, 2003 was not a good
year for the Tigers. In fact, they were historically bad.
On May 6, they were 5-25 on their way to losing 119 games. So he
wasn't helping his team back into the pennant race if he tried to
stretch a sure double into a maybe triple. And he could have
coasted in for his double and become one of 200 or so hitters in the
history of the game to hit for the cycle. But there was Dmitri
motoring around second and going hard into third. When the dust
settled, he had his second triple of the game. He finished
5-for-5 with 5 RBI on a single, two homers and two triples... and no
cycle. As he confirmed afterward in interviews, all he cared
about was helping his team win. He didn't score on either of his
triples as his teammates were woefully inept at the plate. But he
did give them a chance and the Tigers did in fact win that game
7-6. Perhaps the nicest thing about his effort was that, although
he didn't join the ranks of the circle of cycle-hitters, he joined a
more elite club: he became the first player since Willie Mays to hit
two homers and two triples in a game and one of only a handful to have
ever done it.
As for his performance on Opening Day, while I'd love to see him
continue his home run hitting binge all season, he's not the type of
hitter who leads the league in homers. He had favorable
conditions for his feat on Monday, the most important of which is the
pitchers he was facing. Jose Lima, off whom he smacked two, is
highly susceptible to giving up home runs, and Mike MacDougal, off whom
he hit his last one, is a noted hard-thrower with control issues.
His last pitch to Young was pretty much a get-me-over-the-plate
fastball with decent velocity, so Young really only had to get the fat
part of the bat on it and MacDougal would supply the power. I do
like Young for 30+ homers and a .300 average this year though and the
addition of Magglio Ordonez to the line-up should give him enough extra
at bats to get there comfortably.
Number two on the to do list: I'm probably too hard on Ron Gardenhire
for his mistakes and don't give him near enough credit for the job he
does. He has an advantage over most managers in that almost all
of his players are from the Twins organization, so they are in many
ways like a bunch of brothers. Most clubhouses are kind of
clique-ish, but because the Twins players know each other so well,
there's very little factioning going on. So Gardenhire really
doesn't have to worry about team chemistry, if there's any real value
in that. Still, he keeps things loose with his team, taking
infield grounders with his players during batting practice and if not
actively helping, at least turning a winking eye with the rookie
hazing. For example, last year J.D. Durbin was promoted to the
majors when the team was in Baltimore. For those who don't know,
Durbin is a highly regarded pitching prospect who clocked in at 100 mph
this past fall in the Arizona Fall League. He's also somewhat of
a jokester, once referring to himself as "the Real Deal" in an
interview, a nickname that has followed him much to his chagrin.
When Durbin arrived in the visitors clubhouse, there was a makeshift
red carpet of bath towels from the door to his locker, where a large
sign read "Home of the Real Deal". In his locker was a pink
Barbie lunch pail and a PowerPuff Girls backpack along with his
uniform. Anyone who has followed the Twins knows that every
rookie pitcher must tote these two items across the field to the
bullpen before his first game in full view of the fans. I'm not
sure a Powerpuff Girl backpack was previous manager Tom Kelley's style,
so this appears to be a Gardenhire convention. Anyway, there
walked the "Real Deal" across the field at Camden, while thousands of
fans watched wondering if the ballpark vendors sell those in orange and
black.
Anyway, I give him a hard time for his handling of the Twins formidable
pitching yet do not give him credit for doing a very good job managing
the game on the field when it comes to his offense. For example,
tonight the Twins found themselves down by four runs to the Mariners,
but had started a rally in the 5th inning. By the time Joe Mauer
came up to bat, they had cut the lead in half and had men on first and
second. Mauer has good bat control, a good eye and showed good
power last year in his brief stint. With one out, the Mariners
had taken down starter Gil Meche (who had been very good until the
fifth) in favor of hard-throwing but quite wild lefty Matt Thornton to
face the left-hitting Mauer. Sure enough, Mauer worked the count
to 3-1 and everyone in the ballpark knew a fastball was coming.
However, what they didn't know was where it was going. This is a
pitcher who threw 12 wild pitches last year in just over 110
innings. Thornton could throw one in the dirt or way outside or
right down Broadway. The safe play would be to let Mauer look for
a pitch in a particular zone and if he didn't see it, take it for a
second strike and work from a full count on the next pitch. But
Gardenhire guessed (correctly) that Thornton would try to aim the next
pitch in order to insure a second strike and had Mauer swinging away on
a hit and run with both baserunners on the move. Mauer made
contact with the fastball on the outer half and had the runners not
been going, would have grounded into an easy inning- and rally-ending
double play. As it was, the shortstop was out of position
covering second base because of the movement and the ball trickled into
left field for an RBI with men standing on first and third, thus
opening the floodgates to an eventual 8-4 win. After watching
Gardy work the last couple of years as a game scorer and as a
spectator, this is not an isolated occasion. He has a knack for
calling the right play when a play is called for. I still have
questions about the way he manages his pitching staff (although he does
do a good job managing the pitch counts of his starters), but he's a
pretty
good manager everywhere else. Over a 162-game season, the Twins
probably come out ahead. I just thought it was time to give
props where they are due and show the flipside of the coin.
A couple of people have taken me to task about my division appraisals,
especially the notion that the Pirates could win the Central over the
Cardinals. I could be wrong, but remember one very important thing
about the Cardinals this year: they were healthy all last year.
It wasn't until late in the season that Cris Carpenter came down with
an injury and he was about the only guy who missed significant
time. They are depending on an outfield of which two thirds
consist of Reggie Sanders and Larry Walker, two guys who have not
recently been noted for their durability. What are the chances
those two play 140+ games each this season? Combine that
with the likely increased workload on a bullpen that is not as talented
as last year's and I'd say there's the makings of a very exciting race
in the NL Central that could involve anyone, including the Pirates.
One of the possibilities I didn't cover in my previews, but one that
became apparent today, was the chance that John Smoltz won't get
injured while starting this season. He could just stink.
One of the benefits of pitching as the closer is knowing you don't have
to hold anything back. A closer can throw as hard as he can for
as long as he can and know that for the most part, he'll never throw
more than two innings. Not so with a starter. A starter has
to take something off his pitches so that he can pace himself through
at least five innings. A guy who gets comfortable being able to
throw a ball past hitters might have some trouble adjusting to not
being able to throw as hard all the time, just the way pitchers have to
adjust as they get older and they start to lose velocity. I guess
what I'm saying is that it's possible that 38-year old John Smoltz, by
moving back to the rotation, just accelerated his aging process
exponentially so that not only is the risk of injury greater, but that
he will have the additional adjustment of having to pace himself where
he can't just let loose whenever he needs to blow a hitter away.
Obviously, he knows how to do that as he was a pretty good starter back
in the day. But also back in the day he was also much younger and
threw much harder and didn't have three arm surgeries on his
resume. I doubt he will stink this year, but it should be noted
that the last time he was a starter (back in 2001) he posted an ERA of
5.76 and a WHIP of 1.52. Granted, that was after missing the 2000
season due to arm surgery, but it is what it is.