On MadBum and the Klubot

Word broke Sunday that Madison Bumgarner had reached agreement with the Arizona Diamondbacks. The Snakes didn't give him the $100 million total that was supposedly his ask, but they did go five years, and the Twins reportedly wouldn't do that.

I am neither surprised nor disappointed. Not surprised because the Twins were almost certainly not high on Bumgarner's wishlist, not if, as Jon Heyman tweeted last week, location and league were obstacles. The lefty stays in the NL, where he can hit, and he gets to be in the Phoenix area, where he apparently owns property and horses. Not disappointed because, while he would certainly be welcome in the Minnesota rotation, he is clearly not the pitcher he was about five years ago. His arrows are pointing down.

Speaking of pitchers whose arrows are pointing down: Cleveland traded Corey Kluber to Texas on Sunday in what appears to be a salary dump. Kluber didn't pitch well last season before a suffering a broken arm on a line drive, and he never made it back with the Tribe.

The return -- a part-time outfielder and a minor league reliever -- seems pretty light for a two-time Cy Young winner, even one on the wrong side of 30. Presumably the Rangers are taking on all of Kluber's contract. And, also presumably, nobody -- at least nobody to whom Cleveland was willing to trade Kluber -- was willing to top that offer.

The Cleveland operation has been pretty good in recent years at turning out quality young pitchers, and I suspect that Delino Deshields Jr. will be an outfield upgrade for them even if he couldn't attain regular status in north Texas. But not having the Klubot at the head of their rotation feels like a big loss, even if it can be rationalized.

The MadBum rush

The Twins were most likely never seriously in the Gerrit Cole market, but now that the right-hander has signed the most lucrative pitcher contract in history, the top pitchers left in free agency are guys the Twins have been pursing. Which brings us to this:

#MNTwins are thought to be heavy on Bumgarner. They have a couple likely hurdles to clear, though; location and league.

— Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) December 11, 2019

 


And there's nothing the Twins can do about either of those factors.

I'm not particularly optimistic about the Twins' chances to sign either Madison Bumgarner or Hyun-Jin Ryu. The Dodgers and Angels, having failed to land Cole, will probably be after those two, and at least for the Dodgers, neither league nor location is a drawback. Nor will I be upset if the two lefties sign elsewhere.

I suspect the Twins' most likely route to a name addition to their rotation is via trade. The Red Sox are eager to dump David Price's contract, and I'd just as soon have Price as either Bumgarner or Ryu. And Price's price in a trade might not be that high if the Twins are willing to take on most of the money. He is to make $32 million over the next three seasons; if MadBum's signing point is indeed  $100 million, three years of Price -- seriously -- is a bit cheaper.


All three of these lefties are on the wrong side of 30, and all three have medical histories. None of them are sure bets. But the Twins seem eager to take this sort of plunge. Whether any of them are eager to take the Twins' money is another matter.

Notes from the weekend

The Twins didn't exactly dominate the Royals over the weekend, but they won two of three and had plenty of baserunners in the Sunday loss. It wouldn't have taken much more at the plate or in the field to flip that result.

Sunday's loss puts the Twins at 47-23 -- still, by percentage points, the best record in the American League and 10 games ahead of the second-place Cleveland Indians in the AL Central. Minnesota's magic number is 83.

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Weekend roster move: Fernando Romero back down to Triple A after a poor outing on Friday, Zach Littell back up. Just another round of bullpen musical chairs.

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The Joe Mauer tribute weekend appears to have gone well. I took note of this Twitter exchange:

I predict he’ll be voted in. His 10 years as a catcher are enough https://t.co/jQVNwELlEh

— LaVelle E. Neal III (@LaVelleNeal) June 15, 2019

My recollection from the past is that Neal has been a bit cool about Mauer's Hall of Fame chances. I suspect he's heard support for Mauer from enough BBWAA colleagues in the past few months. Mauer has long been more highly regarded outside his home market than in, something I blame on KFAN and a couple of dunderheaded metro columnists.

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You may have noticed Martin Maldonado, the Kansas City catcher, wearing a blue tie over his chest protector Sunday. (The names he wrote on it are those of his father, brother and friends, presumably all fathers.) He wasn't the only one. Einar Diaz of Pittsburgh -- who entered his game late -- had one also. And down in Rochester, Willians Astudillo:

Here’s Willians Astudillo wearing a tie at work.

Enjoy... pic.twitter.com/ewwQQVu5kx

— Morrie Silver (@MorrieSilver8) June 16, 2019

All the same solid light blue with an identical logo.

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Plenty of rumors Sunday about one particular potential Twins trade target, Madison Bumgarner. 

I don't think a starting pitcher is as big a need for the Twins as is the bullpen, and I doubt that either Martin Perez or Michael Pineda are good bullpen candidates. Bumgarner is certainly a name, but his pitching the past few years hasn't matched his reputation. There is a theory that getting out of the morass the Giants are stuck in and onto a team with October ambitions will fan his competitive fires.

Bumgarner's a free agent after the season, and he's expected to be dealt. We'll see, obviously, where he lands.

A Giant accomplishment

Buster Posey and Madison Bumgarner
celebrate the final out Wednesday night.

Nicely done, Madison Bumgarner. Nicely done, San Francisco Giants.

This makes three World Series titles for the Jints in five seasons, and while I don't think they're a great team, they've had a knack for finding the right people for the right roles in October in even-numbered years.

This year it was Bumgarner, the lefty slinger who stopped the Royals pretty much dead in two starts, then gave manager Bruce Bochy five shutout innings of relief in Game Seven.

We can wonder why Kansas City skipper Ned Yost never let Josh Willingham out of the dugout against Bumgarner -- the purpose of having the Hammer on the roster was to hit lefties, after all. We can wonder what would have happened had Alex Gordon run out of the box on his ninth inning hit that Gregor Blanco and Juan Perez misplayed into three bases. Might he have scored? We can wonder why Yost had Alcides Escobar bunt on an 2-0 count in the fifth inning after Bumgarner opened his outing by allowing a base hit. Giving Bumgarner a free out there certainly didn't hurt him.

We can wonder and what-if, but what happened happened, and what happened was the Giants winning the title.

One aspect of the Giants' staggered string of championships -- 2010, 2012, 2014 -- is how few pieces have been consistent from title to title. Buster Posey behind the plate, certainly. Bumgarner in the rotation -- although in 2010 he was in the back of the rotation and now he's in the front. Sergio Romo, Santiago Casilla, Jeremy Affeldt and Javy Lopez in the bullpen, although the first two have changed roles repeatedly and the latter two are essentially lefty specialists.

The Giants have had three different center fielders for their World Series runs, and three different second basemen. Twice, in fact, the Giants changed second basemen in midseason and went on to win the title. Pablo Sandoval sat for most of the 2010 World Series and hit cleanup in 2014. Tim Lincecum was a rotation mainstay in 2010, a useful reliever in the 2012 postseason, an afterthought this year.

What we have in the Giants, then, is a multiple-time champion that has had to retool on the fly, each champion sharply different than the one that preceded it. This is rare. Baseball history is filled with dynasties (or at least pretenders to such status) that relied on the same core. Few have had to rework the puzzle as completely as these Giants have. Casey Stengel's Yankees, perhaps. It's no small accomplishment.

Pictures of pitchers

I am frequently fascinated by still photography of pitchers. Freezing the image in mid-delivery often makes it obvious that the arm is simply not supposed to be doing this. The wonder isn't that pitchers get hurt from throwing high-velocity, high-torque pitches, but that the injuries aren't more common.

This is an AP photo of San Francisco rookie Madison Bumgarner taken during Game 4 on Sunday:

It is almost identical to an AP photo taken eight days earlier (by the same photgrapher, no less) when he was pitching in Philadelphia; the only real difference is that in the NLCS game he had a black brim on his cap. I know what the photographer was thinking: Look at that straight line. I've looked at hundreds of photos of pitchers over the years, and I rarely if ever see something like that.

Contrast that to this:

This is C.J. Wilson of the Texas Rangers, displaying what is known in some biomechanic circles as "the inverted W." (That it's called "the inverted W" rather than "the M" suggests that somebody also knew something about typography, but let's not get diverted.) Note that both elbows are above the shoulders and both hands are below. Go ahead — try to put your arms in that position. Real comfortable, isn't it?

Francisco Liriano did this in 2006 — I remember several photos of him in this position. I haven't seen a photo of him in the inverted W since, and I assume that is the result of the delivery changes the Twins had him make after his ligament replacement surgery.

For this and other reasons, if I were still playing fantasy baseball I'd let somebody else take the risk of having C.J. Wilson next year.

One more photo. This one, I suspect, is more a function of toying with shutter speed than the pitcher —  if Pat Christman is reading this, he can speak to that question — but still ... everything else is moving, but Bumgarner's head is still. (Addendum: I talked with P.C. about this during a lull on election night, and yeah — it's shutter speed. Slow enough to blur movement.)

Bumgarner is a very interesting young (21) pitcher. He rocketed through the Giants' minor league system, putting up ERAs below 2.00 at every level until he hit Triple A this year. But the reports this spring had his fastball velocity in the mid-80s, down from the mid-90s in the minors. He lost out on the fifth starter job in spring training and was a mess at Triple A at the start of the year.

Clearly the velocity is back.