Nishioka, Liriano and another loss

Pretty lousy math for the Twins on Thursday:
Add one loss, subtract one second baseman.

Of more importance than the 4-3 loss this afternoon for the Twins in New York is that Tsuyoshi Nishioka suffered a fractured fibula turning a double play.

Obviously, he'll be on the DL for a while. Luke Hughes, who lost out to Matt Tolbert for the utility infielder job, is likely not only to fill Nishioka's roster spot but second base as well. That's how I'd do it, at least — stick him in the lineup and see if he'll hit enough to carry his glove.

I didn't see the play in question, but I'm inclined to give Nick Swisher the benefit of the doubt and assume it wasn't an out-of-the-baseline slide or dirty play. The Twins say it was a clean play.

Meanwhile, Francisco Liriano pitched better than he did against Toronto, but the worst aspects of his game cost him. He threw first-pitch strikes to just nine of the 24 men he faced; he walked two leadoff men, both of whom scored; and the crucial hit of the three-run fourth inning came when he got ahead of Andruw Jones 0-2 and started shaking off Joe Mauer. The old Crash Davis line applies to Liriano: Don't think; you can only hurt the ball club.

Dan Gladden described the pitch Jones hit for a double as "a big slow curve ball." MLB.com's pitch reader said it was a slider at the same velocity as most Liriano sliders (around 85 mph).  I can't say that I've ever heard of Liriano throwing a curve, so I'm inclined to think it was the slider — maybe a hanging slider.

Meanwhile, Charter and FSN came to an agreement, and the game was carried by Mankato's dominant  cable service. I'm sure Hickory Tech, which ran an ad in Thursday's Free Press touting "all the Twins games," is disappointed at losing that bit of competitive advantage.

Poll gone, a comment gone

I deleted the poll because there appears to be some sort of silly glitch involved that is creating literally hundreds of fictional visitors to the blog. (Eight-hundred plus as of this morning supposedly going straight to the poll, which had all of 24 votes.)

Google has not acknowledged this, nor has it fixed it. And while I am not particularly driven by the pursuit of hits, I am this week more interested in an accurate count than usual because of the Charter-blackout topic, which appears to be bringing more readers than usual.

Had it been an interesting, unique poll question, I'd feel worse about deleting it. Discarding it isn't much of a loss.

----

While on the topic of me deleting stuff: I deleted a comment on the subject of Charter on Wednesday. I axed it not because it was critical of Charter, but because it contained a mild vulgarity and some shouting.

It's my blog, and I am judge, jury and executioner. It's OK to criticize Charter and FSN over this dispute, but if I don't like the tone, it's gone. Just wanted to make that clear. (I have deleted fewer than five comments since the blog moved to this platform, so it hasn't been a real problem.)

The alienable right to baseball on TV

The Declaration of Independence asserts that the "pursuit of happiness" is an unalienable right. Watching baseball makes me happy, but despite that I doubt that I have any true right to have it funneled into my television.

Which doesn't make the current squabble between Fox Sports North and a number of carriers any more palatable to the fans caught between them.

I did a quickie post Tuesday night when it became clear that Charter Communications (the dominant cable company in Mankato-North Mankato) was not carrying that night's Twins-Yankees game. I didn't have much time — I was supposed to be working on the front page — and avoided going into detail. Since then there have been comments that suggest some confusion about what's going on.

So let's backtrack a bit.

In recent seasons, the Twins broadcasts have been divvied up between FSN (which has generally carried something in the vicinity of 105 games) and WFTC, aka My29 (which carried games on Sunday afternoons), a total of something in the vicinity of 130 games. Weekday games were generally not carried by either, which accounts for the missing 30 or so games.

Both FSN and WFTC are part of the News Corp. empire. During the offseason, it was announced that the Twins games this year would be strictly on FSN — no more over-the-air broadcasts, strictly cable. (Reading between the lines of the announcement, I inferred that this was News Corp's idea more than that of the Twins, but I doubt the Twins put up much of a fight.) Also,  the number of day games broadcast would be increased. In all, FSN is to carry 150 games. About two dozen of the added games would have been WFTC's under the old system, the rest games that previously would be without TV coverage.

More games meant more money. FSN paid the Twins more and went to its carriers, satellite and cable, for the cash.

And some —  most notably, for the Mankato area, Charter and Dish Network — balked.

As of right now, Thursday's game, which is to be carried by FSN, will not be on Charter,  nor will Saturday's. I haven't the slightest notion how they determined which games are among the 45 in question. FSN lists six April games whose carriage is in dispute; that leaves 38 others scattered through the remaining months of the season.

That's the FSN website statement on the dispute. I tried to find something on Charter's site, but with no success. (Off my previous experiences with Charter, this is not a surprise.) The Twins, who are not directly a party to this dispute but probably aren't thrilled to have about a third of their TV audience cut off, also have nothing on their site.

Joe Nathan and the "90 mph changeup"

The Twins fans without TV access to last night's game wound up missing a pretty good conclusion – a four-run eighth against Rafael Soriano to tie the game, a 10th-inning run to put the Twins ahead, and (perhaps most encouraging of all) a clean inning from Joe Nathan to wrap it up.

Joe Nathan said after Wednesday's game
that it was so cold and dry in
Yankee Stadium "it was like
throwing ice cubes."

I was among those without a view of the game, but I did have something (perhaps) a bit more descriptive of the action than Gordo and Gladden — MLB.com's "At Bat 11" app on my iPad. It provides pitch-by-pitch details of the game, including pitch speeds, type and location. (There are readers here who think I'm overly harsh on the Twins' main radio guys, but even John Gordon's most loyal followers cannot believe they're getting every pitch from him.)

I assume the pitch data that shows up on my iPad comes from the "Pitch f/x" system, a computerized, multi-camera system that purports to chart in detail every major league pitch — not just velocity and location but movement and release point and a truly bewildering mass of information.

Anyway, something odd kept popping up on my feed in the 10th inning: Nathan was throwing fastballs consistently clocked at 90 to 91 mph. He was also mixing in what the feed called changeups clocked at the same velocity.

Huh?

Inasmuch as the point of the changeup is that it's a slower pitch, that's nonsensical. Stephen Strasburg, before his injury last summer, was showing a 90-mph change, but he also was touching 100 mph with the fastball.

One glitch, OK; multiple readings with the same error suggest something's faulty in the system. Perhaps the system is categorizing the pitch as a changeup based not on velocity but movement, in which case it may be that Nathan has a fastball that sinks and moves in on a right-handed hitter. Maybe the velocity readings were flawed for reasons I don't understand.

And maybe the only thing that really matters is that on a chilly night in Yankee Stadium, Nathan was much, much sharper than he was two nights earlier in Toronto.

An example of why I don't take Charter cable anymore

As I write this from work, the Twins game is on -- or at least available -- on FSN at my home, which has Hickory Tech cable. Here at the Free Press, however, the Charter service is showing poker.

Charter (and, I understand, some other carriers) are arguing with FSN over the "extra" 45 games that in recent years had been carried by WFTC. Charter's regional HQ in Rochester sent the Free Press an email saying, in essence, that FSN is asking too much and we're still negotiating.

I've no doubt FSN is Greedy with a capital G and I've no doubt Charter is too. Somehow, however, the issue isn't a problem for Hickory Tech.

Sponsoring Joe Mauer (adventures in Baseball Reference)

Picking up a long discarded thread of this blog:  Last year I signed up to sponsor Michael Cuddyer, Terry Steinbach and Gene Larkin on Baseball Reference, that invaluable online baseball encyclopedia. When those one-year sponsorships expired this winter, I blanched at the prices for that trio and resolved to look elsewhere.

Joe Mauer's stats
are now sponsored
by this blog.

Things stalled there, largely because I was waiting to see what the price would be for Tsuyoshi Nishioka. B-R had a page for him, with incomplete stats from the Japanese league, but no sponsorship link. I had a couple of fallback notions in mind, but I was basically waiting for Nishi.

I checked on Nishioka on Saturday morning, a few hours after the Twins' first official game of 2011.  No sponsorship link. I checked on Brian Duensing, my primary fallback notion. Taken. Then, for no real reason, as I was pondering alternatives, I clicked on Joe Mauer's link.

Available. Really? I clicked on the sponsorship link, then backed out and took the dog for a walk and myself for a think. Do I really want to spend that much?

I'm not going to tell you what Mauer's price was. Suffice it to say that it far exceeded my $40 budget, far exceeded the January price of the Cuddyer-Steinbach-Larkin trio. I cannot defend my decision to buy the sponsorship on any economical or logical basis. It just felt like the thing to do.

So do it I did. The sponsorship went live on Monday. It is my expectation — resolution — that this is a one-year deal. Even if the Mauer page proves to be a major driver of traffic to this blog, come 2012 I will support B-R at a much lower price point.

But for 2011, I've got Mauer. (And, by the way, Nishioka is now available.)

Understanding the Eddie-oms

(Note: This entry, with minor differences, was the Monday print column. I'm posting it here for my ease of future reference.)

Veteran readers of this blog and my print column are aware of my penchant for personalizing certain ideas or concepts.

What I'm going to do here is organize and define these idioms — or Eddie-oms, if you will.

The Greg McMichael Rule: If you get outs, they'll find a job for you. Named for a pitcher cast off by the lowly Cleveland Indians and signed to a minor-league deal by the Braves, who rose from last man on the talented Atlanta staff at the start of the 1993 season to closer in mid-season.

The Michael Cuddyer Principle: Holds that any (right-handed) major-league position player can be put at any position without it being immediately apparent that he's got no business playing there. Named, obviously, for the current Twins player, who has as a professional played every position other than pitcher or catcher, none of them with notable adeptness.

The Butera Corollary: Holds that the Cuddyer Principle does not apply to catcher; put a non-catcher behind the plate, and it will be immediately obvious to all that he's out of position.

For this reason, back-up catcher is the cushiest job in baseball. They seldom play, and when they do, they're not asked to do a whole lot other than avoid disaster. A reliable back-up catcher will last far longer than a star catcher, and the longer they stick around, the more they are valued.

The (Tom) Kelly Virtues: The basic template for Twins players, established by Tom Kelly during his 15-plus seasons as manager. The Twins value command over stuff from their pitchers and batting average over power from their hitters, and they put an emphasis on defensive reliability. The Kelly Virtues led the Twins to value Doug Mientkiewicz more than David Ortiz.

Adherence to the Kelly Virtues has dwindled in some aspects since Ron Gardenhire took the dugout job, but the changes in the middle infield this offseason suggests that the Virtues may be on the rise again. If the Twins use the expiring contracts of Cuddyer and Jason Kubel to slide Ben Revere into the lineup in 2012, we'll have more evidence that the Kelly Virtues are ascendant.

The (Denard) Span Syndrome: A recent tendency for Twins rookies to outperform their minor league stats.  Span's career minor league OPS was .716; his major league OPS is .759. Brian Duensing and Danny Valencia appear so far to be other examples of the Span Syndrome.

The Gossage Rule: Even the best relief pitchers are failed starters. I pick on Goose Gossage here, but it could just as well be named for Dennis Eckersley, who had been a very good starter earlier in his career but appeared to be on his way out of the game when Tony LaRussa made him a relief pitcher.

The Gladden Rule: The quickest way to improve a lousy pitching staff is to add speed to the outfield. Named for the impact Dan Gladden had when he joined the Twins, but the best example would be the 1989 Baltimore Orioles, who added a flock of fleet young outfielders and went from 54-107 in 1988 to 87-75.