The bullpen and facing Pujols

It worked, but I really didn't like very much about how Paul Molitor handled the Twins bullpen in the eighth inning Sunday.

Jose Berrios gave the Twins six innings and got a 3-2 lead to the seventh inning. Tyler Duffey entered and threw a 1-2-3 inning, turning the Angels lineup over.

Duffey has frequently worked two innings at a time, and I expected that to be the case again Sunday. But those two-inning outings are generally the sixth and seventh, not seventh and eighth, and the Angels had left-handed hitting Kole Calhoun leading off the eighth and another left-handed hitter, Luis Valbuena, scheduled third.

So Molitor brought in Taylor Rogers, his favored lefty reliever. I didn't care for this move, in part because Calhoun had already homered off Rogers (and off fellow lefty Adalberto Mejia) in the series, and in part because Duffey is just a better pitcher than Rogers.

But Molitor went for the platoon advantage. Rogers fell behind Calhoun and walked him. Then Rogers got Yunel Escobar to ground into a force out.

And here came Albert Pujols to pinch hit for Valbuena. And Molitor went to the pen for Matt Belisle.

Again, I didn't care for this move. The basic truth is, Pujols in 2017 should not scare an opposing manager. I know that's sacrilegious, but as I said in the Monday print column, Pujols at age 37 is a shadow of his greatness. And he is doing almost nothing against left-handers (slash line vs. southpaws .186/.255/.302).

Rogers hasn't allowed a homer to a righty this year. Belisle is averaging a home run allowed every six innings. If you looked for the matchup in the Twins bullpen most favorable to Pujols, Belisle is probably the pick. I wouldn't have had Rogers in the game to start with, but once in I wouldn't have pulled him for anybody by Brandon Kintzler.

So, naturally, Pujols hit the second pitch he saw on the ground to third for an easy double play (he has bad feet and can't run).  Kintzler got the ninth and did his thing, and the Twins won.

As I view that inning, Molitor steadily deceased the competence of the pitcher and worked unfavorable matchups. He used four relievers in the game, and the two best relievers faced the weakest hitters, while the two weakest bullpenners faced the middle of the Angels lineup (with Mike Trout injured, that's not saying much, but Calhoun/Escobar/Valbuena/Pujols are still better than the other stiffs).

I didn't like any of it. But it worked.

Pic of the Week

Former Twin Ben Revere jumps for joy as Albert Pujols
heads toward first base after hitting his 600th career homer.

This is the second time this year I've used a photo of Albert Pujols as the Pic of the Week, The first time I commented on his inflated RBI numbers a couple weeks into the season.

Pujol's RBI numbers are still big. His grand slam Saturday night off the Twins' Ervin Santana -- career homer No. 600, a stupendous achievement -- gave him 42 RBIs on the season in 51 games.

He's hitting better with men on base now than he was in April, but not so well that you'd expect him to get 120 or so ribbies. Pujols is still having the least productive season at the plate of his magnificent career.

He's compiling the RBIs anyway because almost half his plate appearances come with men on base.

And that is largely the result of hitting behind Mike Trout.

Not that Trout, sidelined by thumb surgery, had anything to do with Saturday's RBIs.

Pic of the Week

A foul ball bounces back to hit
Albert Pujols in the head

An interesting set of numbers so far for the great Pujols, who is, at age 37, clearly not the monster he was in St. Louis.

In his first 17 games, Pujols had a slash line of .203/.247/.319. He also had 14 RBIs.

Ah, you say, he's coming through with men on base. Not really; he's slashing .208/.269/.375 with men in scoring position. That's better than his overall numbers, but not a lot.

Pujol's RBIs are more because he's hitting behind Mike Trout than anything he's doing.

OMG, Pujols is in camp

Albert Pujols at his Monday press conference.
Yes, I intend to collect my money.

I've successfully avoided SportsCenter for a few days, so it fell to a co-worker to inform me that ESPN was making a big deal out of Albert Pujols showing up at spring training with his new team.

Pujols reports to spring training. Surprise. It would be a big story if he didn't:

 TEMPE, Ariz — Albert Pujols announced Monday that he was skipping training camp, citing writers' cramp from the exertion of inking his $240 million contract.


Right.


Pujols has been a great player, and he's probably still got some mileage on his tires, but I fully expect the Anaheims to regret the contract before it's all over. The total exceeds what Artie Moreno paid for the franchise by some $50 million.


It's frequently discombobulating to see a great player with a different team, but in this case the visual shock may not be so great. The Angels and the Cardinals both rely on a bright red as their primary color.

Pujols in Yankees pinstripes, that would be a jolt to see.

Albert Pujols, Michael Cuddyer and the desire for more

John Mozeliak, general manager of the St. Louis Cardinals,
contemplates life without Albert Pujols. He might also have
the same expression thinking about the possibility of
paying the slugger $20 million-plus when he's in his 40s.

Before the Beatles told us I don't care too much for money/Money can't buy me love, they sang: Give me money/That's what I want.

Albert Pujols had the love and admiration of the St. Louis area, and tossed it aside this week for an extra $40 million or so. You and I probably would have done the same. Forty million? I don't know that I could spend that much in a lifetime, but I might like to try.

Pujols was, in truth, underpaid during his 11 seasons in a Cardinals uniform; while it may seem ridiculous to say that someone who made $104 million in 11 years was underpaid, he provided his team with well over $330 million in production. As wealthy as Pujols was before he signed his deal with Anaheim, he knew he has been underpaid in St. Louis, and it's a safe bet that bugged him. "Hometown discount"? He's given that already.

The Cardinals, to use a metaphor Bill James deployed in the late '80s, ate the heart of the watermelon that is Pujols' career. The Angels are paying for the rind.

It's been said that there's no such thing as a bad one-year contract. By the same token, there's no such thing as a good 10-year contract. The Angels jumped eagerly into the deep end of that pool this week, and nobody's standing by with a life preserver for them.

(It will be an interesting race to watch. Which deal goes bad for Anaheim first: $254 million/10 years for Pujols, or $77.5 million/five years for C.J. Wilson? My guess is the Wilson deal goes sour first.)

Then there's Michael Cuddyer. Cuddyer is no Pujols, of course. The money is lower, the talent is lower, the stakes are lower. But again, Cuddyer has made more money playing baseball than you and I have made doing what we do (I say that assuming Glen Taylor isn't reading this), and there has grown, I believe, a genuine affection between player, community and franchise.

And yet there is a standoff now between player and team. He wants more; the team is reluctant to oblige. In my view, the three-year, $24 million offer reportedly made this week pushes the envelope of Cuddyer's value to the Twins. It's justifiable, but I don't think they should add years or money to it.

He wants more. We all want more. Money can't buy me love -- but it can rent it for a while.

News judgment, or lack thereof, and the inability to read

Question No. 1: Is a trade that never happened news?

Question No. 2: Is a trade that was never even proposed news?

Question No. 3: If the answers to 1 and 2 are "yes," and the item is widely misconstrued, did reporting it do any good?

These questions are prompted by a couple of reports the past few days.

The on that cranked up the biggest, and most meaningless, furor was a Buster Olney item that said the Phillies front office had had "internal discussions" about offering St. Louis a Ryan Howard for Albert Pujols trade.

Not only did such a trade not happen, Olney doesn't even say that the Phillies broached the notion with the Cardinals. "Internal discussions" can mean (and probably does) that in a meeting aimed at plotting out budgets for future years — essential when doing long-term contracts — someday eyed the number assigned to Ryan Howard and said: Geez, for that money we ought to have Pujols. Followed by a brief discussion of how much Pujols would cost, followed by a "not gonna happen," and on to figuring out if they can afford both Doc Halladay and Cole Hamels in 2012.

Meaningless. But ESPN decided to overplay this "scoop," and Tony LaRussa acted like Tony LaRussa — meaning that he put on a performance that makes one wonder if this Hall of Fame-bound manager with a law degree is secretly functionally illiterate:

It's the media. They can be really useful and they can be really abusive. But to come up with that one is abusive. ... The person who came up with that one should be tracked down and you'd say, 'Hmmm, their credibility just took a big hit.'

Well, unless Tony LaRussa is sitting in on the Phillies front office meetings, he doesn't know what he's talking about. And if he is sitting in on those meetings, there's a bigger problem.

Then there's the New York Post item — in the context of how little faith the Yankees have in Brett Gardner — that the Yankees tried to trade for Denard Span last summer.

Well sure. The Yankees figured they needed a center fielder and leadoff hitter; they weren't going to hitch their wagon to Johnny Damon long term; so they made an offer for Span. The Twins turned them down; the Yankees ultimately made a trade with Detroit for Curtis Granderson.

The Post writer says he thought a Span for Phil Hughes trade was possible this spring. That's his thought, and now even he has tossed the notion aside.

Still, this item triggered e-mail messages and blog comments to me that took this way too seriously.

Pitching to Pujols (and other stuff)

On Friday, the Twins (specifically Glen Perkins and Joe Nathan) got Albert Pujols (right) out – or at least kept him from hurting them. On Saturday, they (specifically Kevin Slowey) didn't.

Ron Gardenhire has it exactly right: "Just make better pitches. Keep the ball away from him. If you want to just (intentionally) walk him every time up, I think that's embarrassing baseball. That's ridiculous baseball. If we have the same situation tomorrow, I hope that my pitcher makes better pitches so I don't have to put four (fingers) up every time."

Slowey has it right, too: "I don't know if looking back you should say we should have walked him. For me, looking back, I need to make a better pitch in both situations."

No question, the margin for error is less with Pujols than with probably any other hitter since Barry Bonds was in his prime. But he's "only" hitting .328. (With considerable power, of course.) He can be pitched to. Slowey didn't do it very well.

* The latest odd development in the Milton Bradley-Lou Piniella saga is that the Chicago Sun-Times printed (most of) the excrement expletive the (sometimes) volatile manager used in his Friday confrontation with the (often) volatile outfielder and the defusing response from Bradley. Piniella publicly apologized to Bradley for the insult Saturday. And the Cubs complained that the White Sox stadium staff shouldn't be leaking what's said in the visiting clubhouse.

My take, at an extreme distance, is that Bradley wants to be a nice guy but hasn't figured out how to do it. Given time and distance, he says the right things. In heat of the moment — that's another matter. Playing in a major market, for a team whose fans have expectations of success and stronger expectations of disappointment, doesn't help.

*Poll stuff: Of the offered bullpen trade options offered, five votes (35 percent) went to getting LaTroy Hawkins; three votes (21 percent) perfered the status quo; two apiece (14 percent) opted for Danys Baez or Takashi Saito; and one each (7 percent) for Matt Capps or Cla Meredith. Fourtenn total votes.

New poll is up. And, yeah, it's inspired, sort of, by the pending Monday print column — and more strongly by an offshoot of that column that will be posted here later.