Losing two of three to Cleveland

This was the lead to the Star Tribune's game story after Tuesday's Twins-Indians game:

Hard to say what the Twins enjoyed more Tuesday night: Padding their statistics or browsing a schedule that shows 11 more games against this dismantled Cleveland squad.

Now's it's down to nine games, and on Wednesday and Thursday the Twins combined to score two runs against this dismantled Cleveland squad.

I shouldn't ridicule Joe Christensen (much) for assuming that the Indians would be easy pickings the rest of the way, but baseball is weird that way. Somewhere in my voluminous baseball library is a description of Sparky Anderson fretting when taking his powerhouse Cincinnati Reds of the early '70s into San Diego to face the lowly Padres; the Reds were a good bet to win 100 games in any given season, and the Padres an equally good bet to lose 100, but the Padres had a pair of good pitchers in Clay Kirby and Randy Jones, and if Kirby and Jones had good games, the Reds could lose two of three.

Department of the second-guess: Given that it was time for Joe Mauer to get a day off behind the plate – a day game after a night game and all that — it was a curious bit of timing on the art of Ron Gardenhire.

Mike Redmond (above) has extreme platoon splits — always has. This year, he's hitting .382 vs. lefties, .181 vs. righties. OK, that's not a lot of at-bats. For the last three seasons, Redmond is .350 vs. lefties, .28o vs. righties, with even steeper dropoffs in power. For his career, Redmond is at .326 vs. lefties, .269 vs. righties.

The point being: If you're going to face a lefty and a righty, and you're to play Redmond in one of those two games, it's best to use him against the left-landed starter.

Yet he sat Wednesday against lefty Aaron Laffey and started Thursday against righty Fausto Carmona. Left-handed hitters are hitting .313 against Carmona this year; righties, .230.

Now, it may be that Gardenhire didn't decide Mauer needed a break until Wednesday, when he was charged with a pair of passed balls. The fact remains that he used Redmond in the game in which he would be at the greatest disadvantage — and the following facts are that:

* Redmond went 0-for-4;

* He knows he's in trouble at the plate against Carmona;

*He was at the center of the second-inning failure to capitalize on a first-and-third, no-out situation, fingered by Gardenhire as the key to the loss.

It's tempting here to suggest that were the switch-hitting Jose Morales the backup catcher, the Twins might have won the game. On the other hand, there's no guarantee that Morales would have made the catch-and-tag play at the plate in the seventh inning that kept it a one-run game.

Two left-handed pitchers

By the time I returned to Mankato from a mission to my parents Wednesday, the Twins game was essentially over.

Francisco Liriano ( left) was having his customary problems commanding his fast ball.

Aaron Laffey (right) was getting grounder after grounder.

Laffey is a pitcher to keep an eye on. My print column a couple of weeks ago about Mark Buehrle put the White Sox lefty in the Tommy John family of pitchers — fairly low strikeout rates, very low walk rate, lots of grounders, lots of base hits, holds runners well, keeps the ball in the park. Laffey fits that profile even better than does Burhrle, with the exception of the walks. He's walked 29 hitters in 65-plus innings this year, and that's too many.

But time's on his side; he's just 24, and as noted in the Buehrle column, members of this family seldom peak young. I think that's a maturity factor — it takes time to master the nuances and to be patient with the approach. Two singles to start an inning might lead an inexperienced pitcher to panic; the older guy's been there and done that.

Cleveland's had Laffey up and down for three seasons — 40 games, 34 starts, 208-plus innings — and he's gone 14-12 with a 4.10 ERA.

He's a better bet going forward than Nick Blackburn or Glen Perkins, the Twins low-strikeout starters.

Quotes, notes and comment

* It's easy to forget now that the Twins' decision in 2001 to draft Joe Mauer with the first pick in that year's draft was criticized in many quarters. The guy who "should" have gone 1-1 was Mark Prior, that year's greatest college pitcher ever.

The San Diego Padres this week released Prior, who hasn't appeared in a major league game since 2006.

* Some blame Dusty Baker, who managed Prior during the pitcher's tenure with the Chicago Cubs, for the string of injuries that have bedeviled Prior since 2003, Prior's one good year. In September and October of that season, Prior's pitch counts were 131, 129, 110, 124, 131, 133, 133 (again), 116 and 119. In contrast, Johan Santana's career high is 125. He did that once.

Last season, Edinson Volquez (pictured above) had a big season pitching for Baker in Cincinnati. On Monday, he had Tommy John surgery — out the rest of this year, probably out all of 2010 as well.

Blame Baker, right? Maybe, but in terms of his pitch counts, Baker was far more careful in his use of Volquez than he was with Prior.

This link provides a series of links to a variety of views on why Volquez got hurt. To me, it's easy: He's a young pitcher. Young pitchers pitching well get hurt. That they're more likely to get hurt when managed by Baker or Tommy Lasorda than by Tom Kelly or Jim Leyland is probably not coincidential.

* The Twins win on Tuesday; the Tigers (and Jarrod Washburn) lose; and despite the weekend-long disaster against the Angels, the Twins are just 2.5 games behind the Tigers.

* La Velle Neal, in this Star-Trib blog entry about Scott Baker, makes a worthwhile point about Baker and foul balls. But he also comments on the stuggles of the Twins rotation:

Baker was supposed to lead the rotation, and the adjustments he needs to make aren’t as serious as Francisco Liriano’s. I’m surprised that Nick Blackburn has gone haywire lately. And that Glen Perkins seems to be in such a mess. Rookie Anthony Swarzak is young and talented and learning.

This may be the basis of a future Monday print column, but just in case I go in a different direction before then: Nothing surprising about Blackburn and Perkins, really. Neither gets enough strikeouts. Blackburn is striking out fewer than four men per nine innings this year; Perkins is just over four K/9. It is beastly difficult to succeed in the modern game with fewer than five strikeouts per nine innings.

Poll results

The Cabrera trade probably went over well with my readers.

Of the 20 respondents to last week's poll, 12 (60 percent) said middle infield was the Twins' biggest need. Four (20 percent) said the bullpen, three (15 percent) said the starting rotation, and one (5 percent) picked "restocking the depth" — by which (the option wasn't clear enough, I fear) I meant the minor league system. That respondent might have thought I meant something else.

On to the next poll.

A less useful bench

The Twins sent Brian Buscher to Triple A Rochester on Saturday to make roster space for Orlando Cabrera, their new shortstop.

Follow me as I explain how this affects the in-game moves Ron Gardenhire has available.

Shortstop Cabrera is just that — a shortstop. He hasn’t played any other position since 2000.

Brendan Harris is a utility infielder deemed by his manager to be too inadequate defensively to play at second base.

Nick Punto and Alexi Casilla can play second or short, but neither has hit (whcih is why the Twins traded for Cabrera).

Buscher can hit, at least against righties — his on-base percentage as pinch hitter for his career is .500 — but he’s limited defensively to the infield corners.

Imagine that the Twins had demoted Casilla (again). Punto becomes the regular second baseman — but Gardenhire will be afraid to pinch-hit for him, because that would leave him with Harris playing second.

Instead, Buscher lost his roster spot, removing the best left-handed pinch-hitter. Gardenhire will be able to pinch hit for either Punto or Casilla, whoever starts at second, but probably less effectively, since the bench on most days now consists of Delmon Young (right handed), Harris, Mike Redmond and one of Punto and Casilla.

Gardenhire has gotten good mileage from Buscher and Jose Morales as pinch-hitters, but neither is now on the roster.

Views on the AL Central trades

Kenny Williams just made the dumbest trade in baseball history or one of the smartest. The health of Jake Peavy (left) will be the deciding factor, and nobody has labeled him the second coming of Mark Prior.

— Chicago Tribune baseball writer Phil Rogers in Saturday's column

If Toronto ace Roy Halladay had gone to the Angels or Red Sox, his new team could have outpitched anyone in a series in this year's postseason. But Halladay went untraded. Now it's the trio of (Justin) Verlander-(Edwin) Jackson-(Jarrod) Washburn who can out-pitch any other AL team and lead the Tigers to victory in a playoff series. That is, presuming the Tigers can score at least a few runs.
— Detroit Free Press Tigers beat writer John Lowe in Saturday's column

...(O)f the teams that spent July selling off, nobody reeled in the quality haul of prospects the Indians did. They collected six solid young players who are either big-league-ready now or will be shortly (Chris Perez, Justin Masterson, Carlos Carrasco, Lou Marson, Jason Donald and Jess Todd). And they built both the (Cliff) Lee and (Victor) Martinez deals around younger, 6-foot-5 flame-ballers who both project as No. 1 starters — Jason Knapp and Nick Hagadone, respectively.
— ESPN.com's Jayson Stark on the Cleveland Indians

(The White Sox are) going to show up on a lot of other people's "Winners" list after pulling off that sneaky Jake Peavy deal about four seconds before the deadline. But is "winner" really the right term for a team that just dealt a big package for a guy who (A) might not throw a pitch until mid-September (if then), (B) is going from the NL to the AL, (C) is moving from Pitching Heaven (Petco Park) to a pitcher's worst nightmare (The Cell) and (D) is adding more than $55 million to the payroll through 2012?
—Stark again.

More on the trading deadline

This blog's readers poll points to the middle infield as the biggest weakness on the Twins.

My belief all season has been, and remains, that it's the bullpen depth.

Friday's 11th inning meltdown (six runs) underlines that belief.

Bobby Keppel: A leadoff four-pitch walk, two singles, no outs. Gone.

Jesse Crain: Three singles, one walk, no outs. Gone.

R.A. Dickey: A single, then — finally — three outs.

The first two guys are the top alternatives to Jose Mijares and Matt Guerrier, who have been quite good this year but are in danger of being overworked.

I don't have a serious argument with the Orlando Cabrera trade; obviously, the middle infielders (Nick Punto, Alexi Casilla, Matt Tolbert, even Brendan Harris) haven't hit.

But I have more confidence in Punto and Casilla than in Keppel and Crain.

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The Twins weren't the only AL Central contender wheeling and dealing Friday before the nonwaiver trade deadline.

Detroit traded for Jarrod Washburn (above); the White Sox finally got Jake Peavy.

The Washburn trade doesn't strike me as much of an upgrade for the Tigers. They gave up Luke French , like Washburn a left-handed flyball pitcher, and a minor leaguer who didn't figure to be a factor for Detroit this year.

Washburn, unlike French, has a track record. He's racked up far better numbers this season than in recent years (2.64 ERA). Washburn has been aided considerably this year by the Seattle outfield defense, which frequently features three legit center fielders. The Detroit stadium is just as spacious as Seattle's, but the Tigers' outfield speed, especially in the corners, don't compare.

The Twins were hot for Washburn last year, a notion that struck me then as borderline insanity. He's been far more effective this year, but even if he maintains his current success, I won't criticize the Twins for staying away this summer.

The Peavy trade may not do anything to help the Chisox this year. The former NL Cy Young Award winner has been on the DL since early June with a strained tendon in his foot; before the trade, his agent said there was no timeline for his return. Now Peavy is talking about being ready by the end of August.

Meanwhile, the White Sox lose a piece of their current starting rotation in Clayton Richard. And a first-rate pitching prospect in Aaron Poreda.

And Peavy has benefited mightily from pitching in a very pitcher-friendly home park in San Diego. Last season, for example, he had a home ERA of 1.75 and a road ERA of 4.28. Now he's going to have a launching pad for a home park.