An Open Letter to Boof Bonser

Dear Boof,

Long time no chat. How's the family? Get any new tattoos lately?

So, you're probably wondering why I'm writing you during the season, when you're so busy. I know you've got a lot on your plate right now, but...oh, to hell with it. I'm not going to pussyfoot around. You're a big boy, you can take it.

You know the strike zone? It's right where it's always been. Seriously. It did not move in the offseason. It sure as hell didn't get bigger.

Speaking of getting bigger...mix in a salad every once in a while, there, ol' buddy. You do not want people to start calling you "Ponson the Younger".

Actually, I hate to say this but you need to hear it. You've gotten sloppy. With the pitching, with the training, with everything. Sixteen walks in a bit under 26 innings, Boof? Come on. You only gave up 24 walks in over 100 innings last season. Seven homers in your first four starts? And what's this crap with only going five innings a start? You're supposed to be a workhorse! Get with the program!

The thing is, you're elevating your pitch count early in the game with all those walks. And then you get yanked in the fifth, or early in the sixth, because you've got runners on and over 100 pitches under your belt, right next to all those offseason cheeseburgers.

This is not cool, man. You're making the bullpen pitch innings that you're supposed to cover. Don't you think maybe Juan Rincón and Jesse Crain would like a game off now and again? And poor Pat Neshek. Pitching like a meerkat on meth is hard on the joints, Boof. Let the little guy relax once in a while.

We expect better from you, Boof. We need better from you. Frankly, with Sir Sidney in the rotation, we can't afford to have anyone else screwing up. You've got to step up and become the leaner, meaner starter you were meant to be! I believe in you.

Faithfully,

TBL

P.S. Just because I believe in you doesn't mean I'm going to take any more of this crap. This is what they call "tough love". Shape up!

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It Could Be Worse?

While TBL has not personally had the pleasure (?) of seeing Matt Chico in action, Larry Dobrow of CBS Sportsline (who, it may be worth noting, is not exactly TBL's favorite sports journalist, though he is on occasion hysterically funny) claims he's much, much worse than the train wreck that is Sir Sidney Ponson.

Sidney Ponson and Jeff Weaver should be pitching in Triple-A: Oops. Rather, they should be placed in restraints and secreted off to a secure location, for their safety as well as our own. The idea that the Twins, an organization that should know better, is once again sacrificing early-season games at the altar of a "proven veteran" boggles the ol' noodle. It's not as if either organization lacks better and cheaper options under its own roof (Matt Garza and/or Glen Perkins in Minnesota, Ryan Feierabend in Seattle).

And yet neither Ponson nor Weaver can claim the title of 2007's worst starting pitcher -- that would be the Nationals' ghastly Matt Chico. Watching his starts is like watching XXX: State of the Union in Swahili, minus the subtitles. His last one, in particular, was a masterwork of demented artistry: not only did he walk the opposing pitcher twice, but one of his pitches ended up in the stands. Both he and Nationals fans are as deserving of your pity as a motherless child.
--Larry Dobrow, "From A-Rod to Big Z, how it all went wrong"

This got me to thinking. How is Sir Sid stacking up amongst the worst of the worst in this young season? Off to the stats!!

"Top" 10 Worst Starters by ERA (3 or more starts)

American League

Name	Team	ERA	GS	IP	H	ER	HR	HB	BB	K	WP	WHIP
J Weaver	SEA	13.91	3	11.0	24	17	2	0	3	7	0	2.45
B McCarthy	TEX	10.20	4	15.0	25	17	3	2	6	7	1	2.07
J Westbrook	CLE	9.15	4	19.2	24	20	6	1	11	13	2	1.78
M Batista	SEA	8.83	3	17.1	25	17	4	2	4	12	1	1.67
S Ponson	MIN	8.44	4	21.1	35	20	6	1	9	12	0	2.06
J Tavarez	BOS	8.36	3	14.0	19	13	3	1	6	9	0	1.79
K Igawa	NYY	7.84	4	20.2	24	18	5	3	9	13	1	1.60
J Seo	TB	7.66	4	22.1	36	19	4	1	6	11	1	1.88
O Perez	KC	7.54	5	22.2	33	19	1	0	8	10	0	1.81
C Fossum	TB	6.94	4	23.1	29	18	4	3	3	11	0	1.37
League Leader:
D Haren	OAK	1.41	5	32.0	23	5	2	0	9	17	0	1.00

There's Ponson, the 5th-worst starter in the AL by ERA ranking. By WHIP, he's 3rd, after Weaver and McCarthy, respectively. He's also 3rd in home runs surrendered (Boof, alas, is first, but otherwise off the Leaderboard of Suck) and OBA [on-base average].

National League

Name	Team	ERA	GS	IP	H	ER	HR	HB	BB	K	WP	WHIP
R Vanden Hurk	FLA	13.97	3	9.2	16	15	2	0	9	13	2	2.59
W Miller	CHC	10.54	3	13.2	24	16	5	0	6	6	0	2.20
M Redman	ATL	10.13	4	18.2	29	21	3	2	6	11	1	1.88
C Hensley	SD	9.45	4	20.0	34	21	2	0	11	8	1	2.25
B Myers	PHI	9.39	3	15.1	15	16	5	0	9	19	0	1.57
M Pelfrey	NYM	7.90	3	13.2	20	12	2	1	7	6	1	1.98
J Williams	WSH	7.77	3	22.0	26	19	5	0	12	14	1	1.73
J Patterson	WSH	7.71	5	23.1	28	20	3	0	17	11	4	1.93
J Schmidt	LAD	7.36	3	11.0	17	9	3	0	5	13	0	2.00
Z Duke	PIT	6.92	5	26.0	38	20	3	1	5	6	0	1.65
League Leader:
T Hudson	ATL	1.22	5	37.0	25	5	1	1	11	31	0	0.97

Hm. No Mark Chico. Turns out he's 14th, by ERA. WHIP is another story...

Chico's line, for the record:

Name	Team	ERA	GS	IP	H	ER	HR	HB	BB	K	WP	WHIP
M Chico	WSH	6.38	4	18.1	24	13	5	1	15	12	2	2.13

So, at what point do you declare the Ponson Experiment a failure? Now? After another start? Two? Three? June?

Is he even showing signs of getting his crap together? Let's gawk at the game-by-game numbers for a minute.

Game	Versus	ERA	W/L	IP	H	ER	HR	HB	BB	K	WP	WHIP
4/9	NYY	12.71	L	5.2	10	8	2	1	3	2	0	2.29
4/14	TB	8.18	W	5.1	8	2	0	0	3	6	0	2.06
4/20	@ KC	9.39	L	4.1	10	6	2	0	1	2	0	2.54
4/25	KC	8.44	W	6.0	7	4	2	0	2	2	0	1.50

He's had one outing that was okay, except for the walking and the brevity. The other starts have just flat-out sucked. That's a .750 SA (sucking average), my friends.

Unless he can string together 3 or 4 quality starts--in a row--I say chuck him next time he stinks. We've got some kids doing pretty darn good in Rochester, maybe you've heard of them? Garza and Slowey. Some fellow named Cummings (about whom TBL knows nothing of importance) is also putting up some fine numbers out east. Oh, and there's this guy named Perkins, happens to be in Minnesota already...

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Sweep + Sleep Deprivation

Today, TBL has (under the nom de plume "infield") gotten rather silly over on BatGirl.

Post reproduced below, for archiving purposes:

---

Ode on an Assbat
(with deep and sincere apologies to John Keats)

Thou still undent'd length of maple wood,
Thou foster-child of Sucking and slow Curves,
Pine-tar'd historian, who canst thus express
A hitless tale more surely than our rhyme:
What soul-sucking legend haunts about thy shape
Of left-handers or righties, or of both,
In KC or the paths of Jacobs Field?
What men or gods are these? What bunters loth?
What mad putouts? What struggle to reach base?
What fouls and ground-outs? What wild swinging strikes?

All baseball games are sweet, but those we win
Are sweeter; therefore, ye young Twins, play on;
Not with the assbattery, but, more endear'd,
Swing at the pitch that falls within the zone:
Fair youth, beneath the lights, thou canst not leave
Home plate, unless thou can those fastballs smack;
Bold batter, never, never canst thou hit,
Swinging now this assbat--yet, do not grieve;
But proclaim, fie!, upon that curs'd wood,
After this wilt thou swing, and it fall fair!

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South Pause

In the twelfth inning, the seventh man to bat was the first to make an out. And that about sums up the last, pathetic chapter of a game that began with 11 innings of close, exciting baseball.

Up until the twelfth, the Twins managed to hang in there despite the departure of our starting pitcher after five innings and an injury-plagued lineup hitting erratically against a Cleveland club that was pitching well and smacking the ball all over the field. Silva was laboring from the beginning, throwing around 20 pitches an inning and, succumbing to those middle-inning jitters he gets when he's not given any run support, getting knocked out of the game by a three-run fifth inning which pushed him over 100 pitches on the night. And after that, it was an all-out Bullpen Revue for the Twins as Perkins cruised through a couple of innings, Rincón struggled through a scoreless inning-plus, Reyes walked the only batter he faced, Neshek did that voodoo that he do so well, Crain sailed through a 1-2-3 eleventh, and then...

Well. Let's just say Crain's 12th wasn't so uneventful. Nor was Nathan's.

Not that the Twins batters can be excused. Four of the nine went hitless on the night, and only one of those took a walk. Starter Jeremy Sowers did pitch well, I don't want to take anything away from him, but he's no Johan Santana. The Twins still have a rare knack for making average lefties look like minor demigods--they're hitting .245/.280/.638 against lefties this season. That .280, by the bye, is the worst OBP in the AL against lefties at the time of this writing.

It certainly hasn't helped that Luis Castillo has been out with a sore leg during this rash of lefty encounters (four of the last five games), seeing as he's pretty darn good against the southpaws. And there's nothing quite like your leadoff guy getting on base to give the rest of the lineup a little confidence.

Luckily, this spate of lefty starters is over and the Twins will only face one lefty in the next five games, KC's Odalis Perez on Wednesday against our very own Sir Sidney Ponson. I recommend drinking heavily before, and possibly during, that one. Unless you're Sidney Ponson.

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Emblems of Belief

Some of you may remember the story of fallen Sgt. Patrick Stewart and his widow's quest to have his VA-issued gravestone inscribed with a pentacle, the symbol of their Wiccan religion.

Mrs. Stewart and other families of Wiccan soldiers both deceased and living had submitted requests for the approval of the pentacle symbol to the VA only to be stonewalled for years, without even being given the courtesy of a decision in the negative. Nor were they given any reason (however lame) for this consignment to bureaucratic limbo. All despite the facts that Wiccan soldiers can (and do) have that listed as their religion on their dog tags and are allowed to hold religious services/ceremonies in military installations.

Well, the VA finally caved.

Wiccan symbol OK for soldiers' graves

The Wiccan pentacle has been added to the list of emblems allowed in national cemeteries and on government-issued headstones of fallen soldiers, according to a settlement announced Monday.

A settlement between the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and Wiccans adds the five-pointed star to the list of "emblems of belief" allowed on VA grave markers.

Eleven families nationwide are waiting for grave markers with the pentacle, said Selena Fox, a Wiccan high priestess with Circle Sanctuary in Barneveld, Wisconsin, a plaintiff in the lawsuit.

The settlement calls for the pentacle, whose five points represent earth, air, fire, water and spirit, to be placed on grave markers within 14 days for those who have pending requests with the VA.

"I am glad this has ended in success in time to get markers for Memorial Day," Fox said.

The VA sought the settlement in the interest of the families involved and to save taxpayers the expense of further litigation, VA spokesman Matt Burns said. The agency also agreed to pay $225,000 in attorneys' fees and costs.

The pentacle has been added to 38 symbols the VA already permits on gravestones. They include commonly recognized symbols for Christianity, Buddhism, Islam and Judaism, as well as those for smaller religions such as Sufism Reoriented, Eckiankar and the Japanese faith Seicho-No-Ie.

Now, is it just me, or would it not have saved more taxpayer dollars and been more immediately "in the interest of the families" to just allow the pentacle on the gravestones from the get-go? 'Cause then there wouldn't have been the lawyers and the settlement and the families without even a damn gravestone to put over their fallen soldiers who died in the service of the great and mighty US of A and its freedom of religion.

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Amusements

Hey, two sweeps out of five series in the new season! Even the most fervent of doomsayers might just crack a smile at that one.

Now, I have to admit, I missed it. I saw a grand total of about six innings of the three-game series, on account of having to get up at oh-hell-hundred in the morning to report to my little grey box o' gloom at The Company*. And on Thursday evenings I have a knitting group, so I missed most of the one game that was on at a decent hour. Alas. Judging from the box scores and postgame writeups, it was an amusing series!

Looks like Bartlett's bat is thawing, while Morneau, Castillo, and Mauer are riding those hot streaks. Santana got his mojo back, Ortiz continues to be surprisingly good, Silva's pitching well enough to stay in the rotation, and poor Pat Neshek got knocked right out of his tall socks. (Glad I missed that.)

Up next, the Kansas City Royals Landed Gentry. Before you all breathe that big ol' sigh of relief, recall that last season we were 12-7 against KC. That's a winning record, but hardly a blowout.

Probables:

4/20: MIN RHP S Ponson (1-1, 8.18) vs KC LHP O Perez (0-2, 9.26)
4/21: MIN RHP B Bonser (0-1, 6.89) vs KC RHP Z Greinke (1-2, 3.95)
4/22: MIN RHP R Ortiz (3-0, 2.05) vs KC LHP J De La Rosa (1-1, 4.34)

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*Speaking of The Company...

We had this corporate thing yesterday, at which one of the Grand High Muckety-Mucks attempted to revive flagging morale after record losses and a ~15% workforce reduction by bludgeoning all us Disgruntled Peons into submission with buzzwords and acronyms. Standard corporate fare. Anyhoo, he was going on about how we could save money by making sure we're not duplicating efforts. Someone needs to buy Mr. Muckety-Muck a thesaurus, because while we all knew he meant 'duplication', what he intoned so solemnly was:

"There's a lot of duplicity in this organization."

And yes, I actually managed not to burst out laughing. Although I certainly would have if we weren't having layoffs.

Making it all even more perfect, the meeting was in a conference room inside the Park at MoA (formerly Camp Snoopy), underneath part of the roller coaster. So the background noise to our ever-so-cheerful gathering was ominous rumbling and muffled screams.

All of which just goes to show, sometimes even upper management actually gets it right.

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Remembering Jackie Robinson

There was supposed to be a whole nice post about the late, great Mr. Robinson and his legacy, with a few pictures to top it all off. Alas, the annual early spring bout of mystery allergies smacked TBL upside the head around the fifth inning yesterday, and now she's on her fourth dose of Benadryl and about as coherent as wet lint.

Suffice it to say that no mere blog post could possibly do justice to the legend that is Jackie Robinson, and that although TBL has had her issues with Torii Hunter in the past (usually with a runner on first and less than two outs), he was without a doubt the right Twin for the honor of wearing #42 on Sunday.


Carl Crawford wore #42 for Tampa Bay.


Torii at the bat.


Kubel's got some kind of zen thing going on in the background.


Think we could get him to wear his socks the right way again?


First base coach Jerry White also wore #42.

[The originals are 1024 x 768. Click to get the full size.]

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