I’m so mad at myself that I didn’t have this blog going during the draft, because it seriously is my favorite day of the baseball calendar. The best way to build your team is through the draft, and it always excites me to see who the Twins settle on.
First round pick Kyle Gibson probably won’t sign until August, but here are some guys who have:
Billy Bullock (70 overall): The future closer has thrown 3 innings for Elizabethton, giving up 1 hit and striking out 4.
Derek McCallum (132 overall): It’s not going terribly well for the former Gopher in Elizabethton: he’s [...]

Just last week I called Francisco Liriano’s career over. Today, he shut me the hell up:

Look at all those glorious pitches in the bottom of the strike zone. Liriano threw 97 pitches. His 91st pitch was a shade over 94 mph, and his slider averaged 87 mph and he threw 33 of them. If the slider is back, Liriano is back, simple as that.

Once again, I’m heading out of town, so here are your weekend links.
Aaron Hicks’ stats in Single A Beloit (MiLB)
Hall of Fame Class of 09 preview/tribute (Souvenir City)
An MMA Post I can understand (BBB)
Verbally fellating Danny Valencia (Nick’s Twins Blog)
A look at the pitching staff (Twinkie Talk)
Michael Cuddyer might play second base? I’ll believe it when I see it. (Twins Now)
Check out Uniwatch this weekend, as yours truly might be featured in one of the posts. Note that I said ‘might’ and also, at least take a peek at the Confederations Cup final on Sunday when we take on Brazil. [...]

A couple, well quite frankly dumb, twitter posts have prompted me to dive a little deeper into what our best outfield is. I have a decent sense of it in my head, but I want to see if the numbers bear it out.
First, offensively: Last year Denard Span came out of nowhere to post a .294/.387/.432 line. He didn’t have a ton of power, but he walkled (12.6%) almost as often as he struck out (17.3%). He had abandoned his free swinging ways and turned into a plate discipline guy who wasn’t afraid to go deep into counts. This year [...]

Francisco Liriano really struggled with his control tonight. Without even typing up his stats, you can tell he just didn’t have it. Sadly, if you go through his pitch f/x archives you see a lot of this. His changeup doesn’t even matter anymore, and since the surgery he lost that great slider. No control, not as much movement, nowhere near the velocity. The fastball isn’t the problem (although that’s erratic too), it’s that the slider is ineffective. Sad, sad story.
Thanks to brooksbaseball.net for the graph.

First off, I’d just like to apologize to the vest uniforms. You are still ugly as all hell, but wouldn’t you know it, the Twins have their best winning percentage in those monstrosities.
Here’s The Breakdown:
Home Whites: 8-6 record, 76 runs scored, 70 runs allowed, +6 differential
Road Grays: 8-14 record, 67 runs scored, 90 runs allowed, -23 differential
Navy Alternates: 12-10 record, 127 runs scored, 92 runs allowed, +35 differential
Dome Throwbacks: 3-4 record, 42 runs scored, 38 runs allowed, +4 differential
Vests: 4-2 record, 28 runs scored, 33 runs allowed, -5 differential
So the grays are the real culprit. It makes sense, because the [...]

Over at Twinkie Town, Jesse puts up a good article wondering if the Twins could get the 2B of the Pittsburgh Pirates, Freddy Sanchez. Since I’m not at all above letting other people do my work for me, let’s take a look at acquiring Sanchez, and who else the Twins could get.
Assuming that the acquisition of a 2B would push Nick Punto back into a starting role at short, and Brendan Harris into a guy who plays third a couple days a week, short a couple days a week, and 2B a couple days a week, I’m not so sure [...]

I’ll be out of town all weekend, with no access to a computer or the internet, so rather than disappoint (all 10 of) my readers, I decided I’d link to some stuff that other people have written. People doing the work for me is a beautiful thing.
Ron Gardenhire is kind of dumb, but more relevant to this link, he is fed up with the youngsters [Twinkie Town]
It took her roughly 10 years (ok 3 days) but k-bro finally has written a post. Yay! [K-bro]
CRM previews some MMA fights. I have no idea who any of these people are. [Blood, Booze [...]

It’s something I wouldn’t say to my girlfriend, but I’ll say it to Nick Blackburn*. Blackie pitched the first complete game effort for the Twins today, giving up 6 hits and 1 walk while striking out 2 hitters. His sinker was really working today, as he got 17 groundouts and just 8 flyouts, in addition to the two strikeouts, all on 107 pitches, 70 for strikes. He had 49 pitches after the 4th inning, so I was optimistic that the Twins could squeeze 8 innings out of him. As it was, the bullpen got a day off, leaving them fresh [...]

Last night, over at Twinkie Town I was commenting a bit in the game thread, when someone brought up Mauer and Morneau going to the All-Star game. Both of those guys should go and will go, so we’ll leave that one alone, but someone else commented that if Kevin Slowey can get to 11 or 12 wins he should definitely be making the trip to St. Louis.
Currently, Kevin Slowey sits at 9-2 with a 4.23 ERA. Adjusting for park effects and all that good stuff, Slowey’s ERA is slightly below league average (97 ERA+). Slowey’s FIP sits at 4.01, a [...]