A couple new pitchers made their Twins debuts over the weekend. Ron Mahay, a lefty acquired from the Royals, debuted on Saturday, and yesterday Jon Rauch got his first win as a Twin in his debut.
Let’s start with the lesser of the two. Ron Mahay has had kind of a rough year, with a 5.71 FIP and only a 39.6 GB%. He has a 7.5 K/9, but he’s not exactly the type of guy you’d bring in to get  a strikeout, as he doesn’t have great stuff. His fastball has been terrible this year, as has his changeup. About all [...]

I’m running out of creative openings, so let’s get right to it
There was a Maniac on SNYTV the other day. [Marlin Maniac]
More Brad Penny talk. [Over the Baggy]
Complaining about Phillies managing. Deal with Gardy for a week and then get back to me. [Crashburn Alley]
In case you missed it, Mark Rizzo was named Natinals GM. He deserves better. [Teddy Never Wins]
More on the greatness of Baby Joesus. [I'm Writing Sports]
An Indians fan says to respect Jamey Carroll. [Waves of Arms]
This is like four Fridays in a row SC has picked a hot chick. [SC]
The Pirates love Brad Lidge. [Rum Bunter]

Haha, fantastic pun I know. ESPN Chicago is reporting that the Cubs have placed RHP Rich Harden on waivers and that he has been claimed by an AL team, reported to be the Minnesota Twins. Harden has a 4.38 FI this year, and is projected to have a 3.56 FIP going forward. He has been striking out a ridiculous 10.38 batters per 9 innings, but has been walking nearly 4. Harden has also gotten a little bit lucky BABIP wise, and you have to pull back on his numbers a bit if you adjust for going from the NL to [...]

As we hit the home stretch, the Twins are in the position to grab two players for free who can help them, one for the rest of this year, one for the future.
A couple days ago, the Rockies DFAed Matt Murton to make room on the 40 man roster for Juan Rincon (remember him?). Murton has a career AAA line of .312/.388/.469, and he is average defensively. Granted he can only play in a corner, but I’d absolutely rather run him out there than Delmon Young. From 2006-2008 Murton has a .827 OPS against lefties, proving he could be a [...]

I have writer’s block (once again) so I’m going to the well with the topic I usually bring up when such a situation arises: Put Bert Blyleven in the Hall of Fame already!
Let me start out with some raw data: Bert Blyleven is just one of 8 pitchers who rank in the top 20 all time in wins, strikeouts and shutouts. Bert is 17th in wins, 5th in strikeouts and 8th in shutouts. The other 7 pitchers are: Nolan Ryan, Steve Carlton, Fergie Jenkins, Walter Johnson, Gaylord Perry, Tom Seaver and Don Sutton. For the record, there is only one [...]

Recently I have become a huge soccer fan, specifically of the English Premier League. Ever since Chelsea goalie Petr Cech’s horrific injury in 2006 I have been a Chelsea fan, and am excited to follow the EPL more closely this year since ESPN is broadcasting many of the games, and I can find most others on the internet. So since I have been in soccer mode lately, I decided to find the EPL equivalent to each Minnesota Twins player. Well, almost each. There are only 20 EPL teams and I’m not comparing them all, so we’ll get 10 or so [...]

The Twins are still 4.5 games back of the Tigers, but the weekend sweep of the Royals combined with the good weekend by the A’s has breathed new life into the 2009 season. And the two catalysts of Sunday’s game was two of my favorite non-Twins, Jack Cust and Landon Powell.
Cust has been a favorite of mine for a long time, and a favorite of the sabermetric community in general. He never got a ton of playing time, but posted back to back great years in Oakland in 2007 and 2008 with wOBAs of .393 and .371. Cust both strikes [...]

So I’m moving up to school this weekend (one more year baby!) and thus will be without internet access until probably Monday when I can get all settled in. So for now enjoy your weekend links….
Someone agrees with me about Mauer for MVP. Sure, he’s a Twins fan but still. [Twins Fix]
Orlando Cabrera hasn’t been quite the boon Twins fans thought, even if this blogger mis-applies UZR a little bit. [Nick's Twins Blog]
Ross Ohlendorf went to Princeton. He also pitches well. [Rum Bunter]
The MLB draft could be getting a facelift. [Kings of Kauffman]
I’ll confess that I didn’t even read this [...]

Over at one of my favorite sports blogs, Souvenir City, an argument was posted for Joe Mauer not being the AL MVP. SC makes the argument that the MVP should be taken in team context, not an individual award. I think this is pretty shortsighted. To punish Joe Mauer for his teammates is irresponsible. It is like when a pitcher throws 8 innings and gives up 1 run, but still gets the loss because his offense doesn’t score a run for him.
This season Mauer has hit like a designated hitter. Too bad he’s a catcher. Let’s line him up with [...]

Obviously I’m way late on this because I was out of town without internet access, but the Twins signed their 1st round pick Kyle Gibson, whom they took 22nd overall this year. I loved the selection of Gibson because he was a top 10 talent before his forearm injury, and worst case scenario was they would not sign him and have two first round picks next year.
Gibson got 1.85 million, a very fair deal, which was about 600,000 over slot. Baseball America ranked Gibson the 4th best pitcher heading into the draft. Gibson was the latest of dominant Missouri righthanders, [...]