ALDS Coverage: Twins Offense in Game 1
Unfortunately for the Twins yesterday’s game went just about how everyone expected it to. They took a half-inning lead in the top of the third, but gave the runs back in the bottom half. The Yankees added more runs in the next two innings, the Twins couldn’t muster any more, and there was little drama after that.
The game displayed of the offensive limitation of the Justin Morneau-less Twins. Look at the lineup with 2009 wOBA:
Denard Span 0.359 Orlando Cabrera 0.310 Joe Mauer 0.438 Michael Cuddyer 0.370 Jason Kubel 0.383 Delmon Young 0.312 Brendan Harris 0.295 Matt Tolbert 0.278 Nick Punto 0.295
Five players not only below average, but all fairly far below it and three players below 0.300. Even with Joe Mauer this is not a playoff caliber offense. As a group they don’t strike out much and have a fairly high BABIP, so they can get hits. And actually out hit the Yankees last night, 10 to 9. The problem is only two of those were extra base hits (both doubles) and they only drew one walk. For an offense like this to score runs they have to get lucky stringing their singles together in one inning.
Further exacerbating the problem, as I talked about yesterday is that Kubel, Mauer and Span are all lefties. Span and Mauer do not have that bad platoon splits, but Kubel’s is extreme. Versus lefties he joins the list of below-average hitters. Against CC Sabathia he looked very over matched, striking out twice and popping out to foul territory.
The Twins get a needed day off to rest a bullpen that got a lot of work in the past two days and calm down after some high pressure days. Tomorrow they face AJ Burnett, the only time they will see a righty until a possible game five, maybe they can string some hits together and steal one from the Yankees in New York.
Dave Allen's other baseball work can be found at Baseball Analysts.
I know they’re all baseball players, but wouldn’t Gardenhire have been better served with Gomez’s glove in there over Harris’ awful bat?
I just find it amusing that Gardy’s solution to losing Morneau is give Cabrera more PA’s than Mauer.
Problem is, the LaRussa-esque 9-1-2 possibility of this lineup is non-existant. There’s no one you can justify hitting #9 that can get on base without much power so that you can move Mauer up to #2 behind Span.
And for anyone (very few now) that don’t think Mauer is MVP…look at that lineup. Half of them range from low-end starter to barely MLB quality, and they made the playoffs. In some cases, kudos to guys like Kubel, Cuddyer, and Young for picking it up nice, but still.
(P.S. Young’s line in the 2nd half was .300/.322/.502 in 214 PA, with a BABIP actually less than his 1st half’s by a good margin, .364 to .317. Maybe he’s making his hacktastic approach work now, even though the fact that he hit as many HR as he had BB is still un-friggin-real).
I don’t think anyone who reads the comments section of Fangraphs posts believes anyone but Mauer should be AL MVP.
Yes, but ever since Young started hitting, Gardy has made Gomez into a defensive replacement for *drum roll* Jason Kubel, one of the few guys that shouldn’t be replaced just because of his offense. Plus, comparing Kubel’s value to Delmon’s shouldn’t even be close, but still it’s Kubel that loses chances of getting AB in late situations (see: 2 critical AB in game 163 given to Gomez instead of Kubel).
However, this whole problem could be avoided if Kubel would have remained at DH instead of being switched to OF for Cuddyer when Morneau stopped playing.