Thursday, December 4, 2008

Boneheaded Gardy

I can never decide if I like Ron Gardenhire or not. He seems to get a lot out of his players (see 2008) but some of his lineup choices are maddening. I don't know what a player does to do to get on his good or bad side. Matt Garza was on his bad side and the Twins shipped him off to the Rays, where he is starting to look mighty good. Nick Punto is perhaps his favorite player ever and Gardenhire gave him way too many at-bats in 2007 and Punto posted some of the worst offensive numbers of all-time. Now it appears Delmon Young is on Gardy's bad side as well.

On Wednesday in Fargo, Twins manager Ron Gardenhire said the team's three starting outfielders should be Denard Span, Carlos Gomez and Michael Cuddyer.

"Those three guys have to play every day," Gardenhire told the Fargo Forum after speaking at a farm trade show. "Delmon is in the mix. He's a heck of a player, a heck of a talent. But to me, those three guys should be your outfield and then you go from there."

The Twins have been reportadly trying to see what kind of value they could get for Delmon this offseason. Looks like Gardenhire might be the one pushing for him to be traded. I thought he had a great season last year for a 22 year old. Remember this guy has all the talent in the world. But if you are trying to trade him, saying he wouldn't start over Cuddyer or Gomez does not increase his trade value! If I were Bill Smith I would make Gardy be quiet for the rest of the offseason.

There might be 2 shortstops I would trade Young for: JJ Hardy and Yunel Escobar. And I would hesitate before pulling the trigger on that one.

In other Twins news, it looks like it is down to the Twins and Dodgers in the running for 3B Casey Blake. If either team offers one more year or more money to their current offers, Blake will sign with them. I will not complain about signing Blake, especially if it is just a 2 year deal. He is 35, but could be our best 3B since Koskie. Plus we wouldn't give anything up for Blake, since he is a free-agent. That way we could have all our trade bait still available to fill the much larger SS hole with something besides Gardy's favorite player ever, Nick Punto.

2 comments:

Matt said...

Tim, Trish and I are reading your blog over breakfast, and she wondered if Nick Punto *really* posted some of the worst offensive numbers of all time in 2007. Could you remind us what the stats are behind that?

Tim Sederberg said...

Sure

Nick Punto 2007

536 Plate Appearances (way too many)

.210 Batting Average

.291 On-Base Percentage
(that means out of those 536 plate appearances, 71% of them were outs! 380 of them. That is 14 full Twins games)

.271 Slugging percentage

.562 OPS

Only 25 RBI's for 536 plate appearances

Only 1 home run

And his supposed great defense was ranked about 10th out of the 14 AL 3B.

Had the Twins had perhaps even a league-average third baseman, the Twins would have had a much better shot at making the playoffs in Hunter's and Santana's last season with the Twins.