Everyone on Twins team to blame

Everyone’s to blame

With the life of Minnesota baseball hibernating for the rest of the winter, the blame game must come out.
But the blame game is going to have a pretty long list with the Twins and miraculous comeback at the end of the season.

Pitching

The starting pitching for the Twins has been terrible since the start of the season. Scott Baker, Nick Blackburn, Francisco Liriano, Kevin Slowey, Boof Bonser and Glen Perkins started the season for the Twins with high hopes.

I firmly believe that Liriano hasn’t panned out for a reason. He cannot throw his slider anymore and it will not come around again. Liriano needs to be put in the bullpen to work on his specialty pitches in his curveball and change-up. Until he can prove that he can pitch consistently, I do not want to see him take the mound in the first inning.

Bonser and Perkins have shown promise in the past, but show the least amount with the current pitching staff at hand. With Slowey, Baker, Blackburn and late-season acquisition Carl Pavano, the starting pitching staff has no more room. 

Brian Duensing was brought to the Twins to fill the huge void of not having a consistent pitcher on staff. He did well and showed potential to become a solid pitcher.

The bottom line of the starting pitching lineup is that something has to be done. Ties have to be cut.

The bullpen has been another story in itself.

The bullpen crushed my hopes in the playoffs. Joe Nathan has been the Twins closer since 2004. Twins fans have watched Nathan come in and close the ninth inning for Minnesota.

All I can remember about Nathan’s career at the moment is him giving up the homerun to Alex Rodriguez in the bottom of the ninth. Matt Guerrier, Nathan’s set-up man, has been inconsistent and does not look comfortable coming in the eighth inning with some weight on his shoulders.

Other than those two relief pitchers, no other relief pitcher is worth mentioning. The acquisitions of Ron Mahay and John Rauch were needed to cover the bullpen over to the playoffs. Hopefully Pat Neshek can come back strong next season and fill more voids in the bullpen. 

Batting

The Twins were pretty loud at certain points of the season. If anybody thinks that Joe Mauer is not the MVP of the American League, why don’t you count to see how many No. 1’s he has next to any statistic comparing him with the rest of the league?

Mauer has made even more strides this season hitting more for power while still getting a lot of quality hits.

Morneau had yet another 30-homerun season even though his season was cut short.

ne thing that Morneau has done over the years is that he will always get into a funk after having many good games and fans can watch his batting average drop with every at bat. Morneau needs to concentrate this off-season about keeping up his endurance and keeping healthy.

Michael Cuddyer had the best second half of the season out of any Twin. He worked hard on his batting and boosted the Twins to win again. If he could play the whole season like he did the second half of last season, than he would be a perennial all-star.

Carlos Gomez, Delmon Young, Nick Punto, Matt Tolbert, Alexi Casilla all need to learn how to hit this off-season. Their bats had some great timely hits, but sometimes it is hard to get things turned around when you see these batters in consecutive order.

Jason Kubel had yet another wonderful season, but I think his kryptonite has been found. The New York Yankees. He played and helped the Twins win with his power, but his bat was more silent than the batboy’s striking out numerous times.

Miscellaneous

The coaching of the team has never been a question in my mind. Gardenhire and the Minnesota farm system is one of the best in the league.

The Twins’ farm system produces real baseball players playing the strategy of the game and not expecting a home run every at bat. Gardenhire has 708 wins as the manager of the Twins with only one losing season in eight years and reaching the postseason fives times. I thought the performance and moves by Gardenhire in the playoffs were smart and well received by the fans.

So what is left for the Twins future? The main concern the Twins have this hibernation is re-signing Mauer. Mauer is the face of the Twins and everybody knows that the Yankees are probably going to give him one of the biggest contract offers in league history. Mauer is a hometown kid and hope he plans on staying on as the face of Minnesota baseball.

Now the question is, will the owners of the Twins be smart enough to get him to sign back with the Twins?