By Ed Thoma
Free Press Staff Writer
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Sixth inning, Friday night: The Twins trail 7-1, but they string five straight singles together to start the inning. One runner is wasted on the basepaths, but they have a run in, the bases loaded, and their RBI leader at the plate with one out.
And Delmon Young bounces into a double play.
It was not merely a rally-killer. It was the 100th GIDP — grounded into double play — racked up by the Twins in 86 games. (GIDP, to be explicit, does not include runners thrown out on the bases after fly balls/line drives or nailed trying to steal a base on strike three.)
That’s a lot. It’s 15 more than any other team in the American League had at the same date.
The team record for GIDP is held by the 1990 Boston Red Sox, 174. The Twins project for 188.
That Red Sox team was well-set up for hitting into double plays: A lot of base runners, a lineup laden with right-handed hitters, no speed to speak of.
The Twins are more left-handed than the 1990 Sox, but they too get plenty of base runners, are slow, and they hit a lot of ground balls. I’m not sure what they can do about this.
How can a manager reduce GIDP?
This isn’t a tactical problem. It’s a roster problem.
And there’s an argument to be made that it’s not really a problem. The Twins entered Saturday fifth in the American League in on-base percentage, sixth in slugging percentage — and are sixth in runs scored.
If the GIDPs are really killing the offense, it’s hard to tell from the total results.
Baseball, soccer
and ESPN
I followed the World Cup fairly closely; there were very few games, if any, that I didn’t watch for at least a few minutes.
As a general thing, soccer doesn’t interest me, but the World Cup certainly does.
And I wonder: How can we entice ESPN to treat baseball with same dignity the World Cup received?
I can’t speak to how the Worldwide Leader does other sports — I’ll guarantee you I watched more World Cup this past month than ESPN’s basketball, collegiate and pro combined, all winter — but it just gets worse and worse at baseball.
The announcers might as well not be at the games for all the attention they pay to the action. In the studio, John Kruk is taken seriously.
Tonight is ESPN’s dream baseball event: Home Run Derby. Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, and loaded with Chris Berman’s act, which is worse than nothing.
What are the odds they find a way to work LeBron James into it?
Edward Thoma is a Free Press staff writer. He is at 344-6377 or at ethoma@mankatofree press.com. He also has a baseball blog.
