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August 30, 2010

No Morneau, no problem —but how?

By Edward Thoma Free Press Staff Writer

— It defies explanation.

Justin Morneau last played a game on July 7, at which point the twins were 45-40 and going backwards in the standings. Since he went out with a concussion, the Twins have gone 30-15 (entering Sunday’s play) and taken control of the division race.

Last season, he missed the final 21 games with a stress fracture in his back. In his absence, the Twins went 17-4 and wound up with the division title.

Add it up, and the Twins without Morneau are a 47-19 team the past two seasons — a .712 winning percentage.

Which makes no sense. Morneau’s absence weakens the lineup at the plate and in the field.

They shouldn’t be a better team with him sidelined. Their record the past two seasons says they are.

Forced to say why, I’ll offer two possible reasons: the breaks of the schedule and the fact that even three months of baseball remains a relatively small sample size.

One thing this phenomenon should illustrate for us is how little the absence of even a star really matters in the context of a season.

And the resurgence of Joe Mauer — hitting .373/.450/.547 since Morneau left the lineup — should illustrate the fallacy of lineup “protection.”

Working the wavier wire

Fox’ Ken Rosenthal tweeted Saturday that he’d asked Bill Smith, the Twins general manager, if the payroll had reached $100 million. “His response: ‘I've quit checking.’”

A mildly amusing reply, and perhaps illuminating. The implication is that the Twins were easily able to accommodate about $2 million in additional salary with the acquisitions last week of Brian Fuentes and Randy Flores.

Meanwhile, Smith’ counterpart with the White Sox, Kenny Williams, claims to be checking the walk-up ticket sales daily to see how much money he has to play with as he tries to find a way to afford Manny Ramirez.

It remains inexplicable several days later that the White Sox — currently without their two most reliable relievers this season, Matt Thronton and J.J. Putz — allowed Feints to slip past them on waivers to the Twins.

The only reason I can deduce is that Williams cannot afford to add both Ramirez and Fuentes and had his heart set on the slugger.

There’s no guarantee that he’ll land Ramirez. And even if he did, I suspect Fuentes would have been the wiser target, if only because he could have kept the lefty away from the Twins.

Meanwhile,  the addition of Fuentes makes the addition of Flores less crucial. Assuming that Jose Mijares is ready to go for the playoffs — not a certainity — Flores probably won’t even be active for the postseason.



Edward Thoma is a Free Press staff writer. He is at 344-6377 or at ethoma@mankatofreepress.com. He also has a baseball blog at www.mankatofreepress.com

 

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