Gardy complaint of the day: playing Delmon Young over Jason Kubel in an NL park vs. a RHP.

ESPN says kubel is sick

Yeah that makes sense. Sounds like some kind of bug is going through the locker room since Mauer was sick a few days ago.

Liriano, I dare you to blow this lead

Watching this on gamecast, is at much of a **** show as it appears to be?

Yeah the whole game has been pretty sloppy. Hardy made a pretty bad error, Delmon embarrassed himself in left field again, etc.

I remember Delmon just couldn't hit at all last year for about the first 40 games of the season then was actually serviceable the rest of the year after that. He's played about the same amount of games this year being absolutely awful and now looks like he's starting to at least show some life at the plate.

Strongly disagree that Delmon did anything embarassing in LF today. First, he made a nice running catch on the warning track that Span also makes ldo, but one that Kubel doesn't make imo. And, on that one down the line, it had a weird carom off the side wall and he slid towards the wall so he didn't hit it, so what. Everything that happened, all the bases taken, would have happened the same way with Span in LF today...

delmon has a defender in aj, but no defense.

LET DICKEY HIT, ONE TIME!

nooooooo, ron wants to waste guerrier instead

Bringing in Nathan is clutch too.

let's waste nathan while we're at it. we wouldn't want to give tricky dickey 4 innings because he's a relief pitcher and relief pitchers pitch one inning, two tops.

When I first saw the play, it did look like Delmon made a terrible play, but when they showed the other angle on the replay, you could clearly see he did nothing wrong. It was just a goofy bounce off the wall.

<-- not a Delmon fan fwiw

Gardy was just talking last week about running Dickey out there for 4 innings at a time if needed. Just stupid to use Guerrier today. Dickey 3/Nathan 1. Ok, w/e. But using Matty today was dumb.

I'm not a DY fan either really. But, in the last month I think he's played an OK LF. imo, he's improved alot out there.

Dickey for 4 > Dickey 3 Nathan 1 > Dickey 2 Guerier 1 Nathan 1.

If he gets in trouble, fine, take him out. Otherwise do your best to save your high leverage guys.

Also, I really don't know about batting Liriano in the 5th. Up 4, man on 1st, 1 out, >90 pitches iirc. Certainly a better spot to pinch hit than the one where he pulled Dickey.

For sure Keppel gets some high leverage innings in the next couple days now.

agree with your order of preference but ill add that dickey 3, guerrier 1 > dickey 3, nathan 1 too. or dickey 3 keppel 1. but really, dickey until he gets into trouble is so much better that we shouldn't even have to be discussing the other options.

and i wholeheartedly agree with you that we should have PH for liriano in the 5th (i was listening on radio at the time). it really kind of pisses me off that gardenhire cares so much about meaningless stats like wins and saves.

if he cares so much about saves why not let dickey get one today? huh? huh? (answer: because he's not the closer and closers get saves and starters get wins and 3B hit 20 hrs)

also, guarantee that by this he meant innings 4-7. why would he let dickey pitch in teh 8th or 9th? those are guerriers and nathans innings obv.

I honestly think we need to run Dickey out in high leverage 6th-8th inning situations right now and have someone else in the mop-up/long relief role.

Nathan
Guerrier
Mijares
Dickey

Henn-garbage innings
Keppel-long relief

Dickey last two months in relief: 30Inn 21h 4er 8bb 22k

Is this sad? I was hoping Liriano would get the win because fans (and probably Gardy and maybe even the front office) will look at his performance this season more favorably as a result and the chance of them doing something stupid like moving him to the pen goes down.

Very very sad. :/

But seriously, maybe he's better suited for the bullpen? I can kinda see it.

sl, i think liriano is done (being what he was). maybe he has some career left and who knows maybe he'll work his way back up to being good, but if he does it will be because he reinvents himself, not because he finds his old form.

at this point i don't think he's any more valuable than perkins - i'm talking long term. i don't really think there's anything they can do that's more stupid than just giving him unlimited chances in the starting rotation if they have other options. (not saying they do right now)

Meh, he's running a little bad this season. I also still expect his control to improve a little. I'd take him over Perkins right now and think his prospects for improving are much higher.

It would be crazy to expect him to ever be anything like he was in '06, but he still looks good. His velocity has improved a lot since last year. His slider is still nasty and he has developed a good change. Not getting GBs on his fastball anymore is certainly going to hurt him long-term, but if he can work his way back to decent control he is going to be a very solid starter. If he can start getting GBs again he will be very very good.

He has gained a lot of velocity since last season. 90.9 to 91.5 on his fastball and 83.7 to 86 on his slider. Still not the 94.5 and 87 pitches he was throwing in '06, but very solid.

perkins has a 4.37 career ERA fwiw, and 3.46 in the minors. liriano is 3.86/3.42.

i'm not saying that means much but...