As Bad As It Gets

White Sox 7, Twins 1

Yeah, that's about the worst game you're going to see. Pathetic effort from the offense, mediocre start, poor relief pitching, and the defense threw the ball around. Oh well, if you're only going to get one hit, you might as well get all your other sucking out of the way, too.

Blackburn didn't do too badly, giving the Twins another quality start. Too many walks, though.

Was anybody surprised to see Joe Mauer be the one who broke up the no-no? He's as hot as it gets right now.

Progress?

On a more positive note, Francisco Liriano had an effective, er, not terrible outing for AAA on Monday, allowing just 1 R on 2 H in 5 IP with 4 K. He's turned the corner, right? Well, there were the 4 BB, and he only threw 48 of his 87 pitches for strikes. So there's still some work to be done there. But it certainly seems to be a step forward.

Span vs. Gomez

Each CF made an error last night (Gomez' was, predictably, of the exuberantly overthrowing variety). Gomez, like the rest of the Twins' lineup, didn't hit squat, lowering his season line to .261/.287/.360, a .647 OPS, and holding at 13/14 SB. Span has been a busy boy the last couple of nights, collecting 5 H and 1 BB with 3 SB. That raised his AAA season line to .333/.443/.353, a .796 OPS and 11/13 SB.

Aaron Gleeman has been using some interesting metrics to measure the Twins' performance the last couple of days: Win Probability Added (WPA) and Outside Swings Percentage (OS%). Even after he adjusted the WPA ratings to reflect Gomez' importance as CF and Span's poor performance relative to actual RF, Span still wound up with a better rating than Gomez. And in the OS% post, Gleeman cuts off the PAs of rated players at 40, excluding Span, who has just 34 so far. Had he included Span, everyone could have seen that his OS% of 15.8% is even better than that of Joe Mauer (16.9%).

I can't help but conclude, as I have since spring training, that Span is more ready for the Big Leagues right now than Gomez. Sigh.