Greetings, this fine Sunday, from just south of Grand Marais, MN. My little sis and dad came up here last week and I had debated about joining them, too many things to do, that I'm flailing on, or that are just plain stressing me out, but I decided WTH and came up for a couple of days. If nothing else it's good for a little perspective adjustment.
The drive up was 4.5 hours, my longest road trip since I quit smoking. Three different types of munchies got me through it fairly easily. Another first thing successfully navigated this weekend.
The bills are coming in now from my surgery and I've gotten a more personal take on the state of health care and the good and bad. The quality of care has been outstanding across the board I think. Now comes puzzling through the bills and figuring out why some things are covered and others aren't. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be unhappy before the latter is done.
The Twins are staggering into the All-Star break and here's hoping that the starting rotation can use the time to pull their collective head out of their ass. Carl Pavano excepted, so far today is doing his part to avoid a sweep by the Tigers, the rotation seems to have utterly collapsed the last few weeks. Check this out for ugly:
Five games into this road trip, Twins starters are 0-3 with a 16.53 ERA and have allowed 14 home runs.
Ouch. My patience has officially run out when it comes to Baker, Slowey, Blackburn, and Liriano. Two and three years ago I was willing to wait for these young starters to develop some discipline and consistency in their game and forgive the momentary lapses of reason, so long as they worked their way into regular six or seven(or more) inning quality starts. Time is rapidly running out on that. And I hate to say it, because I've been a strong supporter of his over the years, but pitching coach Rick Anderson better take charge of this staff or get ready to hit the road himself. Is it just me, or is this a fairly lame statement?
Twins pitching coach Rick Anderson said Blackburn didn't throw nearly enough off-speed pitches against the Tigers.
"If I throw 90-some percent of my pitches the same speed, I'm going to get my butt kicked," Anderson said. "I've got a theory I say to everyone: 'The harder you get hit, the softer you throw.'"
I think Anderson knows what these guys need to do, but he seems to be having trouble getting them to do it. Okay, Blackburn needed to throw more off-speed stuff. Why didn't he? Why couldn't Anderson or Gardenhire get him to do so? I like both of those guys, but I'm starting to question if they have the ability to coach this team to its potential.
I was going to post some political stuff, but the heck with it. I need to get my sense of humor back a little bit first.
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