A Walk to Remember

That's what it amounts to pretty much any time a Twin draws a walk. I mean, we knew the new guys (Delmon Young and Carlos Gomez) were free swingers, but I could never have envisioned myself being this frustrated with the lack of walks the team is getting. I write this after a zero walk, eight strikeout outing from the Twins, which is becoming quite the norm this season. As a whole, the Twins are last in the majors, having drawn only 42 walks in 21 games. Not surprisingly, this puts them last in team OBP (.297) and second last in K/BB (3.19). The Marlins are last at 3.21, but no other team is over 3.0.

This doesn't give the whole picture, though. You'd probably assume Gomez and Young are the biggest perpetrators in this, but you'd only be half right. Gomez has certainly done the worst job drawing walks and also is striking out the most (24 K, 2 BB), but Jason Kubel is actually the second-worst (17 K, 3 BB). His impatience is more palatable, so far, than Gomez's and Young's, however, since he is .278/.303/.431 as compared to .230/.247/.310 or .250/.277/.313. There's also Brendan Harris (17 K, 5 BB) and Craig Monroe (12 K, 3 BB), who are helping the Twins sustain this terrible strikeout-to-walk ratio. And Monroe has accumulated those 12 whiffs in just 33 at-bats.

I've never quite appreciated how much better it looks when you're hitting .267 and you have an OBP of .341 because you've drawn nine walks versus having an OBP of .303, despite hitting .278, because you've only walked three times. I.E., Justin Morneau versus Jason Kubel.

I guess I just got particularly frustrated with this fact because of yesterday's game, in which the Twins out-hit the A's 6 to 5, and the A's committed two errors to the Twins' zero. So, naturally, you'd assume the Twins would win because they had more baserunners. But, the A's had four walks whereas the Twins drew zero, thus rendering the previous idea useless. Obviously, this isn't scientific and really has no merit in determining who wins (the team with fewer baserunners wins all the time), but I just thought it was a good way to point out my wish for the Twins to be more patient.

Onto the rest of the division...

Curtis Granderson returned to the Tigers line-up yesterday and contributed to their 19-run outburst, including 11 runs in one inning. The Tigers are already 9-13, which is still tied for last in the division (although they are percentage points ahead of the Indians), but just 3 games out of first place in the underperforming AL Central. The White Sox are leading with an 11-9 record, while the Twins are still in second, in spite of their loss, at 10-11.