June Review

The Twins spent just about the entire month of June in 2nd place in the AL Central, having moved into that spot on June 2nd, and vacating it by percentage points after yesterday's win.

Record: 15-12
Best record at any point (games above .500): 40-39
Worst record at any point (games below .500): 28-31
Days in first (and biggest lead): 0 (1.5 GB)
Days in last (and furthest out of first): 0 (5.0 GB)
Longest win streak: 2 games
Longest losing streak: 3 games
Runs scored/runs against: 112/93
Most runs scored/most runs allowed: 11/10
Shutouts/times shut out: 1/0
Extra inning games: 1
Longest game: 10 innings


Hitter of the month: Jason Kubel (86 AB, 12 R, 8 HR, 17 RBI, 0 SB, .291/.371/.628)
Kubel again takes the cake after earning the same honor in April. As you'll see with the pitchers, a lot of them had good months, but the opposite was true for the hitters. That's not to say that they were abysmal, but most of them were not at their best in June. Kubel, however, mashed 8 of his 13 homers on the season this month, and despite having his worst month for batting average, had his highest monthly OPS by almost 100 points (.999)


Bizarro World hitter of the month: Matt Tolbert (45 AB, 5 R, 0 HR, 2 RBI, 2 SB, .178/.288/.200)
I know, I know--that's actually a pretty good month for Tolbert at the plate. Kidding aside, his season slash stats are .185/.274/.235 so he really wasn't far off his normal performance. His 90 tOPS+ supports this.* Still, when the guy's normal performance is that bad, he's going to find himself in this area a lot. He did pick up 2 steals and had an equal K:BB ratio (7-to-7), but he had only extra base hit (a double) and had an OPS barely higher than Joe Mauer's current on-base-percentage.


Pitcher of the month: Joe Nathan (11 SV, 11.2 IP, 4 H, 1 BB, 18 K, 0.00/0.43)
I'd like to give it someone other than Nathan, but he was just too good this month. 13.89 K/9, 18.0 K/BB, 3.09 H/9? That's just too good. I gave him the award for May, too, and pointed out that without one bad outing he was incredible, and was still very good with it. Well, this time there's no need to subtract a bad outing. I considered Scott Baker and Nick Blackburn as starters, but Blackburn's puny 2.84 K/9 mark was too much to ignore and Baker's 3.20 ERA was too high.


Three more up
Scott Baker: 4-0, 39.1 IP, 30 H, 8 BB, 35 K, 3.20/0.97
Nick Blackburn: 1-2, 38 IP, 39 H, 7 BB, 12 K, 2.37/1.21
R.A. Dickey: 0-0, 13.2 IP, 8 H, 3 BB, 12 K, 0.66/0.80


Bizarro World pitcher of the month: Sean Henn (0-3, 6.1 IP, 6 H, 6 BB, 8 K, 9.95/1.89)
There weren't a lot of choices for this, as everyone performed at least fairly well, or I wouldn't have picked a guy who threw under 7 innings. The other options were Anthony Swarzak, who had significantly better stats and only 8 more innings, and Kevin Slowey. Slowey's stats were also significantly better than Henn's, though certainly not good by any means. Anyways, I also don't like Henn because it was stupid to call him up and get rid of Breslow originally since his track record shows he is not a good Major League pitcher. So what if it wasn't his decision to get called up? I don't like him.


*Yes, I just really wanted to use that stat. It's OPS+ for the split (in this case June) compared to a guy's total OPS+. So 100 means he's the same as he usually is, less than 100 means worse, and more than 100 means better.