Tooling in the Garden (Again)

"If we didn't let Hee Seop Choi hit the ball, we would have won a few games," Twins center fielder Torii Hunter said. "Hee Seop Choi. You know what? I think I'm a fan of his now. I've never seen that with my eyes. Six home runs in three games. That's very impressive. I've never seen that, even in Little League."

Jim Souhan delivers the goods in his column this morning, commenting on Sunday's game in LA.

After what Hee Seop Choi had already done on Friday and Saturday, what was going through Brad Radke's mind while facing him on Sunday? Once Choi had turned on an inside fastball in his first at-bat of the day, launching his fourth home run of the series, how can Radke explain his decision to start off the next encounter with a belt-high strike? And after that pitch had been driven into the bleachers, is there any excuse for a veteran leader of the rotation to offer Choi yet another first pitch fastball over the plate in his third at-bat of the game? What was he thinking?

Of course, the first time we saw Radke show any emotion all game was when Gardenhire came to pull him in the 7th, before Choi's fourth at-bat. You could see Radke seethe, as Dick/Bert observed that 'he wants the challenge' of facing Choi again. But it was quite a bit late in the day to be just starting to get the adrenaline flowing. I would've appreciated seeing him get fired up and recognize that a new approach to Choi was needed at least a few innings before. So much gets made of Radke's remarkable control, and the fact that he's now walked only 4 batters in 93.2 innings, but the flipside of that coin is how predictable he can be. The Twins like to preach the importance of Strike One, but Radke can be dogmatic about the principle to a fault. When he sees batters sitting on his pitches, does he refuse to adapt out of stubborn pride, or just a lack of imagination?

Props to Souhan, too, for daring to point out that Gardy wasted a key opportunity to bring home 2 runs in the 6th inning, when he allowed Radke to bat with runners on 2nd and 3rd and 2 outs, despite already seeing Radke show the worst batting form of all Twins pitchers in the past week. Radke feebly popped out, stranding two runners in scoring position just as he did when striking out to end the 4th inning. Juan Castro deserves his share of the blame for failing to put the ball in play with 1 out and runners on 2nd and 3rd, in both the 4th and 6th innings, when the Dodgers were willing to concede a run. (Note to manager: maybe you don't want to bat a guy with a .285 obp right before the pitcher the next time you're playing by NL rules.) That's a failure to execute; a SS with a 683 OPS coming into the game found himself overmatched. Go figure, eh? But the manager in the 6th just failed to engage his brain to enact a simple strategy that would give his team a better chance of winning the game, which is harder for me to forgive.

Gardy has often been criticized by fans online for trying too hard to preserve a starting pitcher's chance of hanging in there for a 'W,' even at the expense of the team's chances for winning the game. He seems particularly sensitive to the pitcher's selfish interest when Radke is on the mound. Sunday, it appears he let that concern get the best of his better judgment again. With a 3-3 score in the top of the 6th, he's thinking he can get a couple more good innings out of Radke and give him a chance to hang around for the 'W,' when instead he should have been thinking about how to take advantage of that golden opportunity to score 2 runs and take the lead in the game.

All Gardy had to say about it: "It's not on Radke to get [the runs] in. He's hitting with two outs every time." So apparently nothing was learned by the man in charge. When your pitcher is up with 2 men in scoring position and 2 outs in the 6th, what can you do but curse the #8 hitter who's left you stuck in that predicament without any options, right?

Between that move on Sunday, the decision to tap Terry Mulholland to pitch the 9th inning of a tie game on Friday, and his efforts to malign and undermine his young stars when the team was in Arizona, it's not been a banner week for the Twins skipper.

I'm glad to see Jim Souhan casting a critical eye on some of these latest turns of events, though. He even referred to Dodger Stadium as a "sun-dappled joint," which comes as a ray of sunshine through my window today--even if the choice of words has absolutely nothing to do with my little blog.

A wink and a nod to you too, if you're reading, Mr. Souhan. Keep up the good work.