*****
Jamaal: That was an incredible comeback... is this the turnaround?
Troy B Balego: Plus now Joe Mauer is leading the league in hitting and Morneau is leading in RBI
Jamaal: Wow... Miguel Cabrera is charging hard though... 18 HRs, 64 RBI in the second half. Morneau has 9 HRs and 60 RBI in the second half... batting just .290. Turns out his BABIP (batting average on balls in play) is a TON lower in the second half (.279). That just means the balls he hits in play aren't falling for hits nearly as much as they did in the first half (.347).
Troy: Still, I tinhk if the Twins win the divsion he has to be the choice. Can you beleive how Josh Hamilton has fallen off? Dude has like 20 RBI second half of the year. Wonder if he's back on the yam yam.Jamaal: I doubt he's doing drugs, but the RBI probably stopped coming as frequently as soon as Milton Bradley became Milton Bradley and kept getting hurt AND Ian Kinsler went down with that groin injury. That really hurt him. Hamilton has 10 HRs, 29 RBI in the second half.
Troy: Kinsler getting on base is what made him and the team go. I never thought Morneau would pass him in RBI total. He was like 30 behind at one point.
Jamaal: Morneau had like 68 at the break, and Hamilton had 95. You're right though - Kinsler was freak. IS a freak.
Troy: I would love the Twins to find an infielder like Kinsler to be on the team. We need that more than anything.
Jamaal: Agreed - it'd be nice to pick bring up a solid SS or sign somebody. I'm still touting that Garret Atkins idea though... TOTALLY could work. I don't mind Buscher as a backup, but I don't believe he's good enough to get us over the top.
Troy: I just wish we'd have someone come up through our famr system that was good. We enver have any shortstop or 2B prospects that pan out. We need sometinhg like that. Or a 3B for that matter.
Jamaal: Well, Luke Hughes is a possibility at 3B next year... he was quite good at AA and AAA.
Troy: He wasn't that impressive, was he?
Jamaal: In double-A, Hughes batted .319 with 15 homers, 40 RBI in 285 at bats (70 games). In triple-A, he batted .283 with 3 homers and 21 RBI in 106 at bats (29 games). He'll need another year at Triple-A, but he could totally play for us in the second half next year, or in 2010. He struck out too much in Triple-A, but I'm guessing he'll probably settle in next season.
Troy: That's not bad but not “wow” either. Ben Revere - who is a Denard Span type player - hit almost .400 this year. I wonder if he could play 2nd, 3rd or short?
Jamaal: Right, but Hughes projects to be a 25-80 guy at 3B, which is better than what we have now. He could probably hit 30 at his peak. Revere is an outfielder, and got hurt mid-season... he finished with a .379 batting average after struggling BIG TIME after coming off the DL. He ended the season on a six-game hitting streak, going 10-for-26 (.385). Stole 44 bases this season though... totally looks like a leadoff guy in like 2-3 years or something. He's only 20 years old, and he played low-A ball this year.
Troy: What about Bushy though?
Jamaal: No one cares about Buscher.
Troy: He held hiks own for a while at least. Mike Lamb set the bar pretty low though.
Jamaal: Eh... he held his own vs. righties, yeah! 4 HRs, 40 RBI and a .333 average against RHP. Of course, in 50 ABs vs. LHPs, he's batting .205 with 6 RBI and 12 Ks. I could totally see him platooning with someone though.
Troy: He should learn to be a switch hitter. next Chipper Jones?????
Jamaal: Nah... how about just improve?
Troy: We should start calling him Chipper Buscher for inspiration
Jamaal: We'll call him Chip... we've got a good vibe with him.
Troy: Call him Chip Buscher in your next blog. Talk about his jammed tmumb or something. We can totally get this started.
Jamaal: That might catch on.
Troy: Well do it already. I haven't received Twins Hotspot in days.
Jamaal: I’ve been busy…
Troy: Yeah, sending emails to me… lol.
Jamaal: You're right though - everything I would have put into a blog I wrote to you... I mean, you saw all the stats I was throwing out...
Troy: Just copy our email string into a blog. You can put my name in there.
And that’s just what I did… Thanks to Troy for opening up to the blogging world. Of course, I was copying and pasting our email string before I got his permission in that last message… seemed like the right thing to do. Enjoy the game tonight, and thanks for reading!
1 comment:
You two should start a live blog or something where you can go back and forth and bounce ideas off each other. I'm guessing it would be pretty entertaining and helpful to those looking for stats and info.
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