TwiMs Baseball 8/15/2012

I've always said baseball would be the best sport to care about, because there's so damn much of it.  This year I'm going for it, complete with a controversial "root for two teams" strategy.  I give you, The TwiMs! 

1. The three months that were - developments since the last one of these from three months ago.
a. Mariners. The Bombs went 38-43 (15-11 in July!). Fair to poor!
b. Twins. The Twinkies went 40-40. FIVE HUNDRED!!!!!

2. Ichiro was traded.

a. Othering. Ichiro, you may have heard, is Japanese. Edward Said (a white! Corrected: He is Arabic) wrote a book in 1978 called Orientalism.  The idea in the book is that Europeans subtly portray Asians and Arabs as vaguely effeminate and somehow lacking in culture as a way to justify their subjugation by western powers.  Part of this is reinforcing the idea that THESE PEOPLE ARE NOT LIKE US, because if westerners stopped and conceded that people are people, we wouldn't allow our politicians to send our troops abroad to, among other things, kill their poor. IN THE NAME OF PROGRESS! Or security. Or something.




With that background, I've always been a little uncomfortable with how Ichiro is portrayed by baseball writers.  He's reputed to be an inscrutable, one of a kind craftsman.  He doesn't get along with his teammates.  He's out for himself.  

Where this gets tricky is that individually some of this seems to be true about Ichiro.  By many accounts he speaks fine English, but always used a translator.  This served to keep him one step removed from the American baseball public.  Not that people should be forced to speak English in this country.  It's just...complicated.  If I buy into this Ichiro-as-singular-Japanese-dude phenomenon, am I just reinforcing the sort of narrative where Europeans don't acknowledge the mundane humanity of everyone on this earth? Or can I be aware that people are the same, our perceived differences can be chalked up to accident of geography of birth, but Ichiro as an individual is just a different cat as anyone from anywhere might be?  I barely know what I'm trying to say with this, just that there's an awful masters thesis in here somewhere.  I'll close this section with the following:

Whatever it means, Ichiro is the most othered baseball player of all time.  

b. But good lord was he awesome.  The list of pure Mariner hall of famers is two people long: Ichiro and Ken Griffey Jr.  (I say Griffey b/c for my money he was in the hall before he was traded to Cincinnati.) More broadly, he's on a Seattle list that includes those two, Gary Payton, and maybe nobody else.  What a treasure.

3. Joe Mauer. 

a. Is Ichiro-like. Like pre-trade Ichiro, Joe Mauer is a career one-team guy with a massive contract, who people wish would do more.  Twins fans hoped that Joe Mauer at 26 years old was going to be Joe Mauer from there on out.  In that year (2009), Mauer hit 28 home runs and put up a gaudy 1.031 OPS.  It's looking clear that season was a power aberration. Even with those 28 jacks in 2009, Mauer has a mere 91 homers in nine big league seasons.  He has only TWO double-digit home run seasons (though he seems a good bet for 12-15 home runs this year). Twins fans are instead left to accept 2012 Joe Mauer, who is merely leading the American League with a .416 on base percentage.  So, really good but not as good as people reasonably thought he might be.  Any team would love to have him.

b. What a head of hair. Excellent choice of Head and Shoulders making Joe Mauer one of their spokesmen.  If a barber was trying to shave that mane, he would have to cancel his afternoon appointments.  

4. New producing faces!

a. Ben Revere. Ben Revere hits for zero power, but he can indeed hit.  At 24 years old, Revere is hitting .315 in 340-ish ABs this season.  In addition he has swiped 28 bases (3rd in the AL in only 80 games), and plays plus outfield.  Sure, his OPS is a mediocre-plus .715, but Revere's insertion into the lineup coincided with the Twins going from TERRIBLE to a competent major league offense.  (Middling in the AL in runs produced to this point, but 4th in OBP behind only Texas, Detroit, and the Yankees.)  Every night Gardenhire can run out the ones, he goes Span-Revere-Mauer-Willingham-Morneau-Doumit-Plouffe-Dozier-Carroll, and that lineup consistently threatens to score.  I can't think of the Mariners go to lineup, because they don't have one.

b. Josh Willingham.  Well, not a new face, but at 33 years old Josh Willingham is already at a career-high 29 home runs with 85 RBIs.  If he can stay healthy, a 40 HR 115 RBI season is not out of the question.  Certainly 30+ 100+ at least.  He's in the first year of a three year 21 million dollar deal.  ANYBODY COULD HAVE HAD HIM AFTER LAST SEASON!!! (Jack Z?)  Even at slightly reduced production, Josh Willingham is a major trade chip for the Twins if they decide to build for the future.  

c. Scott Diamond.  I've written about Scott Diamond previously, but to update, he is 10-5 with a 2.97 ERA.  His strikeouts are really pedestrian, but he's only walked 18 batters in 120 innings.  

d. No Mariners. The Mariners have no new producing faces.

5. Summing up these past three months.

The records are ultimately pretty similar, but the Twins have a major league lineup and the Mariners do not.  It's my impression that finding major league hitters post-steroids is way harder than finding pitching nowadays. Both teams have improved after poor starts, and now you could reasonably say that the Twins lineup with the Mariners pitching staff could make the playoffs.  I give the Twins the edge going forward as the stronger franchise.