Thome

I'm always a sucker for a good story. Baseball provides plenty: The Josh Hamilton story. The '91 series. The Subway Series. The list goes on. Right now my favorite story is, of course, Jim Thome.

Thome is as unassuming and humble as he is a masher. He's played for playoff teams ('08 White Sox) and cellar-dwellers (Phils/Indians) alike. He's nearing 600 home runs, yet here he is playing for $1.5 million plus incentives. Does he want to win? Sure he does. But he doesn't yearn for attention. He doesn't fake injuries and play the media.

I mean, for a guy to hit like Thome is hitting right now is astounding, especially after having the kind of career that he has had.

What's more remarkable?

That Thome has been getting better as the year has been going on?
That Thome has been getting better despite being nearly 40 years old?
That Thome has been getting better in the midst of a pennant race?
That Thome has been getting better as he's been used more?

Tuesday night all of those factors came into play: Thome came up to the plate in the bottom of the 10th against his former team, the White Sox. The White Sox who elected to platoon Mark Kotsay et al at DH instead of Thome. The White Sox who traded Thome to the Dodgers at the deadline in '09.

Those White Sox. With himself being the winning run in one of the few remaining games between the two teams still contending for the AL Central crown.

I think maybe Thome is a little peeved at his former team. I think his .387/.472/.645 line against Chicago this year speaks for itself. On the field. Not at his ranch. Not at a press conference. On the field.

Should the Twins bury the White Sox down the stretch, this game will be looked at as a nail in that coffin. And Thome, that guy who the White Sox turned down, might be a huge reason why the AL pennant race will turn the White Sox down.

Thome knows how to be an athlete. Thome knows how to be a man. There's another guy that just got into town today that could learn a thing or two from Thome.

Manning Up Like Nolan Ryan's Pitchers Do

There is nothing quite as frustrating as continuing to hear whining about Slowey's no hitter that wasn't. And I thought the whining was limited to the uneducated masses.

I guess not.

The post is comical if you forget the fact that this is posted on the website of KFAN, possibly the most recognizable sports radio station in Minnesota. Actually, it still is pretty comical:

I am shocked at how many people are buying into this pitch count crap. The pitch count has been worse for baseball than the steroid era. There have only been 268 no-hitters in the history of the game, and the freaking pitch count stood between Kevin Slowey and number 269.

This is Kevin Slowey we're talking about, right? To say that the "freaking pitch count" is the only thing that stood in the way of Slowey and baseball immortality, one must ignore quite a few things:

1. First of all, it was only the seventh inning. That Slowey was able to no-hit the Athletics as far as he did spoke more to Oakland's ability to hit than anything. Slowey is the epitome of the Twins' pitch-to-contact mentality. Well, I guess that's not entirely true, but nonetheless Slowey doesn't get too many strikeouts with his 86.1% contact rate in 2010. Compound that with his 1.25 WHIP in the 8th and 9th innings. Oh, and let's throw on his career .379 batting average-against after pitch #100, and you have several reasons to doubt that Slowey's no-hit bid was a given.

2. This is not a team that can risk injuries over trying to make baseball history (and we've already discussed the improbability of it). While not the same situation, consider the injury to Francisco Liriano. Liriano simply threw his slider too much and the 2006 campaign changed quickly from a 12-3 thrashing of any opponent to an 18-month recovery from Tommy John surgery followed by two seasons of attempting to find his form again. Great pitchers don't grow on trees, even if San Francisco's trade (Nathan, Liriano, and that one time Boof was a good pitcher) made it seem like they do. Ron Gardenhire knew firsthand the consequences of an elbow injury, and that's why you don't mess around with it, even amidst the potential of being the 269th no-hitter.

3. The Twins sent up seven men to the plate in the bottom of the 7th en route to scoring three insurance runs. There were two pitching changes. Slowey would no longer have been loose after what was probably a 15 minute inning. It's akin to why you don't bring your starter back in after a rain delay.

Let's quit buying into this pitch count garbage and man up like Nolan Ryan is making his pitchers do down in Texas. His philosophy seems to be working just fine. And don't waste your time playing the tendonitis card. Tendonitis is easily healed with short periods of rest... just like the last period of rest Slowey received. He missed one game and bounced back pretty well from it, wouldn't you agree?

I'll just leave this here.

Average pitches per outing, Texas starters:
Colby Lewis (23 starts), 108 pitches / game
CJ Wilson (24 starts), 106 pitches / game (most are in the 110 range)
Scott Feldman (16 starts), 105 pitches / game
Cliff Lee (8 starts as Ranger), 103 pitches / game
Rich Harden (15 starts), 97 pitches / game, only six starts above 100 pitches
Tommy Hunter (13 starts), 83 pitches / game, only three above 100

I guess it's true that any idiot can have a blog. And that's why I'm here too.