Carl Freakin' Pavano

This writer has come full circle with Carl Pavano. A name formerly scorned and lower than scorned, his name itself was a derision. If you grew up in New Jersey, you can hear it in how the heading of this post was spoken. Think of Tony Soprano's voice, now say Pavano's name in that voice and you've got it. He was scum. He was dirt. He was everything hated. And now? After three years of rebuilding his career, his fire for the game, and yes, his leadership with the Twins, this writer actually roots for the guy. Now there is a little smile after enunciating the name. Carl 'Freakin'' Pavano with a little smile at the end.

And so this Fan is happy for the guy on his two year contract. Hopefully, it will work out for both the Twins and for the pitcher. He isn't the greatest pitcher in the universe. His BABIP from 2010 is scary in how low it was. It hardly seems a scenario that can be continued with the same success as he had in 2010. But then again, the guy won seventeen games. He gutted out seven complete games and 221 innings. And he did one other thing better than at any point in his career.

What did he do? He threw more ground balls than fly balls. 46 more in fact. Why is that important? Because it shows that Pavano has adapted and learned from his career and is still remaking himself as he goes along. His 1.13 ground ball to fly ball ratio was the highest of his career. He came close to that ratio in a couple of his short stints with the Yankees, but you can hardly count those years. The rest of his career...the full seasons never featured that kind of ground ball rate. It's not an astounding rate. It's not like Webb or Wang or something. But it's just another sign of a pitcher who has matured and knows what he is doing.

Pavano has come so far since that car accident in Florida with some nameless girl that he forgot to mention to the Yankees. He's come so far since Mike Mussina dissed him in public and in the locker room. Mike Mussina, who never made headlines with his mouth, made them with Pavano. Carl Pavano isn't that guy anymore. He's healthy and his mind and his will is strong. Jim Thome, the ultimate professional ball player personally kept after Pavano to re-sign with the Twins. That shows how far the guy has come.

We are, after all, a society that loves second chances and do-overs. We rag on guys who we think are squandering their careers. But we cheer just as loudly when a life is turned around...when a light bulb goes off inside a person. We don't know the mind of Carl Pavano. Likely none of us know all the facts of his lost Yankee years. But Pavano has proven himself these last three years. He's given the Indians and now the Twins everything they could ask for. He's taken the ball every fifth day and he's kept his team in the game.

He isn't the world's best pitcher. In the end, he's probably just a little better than average. But this Fan hopes he wins another 17 games the next two years. This writer who once said his name with derision, now says it with a wry smile. Go get 'em, Carl Freakin' Pavano!

So You Need A Starting Pitcher...

De La Rosa is off the market. Westbrook is signed. Kuroda signed. It's a pretty good bet that Pavano will stay with the Twins. Who is left? Well, there's Cliff Lee and Kevin Millwood. Yeesh. That's like choosing between a Mercedes and a Yugo. That's like shopping for a house and only having a mansion and a shack to choose from. Yikes.

So if a team needs starting pitching, what can they do? With a dearth of free agent pitchers, some will need to get creative. There are broken but supposedly near fixed pitchers like Jarrod Washburn and Webb. You can coax Pedro Martinez out of the Dominican. You can find out how Messina is liking retirement. Or...what?

Trading for pitching seems to be the only option left, especially if you don't have anybody ready in the minors. Supposedly Greinke is available. But the Royals will want bucket loads in return. Say so long to your best prospects and at least one every day player. Tampa is a possibility. The Bay Rays might part with Shields and/or Garza if the price is right. Anyone wanting to trade with the Bay Rays will have a little more leverage than the KC/Greinke avenue because the Bay Rays want to clear money from their budget. The Blue Jays might be willing to part with one of their starters for the right price.

But good luck with all of that. Most teams are hording pitching if they have it. The Red Sox stockpile it like rabid survivalists. It's easier to get a gallon of water in Walmart the day before a hurricane than it is to find starting pitchers these days. Perhaps it is time for teams to take a chance with their minor league talent. How many Double and Triple A pitchers are deemed, "not ready," when in reality, they can't be any worse in a rotation than Brian Moehler.

There is a tendancy in baseball to rely on the experienced pitcher. There is a comfort factor with a lot of teams in a guy that's been around for a while. But the reality is that a lot of "experienced" pitchers are bloody awful. How long have the Moehlers and Millwoods been floating around? And yet, somebody will always pick them up and say to its fans: "Moehler is battle tested and has fought the wars for a long time." Yeah, okay, maybe so, but the guy is going into a high tech battle with a pea shooter.

There have to be guys in the high minors that can pitch just as well as Kevin Millwood. There just has to be. There has to be guys down there that have been career minor league players who simply know how to pitch but have never reached the majors. How bad can they do? Plus, they will be a heck of a lot cheaper than Kevin Millwood and might even pitch better.

There is only one Cliff Lee on the market. Just about everything else (besides Pavano, but the Twins will sign him) is Melba toast. Teams will have to scour the earth to find people that can pitch. But this Fan bets they are out there. And judging by the pitching going on for some teams, they can't do any worse.

Twins Should Bid For Cliff Lee

These are heady times for the Minnesota Twins. It wasn't long ago that the Twins were part of conversations about contracting Major League Baseball. Attendance was poor, Ownership wouldn't spend the money (or contended he didn't have it to spend) and the Twins seemed to be in terrible shape. But the last ten years have shown a rebirth of Minnesota baseball and the team now draws 3.2 million fans, good for third place in the American League. And the payroll, once the joke of baseball, rose to $107.5 million in 2010. The Twins have won their division six of their last nine years. The one dark cloud in this silver lining is their inability to take the team to the next level. Each of those six playoff teams have died before the World Series, five of them in the very first round of the playoffs. To this observer, their glaring weakness is obvious.

The Twins spent $84 million on their on-the-field players last year but only $22 million for their pitching staff. Their highest paid pitcher in 2010 was Carl Pavano at $7 million which took up nearly one third of their pitching budget. Reliever, Matt Guerrier, was second at just over $3 million. In contrast, the Twins had seven position players who made more than $5 million.

The playoffs have shown us the past few years that stud pitching gets the job done. The Yankees, Red Sox and Phillies have all had World Series runs that relied heavily on the likes of Sabathia, Pettitte, Beckett, Schilling and others. The Giants and Rangers this past season parlayed the same formula into the post season and the Giants' stud pitching won the day and the World Series. The Twins, in contrast, do not have a "stopper" type pitcher and haven't in any of their playoff runs. They have good pitchers. Pavano had a great season. Liriano lead the AL in WAR up until the last quarter of the season. But they aren't the kinds of pitchers you can get big performances from when it all comes down to winning or going home.

That's why this writer believes that no team needs to go after Cliff Lee more than the Twins. The Yankees can afford other options and have multiple ways to beat you. The Rangers need him as he deepens their rotation and makes them a viable playoff sizzler. But the Twins are destined to be a good enough team to make it to the playoffs but never good enough to get beyond. Let's face it, their rotation doesn't scare anybody. They win by playing smart and with a well balanced and talented line up. The Twins need Lee because they need someone who has more than a 50% chance of winning a playoff game.

While this is very easy for this Fan to write, the odds of it happening seem to be nil. The Twins simply don't make a splash in free agent waters. They always prefer to go after low valued talent like Jim Thome (and Carl Pavano in 2009) and building from within. The trouble is, they are superb at developing on-field players but not so brilliant at developing pitchers.. Signing Joe Mauer to a long term deal was the biggest splash ever for the Twins. Perhaps that speaks to a different day and a new reality based on burgeoning coffers due to the attendance boom.

If you can't develop your own stud, then signing one like Lee is the next best thing. Yes, he'll be expensive and yes, the Fan still thinks any long-term deal for the 33 year old Lee is future failure. By the end of Lee's big deal (which he is going to get from somebody), Lee will look a lot like Barry Zito looks now for the Giants. But at least the next two years will certainly improve a good team's chances of going deep into the post season.

There might be other options. The Fan still thinks De La Rosa has a big arm and can be that type of dominating pitcher. Perhaps the Twins could pry Greinke away from the Royals for a good package. But Greinke has no playoff experiences and there is no telling if he could be a stud in one.

The Twins are in a playoff rut because its rotation has simply not been up to the task of giving the Twins an advantage over another team's rotation. It is soft and can be had. Lee would change all that. He pushes everyone else that much deeper into the rotation and that's exactly where they need to be. Come on, Twins, pull the trigger!

Second Guessing Gardenhire

The Twins have a four game cushion on the Chicago White Sox. But as the White Sox have already proved once this season, you make a mistake if you think they are dead. That's why every game counts and the Twins blew one today. It's very easy for a blogger to second guess a manager. In fact it is too easy. But hey, the guys are millionaires and that's part of the job. The Fan tries to do this as little as possible, but this one screams out so loud that it can't go without at least one more look.

The Twins are having trouble scoring runs and they were holding on to a slim one-run lead (it was 1-0 in fact). Carl "Freakin'" Pavano continued his great season (despite the recent losses) and held the Mariners scoreless through six. The Twins pushed their one run through in the top of the seventh on a Cuddyer homer. Pavano started the bottom of the seventh and this is where the problems began.

Branyon grounded out and then Lopez singled. Kotchman singled to right center but Lopez stopped at second. Pavano then threw a wile pitch (catchers who can block those kinds of things should get more credit). This is where the Fan thinks Gardenhire messed up. It's second and third with one out. Franklin Gutierrez was at the plate. Gutierrez isn't having that good a year. His average is under .250 and his OBP is under .310. But for the Mariners, that's one of their better hitters. Plus, he was good last year. He's already ahead in the count thanks to the wild pitch. Why not walk him to load the bases?

That makes even more sense when you consider who was coming up after him, the one, the only, Adam Moore. Catching has been the pit of hell for the Mariners for a couple of seasons now. Moore is probably a nice receiver, but his OPS is sitting at .523. Five-Twenty-Three! His OPS+ is 44 and his career (short though it is) OPS+ is 48. Sure, he hit some in the minors and is actually #83 on Baseball Prospectus's list of top prospects. That's pretty good. But the Fan goes by the theory that a prospect isn't a player until he proves he can do it in the majors and so far, Moore hasn't done that.

A golden rule in baseball is that you don't pinch hit for your catcher. You only carry two of them and if the second catcher comes in the game and gets hurt, you are out of catchers. So Moore was going to bat one way or another. So why not take your chances with him instead of Gutierrez? But Gardenhire had Pavano pitch to Gutierrez who rapped a single to tie the score. Moore then hits a broken-bat grounder that is too slow for a double play and the second run scored. With the infield in and the bases loaded, that grounder could have gone home and no runs would have scored. Yeah, you still needed the third out, but that had to come from the number eight hitter in the batting order (Tuiasosopo), who did end the inning with an out.

The obvious play here would have been to walk Gutierrez to load the bases and then pitch to Moore. Why Gardenhire didn't go that route is hard to fathom. In this Fan's mind, the lack of a move there cost the Twins this game and kept the White Sox (who lost to the Yankees) that much closer in striking distance.

Carl Freakin' Pavano

The heading is how New York fans named Pavano, except they probably used a different word that began with the letter, "F." He was disparaged by his own teammates. Mike Mussina, who never said boo about anything to anyone, was quoted as calling out Pavano. He was a quitter. He was a guy who took the Yankees' money and was tooling around in his car in Florida with a woman when he was supposed to be getting ready to pitch. The rest is well documented. It was the worst deal that Brian Cashman ever made.

And then just as suddenly as it began, his tenure in New York was over. New York fans were relieved. At least the team wasn't forking over any more money to a no-good-for-nothing, money-grubbing iconoclast. Hmm...not sure a lot of Yankee fans would use that "i" word. But anyway, he was gone. Thank goodness! New York fans laughed when Pavano signed with Cleveland. They laughed even more when he got bombed his first couple of starts there.

As 2009 rolled along, the Pavano skeptics, including yours truly, kept wondering how long he would pitch with his history. But he kept on pitching. After a rough start, he started pitching better. In fact he pitched well enough that the Twins wanted him for the stretch run. Whuh? The Twins WANTED Pavano? But there it was. And he did fairly well for the Twins down the stretch. He won some big games. He had a clunker here and there, but he helped.

When the season was finally over, Pavano--who tallied only 26 starts over three years for the Yankees--finished with 33 starts. The guy who only put in 146 innings over three years and finished his Yankee career with nine wins pitched 227 innings in 2009 and won fourteen games.

The Fan figured that Pavano had done it with mirrors. After all, he did lead the American League in earned runs allowed in 2009 with a combined ERA of 5.10. But the more this writer looked into it, the more it seemed that his numbers were deceiving. He had his best ever season in strikeouts per nine innings. His 1.8 walks per nine innings was also the best of his career. Obviously, his K/BB ratio was the best of his career. He got blown out a few times, but in games where he wasn't blown out, he kept his teams in the game long enough for them to win more than half his starts.

And then the Twins signed him again to pitch for them in 2010. They gave him $7 million after he had made only a million and a half the year before (quite a bit less than the $11 million the Yankees paid per year for him). That seemed like a lot of money for the Twins for a fourth starter...especially when that fourth starter was Carl Freakin' Pavano.

Pavano has delivered. His teammates rave about the guy. The pitcher that Mike Mussina called out as a wimp was now being called a bulldog. On Saturday night, in a game against the White Sox that the Twins just had to win, Pavano pitched a complete game on only 102 pitches and won the game 3-2. He is now 11-6 and seems a lock on winning 17 games or more. Wouldn't the Yankees love to have that instead of the Adventurous Journeys of Burnett?

Pavano's WHIP now stands at 1.03. His ERA is 3.48. He has four complete games. He is striking out four times as many guys as he is walking. And speaking of walks, if it wasn't for the freakish and surreal Cliff Lee who has only walked six batters all year, people would be talking about Pavano. He has only walked 18 batters all season. His 1.3 BB/9 ratio is sterling. He is the Twins' second best pitcher. He is averaging 7.08 innings per start. Among his wins this year, he has beaten the Angels, the Red Sox, the White Sox (twice), the Rangers, the Phillies, the Mets, the Rockies and the Tigers. That's nine wins against contenders. Amazing.

If ever a player's reputation has been rebuilt as strongly as Pavano's, the Fan can't think of one. Where once there was scorn and derision, there is now respect. There is nothing you can do but to admit that Pavano has proven us all wrong. And, this is hard to admit, but he is rapidly becoming one of the Fan's favorite players in baseball. Carl Freakin' Pavano. Amazing.

Pavano and Santana - A Conflict of Luck

In the old days--at least before statistics got a little more sophisticated--some old time manager would expectorate into a spittoon and say, "Yep, that Pavano just knows how to win." That same old geezer of a manager would spit again and say, "Now that Santana, he's throws the ball pretty well. But dang it, he just finds a way to lose." Take that same conversation to the golf course after an errant iron shot bounces off a hill and somehow scampers onto the green, and the golfer will throw up his hands and sheepishly say, "Rather be lucky than good."

Carl Pavano is that golfer. He somehow gets the wins no matter how terrible he pitches. Take tonight for example. Pavano pitched six and a third innings. He "scattered" ten hits, giving up "only" four runs to improve his ERA to 6.45. Gavin Floyd pitched for the White Sox and did his best Livan imitation and was worse, giving up eight runs to bring his current ERA to 7.32. So, while Pavano wasn't exactly lights out, at least he didn't give up 14 base runners in five innings like Floyd did.

The win evened Pavano's record to 3-3. He was 4-2 last year with the Yankees despite an ERA of 5.77. So if you combine Pavano's last three years, he is 8-5 despite giving up 57 earned runs in 75 innings. That's a .615 winning percentage if you are keeping score.

Now let's flip over to Johan Santana. In the first inning, Kevin Johnson popped out to center. Then Escobar singled to shortstop. Another old geezer line: "They all count the same in the scorecard." Prado singled to left. At least he got it out of the infield. McCann popped out (it sure is worrisome about his vision!) Two outs. Diaz singles to third (another infield hit!) and Wright throws the ball away allowing a run to score. Kotchman whiffs to end the inning. Santana sure got cuffed around that inning!

The Mets later tie the score and so it's 1-1 going into the seventh. Derek Lowe pops out. Pesky Kevin Johnson singles to center and Santana is pulled for Parnell. Escobar promptly singles. Prado flies out to center. Two outs. McCann comes up and hits a roller to short. Easy out and the third out of the inning, right? Wrong. Reyes messes it up and everybody is safe. Diaz then singles and guess whose run that is? Yup, Santana's. And it's the deciding run. The Braves score more runs on each of the Mets' four relievers to break open the game.

So Santana pitched six and a third (same as Pavano), did not give up an earned run. His ERA actually went down to a surreal 0.78 and he lost. His record is now 4-2. So despite giving up only 6.5 hits per nine innings the last three years, despite a WHIP right around 1 for those three years, his winning percentage over those three years? .614. Pavano's was .615 remember?

Yep. Rather be lucky than good.