Laying It On The Line

Ok, time to call your favorite Congressman. Johan Santana has a good shot to get his second Cy Young award. His competition is Bartolo Colon, so I would really love Santana to beat him out.

Here’s Johan’s stats:

223 strikouts (leads MLB)
.212 opponent BA (leads AL)
22 quality starts (leads AL)
2.98 ERA (second in AL)
217 2/3 innings pitched (4th in AL)

Here’s a good comparison between Santana and Colon from MLB.com

Seems like an easy decision to me. The only way that Colon is beating him is in Wins/Loses. It’s not the Johan’s fault that the Twins are horrible this year.

Let’s do what we can to get our guy the award again.

Sounds almost exactly like what most fans wanted. Retractable roof, on site team facilities (practice fields, offices, etc) and a ton of parking for tailgating. Get it done!!!

I hope this is another sign that Rivas will not be stinking up the Twins roster next year. Gardy is starting to see that he just doesn’t care to play.

Gardy, Please! Please! Please! make Minnesota a No-Rivas Zone.

Liriano’s First Start

Check out Seth Stoh’s writeup on Liriano’s first start. Just imagine a starting lineup that has both Santana and Liriano. Throw in Radke, a healthy Silva and Scott Baker and you have another dominant rotation. Now if the Twins could just get some hitters.

Only 17 more games left in the Twins season. Hopefully they get the rookies some play time just so we can see what’s in store for next year.

Just saw this on SI.com. Makes you feel a little better after last week.

Daunte Culpepper

Just throw out Culpepper’s three-pick, zero-TD performance against Tampa Bay. Bucs defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin owns the Vikings QB. In six starts against Kiffin’s D, Culpepper is 2-4 with five touchdowns and 11 interceptions. Last season, Culpepper struggled against good pass defenses and torched bad ones. That pattern was particularly true in the five games Randy Moss sat out with a hamstring injury. As long as he was facing a unit ranked in the league’s lower third in passing defense, Culpepper came up with huge numbers without Moss. Tampa Bay ranked first in pass defense in ’04, so it’s not a surprise Minnesota couldn’t move the ball through the air. This week’s opponent, the Bengals, ranked 13th against the pass last year, so Culpepper should improve in Week 2, and then really start to put up big numbers against more vulnerable NFC North defenses later in the season.”

Just a bunch of thoughts, random though they may be.

• Zygi Wolf partially revealed his vision for the new Vikings stadium. Although he didn’t go into specifics (at least according to the article) he did divulge that the price tag would be between $700 and $760 million dollars. Of that, the Vikings and Anoka county would each put up about $250 million with the rest coming from a new state tax district. Let’s see how far this one goes.

• ESPN has put up their new NFL power rankings. Vikes at 13. I’m surprised they are this high. They looked terrible against the Buccaneers. I know it was only one game and I also know that they will probably pull it together. That said, they almost made Chris Hovan look like a football player.

• Radke turned in a good performance just a day after Lohse made amends for his tantrum.

• In non-sports news, Jon D. Markman makes an attempt to tell us who to blame for rising fuel costs. Although he is probably a lot smarter than I am and has his finger on the pulse of the industry, I find a problem with a part of his article. Specifically this part:

  “In the case of gasoline, many consumers do not seem to yet grasp the difference between crude oil, the price of which is declining of late, and the stuff that they pump into their car, which is getting more expensive. One is the raw material, while the other is a finished good. It’s the difference between the price of raw cotton and an Armani T-shirt. You wouldn’?t expect a sharp cut in prices at Bloomingdale’s just because cotton futures prices fell, and neither should you expect a 1:1 change in the relationship between oil prices and gas prices. ”

  I keep track of gas prices religiously. It goes back to my frugal upbringing. My dad would know every deal to be had around town and would take advantage of it. My issue with Mr. Markman’s article is that he says we can’t expect prices to go down in a 1:1 ratio with the falling prices of crude oil. I have noticed repeatedly that whenever it is reported in our local paper that the price of a barrel of crude oil has increased, the prices at the pump make a jump the following day.

  If gas can’t fall with crude, why can it rise?.

• Speaking of gas, here’s an intersting (and brief) website related to it. Notice the chart on the right side that shows crude prices versus wholesale and retail prices.

• It wasn’t Bush’s fault that some people didn’t get the response they wanted in regards to Katrina. However, it shows the character of the man that he’s willing to take the blame.

  In my mind, Bush isn’t to blame at all for the catastrophe that happened in New Orleans. Bush has a whole country to run. His job is to delegate the responsibilities of running sections of the country to other people. In this case the person responsible was not able to handle the duties.

Anyway, that’s enough for today.