One thing to watch for when Nick Blackburn takes the mound tonight against Luke Hochevar and the Kansas City Royas is how often he uses his cutter. When he first came up to the Twins in a September call up, he used the pitch and it was quite good. In recent years, he has gone away from the cutter. I'm not optimistic about Blackburn, but reportedly he and Bobby Cuellar did work on getting him to use the cutter more frequently. He had the success in AAA. Could incorporation of that pitch into his repertoire help him become at least bearable to watch? We shall see.

How come Rick Anderson, in the last 2 1/2 years, never told Blackburn to throw the cutter more?It might (probably) won't work, but if he got away from using a good pitch, I would think that Anderson would have noticed...

I'm not trying to dump on Anderson, but Cuellar's advice is being put out there as some kind of deus ex machina. And if Cuellar's that good, then HE should be the pitching coach of the Twins.

 

But truthfully I think the Twins are just oversimplifying Blackburn's issues.

Han Solo: "I've got a bad feeling about this."

I'm not trying to dump on Anderson, but Cuellar's advice is being put out there as some kind of deus ex machina. And if Cuellar's that good, then HE should be the pitching coach of the Twins.

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Some of us have been saying this for years

(esp if you look at his track record with Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez and Johan Santana)

 

But Andy is Gardy's buddy.

I'm sure for every good story, there are several guys he wasn't able to reach. He didn't make Juan Morillo or Jim Hoey good. This isn't a Cuellar/Anderson thing...

 

I took the young'n to the fair again tonight. Got home in the fifth. What is Blackburn doing? Is he throwing the cutter? Mixing more pitches? What's working? Or just that the Royals are bad?

I'm sure for every good story, there are several guys he wasn't able to reach. He didn't make Juan Morillo or Jim Hoey good. This isn't a Cuellar/Anderson thing...

 

I took the young'n to the fair again tonight. Got home in the fifth. What is Blackburn doing? Is he throwing the cutter? Mixing more pitches? What's working? Or just that the Royals are bad?

Juan Morillo never spent much time with Cuellar. Just a couple of weeks. The Twins got him in the middle of the season (just in time to pitch in that storm in Baltimore), kept him in the majors for a moon, in the minors for a moon and cut him. Hoey was up and down elevator.

 

If you dare to talk about Andy's misses on the other hand... and some of them were severe, like RA Dickey...

WTF does he have to do with Dickey? JHFC, talk about a reach and a half.

If you dare to talk about Andy's misses on the other hand... and some of them were severe, like RA Dickey...

Damn near half of baseball missed on Dickey. Give it a rest.

Can we please, please, please stop blaming the Twins for letting Dickey go?

 

It holds no water.

Damn near half of baseball missed on Dickey. Give it a rest.

It's better than his "Gardy/Andy ruined Redman" rant.

I took the young'n to the fair again tonight. Got home in the fifth. What is Blackburn doing? Is he throwing the cutter? Mixing more pitches? What's working? Or just that the Royals are bad?

Did a good job throwing strikes - lot of first pitch strikes and getting ahead in the count. Kept the ball low in the zone until the last inning or so. Threw some cutters, but in general just a good job of mixing pitches. Lot of ground ball outs, and most of the hits were not hit that hard (until the 7th, that is).