The Front Three (through 26 games)

Prior to the start of the 2008 season, I analyzed the pitching of the potential front three starters - Baker, Bonser and Hernandez - by their 2007 Record of Opponents Batting. Hernandez was viewed in the media as the more successful pitcher with his 11 wins with Arizona (to Baker's 9 and Bonser's 8), but when judging from the opponents batting, it is clear that he was the most hittable with his opponents batting with a .870 ops (compared to Baker's .760 and Bonser's .807). Twenty-seven games into the 2008 season and we are experiencing a similar dynamic: by record, Hernandez is considered the most success of the three. This, even to your most casual statistician is an egregious representation of the truth. Once again, when you dissect into the peripheral numbers, you find that not only is Hernandez not the best starter, he and the Twins should thank their lucky stars that they have managed to milk five victories out of those games.

Livan Hernandez - 3-1 (5-1), 5.05 era

pa	runs	hits	hr	bb	k	sb	cs	avg	obp	slg	ops
154	22	45	6	7	13	0	2	.310	.338	.490	.827

Because of an injury to Kevin Slowey and Francisco Liriano requiring additional seasoning in the minors as he recovers from Tommy John surgery, the Livan Hernandez signing has been beneficial for the Twins. But with the emergence of Nick Blackburn as well as the success of Brian Duesing and Kevin Mulvey in triple-A, the free agent acquisition may be increasingly regrettable with every subsequent below average start by Hernandez. Hernandez got off to a fast, successful start winning his first three. Over the course of those 21 innings, an average of seven innings per start, Hernandez posted a 2.57 era with six strike outs and 1 walk - a Game Score average of 57. Pundits praised his mix of pitches and ability to get batters out without striking them out. Opponents were batting .263/.268/.325. More importantly, Hernandez did not surrender a single home run in that duration, a critical facet to his winning. However his success was waning and his ability to maintain that level of output sharply declined. In his last three starts, he managed to only accrue 14.2 innings (4.7 inning average per start) while averaging a Game Score of 32. Admittedly, these were against very good hitting teams of Texas, Oakland and Tampa Bay (Tampa Bay? Did I just say that?) but the same tricks that worked so well against Kansas City twice and Los Angeles were not creating the same results. Hernandez's era ballooned from 2.57 in his first three starts to 8.59 in his last three while he was tagged up for 6 home runs as batters accumulated a .369/.417/.619 batting line.

Hernandez is essentially turning his opponents in to Raul Ibanez (who is hitting .296/.339/.487 with Seattle). This batting line, while disappointingly high, is actually lower than the one that led to his .500 winning percentage with Arizona. The Twins offense has aided Hernandez by providing him with 4.41 runs of support while Hernandez has averaged a Game Score of 44. In three of the five games the Twins have won while Livan was pitching have come in spite of less than quality starts by Hernandez (a Game Score below 50). As the season progresses, the Twins offense will have to sustain the 4 runs or more of support if Hernandez continues to pitch like the last three games rather then the first three.

Boof Bonser - 2-4 (2-4), 3.75

pa	runs	hits	hr	bb	k	sb	cs	avg	obp	slg	ops
151	17	35	3	9	22	3	0	.250	.293	.379	.672

Don't let the 2-4 losing record fool you, Bonser has probably been the best pitcher in the Twins' cadre starting pitchers. In his first 19 innings of the year in three starts, Bonser issued just two free passes while striking out 12 leading to just six earned runs (an average Game Score of 56). Opponents hit just .253/.273/.387. The road to victory was detoured for Bonser thanks to zero offensive production and bullpen meltdowns. Even though he only allowed three earned runs in each of those two starts, the team's offense managed to score Bonser just two runs total in those two games. In his third start of the season Bonser was once again the recipient of minimal run support (two) but limited the Royals to just three hits on the way to six shutout innings for his first win of 2008. In his recent last three starts Bonser has somewhat stumbled thanks to the potent offenses of Tampa Bay, Oakland and Chicago coupled with the lack of run support. His Game Score average in those outings slipped to 48, slightly below quality. Bonser compiled 17 innings and allowed nine earned runs. Boof found himself battling more baserunners as he walked seven in those games. In those last three starts, Bonser's opponents hit .254/.315/.369. Again the Twins offense was no where to be found, scoring just six times in those innings and they were shutout by Oakland's Chad Gaudin.

Overall, Bonser's .672 ops is a significant improvement over the .807 opponents hit off him in 2007. This year, batters are hitting very similar to Ivan Rodriguez (.255/.302/.388) off of him. Bonser has a minor league resume that suggests he can maintain this sort of output for the remainder of the season, however, he will most likely end up having an ops between .750-.800. Nevertheless, if Bonser continues to pitch in the same manner that he has been throwing through his first six starts (3.62 FIP) and his run support increases from its appallingly low 1.70 runs per game (well below the team average of 3.86), he will certainly be the benefactor of wins as the season wears on.

Scott Baker - 2-0 (4-1), 4.50

pa	runs	hits	hr	bb	k	sb	cs	avg	obp	slg	ops
122	15	30	6	5	27	2	0	.256	.287	.436	.723

His last start notwithstanding, Baker has also performed much like the staff ace. Not only is his 27 strikeouts and 5 walks leading the Twins rotation, but he is currently second in the American League with a 5.40 strikeouts-to-walk ratio (Cleveland's Cliff Lee leads with an unearthly 16.00). In his fourth start of the season, Baker dueled Cleveland's Paul Byrd for seven innings, giving up only one run and striking out seven, issuing one walk and scattering five hits. Despite not being the pitcher of record, that April 20th Game Score of 70 has been the best pitched game so far this season for the Twins.

The 4-1 record the Twins have in Baker's starts is partly skewed because he has absconded with the highest run support (7.02), the envy of the pitching staff, but it is not as if Baker has needed all of those runs: up until his start against Texas, he had allowed 3 or fewer runs per start. Up until that Texas game, Baker threw four consecutive games with Game Scores 50 or higher. Though it would appear that his home run total of 6 (5th in the American League) in just 122 plate appearances would be alarming, especially considering he gave up only 15 total last season, it should be noted that they came split evenly between two games against the homer-friendly White Sox and Tigers. Because Baker has been very good at not allowing base runners (1.16 whip), all 6 of his home runs given have fortunately been solo home runs minimizing the potential impact of damage. If the nagging injuries do not persist, Baker might take his rightful spot as the number one starter in the Twins rotation.

Welcome Back Pontoon.

The Texas Rangers pitching staff is in dire straits - a phrase that has become as commonplace in the recent years, as accepted as saying "there's turmoil in the Middle East". Aside from the veteran Kevin Millwood (3.32 era in 38 innings pitched) and the young Red Sox groomed Kason Gabbard (2.18 era in 20.1 innings pitched) the Rangers have suffered through futile innings provided by Vicente Padilla, Jason Jennings, Luis Mendoza and Scott Feldman. These arms are a substantial drop-off from the previous two. The front two are 2-2 in their 10 starts while the other four are 2-8 in their 14 starts. Of that last group, Feldman leds with a 4.50 era in his one start this season.

The free agent market has been brutal on the Rangers as of late - Chan Ho Park being the poster child for foolish investments as the Korean hurler failed to yield an era below 5.00 in his four seasons in Arlington - so the front office made a series of trades attempting to rebuild a starting rotation, a task that proved as easy as repairing Baghdad. The Rangers traded for Vincente Padilla in 2005 and then resigned Padilla to a lucrative contract in December 2006 in a thin free agent market. This back-loaded contract ($11 million + in 2008, 2009 and 2010) for the second-best pitcher of Nicaraguan decent (Denny Martinez being the best from the Central American country) has not returned the dividends that was expected following his initial 15-10 2006 season. In 2007 injuries led to only 23 starts and a 6-10 record (9-14 in total appearances) with a 5.76 era. This season in five starts Padilla is 2-2 with an era flirting with 5.00 (4.97).

Jason Jennings was signed this offseason to a 1-year, $4-million dollar contract after being a bitter disappointment in Houston (2-9 with 6.45 era in 18 starts), an organization that sacrificed Jason Hirsh, Tyler Buchholz and centerfielder Willy Taveraz. The hype that surrounded Jennings after his 2006 season with the Rockies was based on the idea that Jennings' pitching had "solved" Coors Field. Jennings had only allowed 9 home runs at home that year and his 3.78 was the lowest among the staff while throwing 212 innings. Still this season was a significant outlier in comparison to his previous three season where he had an era above 5.00. Following his debacle in East Texas last season, Jennings has taken the mound five times only to lose all five of them with a 7.46 era.

Feldman and Mendoza, 25 and 24 years old, have been fillers in the rotation. Feldman has dabbled in the Rangers bullpen since 2005 with various results and Mendoza made three starts in 2007 with the Rangers and maintained a 2.25 era in his 16 innings. This season in his three starts Mendoza has thrown 9.1 innings and has an era over 9.00. In his past two starts, he threw three innings in one and failed to get out of the second inning in his most recent outing. He has been, at best, a work in progress it would seem.

True, injury setbacks to Brandon McCarthy have clouded general manager Jon Daniel's vision for the 2008 season, however past transactions involving rising prospects such as John Danks and Edinson Volquez has left major league-ready pitchers barren in the Rangers system. Danks, one of the trading chips in the Brandon McCarthy trade, is enjoying a good start to the season with the White Sox. In four starts he is 2-1 with a 3.04 era over 23 innings and has yet to give up a home run. While Volquez's trade to Cincinnati brought Josh Hamilton to the Rangers but Volquez so far has thrived in southern Ohio. The hard-throwing righty is 3-0 in his 4 starts with a 1.21 era and 23 strikeouts in 22 innings. The three victories constitutes 33% of the total wins on a 9-win Reds team. Needless to say, these two arms, Danks and Volquez, would certainly be welcomed back to Texas if trades were able to be nullified. The outcome of this long history of pitching staff mismanagement has led to Sidney Ponson in the starting rotation.

This is the epitome of 'desperate times call for desperate measures'. McCarthy isn't expected to throw until the All-Star break and the Rangers are placing Mendoza on the disabled list (mercifully). When Daniels, new team president Nolan Ryan and Ron Washington went to the farm system, they found it, for the most part, void of major league pitchers. Currently 25-year-old Doug Mathis leads the triple-A Oklahoma staff with a 3.12 era and a 4-0 record in his four starts. In his 26 innings, he has struck out 19 while walking just 4. His 1.04 whip is the best in the rotation. Like the Twins' Nick Blackburn last year, Mathis is getting an absurd amount of groundball outs (64%). In a venue like the Ballpark at Arlington, this would seemingly be an appealing statistic considering the rate of which flyballs tend to leave the yard. Instead, the Rangers have opted to recall Ponson, a 31-year-old enjoying marginal success in the Pacific Coast League. In 5 starts, Ponson is 1-2 with a 3.47 era over the course of 23 innings. Ponson has struck out just 12 in that time while walking 9 leading to a whip of 1.47. Though some would argue there is negligible difference between a 3.12 era and a 3.47 era when you see that Mathis's FIP is 3.98 while Ponson's bloated 5.23 FIP reflects his girthy waistline it is apparent that Mathis has been pitching that much better.

Regardless of why the Texas brain-trust decided to bring Ponson back to the majors (the need for the omnipresent veteran in the rotation?), it should bode well for the Twins tonight.

That's A Shame.

Three starts in to what should be a tour of the Twins minor league system rebuilding a surgically repair arm Francisco Liriano looks as comfortable as an enema on the mound. He is a shadow of the F-Bomb we familiarized ourselves with in 2006. So far in three starts in 2008 have yielded an average Game Score of 28 - a tiny 15 in the most recent.

What is most disturbing is not the loss itself, but rather his peripheral numbers at this point and the story they tell. After retiring just Mark Sweeney and being substituted for Brain Bass on Thursday afternoon, Liriano is carrying a paltry strike out rate of 12% and a bloated 23% walk rate. Simply, Liriano is not locating his fastball and therefore unable to use any off-speed pitch, let alone the facsimile that was his slider, to obtain a missed bat.

After walking Kurt Suzuki to commence the bottom of the first, La Velle E. Neal suggests that Liriano began to take velocity off of his fastball in order to place it better. While it may be true that he was trying too hard find the strike zone, he actually threw above 90 mph as the inning progressed. The three walks were disturbing. Liriano had trouble establishing his fastball, throwing it in the zone only 52% of the time. When he was only able to locate his change-up in the strike zone 33% of the time, no Athletic batter - all of whom practice very good plate discipline - were not going to chase the off-speed pitch.

Liriano threw 35 pitches to 9 batters, only to record one out while walking three, giving hits to five and six runs, all earned. Analyzing pitch f/x data reveals that Liriano used his fastball (one that was ranging from 88-90) approximately 71% of the time and tossing what was categorized as a change-up 28% of time while throwing just one slider to Rajai Davis, who ended up being the last batter Liriano would face. In retrospect, the pitch f/x shows that Liriano had several pitches that probably were strikes however when it appeared evident that he was not hitting his spots, the umpire certainly was not going to give him the benefit of the doubt. This forced Liriano to throw the ball directly over the middle of the plate. As indicated in the chart below, too many pitches landed within the middle of the strike zone. A revamped, all-right-handed A's line up feasted on the fastballs (all five hits were collected on the pitch) while seven times Liriano tried to throw the substandard fastball by the batters and three times it was raked for a base hit.

2%	2%	2%		5%		Pitch Chart
		8%				< 20%
5%		20%	5%	14%		10-20%
	5%			2%		5-9%
2%	8%	2%	2%	2%		> 5%

Ron Gardenhire provided the media with post-game speculatory quotes that hinted that Liriano needs more conditioning. "We've seen him down there and up here, and now comes the time to figure out what the next best step is for Frankie to get him back to where we need him," Gardenhire said. "That's what we need to decide." After this, Rochester's manager Stan Cliburn appears prophetic. Cliburn had told Gardenhire and the front office that he believe Liriano needed additional innings in the minors prior to being major league ready. Had Gardenhire taken Cliburn's advice, Liriano's confidence might not need extra massaging while building not only his arm physically with another tour of Triple-A before May ends, but now his psyche needs work as well.

Game Notes #20

Twinks 5, A's 4 (Box Score)

• Game Score 43 - Livan Hernandez looked strong for 4 innings but couldn't quite keep Oakland's wolves at bay. For one thing, the A's lineup did what they do best: made him earn each match-up. In six plate appearances prior to the fifth had Hernandez throwing five or more pitches. The second inning Ryan Sweeney dinged Livan for an 11-pitch at-bat. This certainly could have contributed to his decline later in the ball game. With one out in the fifth, Hernandez gave up back-to-back singles to Bobby Crosby and Chris Denorfia (who by the way, has one of the game best incomplete fu machu's in the game) but go the other Cretin graduate on the field to ground out to Morneau. With runners on second and third, the surging Kurt Suzuki singled home both runners to bring the game within one. The fifth it was visible that Hernandez was laboring, but by the sixth Hernandez was on fumes. Walking Jack Cust, the strike out, walk or home run guy, coaxed a walk then Emil Brown crushed a two-run home run to put the A's up by one. After a ground out by Ryan Sweeney, Denorfia hit a two-out double and Hernandez was saved by The Coliseum's vast foul grounds when Jack Hannahan popped out to Mike Lamb.

• Twins are 5 and 0 when Hernandez's starts - The results are very desirable there is no question about it. Sure, everything about him is unsexy, including his strike out rate (8%) and bulbous head capable of stretch the hole in a cashmere sweater, but 5 starts and 5 wins is nothing to shake a stick at. Livan is averaging 50.4 as a Game Score over the course of those 5 starts which has undoubtedly led to several "lucky" wins. Three of those starts have been below 50 (the equivalent to a quality start) but the offensive production (5.36 runs of support) assisted in lifting the team to victory. Unlike Nick Blackburn who has pitched better in his outings (averaging 54 in 4 starts) but has been one run of support lower than Hernandez (4.11) and has been failed twice by his bullpen leading to a 1-1 record and a 1-3 record when starting. Again the results speak for themselves but I would speculate that Hernandez could hit a rough period as the run support drops.

• .154/.154/.179 - Last 9 games for Carlos Gomez. He is 1 for his last 18 with 7 strike outs and no walks. Stats blog indicated prior to this drought that without his speed, Gomez might be hitting under .150, after all his bunt and infield hits had been leading the league. Currently Gomez has 9 infield hits with 5 successful bunt attempts however this is growing more and more worrisome as he is offering at bad pitches and terrible counts as well. Gomez opened the first 11 games of the season by hitting .292/.320/.417 and keeping pitchers and infielders off-balanced with those well-timed bunt singles. "When I'm on base, it's like I got one run already," Gomez said. "I can steal second, and then the other team's got problems. I'm on second and it's a groundball, I'll be at home." While always a threat once he gets to the bathpaths (9 stolen bases on 10 attempts) but is having a tumultuous time reaching base. Judging from the pitch f/x sequencing, you will notice that pitchers have begun throwing breaking and off-speed pitches low and away to Gomez that he has not been able to lay off.

• 10-for-14 - Craig Monroe lifetime off of the A's Joe Blanton now thanks to a 3-for-3 night at the plate including the tying home run in the 7th - his third RBI of the night - and was a triple short of hitting for the cycle. Nice use of statistics Gardy: "Numbers. They can fool you sometimes. And sometimes they tell the story that you have to play out," Gardenhire said afterward. "Tonight was one night where he's had some success [against Blanton], so you play it out. It's just one of those crazy things in the game. No one knows how it happens. But he was on the ball."

• .267/.333/.267 - Jason Kubel's line against left-handed pitching after singling off of Alan Embree to score the go-ahead run. The sample size is terribly small but Kubel has proven somewhat effect against left-handed pitching in his 18 plate appearances against the wrong handers. Meanwhile, in 16 plate appearances against left-handed pitching this season, Craig Monroe is hitting just .071/.188/.071. It will be interesting to see how Gardy handles left-handed starters when Michael Cuddyer returns from the DL.

Blackburned.

Last night in his first major league victory, Nick Blackburn kept a very good hitting Indians line-up subdued. "We faced him a couple of times last year," said Twins masher and enemy of the Baggy Travis Hafner. "He throws a sinker and does a good job putting the ball on the ground. I had some good pitches to hit, but rolled over on them [grounded out]." Platoon veteran David Dellucci echoed Hafner's quote saying, " "Blackburn pitched everybody a different way every time they came up. He's got a good sinker."

Not everybody shares that sentiment. Some have already suggested that because he is a control-artist that lacks a biting 'out-pitch' that he is somewhat susceptible to left-handed batters. Over the first four starts, the opposite is true. In 55 plate appearances against right-handed batters, the opponents have been hitting .333/.370/.375. Lefties, on the other hand (punny), are batting .239/.271/.348 in 48 plate appearances against Blackburn. What's more is that all five of his doubleplays were started by left-handed batters. Minor League Ball.com's John Sickles wrote that "From a sabermetric standpoint, I am not enamored of the poor strikeout rate, but his control is sharp enough for him to help out as a fifth starter/long relief type. Grade C+." Conversely, Dave Cameron (USS Mariner) wrote at the FansGraph blog that "[w]hile this isn’t as sexy as blowing hitters away with 96 MPH fastballs or a power curve, the combination of throwing strikes and getting ground balls is a proven winner. This is the Aaron Cook/Jake Westbrook path to success - pound the strike zone with pitches at the knees, don’t put anyone on base without making them swing, and let your infielders do the work."

So far, that is the recipe for success. Certainly a 12% strikeout rate will lift eyebrows when attempting to gauge a prospect but couple that with a 2% walk rate and a groundball rate encroaching 60% and you get a major league pitcher. Blackburn has provided positive results for the team. In his four starts he is averaging Game Score of 54 - above the quality threshold - and has yet to yield a home run in his 25 innings of work. In those innings Blackburn has held a 58% groundball rate and only allowed solid, line-drive contact on 10% of balls put in play - his .329 babip is somewhat high for a groundball pitcher. If Blackburn is able to keep his groundball rate above 55% he will put himself in position of success. Last year, Fausto Carmona, Felix Hernandez and Chien-Ming Wang all finished with groundball rates over 55% and all finished with at least 14 victories.

Blackburn, like a Brian Bannister, suffers from being consistently overlooked because he does not produce gaudy strikeout totals or light up a radar gun. In the 7th round of that same draft, the Baltimore Orioles selected Joe Coppinger, Blackburn's rotation-mate in college. Coppinger never made it above high-A with the Orioles while Blackburn just finished a shutout of the Cleveland Indians in his 4th major league start. This trend would continue throughout his career.

As the 29th round of the 2001 amateur draft approached the Twins, the organization looked to pad the farm system's pitching portfolio. After all the Twins had used 13 of the 28 previous rounds to choose hurlers and it has been this philosophical mission of building around pitching where the Twins have found success. They develop from within instead of completing for overpriced free agent pitchers on the open market. 856 players had been selected before the Twins selected Oklahoma native Robert Nicholas Blackburn. Blackburn had carved himself a good college career at Seminole State College, a ju-co in Oklahoma that produced other major leaguers such as Eric Gagne and Lew Ford, but as a late round selection Blackburn's major league path was far from guaranteed. To date, of the 13 pitchers picked prior to Blackburn, only one of them has seen a major league mound, San Diego's Rule 5 steal Kevin Cameron who the Twins picked 13 rounds in front of Blackburn. This once again highlights the nature of uncertainty of the major league draft.

As a 20 year-old, Blackburn began his professional career at Elizabethton in 2002 along side highly touted 19-year-old Scott Tyler (who was the 2nd round pick following Joe Mauer). Tyler had the power and stuff to amass strikeouts by the dozens while Blackburn was more technical, relying on keeping additional baserunners off the bases and his defense to support him when groundballs came their way. As Blackburn sputtered to a 3-3 record in his 13 starts, Tyler whizzed to an 8-1 record in his 13. In 67 innings pitched, Blackburn struck out 62 and walked only 20. Tyler, on the other hand, struck out 92 in his 68 innings and had a 2.91 ERA in comparison to Blackburn's inflated 4.97. In 2003 both right-handers were elevated to then Midwest League affiliate Quad City where they experienced growing pains. Blackburn, in his 76 innings, finished 2-9 with a 4.86 ERA. He struck out only 40 batters in that period. Tyler continued to strike out opponents (110 in 103 innings) but walked 82 batters ending with a WHIP of 1.65 (Blackburn's was significantly lower at 1.24). In 2004, both Blackburn and Tyler began the season with Quad City (only now they were the newly anointed "Swing of the Quad Cities") but this time the experience proved to help the two pitchers win. Tyler finished the year 7-4 with a 2.60 ERA and 132 strikeouts in 104 innings. Blackburn went 6-4 in 86 innings pitched with a 2.79 ERA. When the Twins shuffled newly acquired Francisco Liriano from high-A to double-A, the Twins opted to bring Blackburn up to high-A over Tyler to finish the 2004 season. Over the course of 37 innings, Blackburn struck out 21 and issued only 7 walks. He was hit hard, as evident by his ERA that was above 6.00, but he threw well enough in his 7 starts to earn the right to begin 2005 with the high-A team.

It was around this time that it became apparent that the Twins valued Blackburn's ability to disperse outs through groundballs while Tyler's "fascist" strikeout approach was leading to erratic tendencies. Plus, as many washed-up prospects soon discover, hitters can hit fastballs. In 2005 Tyler pitching in 118 innings for the Miricle and struck out 109 in his first season of high-A ball. Unfortunately for Tyler, he also surrendered 18 home runs and walked another 48 batters. He finished the season 7-8 with a 3.96 ERA. Following the 2005 season, the Twins packaged up Tyler with Travis Bowyer for Florida's Luis Castillo. Tyler failed to pitch above double-A for the Marlins and has since moved to the Athletics organization where he currently in the bullpen for the Texas League affiliate.

In 93 innings with Fort Myers that season, Nick Blackburn struck out 55 but only allowed 5 home runs and just 16 walks. When New Britain was looking for another starting pitcher, they pulled Nick Blackburn up. In his first exposure to double-A, Blackburn tossed 49 innings, struck out 27 and walked only 10. He had the lowest WHIP on the team (0.92) and only surrendered one home run. Blackburn tossed 14 innings at triple-A Rochester to finish the year as guys like Scott Baker and Francisco Liriano were called up to Minnesota.

In 2006 Blackburn pitched a full season at double-A New Britain and threw 132 innings while finishing 7-8 with a 4.42 ERA. The organization, still not convinced if he was a starter or reliever, had him start 19 games and relieving in 11 more. Because of these results, Baseball America did not consider Blackburn one of the organization's top ten prospect to open the 2007 season (they didn't even project him to be in the 2010 rotation). Blackburn did throw better then the standard numbers suggest. His FIP (3.97) was lower than his overall ERA (4.42), his strikeout-to-walks (81-to-37) was strong and his groundball ratio (48%) merited a second look at the right-handed prospect. This was overshadowed by Matt Garza who during the 2006 season ascended from high-A to triple-A, posting sexy strikeout-to-walk numbers (154-to-32) and an absurdly low WHIP (0.88). As Garza was striking out nearly 28% of all batters faced, Blackburn finished 2006 with his highest strikeout rate of his younger career: 14%.

Last year the talk of the organization was Kevin Slowey. In 2006, Slowey had climbed from high-A to double-A accumulating 151 strikeouts (26%) and only allowing 22 walks (4%) in 148 innings. This earned him the number three overall Twins prospect (Garza was considered number one). Making 20 starts and throwing over 133 innings on his way to a 10-5 record, Slowey continued his control-based regiment in triple-A, striking out 107 (20%) and walking just 18 (3%). This stinginess with free passes and the ability to get strikeouts obtained Slowey a call-up to the big club. At the major league level, Slowey discovered that simply pounding the strike zone does not produce the same results as it had in the minors - this time it resulted in 16 home runs in just 66 innings. In spite of that, Slowey still finished 4-1, completing the season with a 14-6 record split between Rochester and Minnesota. Blackburn, meanwhile, started the season with double-A New Britain on his third tour of the Eastern League but was promoted to Rochester after compiling a 3-1 record with a 3.08 ERA in 33 innings of work. In that short amount of time Blackburn had stuck out 11% of batters faced and walked only 4%.

While Twins followers fawned over the Matt Garza's and Kevin Slowey's in 2007, Nick Blackburn's stock continued to rise. Selected for the Arizona Fall League, Blackburn threw 22 very strong innings, striking out 20 and walking only 2 - culminating the season with being honored as the MVP of the championship game. Baseball America shifted gears all-together and christened the number one prospect for the Minnesota Twins, declaring that Blackburn had the organization's best fastball and best control.

Because he doesn't strike out large quantities of batters at a time, Blackburn's ability will always be questioned. Results will have to speak for themselves.