Always Be Closing

I am sure Matt Capps is a nice guy and a good father, but he blew his American League-leading seventh save on Friday night, and so he doesn't work the ninth inning anymore. Joe Nathan was tapped to take his place, and he got the job done:

Prior to his demotion, Capps allowed seven runs in 5.2 innings in July, with a 0/2 K/BB ratio.  It might seem like a knee-jerk reaction to demote a closer after such a small sample size of poor performances, but Capps was coming off of his fourth straight ineffective appearance, and the Twins got off to such a slow start that they really can't afford to wait for him to turn things around.  They currently sit six games out of first place in a very winnable division; they are in full-on win-now mode. Twitchy has been pitching like the Twitchy of old since his return on June 25th:  allowing just one run and four hits over 7.2 innings, while striking out seven and walking nobody.  The decision to give Nathan his old job back looks like a no-brainer. 

Of course, replacing Capps at closer doesn't solve all of the problems with the bullpen.  Nathan and Glen Perkins made a very effective eighth-inning combination, and though Perk can probably handle set-up duties himself, the Twins don't have a reliable arm to pitch in the seventh.  Capps can't even be trusted with the bases empty at this point; there's no way Gardy can put him in higher leverage situations.  Alex Burnett (6.75 ERA, 4.20 FIP), Jose Mijares (5.23 ERA, 4.65 FIP) and Phil Dumatrait (5.89 ERA, 6.40 FIP) don't exactly inspire confidence, either.  The Twins may give Anthony Slama and Chuck James another shot, as both had good results in limited action with the team and they've been lights-out in the minors.  Or, they may decide to trade for relief help at the deadline.  Personally, I'd rather they recall Slama, or James or both, rather than give up even a marginal prospect for a middle reliever, especially one who has had trouble finding the strikezone.  The bullpen has enough of those guys already. 

Completely irrelevant and probably only interesting to me: while searching the Youtubes for something else this afternoon, I came across this gem:



I hate to sound like a grumpy old lady, but remember when MTV used to, you know, actually play music? They've been shifting from a 24-hour music video format for 20 years now, and even back then they pretty much stuck to mainstream stuff to keep the masses and the major record labels happy. They did, however, have a few groundbreaking shows, like 120 Minutes, that gave not-so-mainstream artists a chance to be heard by a wider audience. I kind of miss that. I can't imagine that channel bothering with the likes of Lou Reed and Victoria Williams anymore; they're not drunken, overly-tanned Italian-American stereotypes or pregnant teenagers.  Now get off my lawn, you goddam kids.

Oh yeah, and here's the more famous version of this song, covered by some guys from Seattle: