Minnesota at Tampa Bay. Twins 4, Devil Rays 2.
Batgirl’s massive and devoted readership sometimes wonders why some guy called Twins Geek gets to be featured daily on the Strib website while Batgirl does not. Does Twins Geek sponsor day trips to Treasure Island for patriotic sing-alongs? Does he offer yoga workshops? In fact, think about it...have you ever seen Legos over at Twins Geek? Even once?
Well, maybe the StarTribune favors Twins Geek because of all those juicy stats he throws about every day. That’s one thing Batgirl doesn’t do. Stats, no . . . sass, another story. But just this once let’s get out some sharp no. 2 pencils, the graphing calculators, and plenty of scratch paper and do some math. It’s time tell the story of tonight’s game through the magic of numbers!
How can one quantify the slightly queasy feeling Team Batgirl felt as tonight’s first pitch approached? Jeb, Goober, and Sooz waxed the BatBus all afternoon in silence. They worried about Seth Greisinger’s ability to lift the Twins out of their rut, they worried the Twins’ recently mute bats would remain hushed, but mostly they worried that Batgirl would return from her Yoga retreat and fly into a rage at their inability to will the Twins to win in her absence. (First she drinks, then she hits.) So, as the three repaired into the BatQuarters and Goober broke out the Slim Jims for dinner while Sooz fired up the TV that pall of silence remained.
That queasiness can be measured in a statistic we call the Greis-integer. To calculate the Greis-integer you simply add Greisinger’s five highest E.R.A.s in his last ten starts and multiply that by the number of runs by which the Twins have lost over the past week and a half. Let’s do the math:
Now, compare the number against your Greisy-Gauge.
0-100: Greisy’s great!
100-200: Hot stuff.
200-300: Luke warm.
300-400: Cold fish.
400-500: No way!
(The Greisy-Gauge doesn’t go above 500 because of the incredible statistical improbability that the Greis-integer would go that high, let alone as high as, say, 511.)
Maybe it’s not that hard to quantify how concerned Team Batgirl was.
But all that started to change when Matty “Campagne Grande” LeCroy drove in Lew Ford in the first inning.
Five innings later it felt as if the Greis-integer was plummeting into the triple-digits, taking the queasiness with it, as Greisy left the game having given up only two runs--five fewer than in his previous start.
But where were our hits to come from without Shannon? After all, the Twins had to go out and get him last year after the team had only managed to collect a total of 14 hits before the All Star break. No Shannon, no hits tonight . . . right?
Not exactly, thanks to Lew Ford!
Which brings us to our second super statistic of the night, a statistic we call the Lew-gorithm. The Lew-gorithm is very versatile statistic that measures a number of things. It measures the fraction of the Twins total offense that Lew contributed, it rates his performance against other players under 6 feet tall, and when multiplied by the weight of your turkey in pounds, lets you know just how long to cook it for a delicious, juicy bird!
Just add tonight’s hits and bases on balls to his current batting average and position on the AL leader board.
Let’s do the math:
Measure your Lew-gorithm against the Magic Eight Ball:
1-2: No.
2-3: Fat chance.
3-4: Outlook not so good.
5-6. Maybe.
7-8. Serious possibility.
9-10. Yes.
A number higher than ten indicates the player is likely to be added to Mount Rushmore.
Lew, as they say, came through, and Jacque . . . did too, batting in Lew and Guzie in the 5th to put us ahead for good. The bullpen performed very well, especially Juan Rincon.
All-in-all, Team Batgirl breathed a sigh of relief, hoping that Batgirl would be refreshed from her Yoga retreat and in a forgiving mood since her boys played quite respectable ball tonight. She returns, thank God, tomorrow night.
Time to clean the BatQuarters!
P.S. Does anyone have any other stats that might prove enlightening?