Livan Hernandez: A Walking Myth

Sometimes the truth hurts, whether it is truth or not. Either way, I'm glad we got this guy in the rotation this year. I'm not going to say Livan Hernandez is a pitching God for the Twins this year, but he is contributing quite a bit given into consideration on who we have on the mound this year and what the rest of them are doing compared to Livan. Heck, I thought Nick Blackburn was off to a good start, too, but, like you had in this post, his ERA is starting to go up as well. All in all, wrapping up thoughts for me, you had a very good post to put things in perspective for anybody who was thinking Livan was going to be an ace, and hopeing the best for all of the MN Twins players to improve that much more, go TWINS!! Bring home the pennant this year.... and why not, bring home the WS Title! GO TWINS GO!!!

At the beginning of the year I posted that Livan Hernandez would win 12-14 games with an ERA of about 4.50, everyone said I was crazy, etc., etc. Everyone said he gives up too many hits (always has), everyone says he gives up too many HR (always has), everyone says he keeps too many people on base (always has), only throws mid 80's ( other than 1997-1998 where he threw 91-93, always has), he gives more hits than innings pitch (always has), yet he has manage to win 140 games and post a 4.25era in a very respectful 10  year +/- career, furthermore in doing this pitch 200 innings or more in most of those seasons. Livan Hernandez "is" and will be better than most of the pitchers that we have mentioned including Silva and most likely better than 60-70% of all mayor league pitchers which I am sure will never achive what he has done until now including all the present starting pitchers for the  Minnesota Twins ball club. The twins know this and this is why they signed him, to win 12-14 games, ERA 4.50 +/- and 200 innings. With this being said, Livan Hernandez with everything he brings, is an average major league pitcher that will have above average major league stats when is all said and done. 

Jamasta - you can call me out all you want because I am not disagreeing with what you're saying at all and as we've seen in the last couple of posts most people would agree of the style in which Livan pitches (inning eater, lots of hits, suceptible to longball, etc, etc). 

However, his stats throughout his career show he is capable of doing that and getting along just fine.  He's not a hall-of-famer by any means and he's probably not even an ace on most staffs but he's doing what we signed him to do and we've been fortunate enough to win some games behind him.

He had another great outing the other night (perfect through 5) and if we can give him run support (which is a little bit of a challenge for the Twins at times) he will continue to have average but good enough stats to win games and I don't care what you say, I will still argue that wins are far more important that regular statistics.