Joe West, Ron Gardenhire Both Morons

There's been plenty of coverage in the sports media in the past couple of days about ostensibly impartial umpire Joe West's comments ripping the Sox and Yankees for playing too slowly. His remarks were pretty startling, but perhaps more surprising were the comments of Twins Manager Ron Gardenhire, who, when asked about the issue, said:

“We move our games along pretty good, and it’s pretty hard to tell some of those guys, ‘Let’s go, get in the box.’ They just look at you like, ‘Why? I haven’t heard the second verse to my song yet.’ That’s just the way it is.’’

Yes, I'm sure the Sox-Yankees games take 4 hours because all of our mega-buck players are infatuated with their walk-up music. OR, it could be because between them, the Sox and Yankees had 10 of the top 30 players in the American League in Pitches/Plate Appearance in 2009:

Rank / PA / P/PA
1 Kevin Youkilis / BOS / 588 / 4.41

2 Nick Swisher / NYY / 607 / 4.26

7 David Ortiz / BOS / 627 / 4.19

9 J.D.Drew / BOS / 539 / 4.12

14 Johnny Damon / NYY / 626 / 4.06

17 Victor Martinez / BOS / 672 / 4.05

25 Jason Bay / BOS / 638 / 3.99

27 Alex Rodriguez / NYY / 535 / 3.97

30 Dustin Pedroia / BOS / 714 / 3.95

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Sox led the AL in P/PA in 2009. The Twins were league-average in this regard.

p.s. It's notable that Papi was able to maintain such a high P/PA, both in absolute and relative terms, despite his decline. It's also impressive that Youk almost exactly equaled his previous full-season high in P/PA (2006), while increasing his slugging percentage by 120 points from 2006 to 2009.