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Day two of my Fort Myers experience featured baseball. After a bit more room jangling, we got to Century Link hereafter known as Hammond or Twins Spring Training camp at 10 AM. We checked the minor league fields and watched pitcher's drills. The Rays were to be the opposition for the Twins farmhands on this warm spring day. Well before first pitch, we made the acquaintance of TD's own Ashbury John, who is in Fort Myers, living it up while his significant other slaves over a hot computer (I jes
Originally published at The Tenth Inning Stretch --------- Today was my first full day at Fort Myers and the Twins had a split squad duo of games, with the half of the team hosting the Orioles at Hammond Stadium and the other half a few miles away playing the Red Sox at Jet Blue Park. This was the second year in a row as far as renovations went for the facilities, and the Hammond Stadium looks really great. The front facade is extended to both broaden the concession place plaza and put a ro
"Why in the name of all things Holy did they send Miguel Sano to Chattanooga - AA?? Not only did Sano show his power, but he even stole a base! Sano did everything you could ask of him this spring, and he was rewarded by spending another season toiling in the minor leagues. What's the point of getting top prospects if you're not going to use them?! It's obvious that Terry Ryan has no idea what he's doing, and Paul Molitor is just another pawn in Ryan's game of saving the Pohlad's money. I thou
(Good morning everyone! Panda here with a post from my friend Ryan. You can find him on Twitter dot com [@ryan7997]. Let him know what you think. He's an aspiring broadcaster/sports writer type. I mean, who doesn't want to be like Bonnes and I?!) The Twins are fast approaching their 2015 season. They have a lot of work to do if they want to be atop the A.L Central. With an ERA of 4.57 and giving up on average 10 hits a game, the Twins pitching staff really has to work on pitching. There was
My journey to Fort Myers started with a phone call at 3 in the morning, notifying me that the shuttle would arrive at the Kwik Trip at 3:50 instead of the already too early 4:20. I arrived at "Terminal 2" at 5 AM for an 8:30 flight, but couldn't go through Security because I had arranged to help my brother when he arrived. The flight was fine-left on time, arrived on time--but still felt a bit like a sardine in the can. We upgraded our rental to an SUV and headed to our hotel on Sanibel. There
Originally published at The Tenth Inning Stretch ---- After the 18 recent cuts the Twins made (some of them unannounced yet) yesterday, the camp roster was trimmed to 43 players. I did provide a break down of those players by position yesterday, also mentioning whether they have options or whether they are on the 40-man roster. Based on these numbers, I am taking a preliminary look at the Twins' potential opening day roster, position by position: Position players (13) Catchers (2/3) Suzuki
1- Why were Buxton and Sano cut so early? I have to assume that they were that far behind. How did Sano look at 3rd considering his inflated weight? Actually the best thing for the Twins would probably be moving him to first, as I think our production there will remain less than stellar. 2-Can this team win without Escobar playing everyday? I would love to think they are that good but I don't believe it. I sure hope the Twins don't trade him...a young talented player that had a very goo
Originally published at The Tenth Inning Stretch ---- This is the third and last, but not least, segment in this series. You can find the first segment (fixing the bullpen) and the rationale for the series here, and the second segment (fixing the outfield) here. I think that the most important (and some times the hardest or the easiest) thing to fix for the Twins to win, is the team attitude. How do you measure attitude and how does attitude prevent some one to win, and what is that "attit
I had the pleasure of watching today's game in person at Hammond Stadium, versus the portion of the St Louis Cardinal roster they deemed worth putting on a bus (hint: no stars). This writeup ought to be pretty quick, because it's one of those rare games where the box score plus a little inference pretty much tells you all you need to know. But first, I'll mention that we didn't have tickets to start with, and didn't want to feed the scalpers - but a little bird had told us that tickets get fre
I visited Arizona last weekend and since most of you will be posting about Florida I thought I’d add my thoughts about the “other” spring training. Arizona is nice because all of the teams are within about 20 minutes of Phoenix and if you fly out of MSP you have a few options on airlines. The main thing I didn’t like about the Phoenix area is that you will need to rent a car to get around and their rental car tax is about 18% total. Everything is close yet just far enough that you have to drive
You can download the new Talk to Contact (@TalkToContact) episode via iTunes or by clicking here, and if you want to add the show to your non-iTunes podcast player, this is the RSS Feed. http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OkCNrHinUQg/VQLn0yZB0SI/AAAAAAAALJo/oX2yGWpEJ7k/s1600/ws.jpg This week’s episode features a guest interview with Tom Flynn, (@mighty_flynn, http://mightyflynn.tumblr.com/). Tom joins us to talk about the whirlwind offseason that took place on the South Side of Chicago and walks us
You can download the new Talk to Contact (@TalkToContact) episode via iTunes or by clicking here, and if you want to add the show to your non-iTunes podcast player, this is the RSS Feed. http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_ABORe9N6vI/VQLnxyJ-m1I/AAAAAAAALJg/U_bIhDoM8so/s1600/st.jpeg Miguel Sano! Byron Buxton! Eddie Rosario! Baseball! LIVE BASEBALL! WELCOME BACK BASEBALL FANS! Baseball is back in Twins Territory with the return of Spring Training baseball on television and the sound of the crack of
http://assets.podomatic.net/ts/19/ad/da/paulpleiss/1400x1400_10429027.jpg This week’s episode features a guest interview with Tom Flynn (@mighty_flynn, http://mightyflynn.tumblr.com/). Tom joins us to talk about the whirlwind offseason that took place on the South Side of Chicago and walks us through all the changes to the White Sox roster and what we can expect from them in 2015. Before getting to the White Sox, however, Eric, Paul and Jay discuss the happenings and goings on down in Fort Mye
Originally published at The Tenth Inning Stretch ---- A great article was written today by Jonathan Judge and published at The Hardball Times, called FIP in Context, introducing an new metric, called cFIP, or contest-adjusted FIP that attempts to "estimate the pitcher’s true pitching talent during a particular season". Always interested in new pitching metrics development, and not only because I have partaken myself in the endeavor. this is an interesting one, albeit much more complex than P
Introduction I have spoken with John Bonnes about writing this article a few times and in one respect, I wish I had written it earlier, when public opinion towards Joe Mauer was more favorable than it is presently. Some of the hot takes regarding Mauer’s (perceived) lack of toughness have been poorly reasoned and while Mauer has not provided good value relative to his salary in recent seasons, given the way the collective bargaining agreement shapes Major League Baseball’s labor market, few ve
Mark Armour and I have a guest post at John Thorn's MLB blog this morning. This is a short essay on the history of Baseball Operations, riffing off Moneyball, which serves sort of as an introduction to our new book. http://ourgame.mlblogs.com/2015/03/09/baseball-ops-welcome-to-the-evolution/
Almost exactly 11 months ago, Mitch Garver arrived in Cedar Rapids to get started on his first full season of professional baseball in the Minnesota Twins organization. This spring, he’s a big league catcher – for now, anyway. Garver, the Twins’ ninth round draft choice in 2013 out of New Mexico, spent all of last season with the Cedar Rapids Kernels, not only playing a leadership role behind the plate but at the plate, as well. He hit .298, led Cedar Rapids with 79 RBI and was voted the Midwe
http://assets.podomatic.net/ts/19/ad/da/paulpleiss/1400x1400-382x382+58+60_10409070.jpeg Miguel Sano! Byron Buxton! Eddie Rosario! Baseball! LIVE BASEBALL! WELCOME BACK BASEBALL FANS! Baseball is back in Twins Territory with the return of Spring Training baseball on television and the sound of the crack of the bat. We're back for our third full season of Twins baseball. This week we talk all about Spring Training, we review the roster, and of course, Beer, Baseball, and the News. http://talk
Originally published at The Tenth Inning Stretch -----In the first part of this series, I discussed why the Twins should focus only on improving 3 things, and if they do so, they will be competitive. I also spoke in length about the first of those things, fixing the bullpen. Today, in the second part, I will be discussing the outfield. The outfield situation was, using one word, horrid in 2014. And this is nothing new. I looked at the outfield defense performance at length, while the ashes
Originally published at The Tenth Inning Stretch ---- At first read, the title of this series sounds very much like A Midsummer Night's Dream: Do I dare suggest that the team that went from 99 to 96 to 96 to 92 losses the past five seasons needs to do only three things to compete? The next number to that Arithmetic Progression up there is between 88 and 92 and that is not competing by any means. Let me explain my train of thought here before the nice kind people in white come and get me to war
The mantra has been the same over the last month, regardless of the source. “The best division in baseball? You have to think it’s the AL Central.” or “The most competitive division this season looks to be the AL Central!” No matter how it is framed, the reasons listed are always the same: “The perennial favorite Detroit Tigers still have David Price, Justin Verlander and Miguel Cabrera.” “The AL Champion Royals still have that speedy offense and one of the best bullpens in baseball.” “The
Spring training is meaningful. Jobs are won and lost as a result. They should be. Statistics from spring training exhibition games have no meaning. They should not be kept, reported or used in support of roster making decisions. I hope the Twins don't keep them or use them. Not only is the data in a sample too small to be meaningful but the level of competition varies. It is critical the Twins get the roster right though. They need to rely on the skill of the coaching staff and other staff
You can download the new Talk to Contact (@TalkToContact) episode via iTunes or by clicking here, and if you want to add the show to your non-iTunes podcast player, this is the RSS Feed. http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-L45Ao4eiZEw/VPB4BbIs-JI/AAAAAAAALGE/p2oCHg62n80/s1600/paul%2Bsaul.jpg Paul is a cranky pants this week, I think he hates Spring Training. We dive into that assumption and figure out what the heck the Twins are doing for the next couple weeks. We're joined this week by Jeremy Ny
On Saturday, Tait went 2-for-4 with a walk and his 17th double. The 19-year-old is hitting .219 with 17 doubles and 15 home runs at High-A Cedar Rapids.
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