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Some of the buzz of the Twitter world yesterday was surrounding the Twins and who should be the lead-off hitter when the team heads north from spring training. Ron Gardenhire would like one of the center field candidates to run away with thelead-off job but he had a surprise name as a back-up plan. With the ways things are starting to take shape, the team might have to get crafty with men near the top of the order. Here is a look at some of the candidates for the lead-off spot. Some of the men
Originally published at The Tenth Inning Stretch ---- One of the most contested spots for the Twins, on paper, this Spring Training was going to be that of the 5th starter. The newly signed (or re-signed) Ricky Nolasco, Phil Hughes and Mike Pelfrey, in addition to holdover veteran Kevin Correia, had four spots, while the three out of option guys (Samuel Deduno, Scott Diamond and Vance Worley, in alphabetical order) were to battle for that fifth spot, maybe with the addition of first round d
Originally published at The Tenth Inning Stretch ---- One of the most contested spots for the Twins, on paper, this Spring Training was going to be that of the 5th starter. The newly signed (or re-signed) Ricky Nolasco, Phil Hughes and Mike Pelfrey, in addition to holdover veteran Kevin Correia, had four spots, while the three out of option guys (Samuel Deduno, Scott Diamond and Vance Worley, in alphabetical order) were to battle for that fifth spot, maybe with the addition of first round d
Originally published at The Tenth Inning Stretch --- Here are the latest Twins Spring Training battle dashboards updated for yesterday's game and the Spring Training cuts. The players who were cut are not longer listed. You can find all of the 2014 Spring Training dashboards here) : A reminder of the scoring system: For the pitchers, I quantify using a measurement created by Bill James more than a decade ago called " Game Score". It is calculated as follows: You s
Originally published at The Tenth Inning Stretch --- Yesterday I speculated about the first cuts of the Spring Training for the Minnesota Twins. This morning the Twins announced these cuts and there were only a couple names I have not mentioned yesterday. After these 16 cuts, the Twins now have 48 players in the major league camp. Here is the full list of the cuts: 40-man roster: Optioned to AAA Rochester Red Wings: LHP Logan Darnell LHP Edgar Ibarra LHP Brooks Raley RHP Trevor May
Originally posted at Kevin Slowey was Framed! My wife is a colorful character. Seriously, here is a picture of her: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-noPQ18WsoV4/UxkqHGlBFwI/AAAAAAAABSQ/oyQLjr2n_l4/s1600/dora_the_explorer_31709-200x316.jpg No, wait, that's Dora the Explorer. My wife does have a lot of pizazz and a curious nature though. Why not put her inquisitive nature to good use? I thought, "hey, I can get a blog post out of this." If nothing else, this will be give you wonderful insight in
Originally published at The Tenth Inning Stretch ---- Like most teams the Minnesota Twins will be announcing the first cuts of the major league Spring Training camp very soon. Who will those players be? One group of players who gets cut first are players on the 40-man roster who do not have much likelihood to make the team and were added on the roster for protection's sake. I think that Logan Darnell, Max Kepler, Jorge Polanco and Kennys Vargas will be the four casualties from this cat
Minor leaguers have been in camp for 2+ days and there is no information on the happenings of our minor leaguers: How are practices going? Who looks in shape or out of shape? What interesting drills are guys going through? What guys are practicing new positions and how do they look? Are they with teams or soley position groups at this point of camp? When do games start? Are there schedules available to post? I'm Talking Practice Fellas - Practice. Give me some news
When I first heard that Mauer was moved to 1st, I was thrilled. Then I started to wonder, why first base? We have Arcia and Willingham in the corners. Mauer seems to be a better athlete and certainly has a better arm than both. Sano is at 3B and has been described as a project there. I can't imagine him being a better athlete than Mauer, even at 30. I hear Sano has a good arm, but I am giving Mauer the nod there as well. I can see Mauer playing 1B when he is 35, but he is 30 years old.
Bloggers and sabrmetricians are sometimes portrayed as treating players as tumbling dice. It's rhetoric meant to discredit and vilify, but it's not totally without merit. I know this because I think I'm about to treat Kyle Gibson and Chris Colabello as tumbling dice. Insiders (players, coaches, etc.) and outsiders (sabrmetrician, bloggers) have vastly different perspective on players and their development in two important ways. First, there is the matter of how much we value our projections
hello Twins Fans! Tonight starting at ten, I'll once again host Troy's Twins Chat. My dad and I will talk about Twins topics. We'll take a look at some of the players on the Twins and how they are performing so far in spring training. If time permits, we may go into other MLB/sports topics. To listen to the show live or to listen to it later, click on the following link. http://www.blogtalkradio.com/the-troy-larson-show/2014/03/07/troys-twins-chat
Originally published at The Tenth Inning Stretch ---- The Twins lost to the Baltimore Orioles' travel squad yesterday in a pretty bad way (11-5.) Here are the Spring Training Battle Dashboards updated after yesterday's game: For position players: http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7424/12966868145_25dfce691f.jpg For pitchers http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2214/12966868315_0c1783496e.jpg Scott Diamond's performance, even though collectively awful, and reflected by the lowest
Well, that was brutal. Instead, let's focus on something else: tonight marked the start of the Twins second turn through the rotation, and their seventh spring training game. The roles for players are clearer as are the spring training battles. So what do several Twins positional hopefuls need to do to make it to Chicago for Opening day? THE LINEUP Joe Mauer, Josh Willingham, Brian Dozier, Trevor Plouffe, Kurt Suzuki, Alex Presley What the need to do: Stay healthy. Pedro Florimon What he
Well, that was brutal. Instead, let's focus on something else: tonight marked the start of the Twins second turn through the rotation, and their seventh spring training game. The roles for players are clearer as are the spring training battles. So what do several Twins positional hopefuls need to do to make it to Chicago for Opening day? THE LINEUP Joe Mauer, Josh Willingham, Brian Dozier, Trevor Plouffe, Kurt Suzuki, Alex Presley What the need to do: Stay healthy. Pedro Florimon What he
This week on the podcast we struggle through a couple of technical difficulties, and lament the loss of Miguel Sano for the season. This week we take a look in on the Cleveland Indians. We are joined on the podcast by Jason Lukehart (@JasonLukehart) of Let's Go Tribe to discuss comings and goings for the Indians and what Twins fans can expect from the Tribe in 2014. You can download the new Talk to Contact (@TalkToContact) episode via iTunes or by clicking here. http://puckettspond.com/files/201
http://assets.podomatic.net/ts/19/ad/da/paulpleiss/1400x1400_9333337.jpg This week on the podcast we struggle through a couple of technical difficulties, and lament the loss of Miguel Sano for the season. This week we take a look in on the Cleveland Indians. We are joined on the podcast by Jason Lukehart (@JasonLukehart) of Let's Go Tribe to discuss comings and goings for the Indians and what Twins fans can expect from the Tribe in 2014. In this week's Down on the Pond segment we take a closer l
Here's what you really need to know about this game: Jupiter, Florida, where the Marlins play, is a long three-plus hour bus trip from Fort Myers. The bus leaves at 7:30 in the morning. It gets back something like 8:00 that night. The Twins, like every other team, tries to protect their best (veteranish) players from this as best they can. (And in the Twins case, they had a split squad game yesterday, meaning that nearly every veteran also played yesterday.) There was even a question in
Houston reached base 3 times on Thursday. He's hitting .308/.398/.440 (.838) since joining the Surge and stole his 14th AA base. His 38 total SB is tied with Yasser Mercedes for organizational lead.