Make It Official! Twins 8, Athletics 7: Your Money's Worth and More

[JD-TWINS]

15 hours ago, bean5302 said:

Martin's home run robbing catch would have been a lot more impressive if he didn't also bounce a ball off his glove costing the team a run and allowing the Athletics to tie it up in the 2nd.

Exciting to have Royce Lewis out there playing like an MVP.

Thanks for that tidbit - I tuned in sometime late in the 3rd. Nobody showed anything on Martin, other than the hero play, the rest of the night.

Royce is hard to not get used to & he can’t keep up 2 HR’s every 3 games. It’s something to see!!!

[RpR]

15 hours ago, bean5302 said:

Martin's home run robbing catch would have been a lot more impressive if he didn't also bounce a ball off his glove costing the team a run and allowing the Athletics to tie it up in the 2nd.

Exciting to have Royce Lewis out there playing like an MVP.

Lewis will be in the Majors as long as he is healthy; at worst he will become another Nelson Cruz.

[cmoss84]

7 minutes ago, RpR said:

Lewis will be in the Majors as long as he is healthy; at worst he will become another Nelson Cruz.

With or without the PEDs? 😆 

[David Maro]

It's like real estate,it's all about location and Paddock can't find it.There are pitchers throwing all across the league in the low 90s.They did say last night that Varland seemed to be taking a little more time between pitches.That is and has been his problem,rushing pitches.

[IndianaTwin]

17 hours ago, bean5302 said:

I'll continue to note this every time I see it because people seem to forget or ignore the Mets GM was just suspended for a year for using the Phantom IL. MLB put front offices on notice about the Phantom IL earlier this year with that suspension, and Falvey is running a lame duck front office right now (contracts end this year, and they haven't been renewed).

Now if Paddack really is suffering from shoulder fatigue or dead arm, the IL trip is warranted.
In Maeda's case last year, his velo looked like this 91.0 -> 89.3 -> 89.0 -> 88.5.
Paddack's case over his last few starts: 91.5 -> 95.0 -> 95.2 -> 93.7

When I looked at Paddack's results and charted them for the season, he started off with higher velocity, which gradually trended down, but was up and down from start to start, with his control trending gradually up in a similar way. Basically, Paddack was trying to find more control, which is usually the last thing to return for pitchers coming back from TJ. The recent starts are not indicative of dead arm, they're more indicative of a starter who isn't very good right now. 

I’m definitely on board with it needing to be a legit case of dead arm/fatigue. I wasn’t explicit in saying that.

My point was more that his recent inconsistency seems consistent with guys running into a fatigue factor when coming back from TJS.

He was able to average nearly 92 pitches over his first nine starts but has only gotten above 88 in one of his last five. Obviously, there’s more than fatigue going on in determining how many pitches a guy throws. There’s effectiveness, which he hasn’t had lately.

Your velo stats don’t suggest fatigue, which is very helpful. At the same time, my sense is that TJS fatigue is as much about not being able to MAINTAIN sharpness and velocity as it is about not being able to find them at all. It seems like sometimes he has one and sometimes the other. Sometimes he’s had both and sometimes he has neither. And sometimes those different permutations happen within the same game. And can change quickly.

Sorry — didn’t mean to turn this into an analysis of why Paddack has struggled. I’m also one who often says, “These folks are way closer to the scene than those of us on TD,” so I don’t like it when people make speculative statements. I wasn’t trying to do that.

All that to say, I’m with you on not wanting them to manufacture an injury. However, as an endurance coach by trade (track and field/cross country), I also admit I come from a bias toward trying to nip overuse injuries in the bud, while also trying to be strategic in when to use extra rest, which is where the ASB scenario is coming from. I see it as a conversation where you’re saying to the athlete, “Look, from what you’re feeling and what we’re seeing in our measurements, it seems clear that you aren’t going to be able to make every start from here to the end of the year. In fact, your recovery would likely benefit from missing more than just a single start. How can we build in an extended rest so that it best benefits both you and the team?”

————

On the topic of phantom IL stints, I recently read “The Tao of the Backup Catcher,” by Tim Johnson with Erik Kratz. ! highly recommend it,

In it, Kratz tells of being told late in his career to invent an injury to create an IL stint. I’ve had opportunity to get to know him on a personal level, so I’m pretty confident it wasn’t embellishment for the purpose of selling books. (And besides, it’s not a book based on sensationalism anyway.)

He doesn’t name names, but it can be sleuthed out which team it happened with. He talks about the difficult spot he was in. He’s a man of integrity and it’s the intangibles that kept him in the game until almost 40 and now he’s being asked to go against those, knowing that if he doesn’t, a DFA could be the end of his career.