chaderic20

Considering Rocco can do nothing right according to these forums I'm sure if he had intervened there'd be a big article and barrage of comments saying he was squashing his players fiery competitive spirit and babying them, etc. I have no problem with Rocco not stepping in here, Cruz and Watkins were both right there. And that conversation was nowhere close to getting out of hand. It barely, if even, qualifies as "heated" in my opinion. Josh could have handled it better than calling out his teammate on the field, but to me it looked and sounded like all he said was "Come on, let's go!" cuz Arraez clearly was not ready for the play to start, whether he was checking the outfielders positioning or staring out at the clouds.

I don't think 5/$100 will get you even close to signing Buxton. I'm guessing his ask will start somewhere more around 6/$200, and his actual signing will be something like 5/$150. There are a few teams with enough money to take on the risk of a contract that size, and the potential payoff if he stays healthy is enormous. Buxton and his agent know this, and will not accept less. I wouldn't if I were him anyway.

I like the idea of giving two bases for a HBP, but agree it has to be accompanied by more severe and/or enforced rules for players leaning into pitches. Is the current rule only that a batter can't move into the way of a pitch in order to get hit intentionally, or is the current rule that a batter must attempt to move out of the way of a pitch? Super-crazy, half-baked idea off the top of my head: if balls and strikes start being called automatically by robo umps, could you incentivize less inside pitching by making a called strike that ends up middle-middle (in the nine box grid often seen in strike zone graphics) be worth two strikes? Incentivizes pitching to the heart of the zone, which means less HBP, less walks, more good pitches for batters to hit, which increases offense and means less pitches per at bat, starters can go deeper into the game, less pitching changes, and faster pace of play. Incentivizes batters to be more aggressive early in the count, since called strikes down the middle are now worse you better make sure you're swinging at them. De-incentivizes selling out for power as one whiff means you're now one pitch away from a strike out.

That's a trick you try in little league just to see if they fall for it. An MLB player falling for that is inexcusable.

Why we all continue to come to the game threads...

Add the fact that there's a decent chance there won't be a 2022 season, and the urgency to trade Berrios (and others) this year increases.

I don't want you to be right, but I'm afraid you probably are.

Instead of using BABIP to determine luck, I was curious what looking at BA vs xBA would show. According to Baseball Savant the Twins have a BA of .245 and an xBA of .255, for a difference of negative 10 points. So at first glance there appears to be a little bad luck, but not a ton. But I noticed it also says that for MLB as a whole BA is .236 and xBA is .243, for a difference of negative 7 points. So really the Twins have only been 3 points of BA more unlucky than MLB as a whole. So, that means we're only losing 3 hits per 1,000 at bats to bad luck, when compared to the rest of the league. Some rough mental math tells me that's about 1 hit every 9 or 10 games. When put that way, that doesn't really seem like much to me. Not even close to being able to blame that for a 13-26 record. Twins pitchers on the other hand have actually been getting a little bit lucky using this method. Twins pitchers are giving up a .256 BA vs a .270 xBA, for a difference of 14 points. Again, MLB as a whole has 7 points difference, meaning Twins pitchers are actually giving up 7 fewer hits than expected per 1,000 at bats, relative to the rest of the league.

Also, can we get the bullpen usage back as an embedded image in the article? Some of us can't open google docs...

I've always thought inherited runners that score should be split between the SP and RP based on which base they were on when the RP came into the game. Runner on third when the RP comes in and he later scores, SP gets .75 earned runs and RP gets .25. Runner on second scores, .5/.5. Runner on first scores, .25/.75.

Make 'em pay Larnach!

Ball hit Lynn. He seems ok.

They already tried to de-incentivize homeruns by deadening the ball. Problem is all that did was change the three true outcomes from K/BB/HR to K/BB/Warning Track Flyball.

Batting right-handed against a right-hander is difficult for those who have been doing it their whole life. I highly doubt Polanco will be able to just switch to facing righties as a righty, which I assume he has not done for a very long time, and have any more success than facing them as a lefty, even though that is currently a struggle for him as well.

And then when he give some BS answer, another writer needs to follow up with, "No, seriously WTF was that?"