chaderic20

I had no intention of this realignment being permanent. It was solely to allow for limited travel and exposure to as few teams as possible to try to prevent/contain any outbreaks of COVID19 among teams. I have no idea if it would be realistic or not, but I'd LIKE to think that MLB and MLBPA would be willing to throw a few traditions out the window this year given the unique circumstances, including traditional AL/NL alignment. Even if it's not realistic, it's fun to consider different "what if" scenarios.

Just for fun I thought I'd put together a proposal for a schedule for a shortened season. The scenario I went with was starting the season on July 6. I picked this date fairly arbitrarily, but it seems like a decently realistic scenario. Let me know what your proposed schedule would look like for that start date. Or pick your own scenario and try to put together a schedule. Here's mine: To limit travel, teams will be reorganized into six geographically-based divisions, and to limit exposure teams will play only within their divisions. Here are the divisions: New England NYY NYM BOS PHI TOR East Coast MIA TAM ATL WAS BAL Great Lakes CIN CLE PIT DET MIL Midwest CHW CHC MIN STL KC South HOU TEX COL ARI SD West Coast LAA LAD SF OAK SEA All series are six-game series, plus a travel day after each series. So each series plus travel day, takes one week. Divisions of five also mean each team will get a week off every fifth week. Each team will play a home-and-home against each other team in the division, one series at each location. This totals eight series, or 48 games. Eight series is two cycles of one series against each of the other four teams plus an off week, so it will take 10 weeks total. With a start date of July 6 the season would end on September 12. Rainouts would be made up as double-headers the next day, if there is a rainout of game 6 in a series, it will be made up as a noon game on the travel day. There will be one week between the end of the regular season and the start of the playoffs to make up any games not made up during the season, but only if they are necessary to determine a division winner or wildcard. Then division winner ties will be broken first by head-to-head record, then by run differential in head-to-head games, then run differential in all games, and finally by a tiebreaker game. Wildcard ties will be broken by run differential in all games, then by a tiebreaker game. There would then be an 8-team playoff consisting of the 6 division winners plus 2 wildcards, which would be the top two second-place teams. Division winners would be seeded by record, and then the wildcards would be the 7 and 8 seeds, by record. Seeding ties will broken by run differential in all games, then by coin flip. All rounds are best of 7 in a traditional 2-3-2 format. Round one of the playoffs runs September 21 - 30. Round two runs October 1 - 10, and the World Series runs October 11 - 20. A couple issues with this proposal are that it means one team from each division will start the season a week later, and one team from each division will end the season a week sooner. Also, run differential could get skewed by weaker/stronger divisions, but I used that to avoid having to play as many extra games as possible.

The difference comes from the expected performance of a generic replacement level player at that position. Lets say a generic replacement catcher hits a weak grounder to second which turns into an inning ending double play, while a generic replacement corner outfielder hits a single up the middle which doesn't score the runner but doesn't cause any outs either. So even though Kirilloff and Jeffers did the same thing, hit a 2 run homerun, the difference between what they did and what the generic replacement level player would do is greater, therefore Jeffers has the higher WAR.

Go all in on the exhibition aspect of the game. Throw all the players into a draft pool, have two team captains, and do a schoolyard pick. How fun would it be for the college guys to play with half your team being your guys and half pros? Pitchers can only go one or two innings, lineups must alternate college/pro players, same for pitching changes. Just have fun with it!

I guess I look at that list and come to the opposite conclusion. I see only one other AL team with a better top 3. Or two, depending on which Rays trio you use, but give Pineda a full season and we'd be ahead of them either way. If only one or two other teams in your league have a better top 3 than you, I'm not so sure that's the "weakness" you need to focus on improving. In fact, I'd say if you have the second best top 3 in your league, you have pretty good odds of making the World Series.

I understand it's hard, if not impossible, to punish the players fairly at this point. Many of them have moved on to other teams and/or retired, so it's just not practical to suspend them. But they can still be fined right? Or another idea I had is to wipe out their stats from those two years. That will hurt them in future contract/arbitration negotiations, or for some, in eventual hall of fame considerations. Also, completely agree with Bauer on the marketing, black outs, etc. It's absolutely ridiculous, there's no excuse for it and MLB should be embarrassed over their ineptitude in these areas. The blackouts in particular have been a pet peeve of mine for years (living in Iowa there are SIX teams blacked out here).

I can pronounce Luis just fine, thank you.

On today's radio broadcast Cory asked Falvey about these changes. Falvey mentioned he expects there to be "tweaks" to the 3 batter minimum rule. In particular they discussed the option of waiving the minimum if the opposing team puts in a pinch hitter. That way a team can't suddenly put in a couple righties where they had lefties or vice versa and force your pitcher to face them.

One could actually argue that Buxton being out showed Kepler's and Rosario's true defensive value. When Buck is in, those two don't get as many chances and so their defensive metrics go down. But when Buck is out, those two get more chances, and they show what they are truly capable of. Just because the metrics go down when Buck is in doesn't mean Kepler/Rosario are actually worse fielders. I'd say it simply means they are getting less opportunity to show their true capabilities.

Just imagining the chicken that thing came from is gonna give me nightmares. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiyJI5Kmcro

I put something similar in the game recap thread, but I'll put it here too. While ideally your opener would do well (as noted above it should be a shut-down type guy), I don't think the opener's performance is the focus of this experiment. The best experiments test one thing at a time, and I'm sure the variable they are testing right now is the effect an opener has on the primary pitcher, especially in their last one or two innings. Does it improve their numbers in those innings? If so, then the strategy might have some merit, and you just need to find the right guys to be the openers.

Even if you are going to a game to see a certain pitcher, why does it matter if that pitcher pitches innings 2-7 instead of 1-6? You still are seeing them the same amount. The opener strategy shouldn't have any effect on whether you watch a game based on the pitcher. Also, while ideally your opener would do well, I don't think that's the focus of this experiment. The result I'm sure they are most interested in is the effect it has on the primary pitcher, especially in their last one or two innings. Does it improve their numbers in those innings? If so, then the strategy might have some merit, and you just need to find the right guys to be the openers. As the article said, two games with bad results from the openers (which isn't the focus of the experiment) isn't nearly enough to scrap the idea.

I think an important factor that none of us will ever know, and will be up to the FO and coaches to weigh, is Buxton's mental state. Is he completely frazzled after a frustrating season and straining/pushing himself trying to break through? If so, maybe it'd be better to not call him up, and actually tell him to disappear somewhere warm and tropical for the month of September and don't touch a baseball or bat while you're gone. Get physically healthy, clear your head, and we'll see you for offseason workouts in a month and you better be ready to work hard.

Thanks for the minor league playoff updates! I know team success isn't the primary concern in the minors, but I think it's still important, and well, the Twins aren't going anywhere, so it's nice to have a couple affiliates to cheer for at least! I'd be curious to know, of Pineda's pitches, how many were offspeed, and how many of those were strikes. Sure, he threw 29 of 33 for strikes, but was he just pumping in fastballs? The 95 velo is nice to see, but it's not unheard of for pitchers to come back from TJ actually throwing harder than before. It's the control that's hardest to get back.

Thanks for the great minor league updates, one of the best parts of the site. Now that minor league seasons are heading into the home stretch, could we get updates on playoff races included in the relevant summaries, please?

I think too much is being made of Forsythe here. He's only signed through this year and there's no chance we'll resign him. Gordon isn't ready yet anyway. And Forsythe will probably only be a bench player anyway. My guess is Adrianza takes over at 2nd until Sept when Gordon will likely come up and split time with him. Or possibly Polanco slides over to 2nd and Adrianza takes SS.

The article points out the exact flaws you mention (a player may have technically negatively regressed, but was still a great player, therefore it may have still been a good trade). But the point isn't to evaluate individual trades, it's to look at the broader picture, namely, in general it's not a good idea to bet against regression, so when evaluating a potential trade target you should consider their long term track record at least much if not more than their current season stats. You will always be able to find lots of individual exceptions to a generalized result, but that doesn't invalidate the overall result. As for the team regression, it's just saying you can probably expect some positive regression for the Twins as a team. Is an extra 2-3 wins gonna make a difference at the end of the season, and get us the division, probably not, but you never know.

The author does note that Atlanta's projections could be due to the lack of track record to base expectations on for all their young players.

Hey! I'm from Ocheyedan, now in Waukee (you can find my full GTKY above).

There was a good article on ESPN today about regression, particularly as it pertains to players traded at the deadline. It's definitely worth going to read the whole thing, but here's the TL,DR: First, regression does not mean getting worse. Regression means a player's performance will tend to move towards their established track record. Therefore, a player can have either negative regression, meaning they've been performing above their track record, and are likely to get worse, or a player can actually have positive regression, meaning they've been performing below their track record and are likely to get better.Second, GM's have a pretty bad overall success rate (44%) on betting against regression at the deadline. Breaking it down though, they actually have a 62% success rate when betting on positive regression and only a 24% success rate when betting against negative regression. In other words, GMs do much better trading for an underperforming player than an overperforming player.Third, and Twins-specific, he notes that Escobar is a prime candidate for negative regression, so buyer beware, but Dozier is a prime candidate for positive regression, so he's a good buy-low candidate for other teams.Finally, looking at teams' performances based on WAR and expected win/loss, he notes that the Twins have the highest expected positive regression for the second half at +2.84 wins, and the Braves have the highest expected negative regression at -6.41 wins (yikes!).

1.) Where are you from? Grew up in NW Iowa, now in the Des Moines area. 2.) Age Range? 34 3.) What brought you to Twins Daily? Came from Nick's blog, and BatGirl before that. 4.) Highest level of baseball/softball played? Baseball through high school, currently run my church softball team. 5.) Favorite Twins Player, and favorite underappreciated Twins player, and if you want, favorite current Twins player? All-time = Kirby, Underrated = ?, Current = Kepler 6.) Favorite non-Twins Daily site/authors? 7.) Favorite Twitter follows? Don't have Twitter. 8.) Other interests outside of baseball? Board games 9.) Favorite part of Twins Daily? Articles and forums 10.) Tell us what we can do better. What features or other topics would you like to see in-season or out of season? 11.) Have you been to any of the Twins Daily events? Nope, too far away

Hopefully Ft. Myers isn't too low, to where he can just mash homers and not actually make any adjustments.

Sorry, I can't figure out how to actually get the gif to display here, so here's just a link to what I believe is the current situation in the FO. https://media.giphy.com/media/z9AUvhAEiXOqA/giphy.gif

No mention of the Red Wings' hidden ball trick? https://www.milb.com/milb/news/surprise-jermaine-curtis-pulls-off-hidden-ball-trick-for-rochester-red-wings/c-272690860

The last 20 or so posts have all been discussing how players don't bunt because it's hard and they don't know how, and about what the success rate would be...