bean5302

I'm not sure as the front office is truly going to start advocating attempts to steal more often, but it's excellent practice to get players tuned in to reading pitchers habits and base running skills in general. Being in the right position and getting the right jump can make all the difference when scoring from 1st base on a double or scoring from 2nd base on a single.

Since I've already stirred enough pots in regard to heated on the field debates, it's time to take it off the field to the stands! There have been a number of posts regarding the cost of food and drink at Target Field scaring away the fans, but I'm going to give a run down on many of the items and locations and whether you should eat or avoid! First off, beer. If you fancy a pint at the game, there is an enormous selection of craft beers to pair with foods along with old-timey American style lagers perfect for a hot day at the park. I'm not going to list them all because... yeah, that's a lot. Location wise, the best concentration of craft options is right at Gate 34. Selections from Bent Paddle Cold Press Black Ale to Surly Furious and Goose Island Beer Hug IPAs and smooth sessionable Vienna (basically a red) style's like Schell's Firebrick are on tap here. If you're a Surly fan, right behind the left field bleachers and Gray Goose bar is a Surly stand with options you won't find elsewhere like Surly Hell. There are also "Minnesota Brews" stands around the stadium behind the Diamond Box areas where you can find a Grain Belt for nostalgia's sake. Other options are scattered around as well. The selection on the upper deck is much more limited to the usual suspects. My favorites: Bent Paddle Cold Press Black Ale (Gate 34), Beer Hug Hazy IPA (Gate 34), Surly Hell (behind Section 128) and Grain Belt (behind section 126). Best Full Belly Deal at the Game: Burger and fries basket. It's $15 at Hennepin Grill locations around the stadium, but the burger is big, tastes flame grilled and a solid enough choice. The fries are medium cut, crispy-ish outside, fluffy inside and taste rich like they've been fried in peanut oil. It's a good sized meal. Senior Smokes: (105, 305) Barbacoa burrito. $10.50. It's not quite the gut stretcher the burger and fries is, but it's also only $10.50 in comparison to $15. It's a solid burrito near burrito specialty chain quality. Best Budget Option: The hot dog or soft pretzel at various locations. They're $4.00 out the door and are enough to tide you over for a bit. Bring an empty water bottle in with you and get free water from various stations as well. Best Burger(s): Red Cow 60/40 Bacon (2) Sliders w/chips. $15.50 located behind section 126 Why the chips that nobody wants? I don't know. Anyway, the sliders themselves are Red Cow name worthy. They're absolutely excellent and pretty filling. Could use a little something vinegary like mustard or ketchup to break up the fatty flavor. Blue Door Pub a 2nd place finish here goes to the $13.50 "Jucy Blusy" Cease and Desist Burger located at Gate 34 at the Jack Daniels Bar. It's very good and full sized, but the combo of thousand island and mayo is a bit sticky and bland. Don't expect fast service for either of these burgers. There's always a line for the sliders (and they frequently run out for a bit of time at 126) and it seems like Jucy Blusy is cooked to order. Best Sausages: Kramarczuk's Bratwurst. $10 (behind field box 101, home plate box 112 and upstairs 312). It's a much better quality brat than the $8.50 standard option around the stadium. The polish is so greasy and salty (like polish sausage is) it makes for a real gut-bomb in my opinion. Other Sandwich Options: Turkey to Go sandwich $11 next to Hrbek's (114). Make sure you get one fresh made and they press the jerked turkey hard to get the juice out. Otherwise, you'll get a rather disgusting pile of slop bun. If made right, Turkey to Go is fantastic. Use the BBQ sauce if you want or skip it if you don't want it. Good either way. Side note, this is like the only station at the stadium which doesn't have an option to tip in the checkout app. What a bummer for the staff. Philly Cheesesteak. $11. I think I stumbled across this one over behind section 110ish. Gross. Virtually inedible. While the grilled onions and peppers are very good and the cheese sauce is okay, the meat? (is it meat??) is like unseasoned sloppy joe mix or something. It's not right, best described as slop, and I didn't finish it. I like just about all food for the record. Murray's Smoked Beef Sandwich (103). $15. Very high quality roast beef, but with no au juis and weak horseradish sauce, the sandwich is disappointingly bland. Skip it, this coming from a big fan of Murray's Restaurant. Senior Smokes: $10.50 (105, 305) barbacoa beef burrito. Filling, maybe not quite as good as Chipotle, Pancheros and Qdoba, but certainly not far off. There are veggie options too, if you want. A far, far better deal than the nachos as this burrito will fill you up. Tony O's Cubano: $13 (114). Gotta be honest here, a lot of people rant about this one, but it really didn't impress me compared to other options around the stadium. It's not that it's bad, it's just not that it was great. Unexpected Options: Hot Indian (120): Chicken tikka (pronounced tick-a, not teek-a) masala. It's legitimately good and very mild + gluten free. They have some spicy sauce condiment which kicks 'er up a notch or two if you like. The cabbage veggie blend on the top is okay. Rice was a little undercooked, but all in all, I liked it. Note: I expect the chana masala will also be very good and it's vegan + gluten free. Haven't had Indian food before? Think a rich, thick, very savory and complex creamy tomato soup with tender chunks of chicken poured over rice and garnished with thin chopped cabbage here. Side/Appetizer: Cheese curds: $8 (109, 305). The portion is pretty good, but $8 still feels a little pricey. The curds are small sized, coated and deep fried mozzarella. They have good flavor, if not a bit salty. They're not truly as good as the ones you'll get at the State Fair as the batter used at Target Field is kinda meh, but they're still great if cheese is what you're craving. Vegetarian? Herbivorous Butcher Vegan Bratwurst (129). It's okay. You're not going to mistake it for the real deal and the aftertaste is decidedly veggie wheat thin flavor, but for the vegan/vegetarian folks, it's not bad. Hot Indian (120): Chana masala... okay, I haven't had this dish yet, but when Indian is good, it's universally good and the tikka masala was solid here. What about dessert?: Tiny Tim's Mini Donuts: (135) $6 for a bag. Excellent mini-donuts take my vote for the best sweet/dessert at the game. Cooked fresh, sprinkled hot with sugar, they're everything you hope for in mini donuts. Be aware, get them before the 7th inning, I've seen them run out more than once. I'd choose them over the expensive, and mediocre, soft serve ice cream in the helmet or the waffle cone any day. A lot of high quality options are tucked away at Hrbek's or inside the Town Ball Tavern, but a couple have been moved exclusively into the Truly On Deck (formerly Metropolitan Club). I didn't list these even though some are certified good. Good options if you want to sit, you don't want to do the walk of shame and you have SRO tickets, though!

Side note... I'll take the opportunity to apologize for my entire section and the stupid kids starting the "throw it back" chants. I seriously hate that. Give the ball to a Cleveland fan or somebody else if you don't want it... and never throw stuff onto the field, ever.

Honestly, I think it's always a concern when huge contracts are handed out that the player "got paid" and the fire and drive which pushed them to be the best drops off a bit. I have to wonder if Berrios lost some hunger.

I still can't believe they didn't kick you out of the stadium when you took the opportunity to run over and start urinating in the visitor's dugout... dude, show of home town pride has to have a limit.

Home runs to straight away center field at Target Field are rare. Gordon hasn't shown a lot of pop, but the bat speed and raw power is greater than he gets credit for. Still doesn't take enough walks, but after today's game, he'll be sitting at a wRC+ around 95ish. Going to Thielbar was strange considering he just pitched last night.

While I'm now quite cautious on Lewis' ability to ever stay healthy, anything which improves his chances of consistently showing his abilities on the field is great. I wish him nothing but luck!

Duffey's been plagued with home run allowance throughout his career, often well above the MLB average, but never to this extent. Duffey's xFIP is 3.37. The K% and BB% are both solid enough and the BABIP against is the highest he's seen since 2017. It does seem like Duffey's lost a little velocity, over the past couple years though. Right now, Duffey is repeatably throwing his fastball like a meatball, right in the heart of the mid/upper strike zone and hitters have been rightfully punishing this mistake. He needs to be spreading the fastball out a bit on the inside/outside more so hitters can't predict it or crush it as easily. When it comes to the Rogers trade... it has never made sense to me. From the trade itself until now. Why build a team like you want to compete and then gut it at an important position of need at the same time? I've seen the front office treat relief pitchers as disposable/replaceable assets in the past and it's never worked. Not once. With a team like the Twins who don't value starters going deep into games, relief pitching is even more critical.

I was at the game, and in the left field bleachers, and even I thought that was going to be an out. When Larnach didn't come trotting out of the corner I thought.... "really???"

Deduno had no control at all over his pitches. It was literally dangerous to the health and safety of players to have him on the mound. Averaged 1 hit batter per 9innings or so pretty much his whole career despite opponents being constantly ready for "in your ear" For every HBP, there were about 5 dust ups... Gardy said Deduno was a guy that put a little fear into opponents. Yeah... fear their career would be ended, fear they'd take a trip to a hospital. Not a good kinda baseball game fear.

So my small sample sizes are no good, but your even smaller sample sizes are? Got it.

Even better, the Twins could move Byron Buxton to the 60 day IL permanently so TwinsDaily fans can go back to speculating how Buxton would be OPS'ing 5.000 if only he were healthy! Every time Buxton has a cold week, it's because his knee isn't right yet and the calls for the IL come out. Then, inevitably, Buxton goes on a huge tear like when he hit 6 HRs in 6 games after the last calls for his trip to the IL and suddenly, all is right with the world. It appears a cold week has happened again so Buxton's <insert injury here> isn't 100% and you can tell so he should just go to the 10-day IL and get it fixed.

I included round 3 so you concern seems to be round 4+? I don't wonder that at all. 30 teams scout virtually every top player (physical attributes and performance) as they come up through middle/high school. Even if a scout believed they saw a huge potential, that talent would have to be refined or all the rest of the teams would be seeing the performance and everybody would know about the player. In addition, the idea a single scout from a single team would see the talent (like the movie Trouble with the Curve) is unlikely. There would be a handful of the "some teams" better scouts who'd be expected to see it, too. Passing on early round drafts with the hopes nobody else noticed the elite player hiding in the rough is way risky. Plus, drafting the player early would allow the team to go way over-slot further down the line. That's a technique the Falvey led Twins have employed.

Personally, I think you're too optimistic on Jeffers. First, 13pts below average on wRC+ is very significant Second, using "mean" vs. "median" is misleading because there are backups and AAA injury replacement guys skewing numbers at the bottom. Jeffers might be only 13pts below average, but he's 21pts below median (for 31 catchers with 130+ plate appearances) in wRC+. Jeffers is 70pts below median in OPS. That's ballpark-ish 2 WAR over a 150 games played. Third, Jeffers struggles at the plate date back through last year, where he had a wRC+ of 82 in a fairly significant 293 PA (right in line with what he's rocking today). In total, Jeffers has a wRC+ of 85 across 520 career plate appearances in 3 years. Jeffers has been consistently poor at the plate and that's not a small sample size anymore. It's not absolutely definitive by any means, but it's fair reason to temper expectations. Fourth, there are many players who never perform up to their metrics for various reasons. From players who only use 1/2 the field, to players impossibly weak against certain pitches or players who maybe just psyche themselves out in high stress situations. It goes that way for hitters and pitchers. Fifth, Jeffers is an adequate defensive catcher. He's middle of the road so while he has positional value, his defense shouldn't keep him starting if his bat doesn't play. He's on pace for about 1.5 fWAR this year as the primary catcher. That's not getting it done... and he didn't get it done last year, either.

I agree completely with this take. The trade of Petty could wind up being a monumental mistake and I absolutely hated it when we traded him for Gray since I didn't think there was really anybody in the Twins' system with the potential upside of Petty. Speaking of Petty... his last 5 games are pretty impressive. 2.45 ERA (2.44 FIP), 9.82 K/9 (28.2%), 2.45 BB/9 (7%), 0.93 WHIP. He's not giving up hits, he's not walking too many, he's striking out quite a few. In his first year of professional experience out of high school, that's about all you can ask for.

humor, irony

A delusional exercise by an unrealistic fan base is what it looks like.

I feel like that may depend on the height of the catcher. A shorter catcher won't have to lower their stance to get the lower zone calls and a tall catcher won't have as much difficulty framing the high strike. At least that's what I saw when I looked at Mauer and other catchers years ago.

Catcher framing is a real stat. There's a lot of noise in it so it takes a pretty large sample size for it to be reliable (like seemingly a lot of defensive stats), but it's based on solid principles and value. It's also fairly repeatable meaning catchers who are good framers continue to be good framers for the most part. The value of balls and strikes is obvious. Here is the median OPS for batters in fangraphs' splits tool this year through the first two pitches. 1-0 = .811 0-1 = .610 1-1 = .647 0-2 = .463 2-0 = .945 The value of the strike or ball can be quantified in terms of the likelihood runs are produced. It's boring, meticulous spreadsheet and database work, but the principles behind determining how much a stolen strike or accidental ball call is solid.

I don't know. It's a concern to me that an "A" grade might be unachievable with my grading system, but analysis and write up work like this takes hours so it's not really feasible for me to do this for 29 other teams. That said, rounds 1-3 for Falvey's front office over the past 5 drafts seem to be short on quality regular players as of today, but still with some potential. The C grade as of now seems fair.

Except Urshela might not net much at all. I honestly expect Urshela will non-tendered at the end of the season rather than get a salary at $9+ MM in his 3rd arbitration year. He's rocking 0.1 fWAR and 0.5 bWAR right now with a wRC+ 100 and OPS+ 102. That's not the kind of help contenders are clamoring for.

This article took a cheap shot at Garver, comparing him to Sanchez as a bad catcher. Jeffers' pitch framing was similar to Garver's pitch framing, Jeffers was a little better. The combination of passed balls and wild pitches was similar to Garver. The caught stealing percentage was similar to Garver. Jeffers is not a plus defensive catcher. He's middle of the road. That's not bad or anything, but he's no leap forward over Garver when the two are behind the plate.

Are you talking about the pre-2021 prospects list for Tampa Bay where Strotman was listed as 17th and Ryan at 18th? https://blogs.fangraphs.com/top-62-prospects-tampa-bay-rays/ Neither Ryan nor Strotman were top prospects at the beginning of the year, but Ryan had a significantly more impressive season with a lot more attention focused on him than Strotman. By the trade deadline, Ryan had jumped quite a bit where he slotted into the Twins' top 10, close to top 5 immediately vs. Strotman being a lateral transfer at 16th and falling from there.

I am not bullish on Larnach and I was pretty critical of his projectability last year. But, the fact is he made huge strides against one of the most popular breaking pitches in the game which he was lost against last year, the slider. He's still been nearly useless against changeups, but there is some minor movement forward on that one too. I'll give credit where it's due and that's the reason he got a little bump up.

Garver was just as good as Jeffers defensively. A little better at controlling the run game, about equal at passed balls/wild pitches, error rate and a little worse at pitch framing. This narrative of Jeffers being a plus defensive catcher in the face of evidence is just so.... homerville.