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Nine of twelve

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Everything posted by Nine of twelve

  1. Nine of twelve
    I'm going to respond regarding several comments made about pitching substitutions made in last night's game. I'll start by saying that I think Rocco made the right moves. First, the Twins do not have a designated closer. Instead, the manager makes substitutions based on matching up to the opponent's batting order. The principle behind this is to try to have your best pitcher in the game against the opponent's best hitters no matter which inning it happens to be. This is logical, and that's why most teams are moving in the direction of taking this approach. In last night's game the Nats had the bottom of their order coming to the plate in the 8th inning. He put in Jax, saving either Duran or Lopez (last night it was probably Lopez) to pitch the 9th when the top of the order was coming around. And by the way, Jax has pitched well, so Rocco was still making a strong move to keep the lead. In last night's game Jax got two pretty easy outs, and then was victimized by two seeing-eye grounders, a defensive misplay, and a soft single. Even though the right moves are not 100% guaranteed to win you the game a good manager still makes them, as Rocco did last night. But, as I said in last night's game thread, in baseball sometimes you are the pigeon and sometimes you are the statue.
  2. Nine of twelve
    No pressure or anything...
  3. Nine of twelve
    If Pagan had had 20 good outings we wouldn't be so upset. But there were only 5.
  4. Nine of twelve
    Or Varland. He can be recalled before 15 days if Maeda goes on the IL
  5. Nine of twelve
    No way. Neither city has enough money or enough people for a MLB team. Not even close. The only cities outside the US with even a remote chance are Montreal and Mexico City. Within the US, I do not see Portland or Utah as viable locations at all. Again, not enough money or people. There are enough of both in Florida to support two teams if those teams are run properly. I suppose Las Vegas, North Carolina, and Tennessee are possibilities, but the state with the largest current population growth is Texas. The questions there are where to put a third team that would develop a large enough following and how to make a third team acceptable to the Rangers and Astros franchises.
  6. Nine of twelve
    They have not been the Devil Rays since 2007.
  7. Nine of twelve
    And by the way, Larnach absolutely pasted that home run. And it looked like he didn't even swing hard. Team MVP.
  8. Nine of twelve
    Large hands help, but talent rules. Moses Malone was a 3-time NBA MVP, 8-time all NBA center, first-ballot HOF. He was a beast on the boards. 6"10", 260 lb. And his hands were so small that he could not palm a basketball.
  9. Nine of twelve
    This may not be quite as impressive as the initial impression. Three of those teams currently have losing records.
  10. Nine of twelve
    I think Rocco's bullpen management was fine up until the fourth batter of the 10th inning, at which point it was obvious that Moran was not having a good night and probably should have been lifted. In innings 6-9 Rocco matched up his pitchers to the opposing batting order and they did their jobs, allowing only one unearned run. We don't know for certain, but had he used lower-leverage pitchers for innings 6-8 the game could well have been over after the top of the ninth. I'm not sure what I think about whether Duran should have taken the 10th inning. High-velocity pitchers need to be fully warmed up to achieve their best stuff and getting cool between innings can make it risky to go back out, in terms both of performance and of injury potential. On a warm summer night I'd be much more inclined to give it a try. Remember, players are not machines. As is the case for every human being, they have physical limitations and taking that into account needs to be of high importance when making decisions about who plays when, where, and how much.
  11. Nine of twelve
    In some ways this game was an example of what I like about baseball--even though I have watched thousands of games I don't recall ever seeing a catcher's interference in which the manager chose which play will stand and I know I've never seen a DP like the Twins executed in the 10th. And those occurred in the same game. But that doesn't mean I enjoyed watching it. I don't fault Rocco for having Moran start the 10th inning but no pitcher is on his game every night. So like many others, I do fault Rocco for not making a pitching change in the 10th when it became clear that Moran was struggling.
  12. Nine of twelve
    Me too, along with most people on this board, and probably along with the FO. The problem is that everyone in baseball knew Kepler would be available so I suspect that if the Twins did get any offers they were all lowballs, below even Kepler's currently low perceived value. Plus I bet a lot of other teams figure a trade is not worth doing because there is a good chance Twins will wind up releasing him sometime this season. So about all the FO could do is hope that he would find a way to rebound and that he would generate some interest as part of a package at the trading deadline.
  13. Nine of twelve
    To balance this out, the Twins pitchers lead the major leagues in strikeouts.
  14. Nine of twelve
    Really excellent point and post. When Joe took over some people said that he had "been groomed" for his position. To me that's borderline insulting. Joe realized at some point, possibly as early as when he was in high school, that he was the one best suited to assume control of the team when it was time for Jim to step back. (I have to believe that there have been numerous family discussions over the years that have reinforced this.) But my take is that once he knew this was what his future held he set about working hard to get the knowledge and experience needed to do the job as well as he could. His grandfather and uncle seem to have been highly skilled business people, but neither had a strong baseball background like Joe now has. This bodes well for the team's future.
  15. Nine of twelve
    The more I think about this the more it makes sense. Free agents very often are past their peak performance and a poor value for the size of their contracts. At the other extreme, it is very difficult to project the eventual performance of a draftee who has never faced professional hitters. A player at least two years into his professional career is going to be much easier for scouts and player development people to evaluate. So once again this reinforces that scouting and player development are the keys to success, especially for small-to-mid market teams.
  16. Nine of twelve
    Sometimes you make your own luck. In this case it turns out that the FO had Correa's value pegged pretty well and chose to let him go rather than to compromise on the contract. Turns out the Giants and Mets got carried away, offered him too much, and then tried to walk things back. Meanwhile the Twins never wavered and were ready when the opportunity presented itself.
  17. Nine of twelve
    Can you imagine the reaction of a player in the 1950's being outfitted in a pastel abomination such as that? It would be about the same as the scene in the movie Slap Shot in which the players were asked to model for a fashion show. (I'd like to link the video but it contains language that's inappropriate for this setting.) To me the powder blue kick a lot of teams went on during the 1970's was almost as bad. That's why I'm glad our team discontinued them before this season; I wish they had never been revived in the first place.
  18. Nine of twelve
    The premise of banning grip-enhancing substances is that they give pitchers an unfair advantage. Accepting that, why should the use of rosin be allowed when the use of all other substances is banned? Why is it the policy for umpires to inspect pitchers for grip-enhancers at the end of the half-inning? It would make much more sense to me to do so at the beginning of the half-inning or, in the case of a reliever entering during the game, before he throws his first pitch.
  19. Nine of twelve
    (Mod please delete.)
  20. Nine of twelve
    Current Twins team ERA: 2.50. Second best in MLB. Now, I know ERA is not a perfect stat but it's still not a bad overall indicator of how the pitchers are doing. Oh, and the best team ERA is 1.76. We all know which team that is. SSS or not, that is crazy.
  21. Nine of twelve
    He's still gotta avoid the interference because that's an automatic out. Level the ump if need be.
  22. Nine of twelve
    I was also always glad to see him do well. The issue that sticks in my mind (pun intended) is that the drop-off in his performance seemed correlated to the crackdown by MLB on the use of grip-enhancers by pitchers. Correlation does not equal causation but I'll always wonder if that was the reason.
  23. Nine of twelve
    It depends hugely on the score. In the bottom of the potentially last inning with a runner on second and nobody out it should certainly be in play. Of course, who is batting and who would be up next also comes into play, and in this case that moved the needle from possible to obvious.
  24. Nine of twelve
    I don't think it was a surprise at all. In spite of Taylor's earlier home run, he's a light hitter historically and the top of the order was on deck. It would have been a surprise to me if he didn't bunt.
  25. Nine of twelve
    https://www.startribune.com/edouard-julien-joey-gallo-running-game-in-al-central-minnesota-twins-guardians-white-sox-yankees/600266317/
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