LaBombo

You know it's bad when the water's not even beading.

Thanks, you too! The Twins' off season was so intense that I had to breathe into a paper bag for a few... months, but I'm ok now. Thank goodness it was the Twins who score when I showed up, or I might have been forced into another month or two of hibernation.

Or chuck Finley, for that matter.

Agreed. The heavy jinxing won't come down for quite a while...

The commuter cannon at work is down, so I had to drive home. What did I miss? http://www.universalexports.net/Movies/Graphics/13-images/graydon.jpg

You might be thinking of the whole batting order protection racket thing, which was gospel for years before being credibly disputed by various analytic arguments.

og;nytm,atebig oh great; now you tell me, after the edit button is gone.

Fangraphs isn't known for having especially highball shooter-y takes on baserunning, and they confirm that he was fair to partly awful, parlaying his crazy speed into 9 CS's in just 21 attempts, and a stirling -0.7 baserunning score, good enough to beat fellow Magellanesque bathpath wanderer Jorge Polanco and tie enormous gastropod Kenny Vargas.

Well, I thought it showed great restraint that Berardino did stop short of literally whaling on a Dusty Baker pinata...

So I'm hearing that my Danny Santana take was a bit like a nice Christmas card from a family that you don't really have much in common with (Mrs. Bombo had warned me before we took the photos for the card that our matching mullets weren't a good idea, but you know me, once I get an idea in my head...). Am I being too hard on DanTana? Because if that's the case, then I should add that I wrote a few paragraphs exploring the notion that maybe Santana has been a victim of the high expectations he created for himself. But then that exploration took a Heart of Darkness turn for the surreal when I found myself trying to make a point about Santana's offense that involved his disembodied head. Ok, whoa, slow down, it wasn't like an 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag head. It was a live, cheerful, even chatty Danny Santana head, and more importantly, it really helped illustrate my theory in an empirical, mathematical way. Unfortunately, much like mullets, chatty disembodied heads aren't everyone's cup of tea. So I left those paragraphs off. The question still stands, though. Was I being too hard on Santana? Is starting shortstop not a sheer face free climb for Danny, but rather maybe just a French Alpine Difficulty Grade V ascent: "A long, committing route, sustained and often remote; retreat difficult; potential for significant objective hazards"? Is there at least a hint of plate discipline in his future? Can he have utility value on a four man bench, even if it turns out that he'll never play shortstop any better than Leo DiCaprio can play a doctor in Catch Me if You Can? Either way, thanks for the positive feedback. This is the only place where people listen patiently to me and don't ask what happened to my pants.

With a full time DH and backup catcher, both of your two (yikes) bench players on a 13 pitcher roster almost have to be able to play just about anywhere unless some of the starting position players can comfortably move around. So DanSan's odds of making the team actually seem higher to me if they go with 13 pitchers, due to the short bench necessitating his ability to exasperate fans at so many different positions on the field. And for a team that figures to lose 90+ games, the only real downside of a 12 man staff is greater chance that they'll end up risking the loss of an arm or two due to overuse. As harsh as it sounds, from a purely Darwinian standpoint the Twins staff will likely feature several arms that they won't miss if there's an injury.

Yep, and even without those changes they're already old for a team that's allegedly rebuilding from the worst season in its history.

http://www.claudiocolombo.net/FotoDVD/frankensteinjr1.jpg Congratulations on your winning entry in the '2017 Twins season slogan' contest! Your first prize cheese wheel autographed by Kent Hrbek should be arriving shortly unless he eats it fir... ok, we're working on a substitute prize, but again, congratulations!

Just with Game Day, or can we paint with the whole pallet?

I loved this even more after it reminded me of one of the classic Norm entrance quips on Cheers: Sam: " Whaddaya up to, Norm?" Norm: "My ideal weight, if I were eleven feet tall". Only the Twins could have a feel-good piece written about how a player weighed just a bowling ball shy of three bills in the off season.

Yep. It seems like Garver's faint whiff of upside will probably land him in Rochester, with the backup job ideally going to Murphy unless his bat turns to sawdust again. On the other hand, with very little apparently at stake here for either this season or the future, and catchers being renowned for their athleticism the way they are, I'm totally down with this battle being decided on a special journeyman catcher episode of 'Takeshi's Castle'... http://i.imgur.com/FYEq2ML.gif

Almost none of the entrees on the Twins menu are palatable for me at the moment. So at least for now we should encourage the handing out of as many tiny Costco sample lady cups of encouragement as possible. I meant that the cups are tiny, not the Costco ladies. Well, maybe some, now that I think about it.

Yes. Although I'm told that my 'overly optimistic' state resembles that of twilight anesthesia. And I'm always close-minded, because if there's one thing I've found over the years, it's that nobody wants to see what's going on in there.

Alternate article title: Reusse makes case for ninjas to rappel from skylight and confiscate his BBWA credentials. If Polanco faces an uphill battle to reach the plateau of serviceable major league shortstop, then Santana faces a free climb up a shear face. He fields like the ball is made of yellowjackets, and he creates fewer runs than a Lutheran chili cookoff. Polanco has warts; Santana is warts. Danny would be a swell 25th man/pinch runner/emergency infielder for a team without a 3rd catcher back in the days of 10 man pitching staffs and phones with moving mechanical parts.

Punto with that head first slide, Nishi's compound break. Tommy Herr was such a d*^che, West was a mistake. Daaaavid West.... Daaavid West. Just give him the ball. David would walk in a run, Summer... Spring... or Faaaaall.

Good. It's not a real remodel until you at least fleetingly consider tearing up (or down) the rest of the house, regardless of whether buried treasure may be in play. Thanks for the well-written documentary of your in-home adventure. It was a fun read, and reminded me of treasure hunting in my oldest relatives' basements and attics as a little kid. I remember being an especially proud kindergartner when showing my mom the bas relief art piece that I had found in my great aunt's basement and smoothed out somewhat by running it through "the squishing machine" - an ornate old art deco, hand cranked wringer-style clothing washer.

Not to be confused with Guy Randome, the French expatriate and former giant slalom and Alpine ski racer, now living quietly and operating a modestly successful if somewhat eccentric lawn care business somewhere in America's Rust Belt...

I only mentioned the Kochs because during the Obama presidency there really was no elected Republican whose actions were treated with as much knee-jerk opposition and consternation by Dems as Obama's were by Republicans. The Republican party simply lacked a properly polarizing figure who could match the Kochs' infamy among Democrats. The lack of a clear elected Republican front runner in rankling the opposition to the level the Kochs did increased the perception that the 2016 Republican field was weak, which in turn probably helped in some small way to encourage Trump to run.

Also in fairness, the Kochs could give $100 million to a cancer research hospital and Democrats would protest them. And did. Fwiw, the ability of elected Democrats to offer meaningful criticism, let alone effective opposition, to Trump initiatives like the Carrier deal will continue to be diminished as long as effort and credibility is squandered on recounts and secession respectively.

A lower draft choice?