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LaBombo

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Everything posted by LaBombo

  1. LaBombo
    http://gmagrading.com/file/2010/03/joe-mauer-rookie-card.jpg ?
  2. LaBombo
    No less an authority on the tuba than esteemed cartoonist Gary Larson agrees... ... Tuba is as old school as outhouses and gunfights.
  3. LaBombo
    And he was also the family-killing restroom attendant in The Shining! So versatile!
  4. LaBombo
    18 months on the job seems maybe just a wee bit premature to judge a GM, even if he doesn't inherit tens of millions in aging, expensive players like Friedman did. As for his time in Tampa Bay, well, it's widely viewed as one of the most successful GM tenures in recent history. In two years' time he took a contraction-worthy perennial 95 loss disaster and turned it into a 90+ win powerhouse that made the postseason four times in seven years despite a low payroll and playing in arguably the toughest division in baseball. In doing so, he nearly doubled attendance. So if Friedman 2006-14 wasn't a success, then Ryan 1994-2007 was an unqualified disaster, and Ryan 2011-present is a jailable offense against the national pastime. Who did you have in mind for the job?
  5. LaBombo
    Let's back up. You injected the idea of 'no World Series wins' accrued in Epstein's and Friedman's VERY brief time on the job as a way of gauging what you view as very limited success on their part. When I noted the questionable usefulness of such an all-or-nothing approach, you offered this - and only this - as a counter: "See:Ryan, Terry:Circa:2002-2010" I'm not quite sure how you're not quite sure how anybody can "read into" that footnote just about anything they want to, up to but maybe not quite including Ryan's favorite color. So I'm still wondering why you brought him up in the first place. He wasn't a success as a GM during that run by your standard of World Series wins, or even playoff wins for that matter. And if he was a success, how are Epstein and Friedman not massively more successful, having achieved dramatic turnarounds in a fraction of the near-decade it took Ryan? And no, you absolutely, positively CANNOT use payroll as a means to downplay their success compared to Ryan, because Ryan HIMSELF has insisted multiple times (as have his employers) during this Twins' half-decade of futility that money is not an issue.
  6. LaBombo
    Well, the injury half of your scenario at the end has happened. Or injuries, if you include Sano. Seriously, though, probably no one would argue that every franchise has strengths and weaknesses by position and by level throughout their organization. And MLB in general does see mild fluctuations over time in the overall quality of the players at a given position. That being said, if Trevor Plouffe had NO VALUE to ANY other team in the league this winter, and yet was conversely so valuable to the Twins on Opening Day that arguably its most valuable player OR prospect had to play out of position (way out of position, as we've seen) to accommodate Plouffe, then an in-season firing of the GM is not only justified but required.
  7. LaBombo
    "Then let them make runs without bunts!" http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HD7kolGFY5o/Ua-IkEtYhSI/AAAAAAAAWxs/KOrECYa7w_4/s1600/the-ten-commandments-yul-brynner-ramses.jpg
  8. LaBombo
    2016 Twins: 22 kinds of 'Arghhhh' on tap, and the bar is open. Kidding aside, it was a nice win. 15 hits with even a less-than-stellar Matt Moore starting was a pleasant surprise. http://flyingpigtaphouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/beer-taps-bg.jpg
  9. LaBombo
    Me too. It can get out of hand in a hurry now that it's summer... http://l7.alamy.com/zooms/5d9a8794b53646d99e89b9352e309790/tasbapauni-nicaragua-man-wearing-rastafarian-hat-bbh5h0.jpg
  10. LaBombo
    Twins hang on to lead, six more weeks of Jepsen as closer... http://d1x6zkqyb2gtqn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/groundhog.jpg
  11. LaBombo
    Hats, butts, whatever's handy... http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zJURSr7-EJ8/T9nsg6MdLPI/AAAAAAAACHk/jBZA2FnCLes/s1600/IMAG1179-1-1.jpg
  12. LaBombo
    His fans would rightfully insist that he had several other good songs, but I've wondered if we might ever wake to the UK Guardian headline 'American Die: Angry McLean fans rip singer limb from limb when he fails to perform hit'.
  13. LaBombo
    Well, there are worse ways to go, I guess...
  14. LaBombo
    Basically anything that means not looking at the present is good.
  15. LaBombo
  16. LaBombo
    "Steve Sax and his run-in with the law, Ken Griffey's grotesquely swollen jaw... Talkin' Dozier, Ozzie and The Straw" http://www.sportsonearth.com/assets/images/8/2/0/90622820/cuts/simpsonslead_8menzpi5_iqg0r5na.jpg
  17. LaBombo
    Hughes fastball = http://bsc.omg-squee.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/homer-in-candy-land-300x230.jpg
  18. LaBombo
    AKA the on deck circle...
  19. LaBombo
    A good Division II team would be teeing off on him at this point. The home run and double to left just now were particularly batting practice-y. It's all well and good to show up to spring training vowing to improve on a career year. It's entirely another to sh!tcan most of what made that career year great in the quest for improvement.
  20. LaBombo
    The ghost of John McKay likes this.
  21. LaBombo
    Well, i guess it beats one or two bad starts and the 60 Day for the rest of the year. More so than almost any other position in all 4 of the major sports, though, there needs to be both caution and moderation when allowing the phrase "bad luck" to creep into a conversation about injury to a starting pitcher. Luck plays a part, to be sure, but mechanics and the pitcher's innate physical limitations play a huge role in how healthy they are over the course of their career.
  22. LaBombo
    That was ultimately a disappointing run of years, to be sure. It's also nearly three more years than the combined tenures of the three GMs who you feel have accomplished nothing so far. In that shorter time span the 'unaccomplished' GMs you named have as many playoff series wins as Ryan's teams did '02-'10. It's also interesting that you apparently see those years as primarily Terry Ryan's failure. Ryan assembled two almost entirely different 90+ win cores in those years, and yet only in Gardenhire's rookie year, when he inherited a veteran team from Tom Kelly, did the Twins win a playoff series during those 9 years. Following that win, Gardenhire went on a run of playoff futility of epic proportions. His teams not only lost badly, they simply failed to show up and compete, and Gardenhire's managerial decisions were skewered in the national media. So given a choice between the notion that Ryan assembled two almost entirely different groups of playoff choke artists and the idea that maybe an otherwise good manager is mostly to blame for multiple 90+ win teams being almost entirely unable to win a playoff game, let alone a series, I'm forced to go with the latter choice.
  23. LaBombo
    Your "facts" appear to be saying there's one good GM who wins the World Series and 29 equally failed GMs who didn't. If GMs who turn losing teams into playoff contenders didn't "actually accomplish something", then we just have radically different ideas of accomplishment, I guess.
  24. LaBombo
    So only on pace for getting swept 24 times, not 27. Franchise dignity intact!
  25. LaBombo
    Perish the... aaahh, crap. Oh well. I've lived long enough to see Danny Valencia grow into a feared power hitter, everything else from here on is gravy.
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