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LaBombo

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Everything posted by LaBombo

  1. LaBombo
    Partly that, and partly that the Rockies would probably replace him with a 25 year old middle infielder with a .720 OPS in nearly 700 MLB PA's instead of a kid from A ball.
  2. LaBombo
    For the people surprised by Polanco's return to Ft. Myers, you only need to look as far as the 21 errors he made there so far this year to see why the Twins didn't want to promote him. Eventually if he hits high A pitching he'll get a crack at AA whether the glove improves or not, but whether that's at short in that scenario, well, no idea.
  3. LaBombo
    Not going to go so far as to say it's your imagination, but in 2013 the Twins were among the half dozen or so most healthy teams in MLB in terms of player days lost to the DL. And in 2010-12, they averaged slightly less the league average for lost days. In addition, their injuries to hitters and pitchers roughly matched their proportion on the roster, as opposed to some teams whose pitchers were injured far more than hitters. But the perception of them as having difficulty staying healthy isn't very surprising. It didn't help them that the team's two best position players were among the leaders in non-TJ missed days, and that they underperformed upon their returns. And injured prospects have been top prospects like Gibson, Sano, and Buxton. Then there's the tendency to wait several days before determining to DL players. It's a judgement call, but when you carry at least twelve pitchers, a position player sitting for several days leaves you a pretty short bench. Go with 13 pitchers or 3 catchers, and you've got one non-catcher reserve when there's an injured non-catcher position player on the bench trying to stay off the DL. That, combined with some puzzling roster decisions and bad luck, has left the Twins short of good options several times the past few seasons when injuries and demotions have wiped out Plan A. Put Sam Fuld in center in place of Aaron Hicks for 15 days and nobody bats an eye. Put a double A shortstop out there instead, or an A ball kid at short, and lots of eyebrows go up, and the perception that the Twins are hurt a lot is greatly magnified.
  4. LaBombo
    And on ten pitches. Nice to see him not offer up another tribute to Electrocardiogram Eddie.
  5. LaBombo
    "Perk's slider (*sniff*), you opposite of stink." http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view7/4729430/slider-you-stink-o.gif
  6. LaBombo
    Well, it's the Twins, and what with PFlo and Bartlett and... well, http://media0.giphy.com/media/BZQziX6q2hmX6/200_s.gif
  7. LaBombo
    It's only one day, but it also happens to be the day that this suddenly seems like it might be a potentially good thing to me.
  8. LaBombo
    As was revealed in the popular 1999 documentary Office Space, many employees function at a higher level when allowed to "space out" occasionally. http://img2-3.timeinc.net/ew/dynamic/imgs/080425/office-space-01_l.jpg
  9. LaBombo
    Morales picked a good time to get back on track.
  10. LaBombo
    Pffft. He already had his day off. And he'll sit around the whole All Star break, during which he will apparently rust like the Tin Man, since corrosion avoidance and Cal Ripken Disorder are the only two reasons that come to mind for keeping a middle infielder in the lineup every day of the season.
  11. LaBombo
    Guy across the dorm hall freshman year left a bottle of Bud in his room's south-facing window for six months, as a 'science experiment'. Being a forestry major, he had the common sense to open it outside the dorm the week before finals, in front of a small gathering of floor residents. After we more or less had to restrain/revive him, the ChemE guy who placed a few drops on his tongue (also in the interest of science) offered his fledgling chemist opinion that the substance in the bottle was probably well on its way to becoming a low-tech chemical weapon. The internet was still a few years away, but it's safe to say that if it had already arrived, none of us would have invented Facebook.
  12. LaBombo
    Bit of an understatement about Arcia "struggling" against lefties. .430 OPS, vs.. .759 OPS against righties is more like 'flailing'. He needs to play every day for now, but if he can't figure out lefties over the next couple of years, one would hope that he either platoon or at least get plenty of days off against tough lefties.
  13. LaBombo
    Your self-imposed limit had me wondering if beer has an expiration date...
  14. LaBombo
    Mannequin==> higher OBP due to inability to avoid HBP.
  15. LaBombo
    Hmm. Wonder what his source is. Baseball Cube shows Carew going from A+ to the Twins with no stops in between.
  16. LaBombo
    Well, at least throwing in the towel on Santana now instead of letting him sit on the bench for a few more days before DL'ing him is an improvement over the handling of some previous injuries. That said, while there's unquestionably a whole bunch of randomness to injury situations like this, it would be nice to see the Twins use this incident as motivation to reconsider roster construction and training methods, rather just shrugging their shoulders, scratching their heads, and saying 'We ended up needing a kid from A ball to come up to the majors. Huh. Darn the luck.'
  17. LaBombo
    Pretty obvious that I was referring to Rivera, so I'm not sure why you're attempting to say otherwise. Yes, there are always non-star pitchers (like Choate and Breslow, many are lefty relievers) who age exceptionally well, but they're rare and fairly hard to spot in their early 30's. And no, Peavy and Dempster didn't contribute much to the Red Sox in 2013, and their .6 and -.2 WARs from ESPN really do add up to 0.4. Fangraphs puts them both at 1.3, and like ESPN, shows they contributed a small fraction of what the four best starters did. As I mentioned, three of those were under 30, including the two best, so the Red Sox are not an example of a team built to contend around a staff full of 30+ pitchers. They had some, but outside of Lackey and Uehara, they just didn't do much. Nobody is implying that 30+ pitchers' age regression is either precisely calculable or the only factor in evaluating them, or that the Twins should jettison all over-30 pitchers. People are primarily asking why a rebuilding team would stock up on over-30 non-star pitchers when history and stats tell us they're unlikely to contribute when the team is good again, especially when Ryan himself has acknowledged the high risk they incur.
  18. LaBombo
    Something to keep an eye on, but if it's just a cup o' coffee, it shouldn't be a problem. After all, Santana is just day-to-day, which for a Twins player means that they are somewhere between playing tomorrow and abducted by aliens. Kidding, but for real, it should be ok. But just the fact that an A ball kid is up with the big club because of yet another injury/depth crisis is cause for frustration and concern. Really happy and relieved for him that he succeeded under pressure in his less-than-ideal debut situation.
  19. LaBombo
    Thirty; the new twenty-one... No, nothing quite that serious, although it's possible that at least one poster is ready to convert Jared Burton into Soylent Green. No, it's more like a pitcher retirement investment seminar, replete with scary Powerpoint graphs of the dramatic roll-off in the income potential of pitchers in their early 30's.
  20. LaBombo
    Hall of Famers age well. Otherwise they wouldn't be Hall of Famers. The best players are usually the ones to be effective well into their thirties. The higher up the mountain you start, the longer you can ski before reaching the bottom. A 6 WAR player can lose 2 points due to age and still be a valuable player. A 2.5 WAR player cannot. Three of their four most valuable starters last season were under 29 years old in 2012, with Lackey being the sole exception. Peavy and Dempster combined for a net 0.4 WAR in 2013, which is pretty much Cole De Vries territory. Age, whether we like it or not, is a key factor in player performance prediction, especially after 30. Just because their are plenty of exceptions is no reason to disregard information that gives a relatively accurate estimate of regression in most players over thirty years old.
  21. LaBombo
    Yup, when anybody on the 40 gets sent to the minors out of spring training and spends more than 20 day there, it uses up an option. So the Twins had nothing to lose in that regard.
  22. LaBombo
    Puckett had a full season of high A and 80 plate appearances at AAA Toledo before his pro debut, but also played a bit of college ball. Carew and Blyleven were Hall of Famers, and it's not terribly unusual for players of that caliber to reach the majors at 21 or even 20. Hrbek and Wynegar weren't HoF material, but they both made the ASG in their first full seasons, and were above average players with long careers. Another thing to put Polanco's promotion into perspective is that all five of those promotions occurred under the ownership of Calvin Griffith, and the Twins tended to promote young players aggressively in part due to their low salaries and the holes created by the constant free agent departures and trades necessitated by the Twins' microscopic budget. The Polanco promotion will probably not have a dramatic impact on either him or the franchise, but it's another example of a disturbing tendency for the Twins to suddenly find themselves scraping the bottom of the depth barrel.
  23. LaBombo
    If you can name a team that has undergone a successful rebuild recently with a pitching staff mostly over 30 a year or two before contention, we're all ears. Can't recall one myself. The potential lack of offense was mentioned by several posters including jokin and myself during the offseason and ST, and there was some understandable skepticism of that opinion, especially after the crazy start some Twins like Colabello got off to in April. By now, however, most people would agree that as presently constructed, the Twins will struggle to reach a league average run output. But fixing the offense will only take them so far if they're still fiddling around with finding replacements for the 30-something pitchers who are likely to decline to a noticeable degree just as the Age of Sano and Buxton arrives next year or in 2016. Successful rebuilding teams mostly do that before entering a period of contention, not during it. It doesn't look to me like anyone is in favor of focusing strictly on youth over quality, just on replacing downside guys with upside ones where it doesn't substantially harm the current team's competitiveness. If the Twins can rebuild without the staff getting younger this season, that's fine, but recent history, especially their own, seems to suggest otherwise.
  24. LaBombo
    When P-Flo is your last out in a game like this, mistakes were made...
  25. LaBombo
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