Dantes929

I was always the one arguing with the ones you call rubes but it seems odd that you are bringing it up now, that you are calling them rubes and that you want them to go away when I haven't seen any posts like that for a while now. Not to mention the big(gish) signings in recent years of Odorizzi, Cruz, Maeda, HIll and Donaldson seem to have worked out pretty well. Free agent signing proponents were the majority, many are still here, they have valid points and plenty of anecdotal evidence just like I felt I had when I was supporting the develop from within approach. I don't want them to go away. I appreciate opposing viewpoints.

Hey Nash, Can you explain what it means for the Twins to score 0.93 runs per 100 fastballs thrown. Average number of total pitches faced in a game is 146. That would translate to 1.35 runs scored in a game if all pitches were fastballs. That would be really bad. Am I missing something?

Throwing 97 isn't necessarily a good thing. A few years ago in the 1 game playoff with NY Ervin Santana was about 4mph harder than he was all season. Very little command and his best pitch slider didn't respond well to his livelier arm. Berrios performance reminded me a bit of that. He was throwing hard but his waste pitches truly were wasted pitches cuz he wasn't even coming close to the plate. Overthrowing fastball and curveball, imo. Less is often more. Ask Rich Hill. Would be great to win the 1st game of he series.

"What has been your favorite Player’s Weekend nickname?" Ironically, the guy starting for us today had the winner last year. Dick Mountain. I do like Miles Mikolis with 5280's.

I never worried about Donaldson. My only whining about Bailey was that I thought Dobnak deserved to be ahead of him. I still think that.

I don't think I would care to hear any of them every game. I missed Marnie's games so will go with Morneau, Hawkins, Bert, Smalley, Morris, TK and Hunter in that order. I like Bremer. I just wish he would pause that extra second so he doesn't get me excited about fly balls that don't even make it to the warning track.

When Buxton walks can't he just keep running until they tag him out. That would still make him the last batter I think. I wouldn't advocate making outs on purpose. Have Buxton swing for the fences maybe or as suggested have him try to steal 2nd early. The odds of scoring a run with two outs and one on is still preferable to the odds that having a speedster at 2nd to start an extra inning is going to make the difference. I really miss speed being a big part of the game and having home runs be special. In my ideal world you would expand the fences and deaden the ball. Not a lot but enough that you actually have to hit the sweet spot on the bat.

That's not how I viewed Duffey. In 2015, he had a decent fastball that he located very well. He had several curveballs that he threw from different angles and different speeds that all had one thing in common and that was a sharp and nasty break. So of course the consensus was that instead of trying to get an extra tick on his fastball and work on command, he needed to develop a great changeup. In 2016 ST it seemed like he threw that changeup a lot and it never really did develop all that much but whether that was the reason or it was happenstance he did not have the same control of his fastball and his curveball did not have the same bite to it. So in my mind it went like this. His fastball was decent and his curveball was great. He worked very hard on a change up and as a result his fastball and curveball were not as good which showed up in the ERA and proved to people he couldn't make it with just two pitches (even though those two pitches had a lot of variations). What it proved to me was that he couldn't make it with three pitches when in my opinion he could have done quite well with just two pitches. BTW, add Scott Diamond to that list though I think arm strain was the reason he didn't succeed. Its not that batters adjusted. Its that one year his curveball was really really good and the next year it wasn't as good. As far as Dobnak goes, I have no idea except that he seems to have plenty good stuff and control and also a pretty good competitive nature. He didn't wilt under pressure but rather seemed to get tougher. Its why I was disappointed when they lifted him so early in the playoff game.

I thought he was our ace in 2019. His W-L, ERA, ERA+, FIP, WHIP, and SO/9 were all better than Berrios. Only stat Berrios beat him at was innings pitched and that has become less important when a relief staff is full of guys with even better ERAs. Plus I just felt like we were more likely to get a good performance when he was up. Not trying to take away from Berrios here. Over the course of a season innings are important to save a staff but Odorizzi was quite good.

Really streaky here. We suffered through the slumps because we saw the rampage when he was hot. No rampage for other teams and they won't give him slack for slumps. Another guy I thought was a little pull happy but overall nice career.

Fighting Irish? Difference maybe giving the name to themselves when they had a team and school full of Irish Catholics. Just looking at a list of team names. Marlins, Brewers, Twins, Rangers, Astros Rockies and Mariners all have pretty good names that relate to their area and appear to have had some thought put into them.

In an odd twist St. Mary's of Winona used to be called the Redmen. The name originally had nothing at all to do with native americans but eventually the image and mascot appeared. When a native american group asked them to change over 30 years ago they did. In a similar way I have always wondered how a town name like Savage can continue to exist. Turns out it was named after some guy named Savage. If any team should be allowed to have the Indian name it would be Shakopee since presumably the tribe would have influence over the images and narrative but even they changed names. In my book its ok for anyone to not be offended but biggentleben's 4th paragraph above kind of explains it all on why it would be offensive to many and should therefore be removed. Not being offensive to me personally (or to any other one person) should not be the standard for keeping a name.

Its not going to hurt anything either. Just curious. How do you feel about the name Redskins? When this whole name change movement started years ago I kind of pushed back but then took a step back and asked myself why. Why would I care? The push to change the name came from somewhere. You are not offended and you are not alone but there apparently are lots that are offended so changing the name seems like a small thing to do.

Simple to say. Really hard to do.

Twins had 12 extra inning games last year for a total of 33 extra innings. The rule itself will probably cut down the extra innings and over 60 games that comes out to roughly one extra running chance per player and maybe 3 extra rbi opportunities per player, probably less when considering the same 9 players generally don't play every game.. In this situation I would be surprised if there were more than 10 stolen bases all year across the majors this season. It probably comes out statistically to around 1 extra rbi and one extra run scored per player. Statistically insignificant and if some one can beat that average in a significant way more power to them. Its also roughly the same odds for every player across the league to get that extra running or batting chance so its also fair and comparative. It doesn't give any one player better odds.

Me too. Of course if the White Sox or Yankees win the World Series this year I will fight anyone who tries to say it "does count".

The topic is spring training 2021. It is actually pretty easy to not get off topic with just a little focus. If the topic is the pandemic, What was the common sense approach to the pandemic? What was supposed to be done about the virus itself? We may be at the mercy of educated idiots but kind of prefer that to being at the mercy of non educated idiots. How is being at the mercy of educated idiots compounded by so called (?) professional idiots? Your venting seems to be all over the place.

That batting average and walk rate bode well. Just like I want a pitcher to have "stuff" rather than velocity I like hitters to have more than just power.

Electronic strike zone? Seems like the perfect time to try it.

As soon as the restrictions lifted I talked to my staff about being more conscientious of cleanliness and distancing. I suspect it fell on deaf ears. Thankfully, there are a lot of business that still take the issue seriously and reopened with all precautions in place. That doesn't mean its 100% safe. Then there are businesses that protested the lockdown saying they could open safely and they have taken no precautions whatsoever as far as I can see. It doesn't mean they will all contract covid. Just means they are more likely to. Big picture maybe it is better for the world to develop the herd immunity even at great cost. Who knows? Little picture, I want the ones I love that are high risk to be safe and am sad that people out there just don't even consider anything but themselves.

I don't ever remember the CDC saying "embrace the public, there's no problem". I do remember one person saying it but not the CDC. I could be wrong. I also remember the CDC saying high risk people are the concern and a lot of other things that are still considered valid. They probably have been wrong here and there along the way and maybe it was because they believed Biejing but that is really a rather reasonable starting point for a novel virus. As far as agenda facts the only fact I really don't trust is the death rate. Just seems to vary so much by county, state and country. I feel like death attribution has been inflated in some areas and deflated in others, like you said, to support an agenda. I don't distrust the CDC though of course there is bias in everything. I just think this is an incredibly complex situation.

No one I know and none of those whose opinions I have read on here thinks removing a stature solves any of the real problems in the US so who are these self righteous idiots you refer to except those that think removing the statue is a step in the right direction no matter how small? You seem to feel very strong about the subject. I said in a separate post that I respect people can come to the conclusion of leaving the statue up as long as they have gone beyond "This is just another leftist agenda that I have to refute". Maybe you did go beyond your first reaction but capitalizing the words and throwing ad hominen in there tells me you probably didn't. My life would not past muster but I neither expect nor want a monument. I also don't think we are bound by the decisions of who to honor by people of a different time whether it be 10 years ago or 100 years ago. Heck, someone might have wanted to erect a statue or name a school after Bill Cosby and changed his mind the next day when accusations came out. This situation is more nuanced. He did bring baseball to Minnesota but he also made a lot of money doing it. He would have probably let the Twins leave Minnesota if Pohlad hadn't stepped up. The public perception of him was strong enough and the apathy people had for racial injustice was enough for him to get the statue 10 years ago. If he was a better person it might have even survived drunken quotes from 50 years ago with Carew's moderating words. I never particularly liked him and had pretty much forgotten the Waseca quotes until reminded recently. He is part of the history of the Twins. Doesn't mean there has to be a statue for him.

When I see a report about a pitcher that throws high 90's or even 100 but have to work on secondary pitches I just go "meh". I assume in the several years it takes to advance they will need surgery or the other pitches just never appear or command is an issue. When I see a pitcher that throws 93 but with quality "stuff" I get a little excited. 17 years old. His frame could change significantly.

I think a better thing to hope for is that they look in the mirror and reflect on what they see and maybe consider changing what they see. I know this will sound condescending but I really wish people would get past their knee jerk responses to everything and do more reflection. Instead of just saying "hey look Griffith was a racist, lets take down any monuments to him" I hope the people that decided to take it down considered him in the time he lived and what he accomplished against some of the things he said. Likewise, I would hope those opposed would get past thinking its just another liberal leftist craziness and actually consider why they oppose it and what it really means to them as well as what it might mean to others. If they still conclude it should stay up so be it but at least go through the process. When Kaepernick took a knee my knee jerk response was "that's really disrespectful. There's got to be a better time and place" Getting past that first reaction I thought kneeling as a non violent protest wasn't such a bad thing and when I couldn't come up with a better time and place that would actually get any attention I started defending his actions. I thought it would be better to actually address his concerns so that he would have no reason to take a knee. Now if someone else takes these same steps and still concludes he shouldn't take the knee that is fine but it should be after consideration of why he is doing it, how else can he do it and why am I really so opposed to a respectful non violent protest to improve the country?

I could just as easily say ALL OF THESE SELF RIGHTEOUS PEOPLE OPPOSING RENAMING BREAKFAST PRODUCTS AND TAKING DOWN STATUES OF CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS AND RACIST OWNERS, ETC. ARE THE REAL PROBLEM. You are figuratively pointing your finger at those you imagine are pointing fingers. Take another look at this quote "I’ll tell you why we came to Minnesota. It was when I found out you only had 15,000 blacks. Black people don’t go to ball games, but they’ll fill up a rassling ring and put up such a chant it’ll scare you to death. It’s unbelievable. We came here because you’ve got good, hardworking, white people here."" You say he's not racist so please tell me what a person would have to say to be considered racist even given the context of that era.. No one is re writing history. Those in power 80-100 years ago decided to honor particular people and symbols of history (confederacy) just like 10 years ago those in power decided to honor Griffith. Nothing says we have to continue to honor those same people or symbols. I have never understood how the confederate flag, statues or forts honoring leaders of an army that killed hundreds of thousands of United States military for the purpose of owning people have ever been allowed to exist. This statue is less offensive to me and I would have been ok with it staying but understand how others want it removed so I am ok with it. Honestly, I would be ok if every statue or monument was removed. My life wouldn't be diminished in any way if Kirby or Harmon's statues were taken down. I wonder why you are so strongly opposed to taking Griffith's down.