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Dantes929

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Everything posted by Dantes929

  1. Dantes929
    You guys might be right and my memory flawed. When Castro got hurt they wanted to give Garver a shot at full time catcher to see what they had in him. Escobar was our 3rd baseman for 97 games. I I don;t remember the timing of all the injuries and who played when but I also don't really remember the name Willians Astudillo until he came up for a short while in July. I don't think I saw him on any top 30 Twins prospects lists. To me he had a nice minor league career but the Phillies were fine with letting him go. Twins picked him up, he had a pretty nice season in the minors and was promoted where he got 100 major league at bats in the Fall and did really well. Continued with winter ball and ST and is now getting some opportunity and is making the most of it. I think the progression as far as the Twins are concerned has been quite reasonable. I just don't remember anyone calling for his promotion before it happened. Timing is everything. Maybe he gets promoted earlier and a lot of at bats but things don't turn out that great and he is written off. We agree he's not a .382 hitter but that is what he did last September and that is why he is at the top of the radar now. I think things have worked out pretty well so far and hope it continues to work well.
  2. Dantes929
    Reading a lot of posts that seem to draw some conclusions over a 3 or 5 game span. I agree they should give him more consideration to be a regular based on last year, his winter league season and Spring Training as I stated in the last sentence of first paragraph. They only got him last year, he hit .276 in AAA and then they played him pretty much every game in September. When would the smart team have promoted him?
  3. Dantes929
    A few quick points. A few things to temper enthusiasm. I like what Cruz has done but he is not a .333 hitter. We loved Hunter for a while also. He was a great signing and provided great leadership when he was hitting three run homers. It didn't last. When the dust settles I hope we get from Cruz what Seattle got from him so what I hope from him is less than what he has given us. The Turtle is not a .667 batter. He's probably not a .382 batter either. His career average at all levels is .300. Sample size is mounting so maybe he has turned a corner but .300 would be great from him and if he is a .300 batter he should be a regular. On the flip side, Rosario is better than a .150 hitter and Kepler is better than a .200 hitter. Interesting that there were a lot of posts (including from me) whining about Kepler being left in to face a lefty the other day. Not seeing those complaints from being left in yesterday. Any chance the two run base hit had anything to do with it? In my defense, I thought the Turtle was the guy to put in there the first time and he was already playing yesterday.
  4. Dantes929
    I like that nick name. Obviously unsustainable but Willens should be playing every game til he does an ofer.
  5. Dantes929
    Yeah, but it started with a 2 out walk to the #9 hitter. Game isn't out of reach. How about that Turtle?
  6. Dantes929
    Yep, that's the risk. You go back to percentages. Left handed pitcher and right handed batter helps so what are the odds of success of Buxton stealing vs being able to move him over with a sacrifice bunt because those are far from a sure thing also. Every move had a possibility of success or failure and I am sure we don't have this discussion if Kepler had drilled a two run homer (though the rare posts I respect the most would have still questioned it) but I am sure I am also not the only one that went "huh" when he left Kepler in swinging away.
  7. Dantes929
    I don't think bunting is easy but at the same time I think Buxton showed some strong signs of being good at it in 2017. I don't know how many bunt hits he had that year but I think it was enough to keep him in the lineup that year when the rest of his offense was struggling. Once he got the rest of his offense going it was still a great weapon. IMO it enhances the rest of his offensive game, it doesn't diminish it. Last year I saw him bunt once. It was a sacrifice right back to the pitcher and he still beat it out. https://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2012/12/10/3748738/best-bunter-all-time-career-bunt-hits-bases-empty-mlb Why is it so hard to find stats for bunts? Anyone know what Buxton's BABIP is for bunts?
  8. Dantes929
    I'm no where near convinced the results would be much different. Now of course Kepler swinging away could have turned out well but the guy with the spreadsheet probably doesn't keep an 0-7 guy in against a lefty specialist. and either puts in a guy that is likely to make contact or someone more likely to get a bunt down. Of course there is a fair chance that that won't work either so I am not giving a full WAR to the guy with the spreadsheet but I am giving him an edge. I'm not big on hindsight but I think there were definitely those out there questioning the non move before the results were in.
  9. Dantes929
    I don't know about beat the ball on the ground but enough of this talk about not bunting. He should absolutely be bunting and often. Unless there are guys on base his bunts are the equivalent of doubles since he soon steals 2nd. In essence, is he more likely to get a base hit bunting or swinging away? I think he is more likely to get on by bunting and by a fair margin. Its exciting, it gets under the skin of the opposing team and it is a slump buster. If he's not bunting he is diminishing his best tool which is his speed.
  10. Dantes929
    Well, along those lines, Having a guy on 2nd that has a perfect steal rate over the last two seasons changes odds as well. What are his chances of stealing 3rd? That should be compared to the odds of getting a bunt down successfully as well. In any case, I believe the Turtle pinch hitting would have been a good move there.
  11. Dantes929
    Forget Turtle. What's Spanish for GOAT?
  12. Dantes929
    I think at that time he had hit another popup that was caught so technically, he was also one wind blown popup from batting .500.
  13. Dantes929
    Game three. No one else is hitting higher than .200 and we have the guy batting .333 at the bottom of the order.
  14. Dantes929
    If they are true odds at 25-1 it is 20 times more likely to happen than the 500-1 odds in 1987. https://abcnews.go.com/Sports/longest-shots/story?id=36932901
  15. Dantes929
    Is it too early to say Saturday's game is a must win?
  16. Dantes929
    I was asked on a different thread if I was more concerned about OBP or OPP. Not sure what OPP is but I think maybe Outs Per Pitch. I just know Cleveland threw 92 pitches yesterday and the Twins had a .226 OBP. Still, I don't know how many Cy Young winners we will face this year but 1-0 is a good start.
  17. Dantes929
    Baseball is here. Golf can't be more than a month away.
  18. Dantes929
    Can't win them all if we don't win the first one. Go Twins!
  19. Dantes929
    With Grossman and Mauer the Twins were right at league average for OBP. Without them the teams we would be above are White Sox, Royals, Tigers and Orioles. The 6 teams with the best records last year had the top 6 OBP. I hope I am wrong but I think OBP is going to be a big issue with this team.
  20. Dantes929
    Is it just me or does Minnesota's lineup look significantly worse without Mauer?
  21. Dantes929
    85 seems most likely with a plus or minus of 10. Hopefully the minus 10 doesn't realize in the first month. I just want meaningful games in September. Compete is not a dirty word to me.
  22. Dantes929
    I care. Would love if the Twins made the playoffs. I agree that this team doesn't stack up with some of the teams that were near 95 wins..... on paper. Last year, on paper this team should have been much better than the team that made the playoffs the year before. I have no problem saying this team has an upside of 95 wins and a downside of 75 wins. That's the difference between a lot of guys playing well vs a lot of guys playing poorly with respect to their talent. Last year was the latter. Spring is for hoping it is the former. Likely, it is somewhere in between.
  23. Dantes929
    Yeah, I would never advocate for it. For every Punto there are 10 utility guys that either get a couple years or only a couple months. Like I said he had his two best seasons in contract years and used it to leverage more millions that he would otherwise be likely to make. His career turned out better than could possibly be predicted. His biggest attribute was being a piranha and all that entailed. My biggest knock on him was when he was given the regular 3rd base spot and for some reason thought that meant he needed to try to hit more home runs and started swinging for the fences. Punto swinging for the fences annoyed me a lot. Anyway, yes my original post was a joke and I would not advocate paying long term contracts to utility guys just to buy out arb and FA years.
  24. Dantes929
    I don't know. His ceiling was never considered that high and he wouldn't have got those two nice contracts if they didn't coincide with his two best years offensively which only happenstance even allowed him the opportunity to have. Guarantee of 3 mil over 7 years would have to have been tempting since he must have seen plenty of similar players get a taste and then never heard from again. I know in a similar situation I would have been tempted. 3 mil is still an awful lot of money to most people and even more so 15 years ago. The odds of him making over 10 mil at that point couldn't have been better than 1 in 10.
  25. Dantes929
    We could have offered Nick Punto a 7 year deal when he joined our team at league minimum and he probably would have taken it and it would have saved us $10 mil and 1 trillion posts complaining about him. I guess we can do this all day..
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