ericchri

All pitches are called from the dugout? That's got to really slow the game down, doesn't it? For a team that espouses a good pace from the pitcher they take the time to signal pitches from the dugout, which then gets relayed to the pitcher by the catcher, who may shake it off so that the dugout has to then try and get him to pitch the pitch they want, to get shaken off again...

That Gardy quote looks to me like he was hinting that Hicks might come back with a chip on his shoulder/something to prove due to his non-promotion, not that he showed a bad attitude on the season.

You're probably right, the dimensions of Target Field are a little funky. I guess I do wonder a little bit who'd be better suited to chasing down balls that bounce off the limestone, though. With Buxton in the middle, the range factor gets dimmed a touch. In the end I suspect it wouldn't matter much who played which corner, so if Arcia is more comfortable in right, so be it. I just love watching some of those rocket throws you'll occasionally see from right to get guys out at 3rd.

Have to agree with stringer bell above, he seems awful short to really be your ideal 1B. Plouffe especially and Florimon (and Sano soon) would certainly benefit from a bigger target to throw to. I know Arcia doesn't appear to be a great fielder, but considering what we've been running out in LF for the most part of late (Willingham, Delmon Young) he's certainly no downgrade over the last half dozen years of left field play. He's quick enough with a good enough arm to eventually settle in as being near average, I would think, especially with Buxton playing next to him. I would expect Rosario could move to left field easily enough if it became warranted, but it wouldn't be my first choice, and I wouldn't make that move until absolutely necessary, which it isn't yet. I think Seth mentioned he's a much better right fielder as that's where he's predominantly played, but I would think his future is in left with the assumption Hicks sticks around and becomes a legitimate starter in the majors. With the assumption Hicks gets himself sorted out, he has to be the presumed Right Fielder when Buxton moves up, doesn't he? With his arm it would seem strange to put him in left. If they all become good players, you have to believe at least one of Hicks, Arcia, Rosario, or Dozier gets traded to make room for everyone else. That's a big if, but they all look to have talent if they can put it together.

I actually think Grienke or Sanchez would have been a great off-season move as we desperately need an actual good pitcher on this staff. It isn't that they immediately make us a contender all by themself, but more that we actually have a good pitcher on the staff as we transition to the new generation of players. We're basically betting the farm on the farm (sorry about that) actually saving this team in a couple years without any legitimate proven starting pitching to help take some of the pressure off all the newbies. I'm not arguing that we had a legitimate chance at signing Sanchez, though I assume if we'd offered whatever he got from Detroit we'd have had a chance. I do think that if he'd signed with us that it would would have been a good move for the team, though. It would have been massively beneficial to have a consistently decent starter on the team through the next few years, regardless of his perceived overpaidness (yeah, not a real word). How good do Sano, Buxton, Arcia, Hicks, Rosario, Dozier, Mauer, etc... need to be in a couple years if our starters are Diamond, Worley, Gibson, Meyer, Hendriks?* Wouldn't it be nice to slip Sanchez into place for one of those names so you could say with fair certainty, "he'll be good, hopefully 2 of the other four turn out to be decent." *Not claiming that to be the most likely starting 5, just a possible based on the notion of not signing anyone right now.

Interesting that Stuart Turner will end the year in AA. Seems like he's played fairly well this year. Not amazing with the stick, but not Butera bad, either. Only a couple games, really, but it seems they've been pleased with his play for him to get that call.

That is what seems a bit puzzling. It's not likely to happen of course, but if both teams said "have 'em", it would suddenly look like an overplay by the Orioles.

This had caught my attention but I never got back to it. You mention Herrmann playing corner infield. Is there any reason to think he can? I glanced at his minor league fielding notes and he had no games at 1st, and only 1 game at 3rd with no fielding chances (which makes me suspect it was probably for something like a one-inning fill-in due to injury or the like). Cause if he could play corner outfield, corner infield, and catcher at least passably with something approaching a league-average stick, that'd be a pretty valuable player to have. As a followup to my own post previous, I wasn't really advocating anything per se, though it may have appeared that way. I was really more musing on what the long-term (10'ish years down the line) ramifications of all these catchers hitting the concussion DL might be. As a sort of progressing thought, what if baseball as a whole decides they don't want to risk getting sued by their players like the NFL is. And that leads to them increasing the 7-day concussion DL to 10-days. And encouraging trainers/doctors to be aggressive in diagnosing a concussion. Leading to a couple trips a year on the DL per catcher. Leading to managers and GM's asking if there isn't some better way to handle it than shuttling some guy up and down from AAA constantly all year long. Eventually leading to expanding the 25-man roster to 26 or 27 players or the like so they can more readily have a 3rd catcher on the roster without it adversely affecting all the other roster spots they want to fill. I'm not saying I think that will happen or that I want it to happen. I do wonder if it might happen, though.

I get the feeling this is going to start being somewhat common in baseball going forward. Seems like there have been a bunch of catchers going on it lately, which makes sense as a season's worth of balls to the mask start adding up. Supposedly lots of little hits piled on top of each other can be just as bad as one big hit, so now that they're so much more aware of what constitutes a concussion I'll be surprised if it isn't a fairly common occurrence later in the season. I've never liked this propensity to 3 catchers Gardy seems to have (his reasons didn't seem to be concussion related, more security blanket), but taking concussion possibilities into account I wonder if it might start becoming more prevalent and maybe even prudent.

It feels a little underwhelming right now, the ability to sign "fill-in" players that end up contributing. But in 5 or 6 years if it really is a skill that Terry Ryan can repeat we'll appreciate it a lot more as all our hot young prospects start getting expensive together. Regardless, the story of these guys getting their chance and making the most of it is an awful lot of fun. Thanks for the constant reminders, Seth.

Kinda feels like we're arguing over the AL MVP...

Do we have anyone on the 40-man who can sub at 3rd for Plouffe besides Escobar? I mean, sure, we can toss Bernier over there for kicks, but anyone who's actually played 3rd? Deibinson Romero would need to get added to the 40-man, just adding more roster juggling, so I'll be surprised if it isn't Escobar due to lack of other options.

And here I've been trying to decide which of Brian Dozier and Eddie Rosario was likely to become the new favorite player to trade away. After we trade Duensing can we just change the rule to Dozier so it'll still be a Brian D?

Realistically speaking every single starter on our currently terrible team could also theoretically be a starter on a World Series winning team if the roster supports them. That doesn't mean they're a player you should target as being a piece that you build around when shooting for the World Series. That's basically my point with Florimon. Is he good enough to play for a top team? Sure. Is he good enough that you don't think you could improve over him somehow? Probably not. In the end tying that notion to the World Series is probably distracting away from the real point, and it's that you should be looking to upgrade the position if you can. But as I said, he's good enough for now. And he's still fairly young, maybe his bat keeps improving. If he plays gold glove defense and raises his OBP and OPS a little more, yeah, he's probably a keeper. I'm skeptical he's got much more upside than what we're seeing right now, but as random fan #45213 on random fan site #126, my opinion probably doesn't count for a whole awful lot. One thing I'll add. It really feels like our team this year is horrible at hitting homeruns with men on base, it seems like we have a ton of solo home runs. Florimon seems like the exception to that for whatever reason. I haven't looked into it at all to verify if that impression is correct, but it sure feels like the case to me. Not sure that's really anything of note, but if nothing else at least he can pop the ball over the fence, and that has some value in and of itself, especially when you're getting top notch defense. The playoffs are a whole different beast than the regular season, and having a low average hitter with pop sometimes feels like a better choice than a higher average/low slugging option just for that potential game-changing moment. So put that down as another positive for Florimon.

I'm dying for something of interest to watch with the Twins right now. I also think fan interest would spike a good bit if they moved him up. But I think I agree with those saying that starting his service time now probably doesn't make a lot of sense. Moving him to AAA does seem like a good proposition, though. Having him already getting time at AAA would make it pretty obvious he's probably playing with the big league team at some point next year, so maybe that's enough of a marketing boost to help sell a few season tickets. It would be a shame for Deibinson Romero who's having a pretty good season, but it's hard to see much hope for Romero having much of a place in the team's future.

He's exceeded my expectations offensively and defensively, that's not even a question. It was noted already by Thrylos, though, the real question is whether he's good enough to be your starting shortstop on a long-term basis. He's fine for now in the sense that there's no quick replacement for him in our current system. Danny Santana may be getting close, but is he really going to be better than Florimon and how soon? Dozier could try and move back, but will his defense play as well at short as at 2nd? Is there anything in the Free Agent field that would be a legitimate improvement over Florimon? If you're looking to trade for something, is Texas the place to look? They've got Andrus locked up for a long time, Profar a natural SS playing out of position, and the #76 overall prospect (#2 in Texas' system) on MLB's list Luis Sardinas playing short at AA right now. Back to Florimon, I'm happy with him for now. I'd love to see a little more stick there, but his defense is good enough that I can live with him for now. If his bat doesn't get much better we'll still probably want to keep looking, though. If all of our prospects worked out to the extent they look like they might (which isn't going to happen), then you could hide his bat in the lineup and not suffer much, but it probably isn't ideal if you're hoping to win the World Series.

Does anybody else think of the end of "Major League" any time one of these discussions start? When the old guy who started for the Indians says something like, "I'm throwing every piece of junk I can think of at 'em skip, I've got enough for one more." It was disappointing to not see him finish, but that 4-pitch walk to end his night looked pretty bad. I think I honestly said to myself when the first guy got on with the single, "if he walks somebody he's done." Personally, I just hope Morneau keeps hitting homeruns to support his long-lost Canadian half-brother every time Albers starts.

Is that Luke Bard's first action this season? I don't recall seeing his name previous to this. Nice to see, regardless.

Reverse Samson effect? He chopped off his flowing locks and now he's a stud? I've previously wondered if the Twins might move him back to short to make room for Rosario at 2nd, but I'm honestly really torn over that one. He looks so natural at 2nd base, it'd suck if he struggled a bit defensively at short if moved back. His potential bat would sure look nice at short, though. A couple games ago Roy Smalley noted that he thought Dozier was better off at 2nd base, too. While Roy might not be the world's greatest scout, I'm pretty confident he knows more about baseball and playing shortstop than I ever will. One thing I really like about Dozier and even Florimon is that they actually have the ability to hit the ball over the fence. It's so frustrating to watch a Nick Punto/Ben Revere/Jamey Carroll and know there's little chance of anything but a single if they get a hit. They don't need to be in the league leaders or anything, but just offer the threat to make the pitcher a hair more cautious.

I think it would be very interesting to see whether there was any real outcry over the payroll, honestly. I also think it would be interesting to see whether attendance would go up or down if they went full-on youth movement. Living where I do and as I do I'm not really part of any crowd that would give me any feel for what would actually happen. I'd love to see it truly happen, both for my curiosity over what the reaction would be, and also my own interest in actually watching the team. I've reached the point where I'm only interested in maybe a third of the players on the team anymore (Plouffe, Dozier, Florimon, Hicks, Herrmann, Gibson, Deduno, and I guess Diamond too, sort of). It might be a couple more if you throw in bullpen guys, but I don't get too excited about bullpen guys in general. So yeah, bring on the young guys now. If we're terrible, so what? We're already terrible.

I don't know if I'm sold on him completely, but I do know I'd rather watch him pitch than any of our other starters by a good margin. Deduno's in a huge list of players on this year's team that you can look at and go, "maybe he's gonna be really good, if..." We've seen flashes from so many guys this year, but so few have really shown any consistency (barring maybe some bullpen folks and Mauer). He still has a couple months to the year though, if he keeps this up I'll look at him as a potential part of the future as opposed to just a stopgap.

No Ozzie, please, that sideshow doesn't interest me. A name mentioned in the comments for the Reusse column was interesting though: Omar Vizquel. I'll take him to coach my infielders, please.

I think it was mentioned in one of the Minor League daily writeups that he has Strep Throat. I think the possibility that Jorge Polanco doesn't quite have the arm for SS makes our 2B position suddenly look almost too crowded.

Not Arcia specific, but that's actually pretty common. Strikeout, but the catcher doesn't catch the ball cleanly such that he has to be thrown out at first to complete the play. It still counts as a strikeout, regardless of whether the player is safe at first or not. There's a fair number of 4-strikeout innings in the history of baseball as a result. Not hard to imagine Arcia could strikeout and throw a tantrum (exaggerated drastically for effect, not because I truly believe it), not realizing the ball ended up at the backstop and he could have probably gotten to first safely if he'd run it out.

Albers pitched yesterday as well, so he'd be able to slot right into Diamond's spot without shaking up the rotation order.