ericchri

Anthony Castrovince from "Sports on Earth" a secret Twins Daily reader? http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/94257452/ron-gardenhire-twins-transition-13th-season

I kind of wonder if the pressure of being the only truly "good" pitcher in the pen weighs on Perkins a bit. The rest of those guys pretty much top out at "OK". With the assumption that whoever may be managing the Twins a couple years from now will continue the tradition of having a "closer" (gag), I think the best thing for the team might be for the closer to be Burdi, and Perkins moves back into a "setup role". Have Perk and a fairly dominant righty (Zach Jones?) available and you can choose which of the two to use for the 7th/8th based on what the upcoming lineup looks like for lefties and righties. Even though he's been excellent in the "closer" role, I've always been disappointed (enraged might be a truer representation of my opinion) that he couldn't be used earlier in games when the upcoming inning's lineup called for a really good lefty, not just random bullpen guy who is today's available lefty/setup guy.

I've been a fan of Fien due to the fact he's not a robot out there like a lot of our guys, but I tend to agree with this statement. He's been good for a little over a year, but it's just as likely that he was experiencing a period of better-than-expected results before now settling back into normal performance as it is that he's experiencing a downturn before edging back into good performance again eventually. He's one of the guys I'd keep from this bullpen, along with Perkins and maybe Thielbar and Pressly (though I could go either way with those two) because he's been really good at times, but I wouldn't lose sleep over him moving on, either. In general, to answer the original questions, I'd say it's pretty much both. There's really nobody in that bullpen that has the kind of "stuff" that make you expect exceptional performance. There's a lot of mediocre there, which used sparingly can show good performance, but used excessively will likely show it's limitations.

So clearly the answer is to just coach him to only throw no-hitters. What's hard about that?

So far, so good, go Swansea! Showdown with Chelsea (the only two 3-game winners so far) in a couple weeks. Swansea is probably 1/4 of the way to safely staying up in the Premier League with 35 games still to play. And they didn't sell off Bony. Hooray for random acts delivering a good pick for favorite team. SKC forgot how to play defense somehow in the last few weeks though, ugh.

We wouldn't include Duensing in the trade, so it's only Ryu, not Kershaw.

Maybe instead of everyone calling for FA left fielders or moving Mauer out there it's time to consider if that's where Sano belongs?

Anybody else notice Danny Santana whips his bat through the zone really fast?

I'm not exactly disagreeing with you, but isn't that sort of what you'd expect to see from anybody who posts a good offensive season? Some months where they have better numbers from the bounces going right, and some where they don't? I would find it very strange to post month after month of numbers that conform to standards. Mostly I find his ability to post multiple entire months worth of good hitting (on either side of a couple poor-to-average months) somewhat encouraging. He didn't tailspin out of the season, he came out of it and settled into decent hitting again. I don't have high expectations for him, per se, but I don't find it too far-fetched to see him being capable of basically league average offense and defense for a SS. If somebody can push him out, great, but the stability is nice. I'm not troubled by seeing EE at short, and I certainly haven't been able to say that about the guy who's been manning the position at any given moment much over the last few years.

Pretty sure nothing in my post implies it's a World Series lineup. What it is is a relatively young full lineup of "doesn't suck" which is better than we've been able to claim in a while. That's what's encouraging to me. That's the baseline, and hopefully people moving their way into the lineup raise it from there to pretty good. So yes, it is TR's job to raise the bar higher, but at least the bar isn't sitting on the ground right now.

Here's one thing I can say I'm encouraged by at this point: Pos - Player (Age) - OBP/OPS 1B - Mauer (31) - .345/.702 2B - Dozier (27) - .338/.763 SS - Escobar (25) - .316/.714 3B - Plouffe (28) - .320/.722 C - Suzuki (30) - .361/.747 LF - Parmelee (26) - .306/.695 or Schafer (27) - .333/.697 (SSS with Twins) CF - Santana (23) - .360/.837 RF - Arcia (23) - .310/.733 DH - Vargas (24) - .340/.775 (very SSS) For all intents and purposes we can put together a full lineup that's not particularly old where everyone has an OBP over .300 and an OPS over .700 (except LF, which is darn close), which means there's no longer any black holes in the lineup. That's the lineup that any prospects coming up are breaking into. Yeah, those are fairly low bars to cross and don't make them great hitters per se, but they don't suck, either. So if somebody comes up and is better than somebody in that lineup, then we're in decent shape.

I hope Minnesota manages an MLS team, but I'm not sure it's a better option right now than Sacramento or San Antonio (and I'll ignore the possibility of Las Vegas, ugh). The Twin Cities are just spread too thin with sports options for a market that size with the "big 4" sports already, and then the U of M (FB, BB, Hockey) on top of that. Throw in the Lynx and a modicum of interest in the U women's BB and Hockey teams and it'll be rough to draw the support the other two markets will for soccer. Selfishly I want Minnesota, but for the league I suspect someplace else might be a better option for now. I think a team would do fine in Minnesota, but I think it'd do better in Sac or SA. Very jealous, I'd love to be able to attend SKC games. And seeing Tottenham in person when they had that roster would have been fabulous. Bale at RM just seems weird. Ireland has always been tops on my list of places I'd like to visit (for no specific reason that I can think of, just a weird urge), so seeing the USMNT playing a friendly in Dublin in November has me thinking ridiculous thoughts about somehow catching that and then also popping over to catch an EPL game somewhere as well. Two kids in school makes that pretty much impossible, but it's fun to dream. Definitely agree on the pace of game similarities. Soccer pretty much didn't exist for me growing up, so I'm really just starting to get a grasp on it, but there's a lot of subtle little things I really enjoy. I love the thumbs-up for great passes that somebody can't quite make a play on, and taking the risk of pulling up your defense to get an offsides call is weirdly entertaining for me (probably because when it fails it leads to a great goal chance). My interest in basketball has tanked over the last few years, and (American) football is fading for me as well, so finding a new sport to follow along with baseball has been really fun.

Even though we all know that Santana probably shouldn't be in CF, the reality is that makes the most sense at this point. Assuming he's okay with it (and having a starting job in MLB would be a pretty tempting inducement), if Santana keeps hitting (that bunt hit last night was beautiful, and very encouraging for the future) I see no reason why he can't slot in as the permanent LF for this team when Buxton is ready. The nice thing about that is then your 4th outfielder can be somebody who just bashes the ball, defense-be-damned, cause you slide Santana into CF on days when Buxton needs a break (same is true if Hicks figures it out and is pushed to a corner). Escobar has earned the starting SS job with his play this year, more power to him. He deserves to keep it until somebody proves to be an even better option at the position. While he looks promising, I doubt Polanco does that next year. Gordon is years away.

I've discovered that I love soccer thanks to this year's World Cup. I have no idea why it took this year's version to do so because I've paid some attention during the last couple World Cups previously, but this one got me to actively watch soccer once it was over, unlike previous Cups. Soccer has the most electrifying moment possible in any sport I pay any attention to. No touchdown, basket, homerun, etc... can match the excitement of a goal in soccer, and the complete lack of commercial breaks is wonderful. Being American, I'm trying to be supportive of MLS. I've heard all the disparaging talk of the quality of the league, but honestly I think it's fairly entertaining. It still has a ways to go, but it's got a lot more good players than I had been led to believe, and it's still in such a startup mentality trying to stabilize the league that I can only expect it to continue improving. Living in Fargo, ND doesn't leave me a local team, unfortunately, so for now I've gone with Sporting Kansas City as the nearest team geographically. I'm psychologically incapable of rooting for a team anywhere on the East coast, Chicago, Texas, or Los Angeles, and probably Canada, so SKC works out pretty well. My wife is a Microsoft employee, so I sort of feel like I should be a Sounders guy, but I'm just not a Dempsey fan, something about him rubs me wrong. SKC play a pretty decent possession-based offense as opposed to just bombing the ball down the field hoping a forward can hold it until everyone else gets there. It's also nice that they have a couple current and one former USMNT players. As for the EPL, I'm looking forward to the season, but being brand new to the soccer fandom, I'm not sure where I'm leaning. Everton (Tim Howard) and Stoke City (Geoff Cameron and I suppose Brek Shea if he ever actually plays) will certainly be a somewhat sentimental pick, but I think I may actually choose Swansea City due to the fact I got to watch them play a match in person against Minnesota United from the NASL a month ago. Starting to sound like Tottenham may pick up DeAndre Yedlin from the Seattle Sounders (and USMNT), though he'll apparently be loaned back to Seattle til the end of the MLS season, so I'll be interested in them as well. I'm really hoping for one of Everton or Tottenham to break into the top 4, as none of Man U, Man City, Liverpool, Arsenal, or Chelsea do anything for me, and I'm not sure who else will have much chance to.

Great news!

I'm nowhere near the guy who knows how to try and find this information online, but I'd be willing to wager that a good chunk of major league corner outfielders don't meet that criteria anymore. Doesn't mean you shouldn't hope for it, but you may not find it very easily. 5 years ago, yeah, today, not so much.

Abreu in a runaway, obviously, but does Santana get Rookie of the Year votes?

They seem to have different parameters for pitchers and position players, and I have no explanation for that. Along with "decent" AAA starters for fill-in starts vs. minor league shortstops to fill in at CF. I've stated elsewhere that they both have to get innings in the majors this year, so I don't understand the Meyer/May thing any more than anyone else, just observing that I don't find it far-fetched to believe Buxton might have managed to get to the majors at this point if not for the injury.

I honestly think it's very possible Buxton would be up right now if not for his injury, with the crazy adventures we've had filling the CF spot this year. If he'd hit well to start at AA this year I suspect they'd have just thrown up their hands with the various failings and injuries to the other CF this year and just given Buxton a chance to show he belongs in the majors. That being said, I think there's a good case to be made for both bad luck and bad decision-making leading to many of the problems this year. I don't even remotely follow any other team to even guess whether things are going good or bad for them, let alone whether that might be due to luck (of either variety). Thus I couldn't even begin to guess whether the Twins would be the unluckiest team in the league. I do think there is a definite element of being unlucky for the Twins' travails, however. Failure to admit to a rebuild in the past couple years when it was obvious the team was horrible is also a big contributor.

I kind of expected that to be the answer, honestly. Guess it's time for me to really give Firefox a shot. I was an Opera user for something like 15 years or so, but they abandoned their awesome homegrown browser and I really dislike the new one they have now, which forced me to give something else a try. I went with IE for simplicity due to having a couple in-house apps which were built for IE compatibility. Thanks for the answer!

In trying to just "Reply to this topic," I find I am unable to do simple copy-cut-paste operations in the window as I'm typing in text, with the usual Ctrl-c, Ctrl-x, Ctrl-v. Actually, as I'm doing the same thing to try and post this comment, I now discover that I can somewhat inconsistently Cut some text with Ctrl-x, but it has yet to ever paste that text back in with a Ctrl-v no matter how often I try. The little icons at the top of the text window which have Copy, Paste, Paste as Plain Text, and Paste from Word occasionally pop up a warning window asking if I want to allow the browser access to my computer's clipboard (which I'm not necessarily worried about, just puzzled it ever gets to that extreme).

A-Rod and Barry Bonds immediately come to mind as possibilities.

Polanco never even got a game in at AA, did he? I think that may be the item I find most amusing. Obviously he's only up temporarily and will eventually end up there, but what a weird coincidence. What's Jeff Smith saying right now, "I thought I was getting a new shortstop, what happened?" Seems like a solid return for the Morales we've seen this year. Would've been nice if he'd played better for us and could've gotten more back, but a reliever with a 96 mph fastball and a sub 3 ERA in his short stint in the majors sounds good to me, even if he's hurt now.

I went through that drive this past Saturday, and 35W was completely closed from the 35 split into 35E and 35W at Burnsville for some good ways North. They detoured traffic to 35E, to 77, and then back over on 494. Might only have been that weekend, not sure. I think it's the best route anyway, but you may have no choice but to take 35E to 77 to get to the MoA.

If they eat all of his salary (to the tune of we pay him about $1 million per year), then we can start considering it. Otherwise it's not worth the trouble it brings.