ashbury

None other. Before my time - uh, at least as a fan. 😀

It's been done a Lucky 13 times in the majors by Twins pitchers, most recently Chris Archer in 2022. Trevor May, back in his days as a starter, did it in 2014. It's true that none of those 13 achieved what Rojas did: limit the damage to only 1 run scored. Joe Decker and Roger Erickson managed to escape with just 2. I thought it was interesting, anyway. If Stathead (b-r.com) made it as easy to look up minor league results as for the majors, I'm sure there would be plenty of such outings to be sifted through. https://stathead.com/tiny/wx0sV (And none of this of course disputes what you have personally 'seen.' 😀 )

"Wanted" is one of those fuzzy terms that lead to disagreements without anyone necessarily noticing. A player can "want" more than one thing at a time. He could want to remain with the Twins. He could want to not leave money on the table. The Cardinals offered him $75M in guaranteed money. We don't know what, if any, extension the Twins offered, but the QO represented a small fraction of that guarantee. We do know that Gray was quoted as saying that, even after the Twins explained to him that they didn't have the "resources" to make him a competitive offer, he had his agent give it one or two tries anyway. I don't read anything in the MLBTR item the next season suggesting Gray didn't want to be here. Gray didn't want to play for Twins money. AKA right-sizing.

Does Joe Ryan wish that Nelson Cruz was still with the Twins? 😀

We have no idea what's been said behind closed doors. It's true that he'd be fired for being openly insubordinate. "Why do I play Outman? Ask the FO why they traded for an Out Man" would be just an indirect way of saying "I quit but I still want my money." There is a happy medium (unhappy for many observers), where Rocco isn't fired per se but promoted to the front office. I mean, Falvey's always said things like Rocco is a partner in everything they plan and do. My scenario of course assumes Rocco is ready to put aside on-field duties, permanently or even just for a time. Maybe he'd prefer to be someone's bench coach elsewhere. and just accept a contract buyout. *shrug* But we'll get someone just like Rocco as a replacement - a promotion for Tingler, or someone "new" brought in with different facial hair or maybe more hair on top of his cranium but the same philosophies as Falvey.

Hurricane Hazle maintained better numbers than Martin's in 155 plate appearances. So I'll join you in waiting a bit before declaring Martin integral to anything. (Who writes these headlines? ClickbaitBot2.0? The word "integral" wasn't mentioned in the body of the article.) He's striking out less and walking more. Power's about the same as last go-round, which is to say still nearly nothing. I don't feel confident with his defense anywhere on the field, but the summary on b-r.com is less dire than last year so maybe I'm slow to adjust my perception. Baserunning is at best a work in progress. He's scored 11 runs this year and driven in 2 so if you extrapolate to 600 PA he's the second coming of Luis Arraez, i.e. not the run-scoring engine you might imagine from the on-base percentage. All in all, he's earning another chance. Maybe by the time he's achieved free agency in 2031 he'll have turned himself into an asset. 😀

Well, that's why I put the funny little Trademark symbol on it, you know?

Been a long time since I saw that movie and I couldn't have told you one thing about it. Thanks for saving me the trouble of looking it up and watching it through again. 😀

Enjoyable deep-dive into a "moment" not too different from any other in the course of a long season - from the respective perspectives of the 1) PBP announcer, 2) batter-runner, and 3) fielder. Baseball rewards the attentive fan.

Do you know that there are exactly TWO players named Kody-with-a-K-and-not-with-an-I-or-an-EY who have ever appeared in a Major League game? And guess what, WE'VE GOT 'EM BOTH! Right now! But, there are still some Kodys languishing in the minors. Dalen, Hoese, Huff, Putnam, plus maybe a few recent retirees and/or college players who haven't even gotten a chance yet. You've started the project, FO, but now your mission is: COLLECT THE WHOLE SET!

This Article Aged Well.™

Rooting against the Twins is a different type of pathology that we're seeing here and there, too.

Don't be deceived. The Royals may have scored only eleven runs off the Twins' pitching staff, but that's because they were permitted only eight innings to try. Just one of those funny little quirks about the sport of baseball that make us love it even if there can be no possible rational explanation for the discrepancy.

Ask the Pohlads. I just provided a data point you can think about. How much IS enough? Keep adding dollar increments until we're up with the Dodgers? Where is your data for what an incremental dollar of payroll returns in revenue? Do you know what an S-shaped curve is, or a hockey stick graph? There are days of the week where I say, it takes money to make money. Today is apparently not the right day, sorry.

In a similar vein, how about some love for Ron Coomer? He barely makes the cut, with the 2000 Twins season before moving on. (Unless "since 2000" means "beginning 2001 and not one game earlier.")

They did invest when they signed Correa the first time. Attendance per game jumped from 19th in the majors the year before... down to 20th in the majors in 2022. They doubled down on the same investment and signed Correa again, to a more ironclad contract. Attendance jumped... all the way back to 19th. Do you suppose the business-minded folks in the ownership team took note of this experiment and made a judgment about the market they are serving?

With a revolving-door of randos on the roster, Twins games have become pretty random.

"Senior Director, Strategy & Insights" for sure sounds like it requires a PhD in Thinkology.

No. The moment they traded away both Duran and Jax, winning in 2026 went out the window. Not because of their special skills, but because it put in bright neon colors what the FO intends.

If they replace all the Johnson boys (and girls), the Twins will have to go on a hiring spree: Senior Director, Strategy & Insights: Brandon Johnson Manager, Consumer Membership & Service: Cory Johnson Senior Director, Partnership Activation: Amelia Johnson Senior Manager, Radio Partnerships & Administration: Amy Johnson "My name is Yon Yonson, I live in Visconsin..." (Oh, and there's also Sean and Deron, who I assume you have in mind.) As for future HoFer Noah Miller, I laid out my reasoning in a "show your work" kind of style, and others can repeat the analysis and reach different conclusions if they wish. I will say though that someone reaching AAA in their age-22 season needs to be treated seriously - unless you believe players stop getting better at their 22nd birthday. People lose patience so quickly with high school draftees. He's currently hitting his usual empty .235 for OKC, and that doesn't bode well for ever being a starter in the majors. But in case I wasn't being clear, starting is not the only criterion I had in mind for draft success - getting anything beyond "a cup of coffee" out of a #36 overall pick is not to be taken for granted - there is the occasional Randy Johnson or Johnny Bench but also a lot of "who he?" types. Miguel Rojas is 36 years old right now, and maybe by the time Father Time has his final say on Rojas, Miller will have learned a few new tricks at the plate and the Dodgers will choose him as the heir at backup middle infielder (Rojas seems to be really good in that role, BTW). Or, Miller could be a viable trade chip to some other team with that need. But I'll say again, he does still need to improve. Bottom line, "knocking on the door" is a much looser concept for me than it seems to be for you. As I said in my other reply, this is a highly qualitative study, not quantitative. In any case, thanks for reading and commenting.

It isn't really, and I don't especially want to turn it into that. But it isn't "not", either. I'm just putting some qualitative (hardly quantitative) analytics out there for consideration. Readers will draw their own conclusions, largely based on what assumptions they brought in with them. 😀 Firing someone is not the same as looking over the resume as a possible hire; I think the latter is more my motivation right now - looking for that "special sauce" someone has. And the conclusion I'm drawing is that I don't see it. (Which is why I wanted to discuss Jenkins even if it is premature - I believe virtually any FO would have picked him.) But personnel decisions involve other considerations such as whether a perceived flaw (like this one) can be remedied; Falvey still has youth on his side, to a decreasing degree each year of course. It's only a start. If I feel like it's worth it, I should look at the next two or three rounds of the annual draft in the same manner, and see whether any additional trends develop. A third phase would be then to examine all the lower rounds for whatever gold nuggets the draft team has found down there - I think that would require a different methodology than my "side by side" construction, since the vast majority of mid-to-late round picks never amount to anything anyway - that's a lot of noise and not much signal, too little wheat and so much chaff, to separate out. I also don't know how to separate the "draft" from the "development" part. So maybe the title of this post is in error from the outset, LOL. Maybe it's the case that if the draft choices were swapped along the lines I speculate about, the other team would have taken our guy and developed him better, and our FO would have done less well with the alternative player once he was in the fold. E.g. maybe Charlee Soto would be cruising along at AA and Thomas White would have been hit by that darn, mysterious, totally random injury bug. Maybe Royce Lewis wouldn't have done whatever dumbass thing it was that he did when he tore up his knee the first time. And so it goes. Thanks for reading and commenting.

Welp.

Because he's doing it while switching to first base "Hey! I'm not a middle infielder anymore.. How d'ya like me NOW?" 😀

Or, as some might call him, Noah Countability.