ashbury

I am hoping for Cardenas, or literally anyone else, behind the plate just so long as there is no speedo.

Just checked the video. Exciting final play for the win; go to about the 3:46 mark for the final (lengthy and entertaining) plate appearance. Thanks for the tip! https://www.mlb.com/twins

Oh great. Another tangent about Buxton is about to launch. 😀

Slightly contradictory messages in two different parts of the article. I go with the latter. Regardless, as to the spirit of the article itself, I do applaud your writing it, as I think the idea crossed many people's minds immediately after the play had finished. Mind you, I dismissed the idea almost immediately thereafter. But the idea is not so far from the realm of reality that I'm embarrassed to have wondered. It was worth thinking through. / edit - ninja'd a bit by Joe A. Preusser, while I was wordsmithing.

No, but that was. 😀

Soccer has a very different view of sportsmanship than the sports I usually follow, and I have to tip my cap to what seems to be a consistent mindset even if I don't share it. The Offside rule, for example, seems to have as a spirit of "fair play" that simply being the fastest sprinter on the field pitch doesn't entitle you to what they view as cheap goals. The wide receiver beating the cornerback to the endzone to receive a pass simply doesn't exist in soccer. While I don't know every nuance of that sport, I would be surprised if the last defender gets beaten when challenging a player who has the ball on a breakaway to the goal, and goes down in a heap in what seemed to be a clean play, gets the same out-of-bounds courtesy as when the offense magically breaks free in a contested scrimmage as one player goes down. To do so would open up the kinds of abuse that soccer rules seem designed to prevent. As for Kepler's scoring play: the first baseman lost his focus and took too long to notice something was wrong. Absolutely nothing wrong in baseball to try to score.

From MLBTR: "Los Angeles is reportedly covering $6MM of Margot’s $10MM salary for the upcoming season. The Dodgers originally received $4MM from the Rays when acquiring Margot alongside Tyler Glasnow earlier this winter; Tampa Bay also remains on the hook for a $2MM buyout on a $12MM club option for 2025." Twins are on the hook for $4M. If they had a 26-man roster all making that salary, they'd barely have a $100M payroll. Margot's expense to the Twins isn't an issue. Even one dollar wasted, as it has been up to this point, that's an issue of course. It's the roster spot, not the money.

Free Anthony Slama DaShawn Keirsey Jr.!

Fun fact: among Twins who hit from the right side against lefties (so that includes switch-hitters), as of this morning Margot leads the team with 33 plate appearance, with an OPS of .660. That's not stellar but it's not a black hole in the lineup* when facing a left-hander, either. Buxton and Farmer represent right-on-left matchups who've been more of a problem for the Twins this season than Margot. I want to see Keirsey get his opportunity, and his 2024 AAA numbers support that, but I'm not so confident he would exceed that .660 OPS when facing lefties, right out of the chute. So, it is a bit of a conundrum for the FO to figure out. * An example of a black hole would be Margot's .344 OPS versus right-handers

This is a very good point. We know how the FO looks at platooning in general. Here's another point. Keirsey's 2024 stats show him hitting better against lefties than righties. And that seems to include last night, when he hit 2 HR against righties. This is still small-sample territory and last year he did have a more typical L/R split, and they seem to have platooned him more then, than so far this year. But in prior years to that, he didn't have much of a split at all. I dunno, there's a chicken-and-egg aspect to hitting against same-sided pitchers, and I feel like the team has gone a little too far in the one direction.

This closes the books on Ryne Harper's tenure with the Twins. (That's who we traded to get McMahon, back in '20.)

That's exactly Squirrel's point. They lurk until the tide turns, and then they grace us with their wisdom about how "they knew it all along." One of the game thread regulars departed late in the game yesterday. So I'm going to use this analogy. Suppose you went to a ballgame in person with a friend who provides good banter and good discussion of the finer points of the game as it unfolds. That friend gets a call and has to leave the game. No sooner does he leave than the other team mounts a rally in their half-inning. Just then, a drunk sits down in the vacated seat and proceeds to let you know what an awful team you are cheering for. You move to another seat but he follows you. Lo and behold, your team turns things around and finishes with a win. The drunk has magically disappeared during that rally, so there's no one to celebrate with. That's the effect. And there's a word for that on the Internet. It's called trolling. I'm here for good companionship and bad jokes. Cheer with me when things are going well for our Twins. Curse and analyze with me when things go wrong. Be there for the good times, be there for the bad. If our left fielder can't haul in a fly at the wall, let me bemoan that one player or that one play, don't make me pivot to defend that the whole franchise isn't rotten to the core. That's what I'm asking of these certain individuals. Game threads are not just regular topic threads.

It was a difficult play. Martin made it look difficult. In all fairness, his throw on the single by Rodriguez shortly after was the best I have seen from him so far.

Scoring in the bottom of that inning would have raised some eyebrows about the game, too.

Suppose Arraez were not in the picture. If the Marlins still had Pablo Lopez, and decided to wave the white flag this early in the season, and traded him to the Padres for these four players, a pitcher who looks to be not very consequential and three bats who are outside the top-100 across MLB but are highly enough regarded to be around top-10 in either the Padres or Marlins organizations, would this be seen as a good trade for Miami? Usually I want more young pitching than this in return for an established starter, but the Marlins are perennially short on bats, so all in all it looks like a reasonable return. If so, then this recent trade doesn't change my view of last year's MIN-MIA trade, namely a good move by MIN but a win-win for the two teams.

I read the linked article about her - and recommend it to anyone else - and after reading it I had the same reaction as yours. I also lol'ed at this paragraph early in the article: DSP, my favorite hate-read, does it again. He sounds like my Dad. When Dad was 97. The guy simply should not speak in public. He always manages to make it awkward. Break his sentence in two; the last part is merely cringey, but the first part contains a certain amount to unpack, slipping an implied negative into an ostensible compliment on top of the other person's compliment. I could envision her accepting a good offer if it came along, partly because any ambitious person might, and partly to get away from him. I know I'm reading too much into it, but that's the fun.

In the running for best TD article of the year.

Of neglect.

This is not one of the situations the rules give the scorer any discretion. (And in the case, not at all similar to tonight, where discretion is allowed, the starter can't be given the win.) Been that way a long time. Sorry.

Calculation of who is the "pitcher of record" has been part of the rule for 100+ years. What suddenly went wrong with it? Shall we go back and retroactively assign a few additional wins to Warren Spahn and Gaylord Perry for games their teams won after they departed? They merely led their leagues in complete games some years, they didn't pitch one every time out, so surely we'll dig up a few unjust no-decisions for them. Let's go back and remove some wins from star reliever Phil "The Vulture" Regan who got his nickname the old-fashioned way by vultching wins from deserving starters. Maybe we should fix some additional injustices while we are at it. In 1987 the Astros went 12-22 in the 34 games Nolan Ryan started, despite his leading the league in ERA. The batters didn't score for him; let's award him some wins anyway. Starting pitchers victimized by teammates coming in from the bullpen and coughing up a lead; teammates failing to hit and thus dragging the team down. What's the difference? Let's fix everything, when the starting pitcher does his job. No. Fans have always understood that the Win statistic for pitchers has to be taken in the full context of the pitcher's season.

Eh, when in Rome, do as the Romans do.

Worst loss of the season. Rocco should be fired.

Alas.

Chief! Come back! We're messing this one up, somehow!