ashbury

Rogers left because he got nicked on his pitching forearm by a batted ball. Chief and I watched the trainer (one in a Twins uniform) tend to him, in the opponents' bullpen for some reason. After a while they departed for somewhere hidden in the bowels of the ballpark. Rogers had been able to make the throw to get the batter out, and it didn't appear he was in any signficant discomfort while the trainer was looking at him, so I'm hopeful it's just a mild contusion. The 15-day Day To Day list, as Chief said. Lesson learned, I hope - avoid using the meat-hand for fielding purposes. Not mentioned above was Zach Jones who got in two innings of work. I was impressed with his off-speed pitches - curve or change or both? - that froze several batters, including for third strikes. Nice complement to his 95+ fastball. However, he gave up a ringing ground rule double (nearly a homer) on a 77 MPH pitch, so it remains to be seen whether he can avoid Anthony Slama Disease, i.e. get the knock on him that the pitches taken for strikes in the minors won't translate to the majors. Still, I'm hopeful he can continue to disguise his pitches to the better hitters, and this is what the AFL is for. Max's assist in RF was a very nice throw to nail a runner going to third.

Normalized to the league, Plouffe's 2014 OPS of .751 was good for 110 OPS+. We do have two other world series winners to compare to: Gaetti's OPS of .788 in 1987 only comes to 102 OPS+, and Pagliarulo's 1991 OPS of .706 comes to a paltry 91 OPS+. (Scotty Leius did supplement Pags at third, in one of the more successful platoons in Twins history, so that their combined production was probably about in line with Plouffe's season.) Ah yes, I overlooked another world series Twins team, one that didn't win it all. 1965 had the legendary Rich Rollins and his .641 (OPS+ 79). Others have debated the substance of your position, but I couldn't let this Twins-specific aspect of it go without comment. It seems clear to me that a team could win with Trevor Plouffe at third base if he keeps up present production, and without the manager having to go to great lengths to work around him. 1991 was more of a challenge and required some actual Managin'TM for the position.

I've always had skilled craftsmen form the likeness of each page into the side of a block of polished granite, and used those blocks for cornerstones of important buildings.

Or, the ability to work on more than just one thing at a time.

Mauer will have to stand in line for his chance to punch TC Bear.

If I read TD, I would laugh at this very funny post.

Will this be enough, or should he go old-school and also punch some sides of beef? Cross-train, sez I.

Also the Being Hit On The Head lessons. http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kQFKtI6gn9Y/hqdefault.jpg

Well, the concept I had in mind for something called "The FSNorth Guys" wouldn't likely be in the category we usually call reporting. More like a podcast 1 with production values. 1 No offense intended to those who make podca... nah, who am I kidding?

There's no question that woman is the term I'd use at work, etc. But if Fox Sports had a group of males doing light interviews, they might call them, I don't know, "The FSNorth Guys." No one would think twice. What would be an acceptable counterpart to that?

At one time, at least, you could find YouTube footage of Darin Mastroianni giving an interview in Spanish. Darin for manager!

Yes, I foresee the Twins buying out their team option on him for 2015 and then offering him the $15.3M.

Beautiful writeup by Mike B.

For "boys" I agree. What's a useful female analogue for the word "guys", though? Back in the 70s or whenever, I adopted the word "gals" as a more acceptable substitute for "girls". "Guys and gals", or just "gals" alone, seemed to work. In the past ten years or so, though, I've gotten weird looks, most often from people my kids' age, when I use that word in any context. Like I'm trying to sound Western or something, and just got back from a square dance. "Guys and women" sounds overly formal toward the women, when a casual tone is what I wanted, not to mention unequal. "Guys" collectively for both genders isn't well received. I've gone back to "girls" a lot of times. It's what I hear a lot of grown women saying.

Plouffe 2014 against White Sox (1.084 OPS) or Plouffe 2014 against Indians (.471)?

Moderator's Note: this is heading down a path more like bickering than good discussion, with undercurrents of accusations of arguing in bad faith. Please keep it civil.

I would want to try to find a courteous way of asking Terry how his views are evolving, on the practice of "bottom fishing" for many of his major league free agent signings - Guerrier/Kubel/Bartlett this past season worked out pretty poorly, various other examples in prior years, where "only" a few million apiece were invested and little comes of it. (As opposed to the necessary practice of filling out AAA / AA rosters to field competitive teams in those cities, of course.) I'd want to be ready with a followup to dig deeper, after the possible self-effacing reply from Terry of "look how well that Nolasco signing worked out". Could tie into the related practice of scouring the waiver wires, where the team has demonstrated a little more success this past year, as a compare/contrast. I also would be interested in his views about the structure of his recent trades, where (with rare exceptions like Span-for-Meyer) the other teams package two or more players to get one of ours, as opposed to us packaging multiple players to get one solid prospect of theirs. The natural answer is "trading is hard", also "Escobar's worked out pretty well", but anything that could dig a little deeper about the seeming pattern of being someone else's dumping ground would be interesting, particularly as it relates to making 40-man roster issues more difficult. Which ties in, as the other side of the coin, with the above question about waiver wires, which means everything is connected, which means I would be a lousy interviewer but maybe a decent ghostwriter for a memoir.

Igawa at $4M for 5 years didn't kill the Yankees' budget and wouldn't kill the Twins' either. No GM is likely to say, "sorry, can't sign Scherzer, we've still got $4M on the books sitting in AAA". Of course you don't just throw away $4M for the sake of spending, and you don't want to come out on the wrong end of such risks multiple times; but if your scouts agree there is upside, you can compute the risk factors and decide to make the offer. Mind you, I don't trust the Twins' scouting of Japan, based on the Nishioka experience. I don't recall hearing Ryan explain his view on why it failed when other MLB teams have succeeded, and what constructive steps have been taken to prevent that. We can see they haven't signed anyone from there again. It still comes down to talent evaluation.

You can. Click on the "Special BBCode" icon in the editor, it's the greenish square on the top row third from the left when you are replying to a post. Select "Media" in the dropdown menu, and enter the URL in the lower box labeled Media URL. Alternatively, just enter the URL as text, then surround it with text in square brackets saying "media]" and "[/media]". (I left off the first opening bracket there, otherwise it would be taken as something to embed. Catch 22. ) Here's the result: http://youtu.be/FA4yYxaVvP8

You mean aside from Escobar, Santana, Vargas, Arcia, Hicks and Pinto in the lineup? Names I heard bandied about like Deibinson Romero and James Beresford are not that young anymore anyway. I'm not hugely interested in bringing up 23-year-olds just for the sake of youth, if they have no upside and no confidence from the coaches that they are equipped to succeed.

Some teens (a little too fresh-scrubbed but whatchagonnado?) discuss the message found in Nicki Minaj's Anaconda: [media]http://youtu.be/1Uf7UpkbfmY[/media]

You're right; after having been attentive to this distinction while reading others' posts I slipped up and mis-spoke. "Not offered to renew", rather than "fired". II think my point remains the same, however. Ryan informed them that their status for 2015 is in limbo and gave his blessing if they want to look elsewhere rather than hold out false hope of a quick determination of their fates if they wish to stay.

Dr Marshall has been pushing his ideas to all who would listen for many many years now. He has had lots of young pitchers come to him, and I think if he had some magic touch there would be more success stories by now.

I didn't memorize the press conference the day Gardy was fired, but I don't remember anything about the search being quick, nor could I find anything to that effect with a short bit of web searching now. Indeed, Ryan went to the trouble of saying the coaches' jobs were in limbo until a choice was made, something that wouldn't be the case if the process was going to be quick, they'd either be fired too or kept (on a case by case basis of course).

This is on Dan Piraro's blog this week. Had to share.http://bizarrocomics.com/files/2014/09/Bizarro-09-28-14-WEB.jpg