ashbury

Clean inning from Sands. Little late, but this needs to happen more.

You had a freshman year. Lucky.

Pretty sure the cash they give the Mets would not have purchased even one start from the front-line pitcher we wanted.

Maybe to a large degree our disagreement is over what "is" versus what "should be". Further nuance as to maintaining authority could be a good discussion for the next time I see you at AFL or wherever.

The key is to get your point across without "showing up" Blue. Make your point, get some satisfaction maybe. But show up Blue, fuggedaboutit. A bit of a fine art, but also common sense, and I think most folks who work between the lines figure things out. Of course this is only my own opinion, from the outside looking in.

I don't mostly disagree, but I'm a little surprised at the line you draw here. Umpires controlling their domain is as old as the game itself. Treat the ump with respect and you'll get a fairly called game. Show up the ump in any of various ways, expect a few calls to go against you. Players catch on fast, to this system - the smart ones anyway. This is about as far away from the analytical side of the spectrum as you can get, but to my own surprise (a bit) I don't get too worked up about this. Live And Don't Learn, Mr. Wallner.

This is the Pohlads' kind of player! All five tools: Gouge, Skim, Scam, Redline, and Foreclose! He can truly do it all.

Or even with, now.

"No, you numbskull, not Juan Diego Castillo! That's a soccer player!"

Baseball is a sport for romantics, and the idea of gritty determination taps a deep vein. Still, if you look across MLB in 2023 you see that once the count reached two strikes, the resolution of that PA had an average OPS of .522. Five Twenty Two! That's worse than having a league full of Pedro Florimons*! And far below the .734 across all plate appearances in 2023. Maybe Royce Lewis is so special that he wills himself to not fail with two strikes on a consistent basis for the rest of his career**, but it's hard to imagine a whole team being smarter than the experienced batters in the majors. Joe Mauer was reputed to have pretty good command of the situation with two strikes. His career numbers show an OPS of .651, which is a lot better than the .522 in the majors last year. But then again, he put up outstanding overall numbers, with a career OPS of .827. No matter how good, or gritty, you are, you're gonna lose a couple hundred points of OPS by letting the count reach two strikes. I find myself bringing this up every few months, but here's what I see as the real problem for the 2023 Twins with two strikes: they led the majors in the number of plate appearances that reached that number. Their overall performance is weighed down by a greater mix of the bad stuff than other teams. Bad outcomes are built strike by strike, not simply on the pitch that decides it. Over the long haul, once you reach two strikes you're pretty well hosed. * To be fair, during his career Pedro Florimon himself OPS'ed .412 with two strikes, built on a BA of .133, LOL. ** Spoiler: so far in his career, Lewis hasn't, as he sports a 2-strike OPS of .576 .

I see that Sunday's game has been postponed due to lack of interest.

Ripken was not yet 22 years old when he went through that rough patch as a rookie. Royce Lewis is the youngest hitter on the Twins' major league squad and he turns 25 in a few weeks. Not much of a comp there, especially since Lewis himself is the only one remotely in Ripken's class and he's the one who's been doing all right (when not injured).

The Mighty Mussels disappeared. You can't explain that! 😀

Bases loaded, two out? This can only end well.

Twins bullpen still allergic to clean innings.

Bases loaded, one out? This can only end well.

123 MPH heater. As expected.

The Toronto series last October wasn't on teevee?

No, it meant that Chief Wins Teh Intarnets Today.

/thread

Teams are limited to 13 pitchers, until September when rosters expand a little. They may carry fewer. https://www.mlb.com/glossary/transactions/26-man-roster

It was one of those "mutual" options, and those almost never suit both parties involved, a year later. Sort of like declaring being BFFs in middle school. 😀 His contract was for $8M last year, and the option carried a $4M buyout by the team. In effect he was paid $12M for 2023, and had no say in continuing the contract for 2024. That said, apparently no bridges were burned, carrying out the business side of the deal, and they were able to reach agreement on $3M (plus an equal amount of incentive pay) for 2024. 2023: https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2022/12/white-sox-in-agreement-with-mike-clevinger.html 2024: https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2024/04/white-sox-to-re-sign-mike-clevinger.html

Thank my son Cashbury who works there.

My post was full of my usual annoying qualifiers (if, maybe, don't have an opinion), and I explicitly said MAT spoiled us last season, so to say "call judgment" seems like an overreaction. I left lots of room for the possibility Martin improves in center - but the man just turned 25 years of age so it's not as high a likelihood as someone younger. Perhaps another Gold Glove type of player right there in the same clubhouse can mentor him. Teams with intentions toward contention should keep the caliber of play we saw on Sunday in CF to a minimum. Martin's stylings on defense didn't by itself cost the game on Sunday, but in a closer game it could have. If this were a rebuilding year for the Twins I probably would feel differently; but we've all been through enough of those seasons, by now. Learning the ropes in CF needs to occur in the minors and it's regrettable if that hasn't happened for him yet. If Martin was part of the team's off-season depth plan at CF, they seem to have seriously misjudged, for the opening series anyway. Or else their intentions are just pretensions of contention.