ashbury

Yes, and Edwin Encarnacion wasn't the least bit happy about it.

I'm more than fine with minor league signings too. I just took issue with the part about replacing Duensing.

This year the Rawlings Gold Glove awards have a SABR-inspired analytic component. Jack, any thoughts about that?

At AAA this year Thompson had a 1.4 WHIP, and he didn't have a lefty-righty split that would suggest a LOOGY role either. Nothing else in his career leads me to forecast him to do even as well as Duensing if he got the chance. I'd see him as organizational depth only.

For present discussion purposes I don't think Stewart can even be traded until June or July, per league rules.

Moderator's note: Let's keep the signal-to-noise ratio at a record high level, folks. Parker didn't mention, but it's probably obvious, that this is a thread the moderation team is watching closely. Review the Comments Policy if you need a refresher on where the "risks" lie; most members have nothing to worry about.

Baseball-reference.com has a tab for players who have played in Japan, so if you go to Randy's page there and click on it you get this: Randy Messenger Japanese League Statistics & History - Baseball-Reference.com

Pulling this question of mine from the other thread... Jack, have you been tasked to look at the business side of things as well as player evaluations? For example, airlines and hotels have expertise by now in a well-developed field of Revenue Management (or Operations Research, more generally) - do the Twins engage in anything that might fall into that category, for example to consider the business ramifications of losing 100 versus keeping it below that threshold?

I am interested in a non-rhetorical version of this question, and more generally would like to ask Jack if he's able to tell us whether he has been tasked to look at the business side of things as well as player evaluations. For example, airlines and hotels have expertise by now in a well-developed field of Revenue Management (or Operations Research, more generally) - do the Twins engage in anything that might fall into that category?

S'il était français, il serait en effet le dire de cette façon. / disclaimer - Google Translate is entirely responsible if this means I actually just ordered a bowl of stewed umbrellas

Way more nuggets than I had any right to hope for. Thanks for the thoughts.

A related question: what advice would you give someone young who has an interest in the field of baseball analytics eventually as more than just a hobby? Say, I don't know, somebody's son who is currently a junior in college and majoring in statistics? (Just to be clear, he's at school in Seattle and thus anything useful you suggest would cause him to pester the poor Mariners, not you.)

That may be because you're not, to my recollection, someone we've needed to remind about the TD Comments Policy, where it is explained in a little more detail. To buttress glunn's post above, here is a link to it: http://twinsdaily.com/minnesota-twins-talk/8837-revised-comment-policy-september-2013-a.html

It's been like this forever.

Splendid taste in women, my friend. I believe my wife and I raised our daughter to be a similar catch.

A pretty darn good amount.

The Yankees won the WS in 2009 after losing game 1 by a 6-1 score. But this year the Cards lost 8-1. There's no coming back from something like that.

Just downloaded mine. Woo hoo!

Which is, to be fair, something that is normally of very keen interest to a GM.

A little web searching reveals that renowned bad boy Aaron Gleeman posted this quip in 2006: My own take is that perhaps her parents had one tee many Destoonis when they named her.

What old people say.

You think that's bad. I'm older than USAFChief.

That treatment pertains to bonuses, which go to the player. (Well, minus the agent's fee, and so forth.) I think the intent is to cut down on financial game playing in how the player is compensated - to make it all the same under tax law, whether lump sums are paid or not. Since a posting fee goes to a third party, I'm not certain that the same logic applies - it's not financial gamesmanship, and it could be treated as a cost of doing business that year. There's no option (to my knowledge) to spread out the actual cash payment of the posting fee to the same number of years as the player contract. IANAL but if I were I'd probably want to pursue that a bit further with the IRS.

Fair enough, and I guess your post is at least somewhat tongue-in-cheek. But the linked article is IMO pretty readable. "Amortize" was the hardest word in it that I couldn't just skip over, and anyone who's ever signed for a mortgage probably has an inkling about that.

If this has been brought up already, I missed it: Molitor is 57 years old. A year older than Gardy. It's not against the rules to replace a manager with someone older, but 57 is pretty long in the tooth to be getting one's first managing gig. I took a look at the 30 current managers, and most got their first managing job in their 40s, if not their 30s. The ones who were in their 50s were: Bud Black - 50 Don Mattingly - 50 Kirk Gibson - 53 Ron Roenicke - 54 Ron Washington - 55 Charley Manuel - 56 The first three seem the closest match for Molitor - stars (or at least a long and good MLB career in the case of Black) who hadn't necessarily paid a couple of decades of minor-league, bus-ridin' dues as coaches, as far as I recall. Realistically, Molitor would be 58 or 59 if he ever got the call, almost a full decade older than these three were. The other three were more in the "organizational man" mold, I think, which may or may not have bearing on Molitor. But even they were a few years younger than Molitor is now. Jim Leyland just retired at 68. But he wasn't born old. His first managing job was at age 41. Jack McKeon was older than dirt when he came back to the Marlins, but he started with the Royals at 42. This is kind of typical of successful managers, such as Maddon and Girardi, and I would expect (no, I hope) the Twins to aim similarly. I'm sure it wouldn't be unprecedented for somebody Molly's age to get a first managerial job (I found it surprisingly difficult to look this up). But it would be highly against the trend. / edit - the same reason applies to why I've never looked at Gene Glynn as a manager-in-waiting at Rochester, except as an interim in case of some dire emergency.