ashbury

Now the Royals are just taunting us? They hand the ninth inning to a pitcher sporting an ERA of 6 across 41 appearances.

Are we having **** yet?

You're on.

Or, "with". (Let's see how well this little jest ages in the coming few innings. I'm still open-minded.)

Public Relations. I think, anyway.

Why? Someone's published data on the length of the bones in his arms?

Maybe Rob Manfred can? He can probably find the wording in the CBA that grants players with 10 years of service time, 5 with the same team, no-trade rights. It's true that Buxton's contract contained no-trade verbiage that applied prior to his 10-year anniversary. But, you did say, "going forward," and as of this year it no longer matters what language the player and team agreed on.

We call the player a gamer when he insists on not coming out of the lineup and then produces. When he does that but can't produce, blame the medical staff. 😄 I feel very confident that Byron is the one insisting on earning his daily bread, and it's laudable but enuf's enuf.

A little Early for that, innit?

You mean just Wright? I don't believe anyone by that name has ever played for the Twins.

There's all kinds of funny little sub-rules regarding minor league options. Yes, people do risk being fired for not being on top of these and other rules. And I'm just a layman and could be misunderstanding a detail in the following synopsis. Each year's option covers the entire season, down and up and down again. He was already up and then down with the Red Sox, so they must have exercised his option for 2026; the Twins piggybacked off of that. For any given year, the option can be invoked a limited number of times (5). But the interesting little exception is that if a player is down for only a few days (at most 20) the option isn't exercised. It covers cases like this where someone's brought back up due to injury to another player. So, either way, I'm pretty sure Anderson has the two remaining options that he arrived in Minnesota with, that can be used for two future years. One last thing. I could be wrong but I think all of Cole Sands's time at AAA in 2026 has been on injury rehab. That does not count as burning an option. His latest rehab time had run out, and the Twins had to either call him up, option him to AAA, or I guess put him back on the injured list. If the player is saying he's good to go, you can't just do that third option. So they put him on the 26-man and let him prove it. He bombed, and I guess is willing to go on the injured list again as a result. Bottom line: this maneuver may actually have preserved Sands's one remaining minor league option. For whatever that's worth. Go figure - it's possible the FO knew what it was doing with regard to the rules. (Whether it was wise - they won the game Sands blew up in, so I guess it worked out.) Fun stuff, I know. 😄 Anyway, even if it was a rhetorical question, you asked.

This explores an important topic. On the other side of the ledger, a good boss I once had would sometimes ask, "what would they do with the information if they had it?" A leader's role can be to shelter the underlings from needless ups and downs. But other times, as the article spells out, it's good to give everyone a heads up even if it never comes to pass. It's a subtle thing, and probably no one gets it right all the time.

Not showing much remorse now, for that'un.

If only there were a web site that provided exactly that kind of information. Yup, .238 BABIP for him in July, compared to a composite .370+ in the other months. Your instinct was good. His prior three seasons have come in at almost exactly league norms for BABIP, so this year he's still running a little high, and was overdue for a month like this. Stay the course - he's not a shutdown guy but he can pitch.

More 'Neau, Less Straker?

Never ran across it. Good stuff. The Halsey blooper reel is from before my time in the Twin Cities, but probably will bring a smile to those born in the area.

Brent Jennings sees what you did there.

One more thought showed up after I hit Submit. Remember 1993? The Giants won 103 games and missed the post-season by one game. Everyone knew that the divisions were going to be reworked for the coming season. Many voices moaned that this would be the last true pennant race, even though there already were two divisions per league. They weren't exactly wrong about that. A race for the final wild-card spot isn't the stuff of myth and legend to tell the grandkids.

Used to be tougher to get into the post-season. For a long time only two teams did. Now it's tougher to make your way through the post-season. Between those endpoints, getting in got gradually easier, getting through got tougher. The common factor is that one WS winner emerges under any of these systems. The toughness factor strikes me as about equal, overall. At least, I don't feel that the eventual champ is more, or less, worthy than 100 years ago. Not in disagreement, just an alternative way to look at it.

Is it possible that different people are offering the hawt taeks at these respective times?

If you're going to snub somebody's wedding invitation, having a wedding of your own is probably one of the better built-in excuses around. Also, "hey guys, instead of us buying each of you a place setting, and you buying us one, let's all just get our own stuff, okay?"

Sands reinstated: "Getting him back is as good as making a trade!" A couple days later: "Yeah, for Shaun Anderson or Sam Dyson maybe." (Sorry, Cole, it's not meant to make light of your injury situation, it's about us and getting our hopes up.)

Going by CS% potential trading partners should be leery of any of the Twins' catching corps too.