ashbury

We're talking about the game where he carried a shutout into the 8th, versus last night, right? I thought we hashed that other game out as far as humanly possible last week, but again, to me a 1-0 game isn't just any one-run lead. I'm pretty stats-oriented, but I don't believe you have a bubble gum card with stats on the mound, you have a human being with human variability. There's his years of track record to go by, but also the fact that on this night he's got a shutout going; if you and your staff believe he's "hitting his spots" better than usual, then maybe it's not a fluke, although fatigue also starts to be a factor. If on top of that you, as manager, have information about your bullpen, you may conclude that on this night your best shot at preserving the lead in the 8th inning is with the pitcher who is already working. I don't like that there was no one at all warming up until too late, but sending him out is a very defensible choice, just in terms of in-game tactics. When you take into account season-long strategy, it's even hard to second guess that specific choice, IMO. In last night's game, maybe Burton was considered at full speed, maybe the home runs and close-call rallies earlier in the game led Gardy to think less of KC's performance; different situation, different choice. Who knows, maybe with that 1-0 lead there really was no high-probability option, while with the 5-2 lead yesterday pretty much anyone but Anthony Slama would have done the job. Yeah, I like to pull the Slama troll-bait now and then.

How many teams go through the core of their season with 11 pitchers? That used to be the norm, but doing it now means swimming against a very strong current.

No one declared a winner, maybe, but Brock calls it a wash, which I view as attempting to determine a winner and seeing it as even. WS wasn't reacting to nothing.

William Joseph (Joe) Benson is my Adopt-a-Prospect for 2013. Joe was the Twins' 2nd round draft pick in June 2006. He was born in a Chicago suburb, Hinsdale Illinois, on March 5 1988, so 2013 is his age-25 season. He's six-foot-one and weighs 215, typical stature for an outfielder. He bats and throws right handed. Seth had a nice interview with him in 2008: http://www.sethspeaks.net/012508.htm. Also, Twins Daily member Jontler chose Joe as his adoptee last year, and that very good page remains up so I will link to it here: http://twinsdaily.com/adopt-prospect-2013/992-joe-benson.html Like a lot of athletes, Joe played several sports, football and basketball in particular, and when the Twins drafted him he had to decide between that and college football. As a high-profile draftee, he is well documented on a lot of scouting web sites, in the organizational top ten of most ranked lists of Twins prospects (99th overall in Baseball America's preseason 2012 ranking, though he has dropped some), and at the moment I won't even begin to try to provide all the links for further insights on his talents and projections. I'll refer you to his baseball-reference.com page for the details, because a table of stats here would be lengthy, but here is a summary of his pro career. As an 18-year-old coming from high school, he had a good start as a center fielder in the Gulf Coast League and the Twins also gave him a taste of single-A in Beloit. He stayed at Beloit the next two seasons, still playing mostly CF but also getting some experience in right. Reaching high-A ball in Fort Myers in 2009-10, his bat started coming around, with OPS in the .800 range, and the Twins promoted him to AA New Britain where he also did well. After repeating AA in 2011 with similar success, the Twins brought him up in September, and he acquitted himself reasonably well as a 23-year-old, batting .239 (.270/.352) in 74 plate appearances. In addition to mostly center and some right, he's gotten some innings along the way in left field; and he even seems to have drawn the short straw one game in 2008 as emergency catcher! At bat, he looks to offer a combination of decent batting average plus developing power, reaching double-digits in home runs by his 2010 season with plenty of doubles to go with them; he generally augments his OBP with enough walks to provide a balance between table-setting for others, while also driving other runners in. But the other side of the coin is that he strikes out at a rate greater than 100 per season. As you might expect from a center fielder, he's a threat on the basepaths and stolen bases are a part of his game, but he doesn't look likely to be among league leaders in that category. Injuries have played a significant role in his career so far, as he's missed playing time just about every season after his first two. The injury bug has been especially prominent as he nears a big-league career. After his promising debut in 2011, the 2012 season was an unmitigated disaster. He did not win a big-league job in spring training (he was a long-shot for that anyway), started off poorly at Rochester, got demoted to AA where he also did not shine, and in May underwent surgery on the hamate (wrist) bone. Then in August he underwent knee surgery. He did not have a strong spring 2013 either, and has started this season at Rochester again. As of the morning of April 16, in 33 plate appearances he's batting just .194 (.242/.226). Hopefully this is just a matter of shaking off the rust, and any chronic physical ailments are behind him. Joe is a few months older than my daughter, so I hope he'll pardon me for adopting him in a fatherly fashion from afar for this season. Although the Twins started 2013 with Aaron Hicks in center field, I still believe that a breakout season by Benson is possible and would add greatly to their chances in coming seasons. Go Joe!

SABR is looking for submissions to the Baseball Research Journal if your study pans out.

You don't ask much for your $4.5M this year, do you? Just better than league-average ERA for 200 innings? And since his salary bumps to $5.5M next year, that should dictate further improvement to <4.00 I suppose.

Nah, they'll be bugged that his change is coming in too fast, and they'll tinker until his fastball is down around 86 so that the offspeed pitch will be slow enough to fool major league batters.

I'm no insider of course, but I think there's two things going on with a young player: 1) you want him challenged but not overmatched, so he experiences both success and growth, and 2) you want to teach him how to deal with the long grind of a season, particularly the normal ups and downs and the small/nagging injuries. Moving him up *could* obscure the latter, if it gives him a built-in excuse for a slump; staying at the same level, he might still experience that slump and have to learn how to deal with it. It's a mental game and stability over the course of a season can help. But if he's really batting .400 a month into the season, keeping him challenged starts to look like the more pressing issue.

If Einstein was so smart, how come he got "i before e" wrong, TWICE?

Joe Benson. I brought Darin Mastroianni some good luck when I picked him last year, after a brutal start at AA. Let's hope the magic rubs off on the enigmatic Benson.

Wow, I'd better be more careful what advice I give. Ryan seems to be listening.

"Angel fan! Give me your tears! If you will not give them to me, I will take them from you!" -- Borat

That comes to approximately $2677 per hit.

The going rate for that kind of performance is well above KC's current pay grade. Of course, there is that big "If" in your sentence.

I just figured out the proper use for my favorite avatar: Victory celebration!

I was at dinner. Doesn't count.

The Florimonster! So, who mops up in the ninth? Fien? Pressly?

BTW, I like the pinch hitting move by Gardy. Let the new guy go to sleep with a 1-3 debut. .333, that's Hall of Fame stuff, right kid? Good game.

And of course the matchup being against Blanton put TR's off-season decision-making on the line. Score one more for him.

And that changes the calculus for the 7th, for those of you warming up relievers at the beginning and taking KC out after one baserunner? Or no?

Hey! We just slept together a couple of times; it was no big deal.

Sure. Send him out. Two-run lead, different story entirely. As always, depends on the analysis my pitching coach gives me, but yes. Wait until someone gets on to warm anybody up. / Edit: my leash is longer than UR's, but it's not unlimited. As before, "don't let him lose" is a good rule of thumb, so I don't want to take him out this inning unless there are 2 baserunners. / Edit^2: and the leash is one baserunner longer if we get that insurance run. Darinsie, gotta get a flyball there.

Crap.

Congratulations on 2000 good posts. Folks, for the record, I taught Riverbrian everything he knows about baseball. Not everything *I* know, of course. But everything *he* knows.

What's the deal with this Jimenez guy playing third for the Angels? He's hit at every level he's been, with power and average, but it took him until age 25 to reach the majors, due to a bad glove? I hope that's not what we have to look forward to with Sano.