ashbury

Yeah, but that was his first year in Organized ball. Let's give him 5 years to develop and see what he can do when he's not still a kid.

Indeed, although what I *want* is for Dozier to step up and take the job from Carroll. I'd also love for Benson to step up and allow Hicks to start his Major League career a few weeks later. And then finally I want every other player in camp to step up, and step it up again, and then we win the World Series!

You will see the beat writer pull out his thesaurus to look up synonyms for "adequate".

Very nice analysis. So can coin flipping, if you have 30 teams flipping (weighted) coins 162 times a year against each other. With that many sequences of flips you could easily find sequences like these. Or so they say - it's been a long time since I ran a coin-flipping tournament on a rainy afternoon, and I didn't keep my records.

This. I was on a riff the other day about scalpers pocketing the difference in street price versus face value, or the owners getting more via their new pricing policies. I could have made my post even longer by observing that the money is there for the taking, regardless of who ends up getting it. We're not being priced out of Twins tickets because of greedy owners or greedy players. We're being priced out by schmuck stock brokers and anyone else with large disposable income who can bid up the price regardless of what I'm willing to pay. Baseball is only the collective middleman.

Under Settings, I find on the left "My Settings", under which is "Edit Email & Password".

#3's job is a blend of getting on base and driving in guys in front of him, since the 4-5-6 hitters on a good team are no slouches either. I hope you'll include OBA in your article. The Twins are a bit heavy on the table-setters and lack enough true power guys, but I would not straighten that out by monkeying too much with the best-balanced of our table-setters. If the thesis of your article will be to move Joe to #2, then whoever they move to #3 may not fare too well in your rankings either. Perceived deficiency in the #3 slot might just be a symptom of an overall teamwide deficiency in hitting talent.

"My client wants Pi million dollars a year, or there's no deal." / sorry, I had to

> Which strategies will work? Only time will tell. Which do you think will work? Me, I like the Twins' approach best. Houston and Colorado seem to have problems with talent evaluation (I just reviewed the Astros' 2011 Bourn trade, P-U so far). Cleveland seems to be aggressive, probably in a good way, and the front office in Chicago is likely to stick with their plan and eventually succeed.

Is the ten-run rule in effect when this Murderers' Row takes the field? But, all seriousness aside, it is GREAT to see this first game-posting of the year.

Special memo to [insert your "favorite" whipping boy here]: feel free to engage in skydiving, hanggliding, Russian roulette and other activities not specifically forbidden in this list.

Gibson was 3-8 4.81 at Rochester in 2011 before his injury shut him down. I wouldn't be offended to see him "prove" himself there with a sub-4.00 ERA before he's brought up.

Huzzah to you, good sirs. Your concept of promoting the local "base ball" Nine for us muffins and cranks alike shows ginger and is likely to take the country by storm in the coming decades - the web site is no duff and represents a clear "daisy cutter" that is sure to score an Ace. Striker to the line!

> Twins director of scouting Vern Followell Follow Well? I don't know if I had ever heard of him (a quick TD search didn't turn up a prior mention), but it's a great name for a scout. I had to check that this wasn't an Onion parody article tripping me up.

It's folk, actually.

Others have already challenged this view, and I already said what I'm about to say in another thread, but... certain things that work for all players on the field during the regular season suddenly stop working when the post-season starts, and then the elite talent starts to assert itself. "Huh, he didn't swing at that pitch outside and in the dirt on 1-2. What do you wanna try next, sneak a fastball by him maybe?" Nobody quits in the post-season. That just flies in the face of, well, everything.

OK, "if you have to ask, you'll never understand" works just as well as a synopsis. That you go on to talk about stopping people from saying certain things is also indicative.

It's an excellent observation, since I believe it's pointless to play armchair-GM without at least attempting to see things through the eyes of the guy actually in the big chair.

I really believe you're on the right track here. Winning a World Series is hard, partly because you have to have a team capable of doing two things, a) finishing well in a very long season, and winning in short series when the approach changes. You don't face the same pitchers in the post-season, again for two reasons, a) the mediocrities don't get their innings anymore, and the stars no longer hold back in order to survive the long season; on the offense side, similar things are in play, so you might see platooning for lefty-righty reasons but not just in order to give your regulars some rest. Grover's listing of strikeout rankings for teams might change if one took the time to sift out the fifth- and sixth-starters and the long-men in the bullpen, aside from whether strikeouts tell the whole story (although they are along the right track). I have no idea how to quantify the concept, but the "piranhas" and hustle guys that the Twins ran out there to win enough games in the regular season seemed to be overmatched in the post-season. They have what it takes to compete when the opposition has AAAA and benchwarmer major leagues sprinkled through the lineup, but when the opponents in the playoffs no longer give you free outs to shorten your pitchers' innings, and no longer give you many mistake pitches, and are no longer flummoxed when you attempt to bunt for a base hit, well, if you are Boof Bonser or Jason Tyner, and the other team has beaten your one ace pitcher 3-2, what do you have left in your bag of tricks? Not too much, I'm sorry to report, you just "try real hard, get 'em tomorrow". The guys Grover listed like Freese and Renteria are a clear step up from the Jason Tyners that the Twins (to their credit, in one sense) get the most out of during the regular season but then try to succeed with in the post-season. As I said, I don't know how to quantify what defines the kind of player I'm talking about, but we recognize them when we see them: the Pedro Florimons who with a little more coaching *may* figure out how to stick the bat out there against regular-season pitching and get a few more base hits, but will revert to futility against real talent in the playoffs.

One year of Little League, the summer before I got glasses to correct what turned out to be 20/200 vision. Connect the dots. As such, I know everything about baseball.

I honestly misread the headline to this article, in exactly that way.

+1, brother.

Nah, he'll throw a complete game to finish the 4-game sweep. Think big, brother.

Chris the magic batsman, Plays for TC. And frolics in the right field mists As the fans shout "Parmelee!"....

Raves != ravings. You had me wondering at first.