ashbury
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Everything posted by ashbury
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Shucks, I thought this was the hotline to the Twins front office, where I could tell them what to do. If the Twins are going to do things their own way regardless of my preferences, I guess there's no point in discussing what-ifs. With a good-glove weak-stick backup catcher, you would designate some utility infielder as your emergency backup catcher, and pick a better hitter for your last bench spot, who could have more of an impact on games than Drew Butera is ever allowed to have. I have not been one of the stick-bangers about Mauer's contract. But this observation causes me to re-consider how wise his contract is. A contract for 15+ million kind of says to me "plug him into the lineup and forget about him, that spot is set barring injury". Can't do that with a catcher, he is going to have days off. Kind of a dilemma when you draft a top-talent catcher in the first place - are you setting yourself up for years and years of this kind of roster juggling that you wouldn't face with an ordinary starter and a typical backup? In the abstract you say "hey, it's a problem anyone would like to have." But in the concrete, you have a third catcher taking up space on the bench and rarely appearing in games.
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OK, that's another way of stating my objection to how Terry Ryan phrased it: leave out the words in his sentence that came after "better". But I don't think that is what he meant, he really meant it was the RISP situations that defines the problem, and not power hitting in all situations. Hitting for more power means more situations where RISP means "man on second" instead of "man on first", all of which tends to get lumped in together in a way that obscures rather than clarifies. And hitting for more power can mean a homer which clears the bases, thus eliminating a RISP opportunity at all.
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Plenty to chew on in Ryan's interview. Here's one: > We're going to have to pitch better to do that, and we're going to have to hit better with runners in scoring position to do that. Check, on the first half of this. I can't believe the second part is key for the offense. The Twins scored 100+ runs fewer than the Rangers did in 2012; surely the fact that the Rangers hit 30 more doubles and 70 more homers than the Twins goes a very long way toward explaining this difference, without resorting to RISP stats. An inning here and there where the Twins follow a single with a single, while the Rangers follow a single with a run-scoring double or a homer, matters more than hoping you can somehow be more able than other teams to bat .400 when someone's on second.
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Once the ink was dry on Doumit's contract, it was clear the Twins would carry a third catcher and it would be someone like Butera. In a day and age where teams often carry only 13 position players, someone like Doumit strikes me as a false bargain. Sign a good-field no-hit catcher, and you have to compensate with a bench player who will pinch-hit for this catcher when you are behind; in other games, this bench player can handle a different role. When you sign a good-hit no-field catcher, your bench option is to get another catcher. This is why the Twins were able to "out bid" any other team for Doumit's services. The scholarship to Butera is just shorthand for this larger strategic choice.
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Swarzak fractures two ribs due to "horseplay"
ashbury replied to glunn's topic in Minnesota Twins Talk
It being at a house, not at TwinsFest per se, kind of ruins my baseless speculation that Hrbek put the body-slam on him while waiting around to do autographs. -
Twins sign Antoan Richardson to Minor League contract
ashbury replied to Willihammer's topic in Minnesota Twins Talk
He has a lifetime OPS of 1.000 in the majors, and also has never committed an error. So I am also intrigued to see if he can keep it up. -
Of Rage.
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I ain't no second guesser. (Well, truth be told, I am.)
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The name for my next rock band.
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Eisenreich's been covered, and Allison was before my time (as a Twins follower). Lombo is mostly notable to me as being deficient enough to cause the ill-starred Brunansky trade bringing in Tommy Herr. Molitor brought in as a DH just didn't do much for me - my main memory of that era is that some little niece or nephew of Molitor was at the same home-daycare place as our youngest son. Pretty thin soup; I basically don't have a "favorite" memory of a #4
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Scott Diamond could be Richard Diamond's son and heir to his private detective business. Drew Butera (or Darin Mastroianni) could be the college-educated son of a mob boss, and Anthony Swarzak could be the goon who protects him, while Trevor Plouffe could be the hairdresser (and snitch) for Butera's girlfriend Jamie (sic) Carroll. Joe Benson sounds like he'd be the bartender Scott Diamond goes to for the word on the street when Plouffe comes up empty. You might be onto something there.
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I was thinking Garrison Keillor. But yes.
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Yeah, I'm guilty of my share of snark on this forum, but deep down I'm a starry-eyed optimist.
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The man really missed his calling as a poet. Take away the capital letters and punctuation, and it would be publishable. to me this is the icing on the cake and not a good cake a crap cake with putrid frosting go twins
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And I'm not sure of the legal distinction between copyrighted material and pay-sites, but the fair-use doctrine seems like it ought to cover a brief excerpt that has correct attribution.
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I'm putting my over-under at 74 wins.
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Yeah, my memory wasn't too sharp about that, and I checked and he didn't DH at all until 1980-81. Still, it says something about a shortstop that this career trajectory doesn't go toward utility infielder but DH. Maybe that can be inferred as a negative about his fielding being in decline, but without a bat, he's just out of baseball in that case; instead, Smalley in his 30s was valuable as a hitter to a team on the upswing. His value in his 20s as a steady shortstop was very high.
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In retrospect, it was probably a mistake to stock up on all those Confederate dollars.
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The Twins just can't give away their money, it seems. I think I heard that somewhere before, too.
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It's certainly a sign that if he gets the pitch he wants, he can turn on it. Baseball's not unique among sports as a constant game of adjustments. The "book" on a batter changes over time, the batter adjusts to take advantage, the book changes again... OK, I'm not lecturing you or anyone, just stating why I look at that brief shining period he had as a little bit suspect, although also hopeful. If it's true that a larger than average proportion of his homers were bases-empty, then one explanation is that pitchers were challenging him in the situations when it wouldn't hurt them too much, given his pitiful batting average when that streak started. As his record started to show this was a bad idea, maybe pitchers changed, happening to coincide with his thumb injury. It remains to be seen whether Trevor will succeed in making the necessary adjustments. So... more so than other players, he's very much an unfinished project, IMO. We can hope that with good coaching he will find the right balance and get the homers when they are there for the taking and settle for other positive results at other times. But plenty of players have hit a wall during such a period of their development.
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Irony isn't your usual stock in trade here. Unless I missed a year while spot-checking, the most terrible the Yanks have been since 1992 is .540 winning percentage.
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Smalley was that rare specimen of shortstop that you would want to DH on his day off. Who here remembers the nickname that Hrbek laid on Pedro Munoz? "Booger." And why? Because Kent, scholar of languages that he is, thought that Munoz sounded like "My Nose". Proof that I'm not just imagining things: GAME USED BAT FOR SALE
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Since the injury is tied to January 25 in connection with TwinsFest, I looked up who was scheduled to be there signing autographs: http://minnesota.twins.mlb.com/min/downloads/y2013/twinsfest_player_schedule.pdf This shows: 4:30-4:50 pm Brian Dozier 5:15-5:35 pm Justin Morneau 6:00-6:20 pm Josh Willingham 6:45-7:05 pm Anthony Swarzak 7:20-7:40 pm Casey Fien 7:50-8:10 pm Trevor Plouffe 8:20-8:50 pm Kent Hrbek I know Bollinger stated that it was specifically teammates, but wouldn't it be something if it was actually Hrbek, the wrestling aficionado, who put the body slam on him? More than likely, though, the candidates would be Dozier or Plouffe, who already have spent time in Gardy's VIP Kennels, a.k.a. the doghouse. Willingham and Morneau would seem unlikely to risk aggravating their own chronic injuries, and Fien just doesn't seem the type or the size.
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Maybe a little more specifically (and not in contradiction), there is a good reason to conserve that year, because if you have a logjam you may free it via a trade, and the extra year of team control makes a young player a more valuable trade chip.
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If they DL him quickly it opens up a spot on the 40-man and makes some of our current speculation a little less pointless. Is the DL even an option at this point in the offseason? But more than likely they will do their typical "let's give it some rest and make a decision later when we have a better idea about it."
