ashbury

He also kind of lost me by saying we "may" have seen Mauer's best career season already. Gee, leading the league in On Base Percentage and Slugging simultaneously, as a catcher? Ya think?

Didn't realize it was possible, but I endorse this potential acquisition.

That's not very sporting. At least the Twins are gentlemen. There should be a push to get back to the Knickerbocker rules of 1845 for every team, not just the Twins, so that all may partake of the Benefits of invigorating Exercise in our Noble Game of Base Ball.

It makes sense, for a hitter whose OBP remains more impressive than his SLG. But hitting the ball on the ground to second a lot isn't a recipe for success in that role, as often as Span has been reaching base this year.

Yeah, looks like B-R automates everything they can. And in his major league career, PH is what he's been, according to his game log. He's had more than seven appearances, though.

Darin had another fine game on Thursday, May 3, in the Red Wings' 4-3 win over the peripatetic Scranton/Wilkes-Barre (Empire State for 2012) Yankees. He singled three times, and also reached base on a first-base error following a comebacker to the pitcher. Scoring two of Rochester's runs and driving in another (in a clutch two-out situation for the final go-ahead run), he neither walked nor struck out; in addition to stealing two bases, he also advanced on a passed ball, and scampered for two extra bases on the first error and again for a base on a throwing error after his hit in the decisive eighth. The only slight knock on his night was later being thrown out at home for the third out, trying for an insurance run from second on Revere's single to left - sounds like just good old hard-nosed baseball to me, kudos to Dewayne Wise for the throw. The 3-for-5 line raises his AAA batting average back to .364.

Not to straddle the fence or anything.... but I also agree with much of your point, shs. His AAA season at age 24 with OPS .730 looks an awful lot like an age 25 ballplayer putting up .697 in the majors - tougher league, a (last?) bit of incremental improvement in skill. The age 25 stint in AAA (1.000+ OPS) looks like a tease/mirage, or a "career half-year". But he's a player out of minor league options, and given that the braintrust opted not to cut/trade him but put him on the 25-man roster, it seems like a make or break year for him, plus there was a good chance (at the outset) this would not be a winning season, and for that reason I would have expected him to see more plate appearances by now than he has. Try to build up his value, as a secondary piece in some trade later on. Capps plus Plouffe for some legitimate prospect? However, his results to date would put even a staunch supporter (which Gardy probably is not) in a pickle. As I said, being at all comparable to any portion of Butera's career, not to mention the very lowest point of Butera's career, is not a good thing, and for that reason is by itself noteworthy. The Twins gamble and (apparently) lose on him, somehow thinking that putting the chip only halfway onto the 00 square is better than solidly in there. Anywho, I appreciate the comments.

I think the reason for this is the apples-and-oranges nature of the two stats - OBP typically resides in a narrower range than SLG. Last year, worst-to-best range for AL team OBP was .282-.347 (a spread of .065) while for SLG it was .332-.470 (spread of .138). If they both seem to have the same correlation to runs scored, you need to scale one up to the other for certain kinds of computation. Don't know how they arrived at 1.8X, but since no one stays in the majors if they bat .000, it's the range that matters more than the absolute level of the numbers. Said another way, being .050 above league average in SLG is good, but not as good as being .050 above average in OBP, and it's not because OBP is more valuable, it's because of the nature of the two stats - perfection in SLG would be 4.000 but you can't go higher than 1.000 in OBP. Anyway, I'll be tickled pink for Darin if he gets promoted for more than his cuppa with Toronto last season.

I'm with you both on giving Plouffe more of an opportunity from the git-go. Still, being within a gnat's eyelash of parity with Butera at his very lowest point last year, seemed worth bringing up. It's not a good thing to be even in the same discussion with Drew Butera. Right now, this makes it hard for a manager to install him in RF and tell him "you're my guy, win or lose".

Yes, thank you CDog. A much better distillation than I achieved.

Arbitron's list is marked as age 12+ for population. Perhaps that explains the difference. 100K? OK, if you don't like Arbitron's approach, there is the Wikipedia page for this area, which states that "The Scranton–Wilkes-Barre Metropolitan Statistical Area covers Lackawanna, Luzerne and Wyoming counties.[1] It had a combined population of 563,936 in 2011...". Those three counties don't extend very far. South of Erie? Do you know where Scranton is? Anyway, 1) there is at least one AAA city smaller than your guess, and 2) no MN (or nearby) city comes even close to this minimal threshold. I'm moving on, hope you will too.

Media market is probably better than even the nominal Metro areas as defined. Arbitron's Radio Market list fits my general notions of town sizes in practice, and helps explain why certain places of a given size don't have sports teams (or why a smaller one does). Average income also matters but that requires pulling together various sources. Reno, my nearest city, is pretty small for a AAA league. Unfortunately no AA league is near, and the town was sick of single-A. So they stretched, and with a new downtown ballpark the attendance so far has been encouraging. I still think we need to wait 10 years to really judge. Anyway, Arbitron lists Reno as 124th. Wilkes Barre-Scranton comes in at 71st. A quick scan of the list doesn't reveal anywhere markedly smaller than Reno that has AAA. It's hard to compare exactly, because once you get out of Reno and Carson City there aren't a lot of population centers within 50 miles for fans to make the trek, while a place like Lehigh Valley (Allentown-Bethlehem) has much more of this to draw from. OTOH Reno does pull in conventions and vacationers, who are looking for things to do, to an extent Scranton probably doesn't. Back to the question at hand, Fargo-Moorhead ranks #204. Rochester MN is #205 and suffers (as already mentioned) from the larger city likely drawing away from them more than it would contribute. St. Cloud is #218. Duluth is #205. Sioux Falls is not listed (an error maybe) but looks like would slot in around #175. Eau Claire is #237. Cedar Rapids is #206. Frustrating, really - aside from the Twin Cities the state and surrounding area does have these pockets of population but they are so far from each other (and divided by the Twin Cities in several cases) that there is no synergy among them. Too small even for AA, by my quick scan; probably several could be candidates for single-A Midwest League, indeed they have had teams in the past and I guess don't like the small-time atmosphere.

"Who wants to be here" should be part of the atmosphere every season, every week, and not just when in last place. That is independent of the view that right now it is more about the talent level than the motivation. To think that an Internet Tough Guy, or a Mitt "I Like Being Able To Fire People Who Provide Services To Me" Romney wannabe, could stride into the clubhouse and straighten this out is not very plausible; more than likely, the players know the business side well enough, and if they are cut some other team will sign them, and that process could even repeat again for players like Valencia. So they'll pay lip service at most to the ITG and wait him out.

Of course there is; this is baseball. OBP is important. So is slugging percentage. For the scoring of actual runs, it seems that balance between the two is more important than either alone. See the pretty chart near the middle of this article , which summarizes a correlation to run scoring with OBP and SLG (among others), and these two come out almost exactly the same as each other (SLG actually has the slight and probably unimportant edge). An even better correlation to run scoring is by combining the two, i.e. OPS. (Better stats than the apples-plus-oranges kind of computation that OPS is, don't add enough to bother with here.) And my point here is that the 2012 team is already weighted toward OBP. At this writing the Twins rank 8th in the league in OBP with .313 (league average is .317). They rank 13th in SLG with .370 (league average is .407). Not coincidentally at all, IMO, they also rank 13th in runs scored per game with 3.62 (league average is 4.34). Their OBP is not good, if the goal is to be above average in scoring runs. It needs to be improved, and Darin should do that compared to the at-bats Clete is getting. But on his record, he will contribute less than even Clete, in the long run, in slugging, and this is the Twins' glaring need this year.

As of May 3, 2011, the sainted Drew Butera had this set of stats for the Twins: AB: 50 BB: 2 H: 5 2B: 2 R: 3 RBI: 4 BA: .100 OBP: .151 SLG: .140 OPS: .291 This morning, I see this for Trevor Plouffe 2012: AB: 36 BB: 7 H: 4 2B: 1 HR: 1 R: 3 RBI: 2 BA: .111 OBP: .256 SLG: .222 OPS: .478 He's been basically five walks, and one double turned into a home run, better than Drew Butera. Drew came back strong to finish with a .449 OPS. Trevor is already higher than this so can we hope for great things from here on out?

As of May 3, 2011, the sainted Drew Butera had this set of stats for the Twins: AB: 50 BB: 2 H: 5 2B: 2 R: 3 RBI: 4 BA: .100 OBP: .151 SLG: .140 OPS: .291 This morning, I see this for Trevor Plouffe 2012: AB: 36 BB: 7 H: 4 2B: 1 HR: 1 R: 3 RBI: 2 BA: .111 OBP: .256 SLG: .222 OPS: .478 He's been basically five walks, and one double turned into a home run, better than Drew Butera. Drew came back strong to finish with a .449 OPS. Trevor is already higher than this so can we hope for great things from here on out?

As a process-of-elimination callup, Mastro does make sense, but (as I just got done typing into another thread) if he will be used as often as Clete has been, it means a lineup like yesterday's will become weighted with four pure table-setters on a team lacking enough guys demonstrated to drive them in. Mastro also is best suited as a leadoff man, so his strength will be wasted batting second or eighth or ninth. If Doumit/Plouffe or some other combination can emerge to handle RF, Mastro is fine as the utility outfielder, along the lines Revere could contribute. Otherwise, he doesn't happen to be a good fit for this team, as currently constituted.

Mastro is my adoptee so I'm obligated to second this. Still, I'm not sure his skill set matches what the Twins need, and I think that's why Clete has gotten chance after chance. Clete has most of what Mastro has, speed and defense, to a lower degree, and brings a moderate level of power based on his minor league production that Darin just doesn't have; they both show about .750 OPS in their time at AAA, but Clete's was achieved differently. In yesterday's no-hit game's lineup, three of the hitters (Span, Casilla, Carroll) are clearly table-setter types, Willingham has demonstrated RBI ability, and we can debate the spot on this spectrum for the other 5, all of whom have potential to do more than set the table but currently aren't doing much else (in some cases like Plouffe they aren't doing anything at all). Replacing Clete with Mastro in that lineup gives you four table setters. Moreover, Mastro's best role is as a leadoff hitter, and Span's not moving out the way for him; batting him #2 would likely waste his strengths, and batting him 9th seems weak to me. Particularly until Morneau shows he's ready again, t's just not a fit right now. Now that I think about it, I wonder if Mastro was signed specifically as Span insurance in case the concussion symptoms recurred. If so, we kind of have to hope he remains buried at AAA. Sorry to have to say that about my adopted "son".

He probably looked at OPS and wanted the better overall hitter to get more chances at at-bats. (Rolling eyes.)

At that rate, how do you plan to fill out the last three spots in your rotation?

Heh. I know it's second-guessing, but: heh.

What I am actually curious about, and would take more work than I invested above, is to add up all the win-loss records for teams that go no-hit, splitting their seasons into "before the bad game" and "after the bad game", and see if there is a trend for falling completely apart after such a thing happens, or pulling themselves up and actually doing better than before. I'm hoping it's the latter, and the Twins figure out how to turn this whole thing around.

Wikipedia has this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Major_League_Baseball_no-hitters). If by "most" you mean a simple majority, you are right. If I counted correctly, the nine teams not having been no-hit in this period are: Boston, Oakland, Mets, Philadelphia, St Louis, Pittsburgh(!), Cubs(!!), Dodgers, Colorado. (This counts the Expos as being the Nationals.) The Rays have gotten the treatment 4 times since 1998, and the Padres 3.

Let's see, here is the Opening Day lineup, about which some of us were enthused as being above-average: 1. Denard Span, CF 2. Jamey Carroll, SS 3. Joe Mauer, C 4. Justin Morneau, DH 5. Josh Willingham, LF 6. Ryan Doumit, RF 7. Danny Valencia, 3B 8. Chris Parmelee, 1B 9. Alexi Casilla, 2B What's the difference between these two (forgetting defense)? Morneau out, Clete in. Is that all it takes to become a shutout victim to a very ordinary pitcher? Morneau for MVP, so far!

He entered the game with an ERA above 11; he left with it under 10. Give him ten more starts, and he'll have an ERA under 0.