ashbury

I don't see many games but I remember one last year where he two-hopped it to his cutoff man who had come out extra far. Two-hopped it. To the cutoff man. Who had already made allowances. That's pretty nearly straight to the ground. I've uncorked throws like that, but I was on a beer-league softball team that couldn't even afford beer.

Comedy, or tragedy?

April 2012 summary: AAA Rochester (I give him a mulligan on his poor AA stats in 9 early April games) AB: 46 BB: 3 H: 17 2B: 0 3B: 2 HR: 0 R: 7 RBI: 5 SB: 4 CS: 0 SO: 8 GIDP: 0 BA: .370 OBP: 408 SLG: .457 A 12-game stretch Darin can be proud of. He leads the team in batting average and on-base percentage and is second in slugging average.

As soon as I saw mid-game that Morneau had come out due to a wrist problem, and seeing his .536 OPS ever since his 2-HR game, I thought of posting a forum question, "who do the Twins bring up to replace Justin?". It has DL written all over it; something the manager and front office knew about and were hoping would work itself out on its own. The wrist will be examined, and the only two possible outcomes will be "surgery" or "rest". No doctor is going to say "get back out on the field, you big baby." Because, Morneau is not a big baby. This is bad.

+1 internets to you, King Boom Boom the Fourth.

In addition to what MWLFan said, I'd like to know from someone like Terry Ryan how a farm team's management can make life difficult for the major league team if they choose to. I believe that Rochester is dissatisfied with their agreement with the Twins, and if 2012 was supposed to mend fences it doesn't look like the product on the field is going to accomplish that. Yet, if Rochester ends its relationship and hooks on with another major league team, we know that the Twins will just get a shotgun wedding with whichever AAA team just got jilted. (Or, some years it gets interesting, and a round of Musical Chairs takes place.) Suppose both the Twins and this new team are grouchy about the whole arrangement - what would be the concrete harm to the parent club? Depending on the answer, this would be the part that is not 100% about player development. In addition, there is a polite fiction maintained that the minor league experience for the fan is one of competitive games being played; anyone who has attended a minor league game can recount in-game situations where this clearly was not the case. (Pitchers getting innings on a fixed schedule, non-tactical late-inning choices of batters, etc.) If at some point the Emperor is finally seen to have no clothes, I suppose a risk to the major league club is having to subsidize to an even greater extent the costs of their minor league clubs, were attendance drop to near zero.

A digression from the discussion on Morneau's wrist, concerning an opinion that the Twins were one timely hit away from winning the 4-3 game with the Angels, that I'll post here now. Twins had 8 hits, Angels had 8 hits. Was it a matter of timeliness? Angels 1st: double, followed by single. One run scores. Angels 4th: single, followed by homer. Two runs score. Angels 7th: homer. One run scores. Twins 8th: hpb, double, single, single, single: Three runs score. For the game, Twins had seven singles and one double. Angels had four singles, two doubles and two homers; one of their doubles was not "timely" (no one on base, no one drove Trout in), one of the homers was not "timely" (no one on base). Weak-hitting table-setting teams depend on long scoring sequences and hope for timeliness. Better-hitting teams get extra base hits and let the good things happen. OBP is good; OPS is better.

A digression from the discussion on Morneau's wrist, concerning an opinion that the Twins were one timely hit away from winning the 4-3 game with the Angels, that I'll post here now. Twins had 8 hits, Angels had 8 hits. Was it a matter of timeliness? Angels 1st: double, followed by single. One run scores. Angels 4th: single, followed by homer. Two runs score. Angels 7th: homer. One run scores. Twins 8th: hpb, double, single, single, single: Three runs score. For the game, Twins had seven singles and one double. Angels had four singles, two doubles and two homers; one of their doubles was not "timely" (no one on base, no one drove Trout in), one of the homers was not "timely" (no one on base). Weak-hitting table-setting teams depend on long scoring sequences and hope for timeliness. Better-hitting teams get extra base hits and let the good things happen. OBP is good; OPS is better.

I converted my off-topic response to a blog entry.

Hadn't seen until late into the game that Mauer fouled a ball off his knee in Sunday's game. That justifies a full game off.

Wonder if Mauer will pinch hit, to keep open the option of appearing in all 162?

Is it common for a team to claim someone and then turn around a week later and try to get him through waivers themselves? Is it not viewed as kind of a d*ck move, pardonnez mon français? I could see Terry Ryan thinking "if he's gonna be at AAA, why shouldn't he be on my AAA team?" I wonder why some kind rule similar to what controls Rule 5 drafts wasn't ever written for waiver claims. Of course maybe a Pittsburgh or a San Diego does claim Hughes, as mentioned above, making the question somewhat moot. But it still rankles.

I don't have a blue print because, despite a Baseball America subscription, I don't have enough of a feel for whom to go after. I'll just say that strategically, I would choose teams as trading partners that have a track record of not knowing what they are doing. No trades with Tampa Bay, or probably Washington; they'll pick us apart because they can evaluate talent, and will foist their second-rate prospects on us.

I hope it's not like last year. After the slow start they turned the corner mid-season, and on July 20 just before the trade deadline they were up to 46-51, mirror image of Detroit's 51-46. There was hope of taking a weak division if momentum continued. As a result, despite treading water the next few days up to the very deadline, they did not move any veterans for prospects; they weren't buyers, either, thank goodness. I supported this approach, at the time. But it was a sad mirage: the bottom fell out (and Detroit straightened up) and even by very early August it was already apparent that the gamble to stay in the race had failed. The outlook for 2012 and 2013 might be very much better now, had some players (free-agents-to-be, marginal guys clogging the system) been traded for good prospects. It cost us a year. This year, I hope for clarity at the trade deadline, and then let Ryan try to work some front-office magic in one direction or the other. Good baseball, but no false hopes, please.

I hope it's not like last year. After the slow start they turned the corner mid-season, and on July 20 just before the trade deadline they were up to 46-51, mirror image of Detroit's 51-46. There was hope of taking a weak division if momentum continued. As a result, despite treading water the next few days up to the very deadline, they did not move any veterans for prospects; they weren't buyers, either, thank goodness. I supported this approach, at the time. But it was a sad mirage: the bottom fell out (and Detroit straightened up) and even by very early August it was already apparent that the gamble to stay in the race had failed. The outlook for 2012 and 2013 might be very much better now, had some players (free-agents-to-be, marginal guys clogging the system) been traded for good prospects. It cost us a year. This year, I hope for clarity at the trade deadline, and then let Ryan try to work some front-office magic in one direction or the other. Good baseball, but no false hopes, please.

Happy 24th birthday!

Wonder how the Rochester fan base is coping with another season below .500, after the promises last season that the parent team would do something.

Can Oakland claim him when he's sent down?

My previous three wishes have not been granted. I want a mulligan. 1. Drop the AAA affiliate in Rochester, choose Washington DC instead. 2. Promote pitchers Strasburg, Gonzalez, Zimmerman, Detwiler, Jackson, Rodriguez, and batters Harper and Ramos (the latter just because). 3. Profit!

Despite appearances, I don't intend to post daily updates about Darin. But he's on a hot streak, and in the game Friday (a 7-3 loss to Buffalo) he went 3-for-4 plus a walk, driving in one run. (No one drove Darin in. Booooo!) He's batting .395 now, with an OPS of .886. Rochester's offense seems to suffer the same malady as the parent club: Table-Setter-Itis. They loaded the bases twice without scoring further. One other time they loaded the bases, and did score one run on a sac fly but then followed with a DP.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]802[/ATTACH] Joe Mauer must have read my post yesterday. There can be no other explanation. He hit a triple in the first inning, driving in Span and then scoring on Morneau's single. If you reconstruct the inning with Mauer hitting a single or drawing a walk instead, and overlook that every change could result in a different approach by the opponents thereafter, this was worth an extra run. He followed up with a none-out double in the third. This resulted in no scoring as the next three batters made outs. In my post, I had said that (compared to his 2008 season) Mauer was a couple of doubles/triples short, otherwise his 2012 so far lines up. Friday's game basically rectified that. Yay Joe. In the fifth, he struck out swinging. In the seventh he was hit by a pitch - a topic I did not discuss yesterday and something Joe apparently came up with on his own. (He did not score.) Finally, in the ninth he struck out swinging again, setting the stage for Morneau to do likewise to end the game at a 7-6 deficit. I won't re-do the extrapolations, but this game brings him really close to his 2008 season, in both OBP and SLG. No one could quarrel with a full season like that. And yet, as I said yesterday, I hope he continues the trend of raising his slugging average even further, even if it comes at the expense of his on-base average, because of the needs of this team. Of course, a game like yesterday's raised both; good on you, Joe. On the surface even the two strikeouts were OK, if he was trying to power the ball, although in the ninth just getting on base would have been a good goal too. However: on both strikeouts his first two strikes were looking, fine-able offenses in my Kangaroo Court. Wait: even on his triple and double, he took two strikes each time. Hold on: ditto for his HBP (a fine on the pitcher for hitting a guy on 0-2, too). All part of his cunning plan to lull the pitcher into complacency, each and every at-bat? Only once in five trips were the first two pitches not in the strike zone (ball one, in the ninth). Well, this is a topic already covered by others and I'll leave it alone. But it's absolutely amazing. Actually, an extrapolation I failed to do yesterday was his strikeout rate. It's up this year compared to 2012, even before Friday's game. Not sure why I didn't think to look at that the first time. If he's only table-setting, up until yesterday, an increase in strikeout rate serves little purpose. His GIDP rate is also higher than in 2008, and that's just plain counter-productive. Anyway, yesterday Mauer Power contributed an extra run by my reckoning, versus what Joe Table-Setter would have accomplished. Losing 7-6 versus 7-5 is no great shakes, and we know the main problem with the team is the pitching; still, I'm glad Joe Mauer reads my blog and finds it helpful.

This is the source of our disagreement and I doubt we'll get past it.

You can't? Please cancel my subscription. My wishes: 1) Kangaroo court Joe Mauer for every first-pitch strike he takes. Not because it makes him a bad hitter, it's because we have enough table setters, and he's the one on this team who can best adjust his game. (I may have said this already somewhere.) 2) Get Liriano drunk, laid, hypnotized, whatever it takes to get his mind completely on something else, and see if that helps hit the catcher's mitt. 3) Bring up Darin Mastroianni. He's my adoptee, I am legally required to advocate this.

The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle featured Darin in their writeup of the April 26 doubleheader. “What a prototypical leadoff guy,” Wings manager Gene Glynn said. “He causes havoc with his speed.” In the first game, which the Red Wings lost 5-4, Darin had a single and a triple in three at bats, the latter a two-out RBI to tie the game in the 7th, plus a walk and a stolen base leading to a run in the first inning. The nightcap, a makeup for the rainout of Tuesday, was less of a success for Darin, who went 0-4, although he did contribute a leftfield assist to nail a runner at third to help keep the game close in the 3-2 loss. He didn't strike out in either game. Altogether, the night dropped his BA to .353 but the triple and walk elevated both his OBP and SLG slightly, so that he now has a .801 OPS in AAA.