ashbury

In Fort Myers at spring training I heard teammates calling him by the nickname Squiggley. Don't know if the name has stuck. Anyway, an important item to add to the Bigley Database.

I haven't seen any mention here of a tidbit found on mlbtraderumors.com, which states that "it was announced" (Dave St. Peter?) that Liriano would skip his next start and pitch on May 1. Sounds like no bullpen duty, just rest; we shall see.

I'd think less of you if you didn't. It was a bad way to lose.

Not for long. Liriano will soon be joining him.

Having adopted Mastroianni this morning, I am legally compelled to woof for him and state that he is the obvious callup. Obvious, I tell you. He is Ben Revere with an arm. He is Clete Thomas with an eye for the strike zone. He is Denard Span with... erm, a little less of everything, never mind. Anyway, the obvious callup.

> Sometimes a different coaching staff has success with a guy with a strong head. I just wish I could come up with a nice list of pitchers where the reverse has worked in the Twins favor. Maaaaaybe Pavano counts? Santana as a Rule 5 draftee, which somewhat changes the subject. Don't know of too many others, off the top of my head.

And... Aviles slants left for a first down to start the game. Sweeney is stopped for no gain. Pedroia rumbles up the middle for another long gain. And Gonzalez executes a sneak for the first score. Eh, I'll stop now.

14-0? It's possible. I don't think Lester is likely to set things up for a 14-13 outcome with another bad start though.

I figured he just fizzled out or something.

I wanted to put in a claim on Wilson Ramos but could not find him listed on any of the Twins' farm rosters.

All in good fun of course. I just flag typos when the resulting meaning is funny.

Are you talking about the game being on the line? I'm not sure how many chances I'd give him in that role, nor how well my blood pressure would fare. The few leads we're seeing in the 7th, need to be preserved. If you just mean mop-up until he finds himself, any inning is as good as the 7th.

Why stop it when it's just getting started? That, plus the "they're" for "their", suggests an editing pass is in order.

Darin was a third-team academic all-American, and apparently is fluent enough in Spanish to accept a video interview during winter ball: . That makes me worried that Darin will occupy the Kevin Slowey endowed professorship chair in Gardy's mind, if he's ever promoted to the big club. There's plenty more Youtube items of Darin out there, so I'll just invite you to do a search like this one. The good news is that he's personable in his interviews, and doesn't sound like The Smartest Guy In The Room. So there's hope we won't be seeing anything about Hipster Darin. Oh, and I didn't know this until I started my "research", but in one of the interview videos he looks a little (a little) like one of my sons, depending on hair length and beard style at any given time, and is one month younger. One more reason to root.

Darin Paul Mastroianni is my adopt-a-prospect. http://media.scout.com/Media/Image/43/437017m.jpg Darin was Toronto's 16th round draft pick in 2007. The Twins picked him up as a waiver acquisition in February 2012. He was raised in New York, and played college ball in both South Carolina (Winthrop) and Indiana (University of Southern Indiana), so he came to minor league ball already a little well-traveled. He bats and throws right-handed, and is of normal ballplayer stature - 5'11" and 190 pounds, maybe a little small for an outfielder. You can find him easily enough on baseball-reference.com, or you can click here. He signed right away, and started with promising results in low-A ball (Auburn) in 2007 as a 21 year old, and had steady promotions with recognition as a Florida State League all-star in 2009 and as an Eastern League all-star in 2010. Though never a high-ranking prospect, in January 2012 he was close to Toronto's top 30 according to Baseball America (link). If you like deep stats you probably already have a favorite site where you can go and check, but here is a summary of his batting record: Age Year Level PA OBP SLG 21 2007 A- 274 .391 .409 22 2008 A 369 .302 .311 23 2009 A+ 274 .426 .390 23 2009 AA 292 .372 .340 24 2010 AA 617 .390 .398 25 2011 AA 198 .342 .355 25 2011 AAA 364 .358 .389 He had the briefest of cups of coffee with Toronto in 2011. He began 2012 at AA New Britain, with rather poor batting results (.231/.171 in 40 PA), and was promoted to AAA on April 14, with a .304 BA (.304/.304 in 23 PA) at Rochester through April 22. Rather than plagiarize too much on tidbits about Darin, I'll refer you to this link at jaysjournal.com . He has been an outfielder through most of his pro career, with CF skills and good fielding percentages and range factors. However he was a middle infielder in high school and college, and in his first pro year he saw significant time at 2B. He was tried there again in Spring Training games at Fort Myers this year, perhaps representing his better path to the majors; I happened to watch him take drills with Nishioka and other infielders on the AAA field one day. This does not seem to have panned out, as his position in both New Britain and Rochester games has been exclusively in the outfield, LF mainly. He's a speed guy, with SB being a significant part of his offensive game. Plate discipline also figures in, as his OBP in typical years includes about .100 beyond his batting average. His power seems limited mainly to hitting doubles. Darin had an interesting quote that I can't find now, comparing the atmosphere in Toronto's spring training camp to the Twins', in which he said that in previous years if he made a bad play in the outfield he would get "reamed" (his word, I definitely remember) for it when he came back to the dugout, whereas he referred to an incident this spring where he got turned around when trying to make a play on a long fly ball, and when he got back to the dugout at the end of the inning Tom Kelly (I think it was) just said "let's try and keep the 360s to a minimum, OK?" Same message but a lighter touch, apparently. I have another 2012 Fort Myers anecdote that definitely I've not seen in any article. During batting practice on the AAA field, Mastroianni and Aaron Bates were together (with a third hitter I am forgetting) taking their turns in the cage. Now, I have seen somewhere that Darin was sometimes referred to as Maestro during his time in Toronto's organization. In Fort Myers, coach Tom Brunansky was instead calling him Master - "hey Master, you're up". Fair enough, players and coaches will concoct all kinds of variations on a teammate's name. Then I noticed that Brunansky was calling Aaron by the nickname "Bater" - "c'mon, Bater, hit this one". (I don't know if this has been Bates's nickname throughout his time with the Twins organization.) It took me a few moments to realize what Brunansky was doing there, as he called out the BP order a little more frequently than anybody needed to be reminded. Yeah, this is actually a Bruno anecdote in disguise. For such a stupid reason, I find myself signing up to follow Darin's progress with the Twins this season. I suspect that an inability to handle 2B well enough in Spring, coupled with the acquisition of Clete Thomas, makes his promotion to the parent club a bit unlikely, and he represents instead the Twins' commitment to giving AAA Rochester a more competitive club than they have had the past few seasons. But, we shall see, and I'm crossing fingers for "my" guy.

For now, Liriano can mop up for Jeff Gray, as far as I'm concerned. After 10 days, re-evaluate.

Darin Mastroianni. Wait, did you say Prospect, or Suspect? Never mind, I still want him.

Way to put a curse on the team. Five hits, each of the last two games. And their hitting has moved down to match their run scoring, rather than the reverse.

Seriously? The D-word is now a magic word for getting tossed out of a game? Pretty thin skin on some umpires.

This brings up a good point, that anyone with (even relatively) local access to one of the teams should get dibs on a player on that team, in preference to someone like me who isn't within a thousand miles of any of these players.

The AL has higher offense than the NL, so basically the Twins have as close to league-average OPS as is possible. Somehow, it's translating to 10% fewer runs than average. I don't much subscribe to clutch hitting as a reason for anything at the major league level, but hopefully the run scoring moves up to match the OPS rather than the OPS "reverting" to the lower mean that the run scoring suggests.

1. 13-21 2. 15-19

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arithmetic: Arithmetic or arithmetics (from the Greek word ἀριθμός, arithmos “number”) is the oldest and most elementary branch of mathematics, used by almost everyone, for tasks ranging from simple day-to-day counting to advanced science and business calculations. ... It's practically the very opposite of "alternate reality". I simply did "4.5 million is to 750, as what is to a dime?" I get accused of attaching too many smiley icons as it is. If you didn't find it a little humorous, we can move on. Or if you insist on taking it seriously, adjust your analogy to a five or ten dollar parking ticket; or else get over your apparent rage at ballplayers earning salaries that are worth 50 to 100 times less in purchasing power than you seem to think they receive.

I actually don't hate it, and it's a fun takeoff on a futbol drinking song, but this adaptation is pretty generic. Nothing about it is special to the location or the team. Could just as easily be the anthem for the Cin-ci-nnati Reds! Reds! Reds! (Ar-i-zona Snakes! Col-o-rado Rox! Kan-sas City Chiefs! Al-a-bama Tide!)

Yes, I kind of figured that out about you some time ago.