ashbury

Gordon has no minor league options and the FO isn't just going to give him away to another team. Since May 20, Miranda is batting .333 with power. Finding room isn't going to be that easy.

I think it's pretty much a given.

I have no idea how an MLB analyst looks at Mancini and thinks, "know who would be a good team for him? The Twins!" Castillo will of course be expensive. Contreras will likely be in huge demand, driving up the cost of a part-year rental. Either one would be desirable for our team. I have my doubts either one becomes a Twin though.

2016 was the year of the total system failure. Except, not quite!

"One of a kind" is apt. Baseball-reference.com has this fun tool called Similarity Scores (developed by a certified "stat geek" way back when), and Luis now has enough plate appearances for them to invoke it. https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/a/arraelu01.shtml#all_ss_other Look at the guys he statistically he matches up with best at age 24. You have to go down to #6, Matt Duffy, to find a similar player whose career started after 1950. Luis wouldn't have seemed one of a kind back in 1871, when someone named Ezra Sutton* started his long and not very remarkable pro career. But Luis kind of is, now, and is indeed remarkable. It's been said that one mark of a great player is that it's hard to find comparable players to him. Of course, that point of view can lead you to Willians Astudillo, too. But it's true of a good unique hitter like Arraez. * For additional stat geek fun, go to Sutton's b-r.com page and look at his simiiarity scores. I spotted no names except Arraez (in the age-24 group) from anything like the modern era.

Was preparing to respond similarly when I saw yours. Let me add this perspective: "stat geeks" so "despise" BA that when they designed OPS they included BA twice. Because BA contributes to on-base percentage, and BA contributes to slugging average At any given point in a season, a humble seeing-eye single improves a batter's OBP and it improves his SLG (unless maybe he's Barry Bonds on some sort of tear). And then you add 'em up. Contact is arguably the most indispensable of the tools, and "stat geeks" honor it in many ways. Zero "stat geeks" have said BA doesn-... well, you said that already.

Twins don't control what happens with Correa. All these other scenarios become moot if he decides to stick around another year, or another year after that. It's okay to what-if the scenarios now, but choosing one or the other is premature.

They evoke some great memories for me; I enjoy the look. But if they're a documented jinx, nuke 'em from outer space. (During such time as no player is wearing one, of course. Except [name your current least favorite roster member].)

But according to b-r.com, Pineda cost the Tigers $5.75M while we got Bundy for $4M plus a $1M buyout. So now who's the real winner?

Super slo-mo on Tortuga? I thought that was regular speed.

This isn't really the thread I should try discussing the big picture, and the post I'm responding to isn't beyond the norm, so I don't mean this too personally. But there's this underlying belief that if we can just get past this spate of injuries, we'll really start to see results. And my feeling is this: injuries have been baked into this roster by the way it was constructed, one FO decision at a time. Each decision may have its justification in a vacuum, e.g signing Buxton long-term instead of trading him, trading a propect for less-than-ironman Gray, trading a closer coming off a finger injury for a starting pitcher in Paddack who had a worse injury history in his elbow. Ryan seems like the only one on the IL whom you can't reasonably say, "didn't see THAT coming" about. The FO chose this plan based on an idea of swapping in spare parts as needed. Every team faces injuries of course. This FO seems to value durability less than most others, though, just looking at the injury history for players during 2021 and seeing what (if anything) they've done to make roster changes. When this "cavalry" charges in, it will likely be to replace other mounted soldiers who have just fallen. Hope I'm wrong when September rolls around.

Finally caught on that they had signed the wrong one? / LOL - IALTO

I wish you could, too. Brock, whatever happened to the You Win Teh Internets Today button you were working on?

Up the middle talent is always coveted by trading partners. Trading two, even for a starting pitcher, is not to be done lightly, especially since pitching prospects will also be part of the deal.

My comment to your article was a little flippant, but was intended to be constructive. There was no further data at the time and I had said what I wanted to say, so I left it. Today Buxton had an o-fer, so maybe it is an okay time to circle back to this example of data analysis. By no means is my purpose to do an "I told you so" (as some seem to want) about Buxton's breakout right after this article came out, because I made no such prediction. But I want to revisit the tangent about his week's statistics prior to the article. No one, a week ago or now, disputes that Buxton had had a terrible several weeks following his injury. An article looking back at the Twins' decision not to put him on the IL earlier in May could have been interesting, albeit second-guessing (which isn't always wrong to do). But the topic was whether to IL him "now" (a week ago). The only thing a batting record can tell us about that question is a portion of his most recent games. And that's hard because Small Sample Size is very risky to predict from, as we all understand. You did look at this small sample, and to your credit you let it start when Buxton's string of o-fers ended. But he'd had one good offensive game in a week - the month was no longer relevant if we were looking for evidence he was healing. And his other games in that span were not a complete loss. Good hitters can have a week like that even when they are 100% - as I pointed out, his OPS was even a tiny bit above league average for the period. Sometimes data needs to be sifted, and outliers removed. If Nick Gordon had been the topic of discussion, the game you wanted to discard from those recent ones might have made sense - that didn't look like a "Nick Gordon at his best" game, as it was too good - it would have been just a fluke in Gordon's season. But this was Buxton, and that one game a couple Fridays ago was not beyond his ability when he's going good. Tossing out that game was dangerous for a statistician to do without a very good rationale for doing so Yours was a thought-provoking article. But overlooking the one bit of contradictory evidence, that might suggest our favorite center fielder had found himself, was a mistake. There's the old turn of phrase about "separating the wheat from the chaff." You did that when you looked at Buxton's batting log. And then, through bad luck or whatever, you threw away the statistical wheat, and continued to dwell on the chaff. That was the point behind my quick comment. I really think there is something to learn from this one. And yes, if Buxton had gone an empty 3-for16 after your article, which could about equally well have happened, I probably wouldn't have thought to write this rejoinder now. But I still should have.

Yabbut the manager doing what the boss tells him is not a silly extreme.

If you bring up Kirilloff and Godoy, who else do you send down besides Jeffers? I'm always willing to overlook a slow start if it gets corrected, but Jeffers has combined that with another downward trend, and this looks serious enough to merit the demotion. Have I mentioned that I was very skeptical about the trades of Garver and Rortvedt for exactly this reason? With hindsight we can see that Rortvedt is injured and Garver is DH'ing more than he's catching, but without the trades perhaps things play out differently, and we could send down to AAA either of the young catchers who needed it the most. I didn't think we had an oversupply of catching at the time - a veteran and two youngsters with plenty of minor league options seemed about optimal to me. Oh well, water under the bridge - and acquiring good catching now is tough.

Oops, wrong Noah Miller in the link.

Concur with the general logic. Perhaps a corner outfield prospect can be part of the mix in place of either batter, depending on Oakland's taste. You won't be able to trade for a starting pitcher without giving up at least one young starter to compensate, and Jordy Blaze might have to be that arm - I view it as Montas is what we hope Balazovic becomes, so we have to provide more value on top of him to compensate. Have to trust the Twins FO talent evaluators and negotiators to decide which of our pitching prospects is destined to burn us the least when we trade them, while still submitting a winning offer. Although, dang it, Montas's most recent start was a clunker. Oh well, by the trading deadline, one start in June won't be remembered.

It's possible for the front office to consider the impact on attendance and revenue, and put in a good word to the manager whom they employ at will, without going to silly extremes.

SWR really hasn't been anything special at AA since his first four games of the season. Is he physically okay, or trying to battle through something that keeps lingering?

I saw him just once, when Rochester came to Pawtucket, but I likewise formed a poor opinion of his defense. He has been much better than I expected as a major leaguer. Still below average, and stretched as a CF as we saw the other night, but he makes the most of his skills. I would still consider him a prime candidate for an upgrade if one becomes available.

That describes his defense, and his bat isn't strong enough to make him an asset at any other position. Even as a utility guy, it's not fun to be worse than the day's opponent at whatever position he's slotted at. He's a candidate to lose a roster spot if any upgrade presents itself to the team.

ALL-STAR ARRAEZ! / hawt take of this mid-game moment

Yeah, that poor wolf won't even see it coming.