ashbury

61. I have no money wagered on it.

Second prize: two pairs of tickets.

So now we need a seventh?

Little known factoids: Wee Willie Keeler was only one inch tall, and Eddie Gaedel was measured by physicians in the negative numbers.

That's fair. But at this writing, it's no longer working for him. I can't tell him what to do, but can only report my own experience. My time in slo-pitch would have been cut short* had I tried it his way. * Er, uh, even shorter.

I believe you're right. I must have been thinking of cases where a 10-day list guy was transferred to the 60-day and the days so far would count against the 60. But if the player wasn't on the 10-day then probably retroactive isn't allowed, and in any case the retroactive portion couldn't be nearly as long as all of Spring Training. I'll trust Zoll and crew to know these rules backward and forward.

Already is. The 60-day comes back into play around the time pitchers and catchers report, give or take. The Twins official roster already reflects his removal. https://www.mlb.com/twins/roster/40-man I believe new assignments to the 60-day can be retroactive to that first day of camp in February, if the injury legitimately dates back to then and they've just been monitoring hoping for improvement. Festa could be such an example, though I'm not sure. It puts a player on track to return to action around mid-April, rather than a full 60 days after the start of the season. Unless rules have changed or I simply misunderstood, either of which is possible.

Also too, the vast majority of Gallo's positive offensive output that season came when his teammates already had secured a lead; his batting average was under .140 when the score was tied or the Twins were behind. As Casey Stengel was reputed to say, you could look it up.

Kody Funderburk turns 30 a few days after the Twins WS victory parade.

Particularly noticeable are the ads for, "be a caretaker". 😀

Last season there were exactly 3 pitchers with 200 IP and they all sported ERAs 3.22 or lower, so the last definition would mean essentially no innings eaters at all, just three aces. Above the 175 IP threshold only Zac Gallen was above 3.81, and his was 4.83, so he just barely missed your criterion for eating innings and all the rest were too good to be called that and were just mid-rotation guys. Above 150 IP there were 70 pitchers, and including Gallen I see 17 guys with ERAs above 4.20. (Keeping in mind that league average last year was 4.15.) I think the mark of an innings eater is that his manager keeps running him out there despite not being hugely successful, so I would suggest changing the point of view to the ERA being a lower threshold and not an upper one for the role. You can pick a different lower bound than the 4.20 that I used for counting purposes above, but in any case there are only a relative handful of innings eaters if you use that number of innings as the lower bound. I might suggest looking also at guys between 100 and 150 innings - too low to qualify for the ERA title - and who compiled an ERA above 4.50. There were 19 guys like that - pitchers who kept getting the ball and who kept scuffling. They were arguably there to soak up a percentage of the team's innings for the year.

Is there a definitive list/roster of who is still in camp and vying for an Opening Day spot? It can't be very many higher than 26 by this point, can it?

100? Pff. Make it 200.

This year's edition is shaping up as the team that finds a different way to lose each game. Chandler Simpson not only hit 0 homers for the Rays last season, but has hit only 1 of them in 1197 minor league Plate Appearances; try and find that way of losing on your bingo card. 26 players on the regular season roster; 25 spots on a standard bingo card. I'm thinking only Buxton or Ryan might be exempt - Austin Martin by way of contrast strikes me as the Free space in the center of the card, as he's bound to find some wacky way of confounding expectations at some critical point in a game.

Mental gymnastics? Strikes me as General Manager 101. And I'll repeat, the stakes on this decision are low. Am I concerned? No. Do I like to play Armchair GM? Sometimes yes.

I think it's more complicated, even though the stakes are ultra low. If the FO sees the choice between the two players as being close, then a consideration is which move has the best chance of keeping both, one of whom would be at AAA. If you DFA Kreidler, then what are the odds someone claims him? If you keep the status quo, what are the odds that Arcia opts out?

Not corner outfielders. We have 'em all.

The Twins lack an honest to goodness fight song. This article points up the need.

Has he tried throwing with his right hand? I'm no pitching coach, but most people do better throwing from that side.

These guys have the over. I'm taking the under. Sorry I can't be constructive anymore. This team's a mess.

How I read this headline.

Here's a clip from an interview in which Johnson talks about repetition and mechanics, essentially interchangeably. A "mechanical advantage" isn't "mechanics." Just listen to what a HoF'er has to say, and don't quibble; when he says repetition, he means repeating the mechanics. www.youtube.com/shorts/T9zvE-IUoQw

Martin being on the same team is worth looking at. With all that on-base skill, plus some base-stealing, Martin in 2025 scored runs at almost exactly the clip that Wallner did. 121 per thousand PA versus 120. That is, well, bad. And Wallner, for all his warts, produced more RBI per PA. The low-power table setter leads to disappointing run production.

In a world where walks didn't happen, that math might check out. But because walks are an important part of his game, Wallner made outs 7 out of 10 times in 2025, and for his career he's been closer to 6.5. You know what else are biased heavily toward power hitters? Runs and (especially) RBIs. None of the top ten RBI producers in the majors in 2025 had fewer than 30 HR. Among the top ten Run scorers only Tatis had as few as 25 HR. Personally I appreciate a stat that correlates well with run scoring. And, as I keep repeating, I hate that Wallner's power was so out of keeping and resulted in such little run production.. Are you really going to drag Arraez into a thread where he doesn't belong? Try comparing Arraez to other guys on his own team. He finished behind both Tatis and Machado in Runs Scored, who batted 1st and 3rd respectively sandwiching Arraez. Weird that they both somehow set the table better than Luis. If you prorated Wallner's run scoring to the same number of plate appearances as Arraez had, you'd be looking at 81 runs compared to 66. Maybe Wallner should be viewed as filling a table setter role - and doing it a bit better than Luis (but less well than Luis's two teammates). 😁 This is no defense of Wallner, but to illustrate how utterly average Arraez is at scoring runs. Instead of sorting players into arbitrary buckets - roles that can change their meaning after the first time through the batting order - I would rather gauge how close a player is to being a complete hitter. Arraez and Wallner are at opposite ends of a very checkered spectrum while Tatis and Machado can do more things than either of them to beat the opponent. This on the other hand is supported by the record - Clemens was practically the Anti-Wallner. Using the same splits as I referenced for Wallner in my earlier post, Kody was seemingly uninterested when the lead for either team was 5 or more - compiling a bizarre .496 OPS in those particular 74 plate appearances - meaning that his numbers when it mattered were even better than the full season totals would suggest. He was like that the year before with Philly too, although in much smaller sample size. When games were within 4 runs, Clemens and Wallner got on base at a nearly identical clip (.297 and .295), but it was Clemens who had by far the better slugging percentage (.471 to .413). It's really hard to defend Wallner's season.

I feel like a broken record in mentioning this, but when a writer I respect overlooks the problem, I feel like I need to say it. There is more than one way to break down situational hitting. b-r.com provides a convenient split that goes by how large the lead is in the game. Wallner builds up his above-average OPS in situations where the lead (ahead or behind) was already 5 runs or greater - a massive 1.113 OPS in 2025. In all the other situations, 4 runs or closer, his OPS last year was a very pedestrian .708. If it were a one-year thing, I'd feel differently, but the same pattern existed in 2024 and 2023. (2022 had only 65 PA total, but the pattern was very slightly in that same direction then too.) Now, you might expect that every batter pads the stats during blowouts, when inferior pitchers might be on the mound, but the same breakdown across the majors in 2025 was only .746/.714 for OPS when the lead was 5+ versus closer games. (Oddly, the Twins as a team actually have bucked this trend slightly the past two seasons.) I think the disconnect comes from whether a fan looks at his total stats, or goes with the "eye test" of too seldomly seeing Wallner come through when the game is still actually on the line. I don't in the least bit question Wallner's mental fortitude, but there is something very screwy going on that the player and his coaches need to figure out pronto. I'm not going to let complaints about "Wallner bashing" stop me from presenting facts. He's just not been as valuable at the plate as his totals suggest. If it's just "statistical noise" it is long past time that it cancelled itself out.