ashbury

He looks younger than his years, at least until he takes off his hat. For whatever that is worth.

Arcia being optioned would be the "new sheriff in town" move that I've been expecting Molitor to make at some point in Spring. Send a message to the lollygaggers, or whatever, dontcha know. "You can't play on my team. Not like that."

A business person I highly respect told me years ago that Poker is a terrible analogy for business decisions. Successful business people do not place "bets".

A failure of Mentorin', I'd call it.

I do not understand the enthusiasm for Boyer. Did the Twins teach him an illegal pitch that they think will be key to his success? His resume does not suggest he's worth thinking about. If they are basing decisions in any way on his spring numbers, note that the Small Sample Size leading to a good ERA also involves an unsustainable BABIP of .179. He can not help but get worse. The last word I had seen was that the Braves were completely averse to a trade that would let us stash Graham in the minors. Maybe that has changed. Losing Graham in order to keep Boyer would be galling.

Today we skipped the major league game and spent our morning and afternoon on the back fields. But only after watching some of the major leaguers doing drills on the front field. Looked like they were concentrating on the pitchers making their throws to bases - I wonder if the snafus in yesterday's game had anything to do with that. Had a nice chat there with TDers John Bonnes, Jim Crikket, Halsey Hall, and beckmt (I believe only one of these names appears on any of these gentlemen's birth certificates). Baseball on a warm southwest Florida day is even better with friends old and new. The two "A" games started at 1 pm, both against corresponding Rays affiliates. We mainly watched the nominal Cedar Rapids team managed by Jake Mauer, and I took one short peek at the Ft Myers team managed by Jeff Smith. I mention the teams this way, rather than a hard and fast A/A+ classification, because the players themselves were a mishmash from the rosters that were published only a few days earlier. Things change fast in spring training as the major league roster gets pared down and the ripple effect works its way down the organization. I'm sure what we saw today was a close approximation to the final assignments. I didn't keep a scoresheet, but I did jot down a few thoughts. (Oh, and you'll notice there are no photos; bummer, I forgot to reinsert the memory card into my camera after downloading last night.) Baby faced Stephen Gonsalves started for the Kernels. He proved to be a very tough draw for the Rays batters, just as a highly touted prospect should be. He notched two strikeouts to start the game, and then had a truly wicked liner come right back to him, one that somehow ended up in his mitt instead of somewhere less lucky. That was probably the hardest hit ball against him - I think he gave up one seeing-eye hit and altogether he had a sparkling day. My one look at the other field was in what I assume to be starter Chih-Wei Hu's final inning of work. When I strolled over, it was first and third with nobody out. I don't know for sure how he got into the jam - a Rays coach briefed me as maybe a hit and an error - but he worked his way out nicely, with the batters having difficulty dealing with the movement on the ball. Hu doesn't have the fastball that evaluators like, but so far he has had nothing but success in his two years in the low minors, and like a fool I am thinking his ceiling could be front of the rotation. No one else on the planet has expressed such optimism - so I'll be gloating when he starts Game One of a World Series - one of these days Real Soon Now. Catcher Brian Navarreto nailed a runner trying to steal second, to end one inning, and I'm not sure I ever saw a bigger grin on a player's face when he headed back to his dugout. And he had a right to be pleased, I thought - a really good throw. Jorge Fernandez contributed a no-doubter home run to left. Late in the game Brandon Poulson came in to pitch for one inning. His reputation for wildness appeared deserved - and while sometimes you hear "effectively wild" he wasn't very effective either. Jose Velez preceded Poulson and seemed to have good velocity (AshburySteven groaned when I attempted "Velezity") but he was pretty hittable, yet he escaped without too much damage. Kuo Hua Lo pitched a couple of innings and gave up some solid shots that I think plated a run. I haven't given you a very good idea of the scoring, because I fail to keep track in games like this, but I think the final score was about 4-2 in our favor. Tanner English legged out a single, hit to short, that many other players would not have. And speaking of short players, Rays 2B prospect Oscar Sanay is listed on b-r.com as 5'7" but at the plate he looked not much taller than substitute catcher Brett Doe crouching. The above-mentioned Tanner, listed at a generous 5'10", no doubt towers over him. I don't remember much about what he did, he just caught my eye. Much more the prototypical looking player is first baseman Tyler Kuresa. His fiancee sat near us, and we chatted pleasantly about him and random other topics, as the game went along. Hint to Seth - he might be a good one to interview in depth - I know now for instance he takes pride in his defense at 1B. (Another of those Spring Training pleasures is watching Tom Kelly proceed onto the field in foul territory and coach his defense, in-game. Kuresa got a tip or two that way today.) The lefty looked good at the plate today, hitting an at'em ball to CF for an out and getting a nice sharp single to RF, suggesting that his good showing in Elizabethton was no fluke last year. A Rays lefty with a vicious sidearm delivery did strike him out on what appeared to be a low offspeed pitch on 3-2 after an otherwise good battle. So he's someone I'll add to my Players I'll Be Watching list this year.

Great to meet you too, Stringer!

New coaching staff, same front office. I would not expect radical change in the way resources are managed.

I'll be heading over there soon too. Look for the tall guy in the brown Deschutes Beer t-shirt, with an even taller son. (If you end up talking with Aaron Slegers, you went too tall.)

Paul, yeah, just imagine the extra power he could generate if he wasn't all tangled up in his cuffs. Doc, thanks for the compliments. The camera is just a compact model and you can tell if you look closely that the sharpness isn't quite there. But Number One Son AshburyDavid is the one who has invested in camera equipment, and got some good shots in the AFL. Here is one I really like. I've visited newly built parks in Reno and Indianapolis, and all of these are very good in their own ways. The view from yesterday's 10 dollar seats was pretty far from the action, but the panorama is nice.

And what is the signal to say wait another 75 seconds before throwing the next pitch?

I think that right now players with options remaining versus players out of options will dominate the decision making for April. I'm not totally thrilled, but I can understand the impulse by the front office to not throw away resources that can't be gotten back when instead resources that can be gotten back can be stashed.

We allowed ourselves the luxury of arriving sometime after 11, and learned that the minor leaguers would not play at noon but at 1. Since we had cheap-seat tickets for the big league game, we chatted outside the park with Thrylos then went on in. Tomorrow we'll stay outside and watch the prospects again. Warm day, starting out overcast but changing to partly sunny. Sunscreen advised. Ricky Nolasco had a very nice outing, particularly in the early going when I noted three backward-K strikeouts in the first two innings. In each of the next two innings he was aided by Mauer with a 3-6-3 double play (I'm remembering one now as 3-4-3 but I'll go with what I scribbled). He gave up a solo homer to Donaldson in his fifth and final inning. I didn't keep a pitch count but it had to be decently low. Ricky's a good bounceback candidate for 2015 and this was an extremely encouraging outing. This photo may or may not be of Donaldson, connecting or not connecting on that homer; I didn't take good notes when I was snapping action shots but I think it was just a foul prior to the homer. Meanwhile, as probably every Twins blogger on the planet has already noted, "Dozier celebrated his new contract extension with a first inning home run" to left. Here he is during warmups before the next inning. Doesn't he look elated? Schafer later hit a solo shot to right; maybe he wants some dough too. Plouffe finished out of the running with only a double. Hunter hit a deep homer to left, but he already owes us, amiright? My son AshburySteven pleased me with the observation that Hunter isn't actually costing anything meaningful because the marginal cost of his contract is zero in the absence of being close to any practical budgetary limit; that collitch edjamacation we paid for (at nonzero marginal cost, amiright?) is actually working out for him. Speaking of sunk costs, Mauer didn't have much to show in the box score, but he had two warning track shots to left. That's in keeping with what I saw in BP the day before. Here's a routine but classic pose by the man: Perkins had a clean enough looking pitching line in the box score, but he was bouncing several in the dirt. So he clearly is still working on a few things. Duensing came in next, for the seventh, and did not have good results, retiring no one and leaving with the bases loaded after he took a shot off of his leg. Molitor evidently wanted to see how he'd do against righties because he fed him to two very dangerous ones, Joey Bats and Donaldson. The outing didn't aid Duensing's ambition to be more than a LOOGY, I'm afeared. Here he is a few pitches before getting dinged, also bouncing one in there: (If that's any of you sitting behind home plate in the expensive seats, let me know when I should stop by for my free beer.) But JR Graham came in to the rescue, and got a strikeout, and then a DP, to escape with no scoring that inning. We haven't had many bullpen arms lately where you could base strategy on trying to get a strikeout in a key situation; I could get used to that, if we end up with such a pen soon. Graham got into trouble, himself, in the eighth, and Hamburger went on to give up the lead (and probably punched his ticket to Rochester) but wound up vulturing the win when Rosario drove in Nunez after a nice Fryer bunt. Ha ha, I said to Toronto fans (not really), your team lost to Mark Hamburger. Ha ha, AshburySteven said to me (really), you pay attention to pitcher wins.

As GM you don't have to outsmart all 29 other GMs, only 1 other one, on any given trade. But there aren't that many dumb GMs around and you can't keep trading with the Phillies every time. If this is Terry's strategy I don't really care for it; unless he can find several suckers it will be a lot of effort, and more importantly wasted roster spots and PAs and IPs in a rebuilding year, for precious little return.

Are you sure it was Hunter? I think Williams was in, by then.

At peace sounds suspiciously like the final stage of grief over one's career as a starting pitcher.

Or trading AJ when Mauer came up. There's no guarantee it'll be a logjam in the middle infield in a couple of years, but if Polanco and Michael look like our DP combination of the future, being ready to make a big trade is important and maybe this extension helps. And if there is no logjam but Dozier is performing, hey, fine. It does look to me like the team is taking on more risk than Dozier is, but that's because I'm discounting much possibility he'd be a 10+Million player in arbitration. He's good but we've been so starved for a major league average player in the infield that I think our perspective has gotten skewed.

No one has been removed from the organization's payroll, have they? Each player is just a phone call away. A trade or two before June and things may look different.