ashbury

I agree it shouldn't dominate any decisions. OTOH the GM is responsible for the overall health of the franchise, and fans do like for a team to "win" its major trades. Nothing wrong in my view with doing what you can to make sure the trades you make do go your way. It's a factor (again) in the context of the general good of the team. I would guess either Meyer or May succeeding would put more fans in seats than some of the other options succeeding. Baseball being a business, that has to count. But no, I wouldn't "construct" a roster "based on" trades, either.

Good gawd. How'd that typo slip through the previous time and nobody razzed me about it? Just for my sanity's sake I'll fix it in the blog entry, but your comment stands, with thanks.

I meant to write up these notes last night and forgot. No deep insights here, just my jottings from a day under the sun at Hammond Field. I arrived at 9:10, too late to get free parking on a game day. Cheapskate fans of minor league spring ball, take note! I was approached by a reporter from a Naples newspaper, who was looking to interview average fans. I had initially mentioned my tenuous "affiliation" with TD (thinking he might be Nick Nelson), and apparently that made me way too official sounding for him, so he moved on. LOL. The players were only just starting their warmups, and I saw maybe one other "civilian" like myself checking things out, to begin with. More started showing up soon, of course. This just in: Aaron Slegers is tall. He looks like a weed that the lawn mower missed, when standing amongst his fellow pitchers listening to a coach. Met up with fellow TDer Stringer Bell, and his brother. Great guys. We hung out together, off and on, most of the rest of the day. I watched the first hour of the two minor league games versus the Rays, back and forth between the adjacent fields. In the nominal AAA game, "A Rodriguez" (I didn't know A-Rod had joined the Twins organization!) scored a hit to right, and the players who had the game off behind the screen near me were hooting that this was his first time to hit to the opposite field, ever. One of these players was eating some berries, and another piped up with a crack about Hingle McCringleberry. A Key and Peele fan, apparently. No "Berrios" joke, considering he was sitting right there with us, so I guess it's too far from his actual pronunciation which I haven't completely mastered yet. "Bay-REE-ose"? Either that or for some reason they don't want to kid him that way, or Jose had duties charting pitches and maybe shouldn't have been disturbed. I already mentioned in a forum thread last night that AA pitching coach R. C. Lichtenstein asked the Rays kid who was holding the radar gun behind the plate, "was that a changeup?", while prospect Dylan Floro was on the mound. "No, fastball," was the reply. Hope Floro didn't overhear. Ouch. Very ouch. In the other game, Sano hit a very long homer on the first pitch he saw. It drew appropriate oohs and aahs from the spectating players. His ability is certainly respected. The players know who's who - see my above comment about A-Rod, and when Max Murphy hit a homer the previous day I watched, one of the guys confirmed his identity for me and added "he can hit". Stuart Turner threw out a would-be base stealer by about two miles. I know there's a lot more to catching than that, things I can't begin to judge on my own, but it confirms for me the good things I've read about his D. I finally walked over to the big leaguers' game and made use of my cheap seat ticket. Watched the middle part of the game with Stringer and his brother, and got to witness an error by Dozier and later a bobble by Nunez that he still converted to an out. Guess which infielder I gave a pass on that to, and which one I griped about. It wasn't a very compelling game in the late stages, so after my companions left I watched an inning more, then left with the score 3-2 going into the bottom of the ninth. Apparently I didn't miss much. That's it for now. Off to the park now for another go-round.

Sounds too optimistic. I have them at 87-75.

Switch to decaf, OK? SATIRICAL RESPONSE

Source: 30 Twins Prospects I'll Be Watching In 2015

Stringer and I were idly watching today's game at Hammond, where Nunez bobbled a ball hit to him but managed to recover in time to toss it to second for the force. Stringer is a Nunez backer, I am a Nunez skeptic, and we both had our say about that play. What we managed to agree on is that Nunez seems to have the athleticism and so forth, but somehow manages (in Stringer's phrase) to be less than the sum of his parts.

"The Claimed Clingers". He was lumped in with Schafer.

*shrug* That's how trades occur sometimes. He wasn't claimed for free.

Wasn't Nunez acquired by trade, not waiver claim (assuming that's what you meant)?

I rotated through the three games that were going on and I didn't notice him anywhere.

He didn't keep it under enough control to prevent the runner starting from first to reach third. Wound up costing the lead. He also didn't quite run the bases well enough to score in the bottom of the ninth. Little things that happened to add up in that one ST game.

I was sitting in the upper area near home plate on the third base side, and to me the ball seemed to arrive while Nunez was still at least a couple of steps away. Was there a problem with how the tag was applied? I didn't even notice controversy, it seemed like everyone just walked off the field. Maybe I was guilty of making assumptions, since Nunez was trying to score on a base hit that wasn't deep at all; even Revere could have made that throw. (On two hops.)

I had the pleasure of watching today's game in person at Hammond Stadium, versus the portion of the St Louis Cardinal roster they deemed worth putting on a bus (hint: no stars). This writeup ought to be pretty quick, because it's one of those rare games where the box score plus a little inference pretty much tells you all you need to know. But first, I'll mention that we didn't have tickets to start with, and didn't want to feed the scalpers - but a little bird had told us that tickets get freed up just before most games - seats that are controlled by the two teams (for players' relatives etc) until they are sure they aren't needed. So we got there 2.5 hours early and waited half an hour, and sure enough we wound up getting $29 seats nearly behind home plate on the third base side up near the top. Seems high priced for spring games but the world is like that now. Just a little tip for those of you wanting to attend games. Kyle Gibson was as good as his line score would suggest - batters were not able to distinguish his offspeed offerings and were getting fooled by them. Two hits, no runs, four strikeouts, in four innings. A little shaky in the third, followed up by a strong fourth. Very hopeful sign. I've not been a strong proponent of Tim Stauffer when the news broke that the Twins had signed him, and nothing today improved my view on him. He got through his first inning with no drama and three ground balls, but his next two innings showed he was no mystery to the Cardinal batters and they piled up four Very Earned Runs in that span. I thought it was silly to envision him as a competitor for the fifth starter spot - now put him back in low-leverage situations like the Padres had him, is my advice. The rest of the game was your usual parade of relievers, who did OK but nothing great, allowing two more runs in total. The last run was aided by some shoddy left field work by Nunez who allowed an extra base by not being able to decide whether to dive for a flare or not, winding up letting it drop but then not corralling the ball to keep the baserunner from getting to third, whereupon he scored on a sac fly. Bad luck to Fien I guess, but he did allow the first hit legitimately. This run was the one that tied it at 6-6, which was the eventual final score. Conversely the Twins scored 5 early runs, three in the third capped by a Brian Dozier two-run homer to left following a Schafer RBI, and two more in the fourth that drove off starter Carlos Martinez when Suzuki doubled down the third base line. Nice. After that the Card bullpen was effective, though they let in another run in the seventh when Herrmann drove in Argenis Diaz. (I was surprised to see Herrmann playing first after Mauer was lifted, so I guess they really are grooming him to be super-sub, and thus likely to be the 25th man on Opening Day.) Twins fans at Hammond today were outnumbered by Cardinal fans. They were courteous but toward the end of the game the repeated rallies had them cheering their favorites on, and the Twins fans were too "Minnesota Nice" (I guess) to put up much of a fuss. The game ended on Nunez being thrown out at the plate trying to score on a short single to left, having been waved in by coach Glynn. With 2 out and weak hitters now in the lineup it was the obvious call for the situation, as all choices at that point had become low percentage and this was the most entertaining one to try. I saw it as him being out by at least two steps, leaving matters at 6-6, and it being Spring they did not go to extras. Everyone departed in a good mood - perhaps as in soccer, a "friendly" played to a tie.

Mention Twins Daily to whomever you chat with, and who knows, maybe you'll find out you're talking to a fellow member.

If you asked them, they'll probably say "I'd be most comfortable in the Twin Cities to start the season."

Wrong choice, my friend.

As it happens I too refrained from adding my own disclaimer that I know it's hard to come up with perfect comparisons. If the more elaborate footwork helps him hold up on embarrassments like that one example, it's all to the good. Since it's a few microseconds longer to develop, though, I wonder if it gives the pitcher a chance to disrupt his timing even more. Pitchers aren't known for cooperating with a batter's timing. And I've heard it said that one man's timing mechanism is another man's hitch in his swing.

I love the nuts-and-bolts discussions Parker provides and the animations are great, but this pair of animations seem like apples and oranges. The leg-kick is indeed a nice looking swing (to my untrainable eyes ) on an inside fastball. But the toe-tap one looks like it was on a pitch he was somewhat fooled on - a bit offspeed maybe and outer half of the plate and he was way out in front and possibly intending to pull but had to change plans and couldn't hold up. No swing is going to look good if that's the circumstance. Pitch recognition would be an equally high priority to fix that swing which maybe only occurred because he had two strikes on him.

On the recent broadcast I heard the announcer pronounce his name bay-REE-oce. Made me realize I had been doing it wrong. As with Arcia's name, I kind of hate to see us encourage what seems like a mangling of his name. / sorry to be a stick in the mud

Eeenteresting. That's because Sano's a lock to go north with the big club? It is hard for me to understand the benefit they expect for him in AA, apart from the rust-shaking-off I mentioned.

My experience two years ago was getting there early means getting free parking even on game days. What constitutes early is probably a good question though.Ten a.m. probably is pushing your luck. I think I was usually there before 9. As ChiTown said, if "all" you want is to watch drills and minor league games on the back fields, there's no admission charge as far as I know. Those games are interesting, with loosey-goosey rules - Morneau batted every inning, third I think, in one game I watched. Sometimes a pitcher hits his pitch count and there's two outs and they just end the inning rather than warm up someone to come in. A few other sandlot-style rules have escaped my memory at the moment - I don't think I ever saw them call for a ghost-runner. Probably plenty of courtesy runners though. Good times.

I think you can make a strong case to start Sano at AAA, a decent case to start Rosario there, and a marginal case for Polanco to be up there at the outset. If Sano needed to shake the rust off then starting at AA might be called for but so far this Spring there's no evidence of that. Rosario didn't exactly shine at bat in AA but he didn't embarrass himself either. The problem for Polanco might be his progress on defense as much as offense. I don't see any of them as clearly unworthy of AAA if that's the direction the farm director wants to go, but I won't be outraged if any of them start at AA. Two out of three at AAA will suit me fine.

Or just let him start a game. Events will unfold. / I'm actually hoping/rooting/expecting Pelf to do well enough to make the 5th starter decision difficult. Today's outing was not much in line with that however.

He'll need to pitch better than he did today, sometime soon, or nobody is going to take him at all.