ashbury

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.

I think there's a tacit assumption that the article is discussing Opening Day, and therefore who is on the 40-man roster right now. Adding Burdi now would mean dropping somebody - which wouldn't be the end of the world, but it's not going to happen like that so why factor it in. The wild card for me is that currently the 40-man has 22 pitchers and 18 position players. That suggests to me there is room for a trade of some type in late March. It could be a minor swap to get rid of perceived dead wood (*cough*Nolasco*cough*), or it could be big. A big trade could change every discussion here, so you can only go with what you know now, but it's still there in the background.

This, and I'll go you one better. Mr Clanky batting against Iron Mike. http://i.ytimg.com/vi/0Hr1c2rcn9o/hqdefault.jpg http://www.frozenropes.com/Uploads/Gallery/NY%20-%20Albany/iron_mike.jpg

FTFY. Sano's got 90 HR in 379 games. Quibble quibble quibble, I know.

"All the talent in the world" may be generous, if you think it means the next Mickey Mantle. The narrative probably comes from being the type of player who finds himself in AAA at age 21 and acquits himself reasonably. That doesn't happen by accident. He's many years older than that by now, though not in a usual "decline phase" yet - perhaps some wear and tear has eroded the talent prematurely. But he OPS'ed .800 as recently as the season before last, so a good working hypothesis is that the ability is still there, and the story on him has always been the mental aspect.

I thought he was hired all at once.

Hearing from Nick in 3... 2...

If he shows normal progress and has a season about like that in the majors at age 24 (assuming decent defense) it will be fine with me. He can build on that for age 25 and on. I'm with you on Chattanooga for 2015 and I don't even really consider it a "push". Maybe TR and the rest of the braintrust do.

If that's played with regulation baseballs and not whiffle balls, I would have a jammed/sprained finger within 90 seconds.

So it's actually Harmon?

Fixed it. I think. If not, I'm sure I'll hear from the Admins not to ever try a fool thing like that again.

I let Brunansky worry about tweaking the K's a little?

And then there was the family that named their kids Eeny, Meeny, Miney, and Irving. Why not Moe? "We didn't want any Moe."