ashbury

Relax. KC's got this.

Release the Anti-Rally Sleestak!

Backup? What are you talking about? He pushed the previous starter out to left field!

Franmil Reyes with a homer to bring Cleveland to 8-4. / edit - but that's all, end of 8 #scoreboardwatchinginaugust

Splendid reverse jinx! All of Twins fandom thanks you!

A single season's hitting or pitching stats contain a vastly greater number of tests of the player's skill in those areas, than fielding. An outfielder has had a busy season if he collects 300+ total chances. Many of those chances are absolute cans o' corn. Conversely, and unfortunately, many other opportunities to excel (or to fail) are never recorded as total chances, and are recorded simply as "hits" for the opposing batter, even though the ball came into an area of the field where under other circumstances a play might have been successfully made. Other "hits" are truly unreachable by even the fastest player - the distinction is not noted in the traditional fielding stats. Analogously, a batter faces a certain percentage of pitches that essentially every batter would do the same on - 55-foot breaking pitches, fastballs that sail three feet outside, strikes taken on 3-0, and so forth. Those are like the cans o' corn, and/or the balls hit totally out of reach of a fielder. But a busy season at bat consists of nearly 3000 individual pitches; these chances to excel or fail get combined into hits and outs and eventually the slash-line. So when you slice and dice, "cans o' corn" versus more challenging plays (fielding and batting analogues to one another), there is 10 times the quantity of data to judge the hitter (or pitcher) on, than for fielding. (Shortstop is slightly less troublesome, with about 2X the total chances of center field.) We are accustomed to looking skeptically at Small Sample Sizes of batting stats - 100 PA may not tell you much about the player. More than 400 pitches might be involved in that. A season of defensive data is inherently SSS. Robbie Grossman may have suddenly gotten better in the outfield. Or, more likely, his 2019 has been the fielding equivalent of Hurricane Hazle (or our Danny Santana), hitting amazingly for a quarter of a season, until suddenly the pixie dust disappears.

Slugging average in the major leagues in 1927 was .393 Slugging average in the major leagues in 2019 is .437 So, this year's Twins having a SLG a little higher than Murderers Row doesn't look quite as strong in the context of their respective peers. The game today is so different from that of almost 100 years ago (relief pitching, DH for half the games, night games, transcontinental travel, etc) that it's very hard to compare stats from different eras anyway. The environment that players play in is just different. That, to me, is what the article's comment gets at.

For clarity: The article Matt seems to be referencing is at MLB.com: https://www.mlb.com/news/seven-things-nobody-saw-coming-this-season The first "thing" pertains to the Twins: 1. The Twins are the greatest slugging team of all time

Good one. Does there exist any footage of his wife competing?

What Would Cron Do? (Eat chicken dinner with the rest of the team, of course!)

Scoreboard watching in August - this is what it's all about!

Ninja chicken! Twice As Delicious!

Chicken! It's what's for dinner.

"Fastball down the middle..." for strike three, on a low inside-corner pitch.

Wow, Dick Bremer with the snark. "Well waddaya know. They got a leadoff man out." You rock, Dick.

Hope not now.

... barefoot and on broken glass.

We had a Cleveland fan here for a while, we could ask him, but he wore out his welcome.

Darn.

Over-under on the number of home runs Cave hits in this at bat?

Good take-charge call, Arraez! I thought for sure that had dropped safely.