ashbury

That would be a wrong reason to assign rankings, IMO. But we can save that debate for when his name shows up in the countdown. The tender age absolutely should be seen as a positive, given the performance. That's a very reliable piece of information to factor in about any prospect.

Rortvedt stands somewhere just inside or just outside the top-20 in the rankings I've seen. TD had him #16 back in February. MLB.com has him at 21. Sickels pre-season had him un-numbered somewhere in about the top 30. You want to see a prospect making progress, season to season, and he's doing that this year. But this hasn't been some kind of breakout year. He's still a project with the bat, and hasn't established a major-league floor as even a marginal hitter, as yet. But, he's not too far from getting to that point. He certainly hasn't done anything I can think of to harm his luster; the mid-season promotion attests to that. And he's very young - still can't buy a legal drink. If you're asking about the current TD prospect countdown, Rortvedt's exact ranking depends a lot on the other players too. A few guys may have leapfrogged him; some other guys ranked better may have fallen back. And maybe #16 was a bit generous, back in February. So, without thinking too deeply about it, how about if I set the over-under at #14? Which way would you lean, then?

Ben started July off with a bang, with a pair of two-hit games on the 1st and 2nd. Since then, he's had only 1 hit in the next 3 games; still, he's batting .278 for the young month.

See the TD article for details on Aaron Slegers's fine major-league start on July 5. http://twinsdaily.com/topic/30526-article-min-5-bal-2-slegers-cave-lift-twins-out-of-slump/

... and could play the outfield, and do a mean tour en l'air or grand jeté.

Pretty soon, you'll have every man, woman, and child with an internet connection in America posting on Twins Daily. Plus a billion Chinese folks, I suppose. What are you trying to do, give your moderators a heart attack?

I was being a little generous for discussion purposes but basically agree. We could keep scratching around for other reasons against, for instance it being an intra-division trade, too.

Starting a new thread, from elsewhere... https://www.mlb.com/all-star/final-vote Come on, people. With the power of Twins Daily posters backing him, how can he lose? Vote early and vote often. (They actually encourage this.) #AcceptThisRosie

Wrists versus shoulders, basically?

Cleveland. Bieber's too MLB-ready and probably too good, to be had for someone's super-sub infielder. His stock has surely risen this year. It could be the starting point for a discussion, if the Twins are willing to include a good pitching prospect, and the Indians throw in a so-so position player prospect to re-balance the deal. But then the Twins probably say no.

I suppose if you love that a-ha video, you have seen this fond rendition of it too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HE9OQ4FnkQ Band Montage!

Just when I thought I was out, you pull me back in. I feel compelled to reiterate that the age demographic who was voting for Clean Gene in '68 voted for Trump in '16. Spotting "a growing trend of the under 40 generations" requires care that's beyond my pay grade. "If you're not a socialist at the age of 20 you have no heart. If you're not a conservative at the age of 40, you have no head." The link gives an interesting little bit of research on the origin of this cliche.

Aside from my inability to distinguish a slider from a curve from a straight change, from the baselines, the Twins are missing a trick by not signing me up as their pitching bird-dog for New England. If we trade someone like Rodney for any of these guys this month, I'll either end up eating my words, or saying I Told You So.

Red Sox relief prospect Ty Buttrey came up in one of the discussions about trade talks. As luck would have it, I could drop Mrs Ash at Logan Airport today and head down I-95 in time for the last game in Pawtucket before their All-Star Break. So I did. The pretext is scouting a trade candidate, but of course I am not a scout. I'll tell you what I saw, and offer some opinions, and hopefully keep the two straight, one from another. Even better luck: the Yankees AAA affiliate in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre was the opponent, and their #2 prospect, Justus Sheffield, was the starting pitcher. And a ranked prospect also closed the game for them. So there's more to tell. The PawSox starter, Fernando Rodriguez, doesn't show up in MLB.com's top-30 for the Red Sox. The righthander's fastball touches 92, but his out-pitch seems to be offspeed. My seat was not located anywhere I can even pretend to tell you whether any of the pitchers use a curve, slider, straight change, or something exotic. From my angle down the first-base line, I could pretty easily tell when something off-speed was being delivered by Rodriguez (with the radar display to confirm or disprove my guess), but of course the batter has a tougher challenge. It was my impression he was getting away with deception, which possibly stops working so well at the major league level. If someone were to tell me we were thinking of using one of our trade chips to acquire him, I'd be disappointed. Then again, perhaps I wasn't seeing him at his best: he seemed to be working annoyingly slowly, and then had to come out of the game barely into the third inning. I haven't looked for an announced reason, but a blister would be my guess. Anyway he gave up a run in the second inning on a homer. He struck out 5 in just 2.1 innings, which sounds nice, but as I said, I'm skeptical. Sheffield, by contrast, was solidly in command for the first four innings or so. His fastball sat consistently at 94 and it was his out pitch, something good to see. If this lefty's rapid pace was any indication, he pitched with confidence. I was less able to guess his pitches quickly as they came out of his hand. The first hit he gave up, in the fourth, was just a squibber toward the third baseman who didn't even bother to attempt a throw. However, Sheffield weakened in the fifth, but managed to wriggle out of two-baserunner trouble with some apparently nasty stuff to get the last two batters out. But it got worse for him in the sixth - I noticed his fastball was around 91 - and a visit to the mound didn't seem to do any wonders, although the fastball ticked back up to 93. He was gone after another batter or two reached base and a run scored. His pitch count by that point had ballooned to 89, whereas it had stood at only 42 after 3 full innings. His pitching line was a fairly pedestrian 5.1 innings with 5 hits plus two walks and one run, earned. But he struck out 7 in that time, and I'm here to tell you, he looks like the real deal to me. Those first 4 or 5 innings indicate to me that there's something to work with if he's called up. He's high ranked, and there's no way I would expect to pry him loose from the Yankees with any conceivable deadline deal, which someone on the forums here floated recently. Back to the PawSox. 26th ranked Williams Jerez came on in relief of Rodriguez. He's a multi-innings left-handed reliever this season and served in that long-relief capacity of necessity today. He finished that third inning and went two more, surrendering a two-run blast in the top of the fifth. His fastball sits at 96 and he struck out five, so he's got a live arm and overall I was impressed enough to believe the ranking (which is a matter of taste, when it comes to relievers). He's 26 years old so his time is now, if ever. Righty Kyle Martin pitched the next two innings for Pawtucket. His 94-MPH fastball helped account for 4 Ks to surround a hit and a walk. He's not ranked, where I looked, although I thought he had good swing-and-miss stuff. But he's 27 and got his cup of coffee last July - apparently he's organizational depth at this point. Robby Scott, 28 years old, pitched the eighth. He was with the big club all last year, but I don't know his story in 2018 and he is at AAA. With only a 90 MPH heater, he's a sidearming lefty junkballer in today's world. He did more than OK today, striking out all three of the batters he faced, twice swinging, once looking, but my impression today before looking him up was smoke and mirrors in that inning. Ty Buttrey took over in the ninth, to keep the deficit to only 1 run, and I thought he lived up to his billing. His fastball clocked 97. The right-hander's got a somewhat high leg kick, which worried me that it might indicate control trouble, but he likewise retired all three batters faced - although only one was a strikeout, neither ball put in play was much trouble - requiring merely an efficient 8 pitches. OK, I'm out of chronological order now, because the Yankees RailRiders were offering up relievers too, today. 28-year old righty Tommy Kahnle took over from Sheffield in the sixth, and retired the two batters he faced to escape further damage. I didn't think to mark down his fastball speed - he's Tommy Kahnle. They brought in another portsider in Stephen Tarpley to pitch the seventh and eighth. He had a 93 MPH fastball and his off-speed stuff seemed to be effective. He did give up a run, which he might be kicking himself over - after a leadoff double, followed by a sac bunt (questionable strategy to me, behind by 2 runs, but it worked out), Tarpley seemingly foiled the strategy by striking out the next batter. But then while working toward the eventual third out, he uncorked a wild pitch, and then failed to hustle to the plate to receive any throw that the catcher, who had retrieved the ball, might have wanted to make. Don't they go over this in spring training (said, every fan ever )? The ninth inning was handled by 15th-ranked Cody Carroll. Like his Sox counterpart, I felt he lived up to his billing, with a fastball in the 96-97 range. The righty started off the inning with a bit of chin-music to PawSox catcher Dan Butler, and as a consequence or not, the home team went down meekly, 1-2-3. As an aside, they play baseball differently in the minors. No pinch hitter by Pawtucket, for any of their number 7-8-9 batters coming up with a 3-2 deficit to overcome in the ninth. I have seen this annoying strategic non-feature and others, over the years. Minor league ball is strictly about developing prospects, not about winning individual games. So, you haven't heard me say much yet about the position players. Frankly, not much jumped out at me, for good or for ill. Ivan DeJesus Jr at second base for Pawtucket made a poor attempt at a grounder up the middle. It was scored a hit, and rightly so because even if he had come up with it, it would have required a stellar throw to nip the runner, if possible. But he flubbed it so that the question never came up. For Scranton/WB, right fielder Billy McKinney made a nice diving catch. The Yankees farmhands had only 5 hits in total, with Tyler Austin accounting for 2 of them. Six Sox batters shared the hit total evenly. As previously alluded to, homers accounted for all three Yankee runs, the two-run shot being by Austin and the solo job by Bruce Caldwell. Both of these guys are 26 and neither of them shows up in the MLB rankings for the Yanks. One last note. Lots of people criticize McCoy Stadium, but I like the place. It's an older park, and I suppose would be uncomfortable in the rare cases they sell out, but today's attendance of 5639 was hardly bursting at the seams and concession stands were convenient and spacious and well-staffed, and I enjoyed a craft brew and a good sausage-and-peppers-and-onions on a roll, and it was a beautiful sunny 84-degree day and the grandstand roof offered shade if you wanted it, so what's not to like? Well, too many Yankee fans, but that was just for this series. Oh, and I want to tell you, instead of the usual mascot race between innings, they had an eyeball race. It's sponsored by a local vision clinic, and you get to watch a green, blue, and brown eye race from first base to third. A wonderfully weird spin on a classic. So that was my afternoon. Was yours as good?

I don't care who I am either.

No. Not from the standpoint of politics, which is the topic of this thread. It's a shift in how people may describe themselves. They're just a little mushier, with the decline in Christian affiliations being approximately matched by the increase in people opting for the phrase the survey summarizes as "nothing in particular", which covers a lot of theological ground . It has implications for the churches themselves, of course. I just think it's unwise to expect very much change in politics corresponding. I also expect a survey like this to fluctuate a lot from one taking to the next.

The article is Minnesota-centric, but does provide some national numbers. However, something doesn't smell right about the analysis, to me - or at least, it's main points can't be extrapolated very far. Here is an article about a fairly recent national survey from the Pew Research Center. What I take from the numbers is that there is change, but maybe not of the kind that will result in overt political change. The country isn't rapidly becoming un-religious, and the changes may or may not help one side of the political aisle or the other. The Pew numbers show affiliation with mainline Christian religions down, but the Unaffiliated ("nothing in particular") crowd that grew is something of a wild-card. A politician who makes an appeal to traditional values might still find a receptive audience among many in this segment. And there is growth in the non-Christian affiliations, again with the potential for appeals to strict moralism. Churches are indeed consolidating, but for instance in the Catholic faith it's largely because of a scarcity of priests. My wife's parish has two buildings in our New England town but only one priest, who shuttles between them to perform Mass on Sunday morning. This proportional change by itself says little about the demographics. The article mentioned mergers but I missed any mention of this cause. If the thrust of the article is only that populations are migrating out of rural areas to cities, that's not a particularly new observation. And that trend was already in evidence in my mother's time, who moved from a farm in southern Indiana to the Big City (Indianapolis), a world away. Probably a look at the census figures in the 19th century revealed the same trend earlier. For states with big cities, the overall political impact may be small. For states without big cities, their politics may become more extreme, but we're pretty much there already for all intents and purposes

Maybe I need to scurry down I-95 to scout Pawtucket tomorrow afternoon...

So this is why the front office wanted to bring in veteran leadership: to offer "deadline advice for Twins teammates".

Awesome. If Rocko's Modern Life had had the genius to draw him with just one eye, they could have written a blues song about it.

"Surely you'd like to play for the Twins, Swihart." "Don't call me Shirley, and don't call me sweetheart." * Usually I don't count "and the sooner it happens, the better" as an unalloyed success, but I'll make an exception this time. * Yes, I basically just re-used your same joke. Plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery.

Nice addition to my playlist. I'm not a blues expert by any means, I just keep re-discovering it. On first listening, it reminds me so much of "When A Blind Man Cries" by Deep Purple, which is a polarizing song for many (including the band members). Deep Purple's song dates to 1971, Your song, originally by Albert King according to Wikipedia, came out in 1972. I sort of doubt either writer copied the other, but perhaps there is some sort of common influence going further back.

Apropos of absolutely nothing, I ran across what might possibly be the greatest Blues song in history, at least based on the title: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltUIzcTUBcM ''Is You Ever Seen A One Eyed Woman Cry?'' I mean, how sad is that??? She's crying. And has only one eye to cry out of. Anybody have a better example they want to nominate?

He has also this advantage over Grossman: I believe he has a minor league option (probably 3, as he may never have been on a 40-man roster yet) remaining. Grossman has to be exposed to waivers when you want to try someone else, while Kemmer can collect frequent flyer miles on the Rochester Shuttle if that's the preference for the rest of the season.