ashbury

Riverbrian: Can I have a Guitar? Dad: No Riverbrian: Why Not? Dad: That time eighteen months ago in the guitar playoffs when we let you borrow a guitar for six days in a row and you went practically hitless in terms of guitar playing. That's why.

For possible reference, my nearest team, the Reno Aces, just announced a similar pass that admits you to the outfield grass seating area, for $1 a game across the entire season, except that the July 4 game is excluded. So yeah, I'd say you are reading the tea leaves correctly for the Twins. These teams understand the concept of variable/demand pricing. From a marketing/messaging standpoint, maybe the Twins would be wiser to keep up pretenses and exclude Opening Day anyway. Not sure whether I'm kidding about this or not.

You taking my bit of humor seriously is even better. Your entertaining rant (I likened it to Belushi's classic one, after all) raised an interesting question, though I don't know an easy way to ask b-r.com's Stathead tool to answer it. / edit - but by using that tool and sifting around a bit, I found that a slow start isn't as limiting as I thought. Steve Finley, for instance, finished with 304 homers, which by itself I find astounding - and through his age-26 season he had a mighty total of 13. Jeremy Burnitz slugged 315 in his career and through age 26 had only 16. Stormin' Norm Cash, 377 and 22 respectively. Andres Galaraga, 399 and 25. Edgar Martinez, who I should have thought of without searching, 309 and 2 (!!!!). Raul Martinez, 305 and 3, only slightly less of a slow start than Edgar. And, probably the champ I am looking for, "our own" Nelson Cruz: 464 HR and 16 at age-26. Either a more systematic way of searching, or a flash of further insight, could confirm or deny there is someone else. So maybe 500 isn't out of the question for Wallner. Who knows, if he plays deep into his 50s, he could reach that 800 mark after all! 😀

"Canton?" Also, Waller just turned 27 last December. He has 29 career HR. I wonder who holds the record for most home runs in a career, with just 29 of them through his age-26 season.

Surely Rocco meant concrete, not cement, when talking about Wallner's bone strength. Cement is brittle. Concrete is what's strong.

I took another look today, and in addition to the Texas hat being not available I now find the Houston one gone. Some intern probably lost their job over this.

Is Boston over the intestinal flu, or whatever it was, that had swept through the roster a week or so ago?

A couple years later he closed out his career in an Independent league, and didn't even hit well when there (I speculate injuries after his Rule-5 stints played a role). But what did both St Louis and the Twins see in him, at the time, that vanished so quickly? His hitting stats at AA at the advanced age of 23 don't stand out, for example, and I don't remember his defense being touted so highly that offense wouldn't matter.

Owl's Well That Ends Well The Hunting of the Shrew Much Ado About Hooting Romeo and Juliet, or The Tragedy of Two Young Lovers Who Happen To Be Owls

I took a look at Jeffers's minor league game logs, several years' past by now, and just a spot check of games didn't reveal a problem at the plate when he caught a second game in a row. (No idea about whether his defense stayed up to par, of course.) It's been 18 months now since that 6-game blip in the post-season, so maybe it would be worth trying again. But it seems like an overstatement born of optimism to call Camargo and Cartaya untested. Both were tested last season - in the minors, where both gave strong indication they would have had difficulty matching even Vazquez's offensive output at the major league level. Maybe Cartaya's glove is as useful as Vazquez's, but Camargo's probably isn't. There is a very large chance we'd have a downgrade for a backup if we dealt Vazquez away. This isn't a rebuilding year so I'm not advocating to take that chance. The $10M paid to Vazquez represents the Failure Tax* for not developing another catcher besides Jeffers in the years this FO has been in charge; and part of the sum is also the failure to forecast Vazquez's production better than they did, because they could indeed have scouted and signed someone else for less money and similar production to his. I do give them full credit for scouting and drafting and developing Jeffers, but success needs to happen more often than this. The pickings after Vazquez remain slim. * Riverbrian caught me once or twice calling it a Stupidity Tax and I won't quite disavow it, although it's much ruder.

There's some belly there, and pretty robust thighs.

I couldn't find the full movie on Tubi and I'm too cheap to have a good streaming service. But there are some clips of the movie on YouTube which gave me the flavor, including what may be the ending you referred to. I'll draw a parallel of that scene to the Warner Bros classic Baseball Bugs and leave it at that. Looking forward to when my grandson may be old enough to enjoy it (and Bugs, too).

He had the opportunity to at least suggest more than a half-share of the playing time, in very small sample size in the 2023 post-season when Vazquez didn't get a single plate appearance in 6 games, and gave a miserable showing.

Pitching is the hardest thing to acquire so I don't feel like making other teams' task easier for them. But then I'm a prospect hoarder and will not likely ever change. Paddack? Sure, I'd listen to offers that make us better. We're still in Counting Chickens Before They Hatch territory with this Pitching Pipeline™. Some of the chicks are pecking at their shells, some are out and are actual chicks, but it's premature to call them chickens yet. It's easy to telescope the future into the present and think they're all happening at the same time.

I still can't decide if this is a 95-win team or a 95-loss team. Potential is there for either.

There is no 'i' in team, and no 'u' in Berenger.

¡El Gasolino, sí!

You misspelled Lavagetto.

Exactly. In the moment it looked like he got caught in-between, but even if so he made a nice toss to second base. Unlucky play for Toronto, all in all.

Sounded like they went to the trouble to talk with him in person before the game. Good for them, doing some homework. I'm not sure our broadcast team brings much direct information to us about the opposing team.

Breaking News: Brooks Lee is pretty slow to first base, for a young middle infielder.

If Camargo and Cartaya can't be depended on to outhit Trevino, they certainly won't out-defend him, and the relatively low salary Cincy is paying him this year, presumably to be backup to Stephenson, looks pretty good to me. Very complementary players on the Reds roster, and he'd pair up similarly to Jeffers. If you're prepped for Trevino, anyone better next year would be a really nice outcome. Lot of ways the FO might try to make that happen. Vazquez of course has established that his salary now should have been on a par with Trevino's. That's a problem, but it's not a very serious one in the overall roster construction process, especially now that we have left the off-season.

Well then I'm buying one of them Texas hats. / Edit - I went to the MLB site and the Tetas hat was unaccountably not offered, although the Overlap hats for other teams are there. Ashos si, Tetas no.

Orioles, Red Sox, who can really tell the difference? 😀

Living your best life. I'm jealous.