ashbury

I Also Like To Live Dangerously.

I've got Raley's, Grocery Outlet, and Pray For Rain.

Hero time, Manuel!

District Attorney Castillo has been taken off the case.

A stolen base, upon further review?

Man, if I had a nickel for every time someone said that.

Suh-weeet! I'll be right over. Delta's flight operations are back to normal for a quick journey there, right?

Looks as if you can move down a few rows for better seats.

I've never smoked but my brother did, and the one biggest tip I would offer is getting those in your life onboard. My brother purposely married a smoker, on the theory she would never nag him to quit, and the several attempts at quitting he made thereafter never really stuck. You don't need nagging, but being accountable to someone can help. Tell those around you what you are attempting - whether it's tapering off, switching to something else, or cold turkey. Good luck to you.

Maybe the Dodgers would take Manuel Margot in exchange for Paxton. Adding Noah Miller to the package would be a nice sweetener they could offer us. 😀 Usually a player in a price range the Twins can afford at the deadline would be someone not worth the money. This is the rare exception that I would pursue. However I wonder if the Twins FO has any payroll headroom at all, given that they already trimmed this past off-season and attendance now is not what they hoped. I doubt Paxton is willing to take on bullpen duty though. If he were, the Dodgers might be going that route with him in the first place.

If the front office can find another team that values Martin as highly as you do, I hope they trade him for a pitcher similarly valued like Zebby or Charlee.

I don't even know now what I must have been looking at when I wrote that. Maybe the previous game? "Never mind."

"Name two satirists and a baseball website."

I still have seared into my memory the sight of Martin in the Arizona Fall League, bollixing up a short shovel pass (to Eddie Julien as it happened) that would have started an easy double play. Julien did extremely well to come up with the catch to even get the lead runner and without injury. I want to think Martin would have progressed in the two years since then, but that throw to home the other day, while not a similar play at all, still brought back memories that had the common thread of a lack of confidence. He's 25 years old now and ought to be making these plays without drama, weak arm or not - it's only 95-100 feet to home plate from where he fielded that ball. After watching Jorge Polanco, Nick Gordon, and now Austin Martin in relatively short order, I no longer think 2B is a very good spot for a SS who doesn't quite have the chops, especially if it's the arm. All you'll have is a subpar defensive 2Bman. (And I say that without meaning disrespect, since Polanco was one of my favorite ballplayers.) In the case of Martin, he's shown the potential for making good running catches in CF, though of course the arm will still be a liability once he hauls in that catch at the wall. And he hasn't got the HR power for his bat to really play in LF where the arm would be less of an issue. Bottom line, I don't know where to play him and I would trade him, but I don't expect many strong bids for his services from other teams.

I think the opposite would be sdeadyt or sdablet.

Give the casting a few months to cure. It'll be fine....

I pay pretty good attention to prospect lists but Rixon Wingrove was a name that made me think I was being hoaxed. 😀 Let's hope to see a lot more games like this one, so he can move up the farm system ranks.

The first sentence there started out gracious. But the second one seems to have mistaken me for one of the Mauer doubters. I don't think you'll find a stronger advocate at TD through the years for his tenure with the Twins and then his HoF candidacy, the latter which boiled down to "if you don't like Mauer for the Hall then you basically don't want catchers there at all." He was the best of his era, and not for lack of good competition in guys like Buster Posey. I didn't feel slighted. But I didn't feel entertained either, and said why.

Well, we're mainly in agreement about Castro then. He played his first game for the Twins when he was almost 26, so we're talking about his development by the Tigers, and he played about 90% of his minor league innings at SS so the Tigers apparently tried to teach him, but it didn't work. That's the thing. "Nobody learns a position in the minors" doesn't take into account that the talent and aptitude just might not be there, no matter how hard you try to teach. Fair enough, so then I'd still like to know what (and who) prompted your post. I laid out in my reply that the current 26-man roster can't really be the cause of such a sweeping indictment, since most everyone except Castro, Martin, and (to the small degree he's been in the majors) Lee play pretty normal rotations. Lee is the only one who might qualify, since IMO Castro and Martin lack the apparent aptitude to become really good at any important defensive position. The Twins FO gets regularly dinged for being slow to promote, so it's ironic if they move Lee upward quickly, only to be hammered from a different direction for not completing the development process. Also you single out the Twins, but as mentioned above Detroit with Castro may fit this same mold, so is our team really out of step with standard practice across the majors these days? Honest question there (as are most of my questions when I'm not kidding around, I hope).

Nice, and challenging, theme to try. Well done!

He double-clutched, the throw was too much to the first-base side, and he couldn't put enough mustard on it to reach 90 feet. Quite the trifecta. There's a physical limitation with his arm, but I think by now there's a mental aspect to it as well. Martin expects bad things to happen when the play depends on his arm, and by golly, bad things do happen.

Two hits in the first seven innings. We're overthinking things to go beyond this as the key to the loss.

"Anybody." "Anywhere." I haven't seen Carlos Santana squatting behind the plate, nor Jose Miranda patrolling center field. Buxton and Correa are playing exclusively at the skill positions they are being paid to play. Vazquez started one game as emergency third baseman. Reputed butcher at second base, Edouard Julien, has played all his innings there this year. Larnach, Wallner, and Margot cycle through the two corner OF spots, with occasional cameo CF appearances by the latter. Kepler plays RF and is rumored to have balked at backing up CF. Willi Castro, mentioned above, is the one true "anywhere" guy, but if I'm being fair he's not really so good defensively such that he would push a legitimate starter out, and is best used when plugged in due to injuries - 20 games played at 5 positions is testament to both versatility and a lack of elite skills. I get the feeling some particular play yesterday may have triggered your observation. I watched part of the game, but may have missed a botched play by Brooks Lee? I've seen him make some really fine plays so far, but as with any rookie there are going to be growing pains. Can't think of anyone on the roster I'm less worried about in the long run (like, two months from now). Seems to me what we are seeing is a combination of talent but youthful inexperience (Lee), and some players with definite and uncorrectable defensive limitations (Julien, Martin). Martin's arm is a liability whether he plays at 2B or CF and there's nothing to be done about it except live with it or else discard him, because the bat doesn't play at LF or 1B where his arm might be least harmful; Martin plays "anywhere" because he actually can play (well) "nowhere." It would help to know who you have in mind.