jokin

Pretty harsh dismissal after only 3 games, can't we give him at least 30 games before we put the weight of the whole world on his shoulders?- or should they just pull the plug and put Robinson out there instead?

I'm not seeing the clamoring you speak of, it's pretty clear that the braintrust has no confidence in sticking him out there for 20 straight games to see if he can hack it or not. Based strictly on his numbers in May, he never should have been sent down in the first place, since his return, he appears quite tentative, that's an approach at the plate that's guaranteed to fail.

Looks like Paul Molitor tends to disagree with you, or perhaps he's one of the "impatient folks", too? http://www.startribune.com/miguel-sano-could-be-called-up-soon-molitor-says/307657841/ And actually the Schwarber comps works nicely, both don't have an established position yet, both appear to be looking at the options for each, and possibly considering if someone blocking each could be replaced, with a reultant net upgrade from either.

Sano is also an athletic guy, probably moreso than Escobar. His arm was made for RF. And yes, it would be an adjustment, but another athletic guy did not a good, but at least an acceptable job in CF for the Twins in 2014. Molitor concurs: "The question about Sano, as always, is where would he play?" “'We’ve talked about that some,' Molitor said, particularly about the outfield. After missing all of 2014 following elbow surgery, the Twins wanted Sano to get comfortable at third base again, but 'as he plays better, maybe we can look at those options. I haven’t been a part of those conversations over the past few days.' Still, Molitor said of the 6-foot-4, 260-pound slugger, 'He moves better than people think he does, once he gets going. It’s a big body to get moving, we all know that. … I think he’s athletic enough to where [the outfield] wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility.'"

Uhh, you really didn't refute much here. Sano hadn't faced live pitching for 18 months. In addition, I posted on the Sano thread, after seeing him play in early May, Sano had not yet fully adapted to the conditions at the home ballpark. The park has a 20 foot OF fence and sits atop a hill with prevailing winds blowing in from LF and CF. In the game I was at, Sano had 4 hard hit fly balls right at the wall, clearly knocked down by the wind. As I documented in the other thread, since then, Sano and no doubt, Chad Allen, have put in significant adjustments to his approach- his FB% has dropped from 44% in April to 30% in May/June, while his LD% has soared from 12% in April to 26% in May/June. Meanwhile, his OPS was a paltry .684 in April, while it's .983 in June. The pitchers have tried to adjust to his adjustments, to no avail- Sano was getting 51% of his pitches in the zone in April, in June it's down to 34%, and yet his production has soared, along with a return towards his career power numbers- which have gone from ISO .222 in April, ISO .253 in May, to ISO .275 in June. In short, Sano is back, with a vengeance, and has slightly outperformed Schwarber since April 30.

Yep. The team with multiple Quantitative Analysts, a physicist, a GM with advanced finance degrees from Ivy League schools, plus a former NASA scientist with a degree in aeronautical engineering, probably have a pretty good handle on the data regarding Super 2 probabilities.

Luhnow wasn't hired off of a turnip truck, Advanced degrees from Norhtwestern's Kellogg School of Management and Penn's Wharton School of Business. The Cards made a full headlong leaping gamble into Sabremetrics with Luhnow and it paid off big time for them, even as it evidently brewed internal dissension from some of the more traditionalists and those left high and dry from Luhnow's departure for Houston. There's a companion NYT article (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/17/sports/baseball/of-all-teams-to-hack-why-the-astros.html) that throws more background info on the whole affair. It sounds like there is some lingering jealousy in St Louis for Luhnow receiving the bulk of the credit and reaping the rewards of the Cards success through his promotion to GM with the Astros. But in the body of the article is revealed a most interesting character who was hired by Luhnow, and perhaps the extreme motivation by some Cardinals officials to gain access to what quantitative analysis the Astros were compiling on draft options, trade targets, Free Agents and International prospects. His name is Sig Mejdal, and he is indeed an interesting character: "...Mejdal graduated from University of California, Davis with bachelor's degrees in mechanical engineering and aeronautical engineering. He later earned master's degrees in operations research and cognitive psychology[4] from San Jose State University.[5] While attending college in the late 1980s, he worked as a blackjack dealer at High Sierra in Lake Tahoe.[4] After graduating from UC Davis in 1989,[3] Mejdal worked for Lockheed Martin's satellite operations unit at the Onizuka Air Force Station.[1]:113[6] Mejdal's interest in baseball was recreational until 2003, when Moneyball inspired him to consider pursuing a career in sabermetrics.[3][7] He attended the Winter Meetings in search for a job in baseball,[8] but ended up working for NASA as a biomathematician in the Fatigue Countermeasures Group.[1]:23 Mejdal studied sleep patterns of astronauts on the International Space Station[9] in order to optimize their sleep schedules.[8][10] While working for NASA, Mejdal had a side job as the chief quantitative analyst for Sam Walker's fantasy baseball team Streetwalkers Baseball Club,[10][11] which was participating in the Tout Wars competition's "Battle of the Experts."[10] The fantasy team would later become the subject of Walker's book: Fantasyland: A Sportswriter's Obsessive Bid to Win the World's Most Ruthless Fantasy Baseball.[9] In 2005, Sig Mejdal was recruited to do sabermetrics for the St. Louis Cardinals' new analytics department.[12] According to Sports Illustrated, "[o]ver the next seven seasons the Cardinals would draft more players who became big leaguers than any other organization."[4] He was promoted to senior quantitative analyst in 2008[13] and director of amateur draft analysis in January 2011.[14][15] Mejdal created a formula to predict the risk of injury to baseball players[16] and contributed a section on injury probability to The Bill James Handbook.[17] In 2012, Mejdal became the Director of Decision Sciences for the Houston Astros, where he supported recruitment decisions based on physical tests and historical player performance...The system was criticized for de-humanizing players, but after trading off some players and making new recruits, the Astro's farm system became ranked among the best in baseball.[4] The Astros also used analytics to persuade players that were uncomfortable with non-traditional positions on the field to embrace shifts, which the team now uses very heavily. " Yes, Tobi0040, this could indeed end up being Moneyball II.

+1 That's The Ticket!

I encourage you to read the Cameron article. Although your facts are accurate, the stat guys at MLBTraderumors have gotten their projections down pretty close. This year is projected to be 140, and the low over the last 6 years was 122 (twice). My urgency in pushing for Sano in my article was prompted in part by this compelling evidence. If Correa sticks for the remainder of the season, he will accrue 119 days of service time. Cameron estimated that the chances of Correa qualifying for Super 2 status are about 0.1%. The article was published a week ago today. There is now probably better chance to win the lottery than winning Super 2 status at this point for any new call-up.

One quote from the NYTimes article caught my eye: "The (statistical) program (in question)took a series of variables and weights them according to the values determined by the team's statisticians, physicist, doctors, scouts and coaches." Team "Physicist"? Really? Somehow, I don't think the Twins have to worry about anyone hacking their databases for the Team Physicist's notes.

But the Cards didn't learn anything from the OJ Simpson affair- you go to jail for 33 years if you break and enter, even in attempting to recover your own sports memorabilia. The article's specificity sure makes it seem like the FBI has the goods on the Cards. You were right, Mike, throw the book at them (perhaps both teams, at some future point), including fines, post-season bans, draft-pick forfeitures.

They never know for certain until late September, but 140 is the number that MLBtraderumors is going with, and they've been very close over the last 6 seasons. I wrote an extensive piece here on TD, with Arcia and Vargas in mind, and Correa as the example piece. Arcia was at 0.126 (122 was the lowest number over the last 6-7), holding him down in AAA last week and this week, will have all but assured with certainty that he's not going to be a Super 2 candidate based on this year's accrued service time.

But if he just sits twice a week, isn't that only putting in one or two tines of a six-tined "fork"?

The estimate was that it would be ~140 days, it's below 120 now. Free Sano!

And the Twins appear to have absolutely little confidence in Vargas at the moment. He didn't play on Sunday, and he curiously didn't get one consideration to PH last night, while Robinson and Nunez did, and he was bypassed from pinch hitting in the 9th for Suzuki, despite hitting .349 vs. LHP.

Super 2 is already passed.

Huh??? What comp???? Sano and Schwarber both play in the Southern League.

Is Vargas the DH? Cause he sat on Sunday. And I'm proposing that the Twins start out by letting Sano DH, just like the role Schwarber is trying out. What' wrong with letting Sano DH for a few games like Schwarber is? You've already raised the white flag on 2015 and made a summary judgement that the season is over by mid-July. Seems very premature, even for a glass-half-empty guy like me. And with 13 pitchers, there's actually a roster spot that can easily be occupied by him without any disruption. The reality, for now anyway, is that the Twins are still in the thick of the playoff situation in a division that looks like 85 wins might get it done, and they're currently struggling for offensive production from the middle of the order. With the alternatives being Vargas and Nunez, it seems like a trial run for Sano makes a lot of sense, I don't see the downside.

You really have to throw out everything before April 30. The guy was coming off of an 18 month layoff from live pitching. Despite the lost season he's currently eclipsing Schwarber over 40-some games, with increasingly stronger power output. Sano, like Schwarber doesn't have a position yet at the major league level. But also like Schwarber, he, and circumstances, have forced the Twins to take a look at his hitting tool in the lower-stress DH role, plus giving him a chance to see what he needs to work on, both at the plate, and in the field.

And. Oh. Boy. Howdy! Like a different language. Epstein's a whole lot less cryptic than what we've become accustomed to in Twinsland, where they seem to have made parsing every prospect update into painful artform- "What's the Keepin' em Down Buzzword and Catchphrase for Today?"

It's more than just the last 10 games, though... or even the last 37 games. I've documented, and just updated, in the Sano How Soon is Now? thread that he's been performing as the best in the Southern League since April 30, as well as vs. the best performer over the whole season. And the power output is surging. http://twinsdaily.com/topic/18548-miguel-sano-how-soon-is-now/page-11?do=findComment&comment=354749 Sano's numbers since April 30: PA 168 Slash: .303/.396/.577/(.973) ISO .274 XBH 20 HR 9 Schwarber's numbers, 4/30-6/14: PA 172 Slash: 295/.427/.525/(.952) ISO .230 XBH 14 HR 9 Schwarber is going to be DHing vs. the Twins this weekend. Why not make it Sano vs. Schwarber?

It was announced on Monday that Cubs hitting prospect, Kyle Schwarber is being called up for a 6 game look-see at DH as the Cubs play their next 6 games in AL parks, of course including 3 this weekend at Target Field. Reporters were assured that he is to be promoted from AA and report to AAA immediately after Sunday's game. Sano has actually slightly outhit Schwarber in the Southern League since April 30, after Sano had shaken off much of the 18 month rust. Do you think Theo Epstein's move with Schwarber might give Ryan a similar idea (especially considering that Ryan could choose to utilize the DH option as a more normal everyday position- and especially with the current gaping power hole in the middle of the batting order)? Sano's numbers since April 30: PA 168 Slash: .303/.396/.577/(.973) ISO .274 XBH 20 HR 9 Schwarber's numbers, 4/30-6/14: PA 172 Slash: 295/.427/.525/(.952) ISO .230 XBH 14 HR 9 More immediate June numbers illustrating Sano's power surge: Sano BA .300 OPS .983 Schwarber BA .300 OPS .806 Schwarber was called up by the Cubs, despite only a temporarily open position for him to play. But like the Twins, they too are also in a pennant race. ESPN quoted Epstein about the plan for Schwarber: The plan sounds very sound. Come on Mr. Ryan. How soon for Sano?

Kyle Schwarber is being called up for a 6 game look-see at DH as the Cubs play their next 6 games in AL parks, of course including 3 this weekend at Target Field. He is to report to AAA immediately after Sunday's game. Sano has actually slightly outhit Schwarber in the Southern League since April 30. Do you think Epstein's move with Schwarber might give Ryan a similar idea (especially considering that Ryan could choose to utilize the DH option as a regular course of action)?

When you won't PH Vargas for Suzuki (vs LHP BA .224/OPS .595) in that last AB (Vargas vs LHP BA .349/OPS .810), you know they've got zero confidence in Kennys right now. Time for Sano coming up and batting in either the 5-hole or Clean-up.

Please remember to post back here if you get the chance to see him, Twinssouth! Anxious to get a first-hand report.