jokin

Yep. And though I'm hopeful that we'll see more progress in his remaining two starts, I don't think the Twins will have seen enough from May for him to be automatically penciled in to one of the 2015 starting spots. Lest we forget last March, Kyle Gibson was really on the outside, looking in, literally waiting for his ticket to Rochester to be punched, if not for the complete ST collapses of Worley and Diamond. I would have liked for a more definitive answer on both May and Meyer, one way or another, for 2015, to have been obtained in 2014, with considerably more lengthy ML tryouts. And because they didn't do so, I'm guessing the Twins are working on the assumption that 2016, not 2015, is the earliest they hope to consider themselves potential contenders

We can only go on past evidence and the current observed incremental improvements we are witnessing. I think it's an extreme over-reaction to assume that May's.396 BABIP and 25% LD rate is who May will always be. If you look at his past four minor league seasons, he's averaged a 15.9% LD rate, and never had a higher single-season LD% than 18.8%, along with a 4-year MiLB BABIP of .313. People also look past his current 58.6% strand rate, which most assuredly will normalize back towards the AL SP rate of 72.1%, once he corrects his mechanical flaws and reduces his jittery performances when working from the stretch (He has shown some evidence of improvement in all of these areas in his 3 September starts: LD%: 18.6% BABIP: .341 LOB%: 71.4%

I don't know, let me put it back on you. 1) Do you think that if May had been called up before his calf injury in June, that his results would have been any different than they have been in 7 MLB appearances since his call-up in August? 2) Do you think that we, and the Twins, would have more information from 20 starts from May? Or the 9 starts he's going to end up throwing? 3) Would May have benefited more from 100 major league innings pitched.... or the 45-50 he's going to end up throwing?

May still should have been called up earlier, likely would have had similar results, garnered more valuable experience, and provided much more information from which to base an opinion on his status for 2015.

Actually, it was two more games, per ben's previous September sample quote hadn't yet been updated w/ Saturday's stats. (FWIW, your current September numbers line up more closely with Schafer's season numbers: .245/.321/.325).

Or maybe "less patience"? as in, why wasn't he called up sooner....? He just as easily could have had his 6 mediocre-bad-horrendous outings starting in mid-June.... and then been well on the way to how he pitched today, only by the All Star game break, or say.\, July 14, instead of September 14. (We'd sure have a more definitive idea on whether or not he not he has earned a 2015 rotation slot and how well he might do).

This was the first game where May, finally, looked like the "power pitcher" that was advertised. In the middle innings especially, his FB was consistently hitting 94-95, mixed with some frequently devastating breaking and off-speed stuff. Very encouraging outing, very different pitcher- -19 of 23 faced w/ first strikes thrown -only 1 batter got to a 3 ball count -Two separate runs of 4 straight batters struck out on swinging strike three

Awesome.... that your brain could work so nimbly after nearly 8 hours of mind-numbing namby-pamby .

And equally repellent are the MSM, social media outlets and special interest grievance groups that surrounds "professional sports and the culture that surrounds it", it was them after all, who largely built them up in the first place, rode the gravy train together with sports on the wave of popularity, only to gladly tear it all back down at the first opportunity, all in an effort to generate their own income-generating clicks, hits and extra rating points. And then they proceed to push, promote, politicize and sensationalize individual acts into what was once a purer form of sport, whether they be positive or negative (as important an issue as it is, do we really want or need to see football players wear pink for Breast Cancer Awareness for the entire month of October each season?), and finally deem themselves the self-appointed thought police, fashioned after their own brands of political correctness. I prefer sports as strictly an entertainment niche, primarily as a respite from politics, culture wars and the day to day realities of life.

When a team has Terry Steinbach, Kurt Suzuki and Joe Mauer available as coaching resources all offseason, and all of whom could have been made available to work with Pinto all in-season, the Twins, by their lack of emphasis on "working with him" coupled with their signing of Suzuki for two more seasons, certainly gives by all appearances the indication that Turner, and possibly Garver, are the Twins catching future. I'm thinking the Twins will look to move Pinto immediately once Turner appears close to being ready.

I was responding to this statement, which clearly isn't the case: And Curt Schilling probably got it about right about modern hitter habits vs. years ago, both hitters appeared to be thinking offensively rather than defensively, leaning in when they should have been ducking out, and a high, hard inside FB is pretty unforgiving in those cases.

FWIW, Curt Schilling commented on this later. He noted that after watching Stanton's reaction to the pitch in slow motion, what happened was in part due to the radical change in baseball pitching philosophy from 20 years ago. Something to the effect that the inside pitch to establish the strike zone has been replaced by pitchers choosing now to pounding the outside corner, instead. Because of that, in Schilling's way of thinking, today's hitters no longer routinely possess the inherent instinct to automatically lean back from the high inside pitch. Kind of curious how the Brewers pitcher, whose career stats indicate he's a control pitcher, put the very next pitch high and inside to the pinch hitter for Stanton.

Not an honest mistake by Mike Redmond's account.

I haven't suggested that Molitor's resume be dismissed, in point of fact, I have suggested that he indeed is likely the Twins manager in waiting. He appears to be very sharp and is publicly well-regarded by the players he's worked with. But the fact that Milwaukee, Toronto or Seattle never saw fit to make him an offer that he couldn't refuse is certainly interesting, and makes one wonder how hot his "hot resume" actually was - the job in Milwaukee has been vacant at least 5 times since Molitor retired, and the Brewers "made up" with him by retiring his number in 1999. Don't you think, and as I alluded to, that there are major reasons that clubs harbor against the notion, as to why SO few HOF (NOT just a "few others") players go on to have any, let alone successful, managerial careers?- and that that largely accounts for the small numbers of HOFers hired, and that there is some credence to the difficulties that Ted Williams, Rod Carew, Frank Robinson and George Brett had to imparting to others of their own great talents should say something beyond just the anecdotal value. And you seemingly ignore the fact that lesser, down to even many non-major league, players generally make for most of the successful, and long-tenured managers. And regarding the criteria you mention in your second paragraph, isn't it most likely that, all other things being even, players who were coached by very successful managers and coaches- all the way from their formative years to their World Series ring, have learned and internalized valuable lessons in individual skill-building, game tactics, roster assembly, handling the pressures successfully and also the successful handling of a diverse set of personalities and skill sets to achieve the ultimate outcome?

I'm not even sure that Dougie would be the first choice for manager, either mine, or the organization's. I do think that the next manager needs to be younger, have a 21st Century grasp of baseball by the numbers, a demonstrated history of pitchers improving under his watch, and upon his naming, be able to quickly rally support as a change agent from the players, fans and organization. I honestly can't say that I know that he would fill up that entire checklist. I've been operating on the assumption that the Twins, if they do move on from the current regime, will look first to hire from within, in which case, TR's backing throughout the incident last year indicates that he, at the least, would be in the running. I think it also obviously helps that he has been working with a number of the best prospects that the organization has in the system- it might be nice to have him around to reinforce the good and successful habits that he's helped to instill in Ft Myers. Tom Kelly worked with a number of up and coming players before a 3+ year tenure as a Twins bench coach, this might be a potential career path for Dougie. Whereas, Mike Redmond came up to manage the Marlins after only one year of A-level ball.

Exactly. For some, it's just not easy to accept that a brawl taking place in the real world of an office lounge just isn't remotely the same thing as one at a sports venue, in the second case, the participants- as they enter their workplace, a 40,000 seat stadium- are called "opponents" for good reason. The physical nature of a sporting event,, the heightened tensions that come with the higher stakes involved, plus the raised testosterone levels inevitably lead to occasional unacceptable behavior. And that isn't to say that such behavior is excusable, either. After the incident in question, Mienkiewicz himself expressed surprise that he wasn't let go, and was grateful to TR for getting a second chance to make it right. By all accounts, he's done so thus far.

I don't know about Nick, but when did I say anything like this about MIentkiewicz? I did say quite a few things like "sports is controlled aggression", though.

I think you missed the point about Dougie's resume containing a National HS baseball championship, an ACC title, an Olympic Gold Medal, a World Series ring and FSL League Championship. It isn't so much what he himself did at each level, it's that he's had a baseball career in which he was trained, coached and played with, or managed, groups of individuals that achieved the highest levels in the game. That is a fairly uncommon set of successful experiences, and a chance for an injection of a different mindset and set of expectations for a group currently mired in a wholly different culture of (unsuccessful) expectations. I don't think earning respect will be a problem for Doug. Regarding Molitor, he remains a viable option, but the HOF player pedigree has been no guarantee of managerial success in the past (Ted Williams, Frank Robinson). And there are extremely few teams that hire HOF players to manage these days- part of that may be that teams are reticent at the prospect of firing a Hall of Fame player, especially if he's managing in his home town. And HOF credentials seem to not necessarily translate well to both coaching and managing. Rod Carew had 3000+ hits, 7 batting titles and a career K% of only 9.7%. Yet Carew was fired as hitting coach by the Brewers after the team finished second from the bottom in batting average, and broke the record for most strikeouts in a season, as well as becoming the first team in MLB history to have more strikeouts than hits. George Brett resigned shortly after becoming the Royals hitting coach, here was his reasoning for walking away from the game: By all reports from those that have worked with him, Molitor has been a good teacher, but Molitor may still turn out to be a better teacher than a manager. And at age 58, he also may not have the fire in the belly to put up with the managing grind. The fact of the matter is though, the best managers have tended to come from those who were lesser players. Perhaps the timing might be right for the Twins to consider promoting Molitor to the managerial chair short-term with Dougie as his second.

Ridiculous yes, but please recall it was your analogy placed in use for this discussion: And there are literally 1000s of professional players and coaches, in all of the various sports over the years, many in the Halls of Fame, who have acted out similarly, or much, much worse. The physical nature of sports inevitably involves the strategic usage by coaches of elements of physical intimidation, it's seems inevitable that that reality can sometimes get out of hand and be taken to occasionally reprehensible extremes. Lest we forget, brawling is basically inscribed in the strategic DNA of professional hockey. Legendary football coach, Woody Hayes, punched an opposing player during the Gator Bowl, and Brett Favre is just the one "bounty" killing that became public knowledge, it's a widely accepted, yet craven aspect of the game, even Favre acknowledged that fact. Bill Musselman's actions as coach led to an ugly and horrifically bloody assault on Ohio State basketball players... I myself was involved in an international college tournament, when the home team's legendary coach saw that it was going to be difficult to defeat us in the championship game, he put his worst player into the game with the sole intent to start a brawl with our best player, in order to get him ejected from the game- despite the embarrassing international incident, the legendary coach is still coaching the national team. Doug Mientkiewicz himself, was "assaulted" by Mark Buehrle with a thrown ball, as some form of physical "retributive justice" directed from White Sox management, just days after Doug had criticized that same White Sox management for the lack of security after a fan assaulted an umpire at Comerica. Some roughneck professional athletes pass away as bitter old men, like Ty Cobb, others do some soul-searching and find redemption and end up leaving their mark on the sport in a more positive light. Terry Ryan obviously feels that Doug has enough redeeming and redeemable qualities to his character, to continue on with another chance to make amends and make it right,and so far, he has done so.

+1

But it does exist, professional sports isn't the real world What is real and common in both occupational realms is that this country is the land of both opportunity and the chance for redemption. Would you prefer he be banned for life from baseball?

Not to excuse what happened, but you are aware of all of the tragedy and tumult that was going on in his life that season, right? If Terry Ryan was willing to get past the incident, I would guess that his character in the whole is greater than that one big mistake.

Well then, I disagree with your disagreement. It's helpful to try to form opinions based on as little speculation and as many facts as is possible. Through his long tenure with the Twins, I would assert that Gardy has given us many insights into all of the factors you cite, and the results speak for themselves, leaving much less to speculate about. I think it's pretty fair to proclaim that Gardy is a (veteran) "player's manager" with a number of managerial blind spots, which can work really well for a period of time with a group of established vets all on the same page with him, but also can lead to a manager becoming more of an enabler to the players, and appearing behind the curve, when things are not going really well.

For all of the positive similarities between Gardy and Mientkiewicz, I especially like the differences even more. Like: Dougie's high school team won a National Championship. His college team @ FSU won its first-ever ACC title in his junior year, with him as the leader and best player. He had the game-winning HR in the semi-finals for the US Team that won the Gold Medal at the Olympics. He was on the World Series winner that broke the Bambino jinx in Boston, coming back from seemingly impossible odds. He won the Twins first FSL title in Ft Myers, without the Twins' super-prospects on the team. The guy's been a winner at a variety of levels, playing and coaching. But I think it's going to take some friendly persuasion for him to be willing to give up the South Florida lifestyle

I would disagree with this assertion. There are a bevy of researched TD threads and articles, along with the wider universe of analytical and direct-source-quoted media pieces, that shine a spotlight on the inner workings and thought-processes of the manager and coaching staff, plus sources for statistical results that, when put together, all provide large amounts of information to base an informed opinion on whether or not to retain a manager or a coach. That, and 100+ years of baseball history and methodology on retention practices say it's likely time to move in a different direction.