jokin

Berardino continues his top-flite beat coverage. I have to publish Gardy's classic passive-aggressive quote: It seems pretty hard for Gardy to admit he was flat out wrong coming out of ST, I hope Eduardo hasn't made any permanent plans about claiming the SS position- Gardy clearly is losing sleep in not having his .100 BA gettin-after-it Middle Infielder.

Except that your first 2 examples were basically owners acting as their own GMs. Antony's frequent mistakes in the past have been of the petit-clumsy variety, not of the meglamaniacal variety. Is someone else pushing the buttons from behind the curtain? I cringe every time Antony publicly offers his thimblefull-deep "baseball knowledge" about a particular player's abilities and shortcomings.

I missed the comment about P-Flow- it's been obvious to everyone not named Gardenhire that Florimon should never have come north with the team at the end of March. Is this an indication that TR is slowly and quietly reasserting authority over the team? It's hard to imagine that Antony, through his own devices, has finally outright won an internal power play regarding personnel decisions.

I'm sure there has undoubtedly been quite a bit of mentoring by TR along the way. Recent results seem to suggest he's still not quite ready for prime time, and given it's been 7 years now, (having never been a fan of Antony) I remain unconvinced he ever will be. I would hope that the owner is engaged enough to demand that his management team review this apparent fait accompli decision of succession and consider alternatives, from job descriptions that involve Antony in some GM capacity with limited direct portfolio, all the way to a clean sweep of the current management team.

Out in Left Field?

"Really disappointing you for a while"? Hah-hah! IIRC, wasn't it more like you went on about a three week get out of town brusque excoriation for inattentive and lackadaisacal play?

Yup. As I've said for the last 8 months, I think the Twins got past the point of caring by the time around the first Hicks demotion last summer- to me, he's now viewed as a short-timer in the Twins long-range planning. Re: "not the young players only".....The Scott Baker case was particularly appalling.

Maybe I could see Gardy's therapist. I'm having anxiety attacks what with Santana not playing- somewhere- anywhere- regularly at SS..

Pelfrey, Willingham and Arcia all in the Red Wing line-up tonight against ex-Wing, Kyle Davies.

PPPC Car Polisher, huh? Brilliantly, brutally honest enough for some bannin' activities, methinks.

Thanks for the quote, JB. And Plouffe was the second person out there to greet Hicks after the winning hit (Cola was first). He was extremely professional in the offeason when it appeared that Sano was about to eclipse him at 3rd base. Inexplicably, Dozier and Plouffe appear to be becoming the team's (vocal, at the least) leaders.

We're now at 2 games where Gardy dares to violate the Baseball Laws of the Universe.* *2-Catchers in 1 Lineup Corollary

LOL Yet more proof that on teams like the Twins, the 25th man does matter.

The K rate has actually improved year-over-year from New Britain, but the KS% is down noticeably. His IFB rate has literally quadrupled over his rate from New Britain, while his LD% of 8.9% is down by some 40% from last season. His H/9 are down by nearly 1. Hence, the guy is basically unhittable, and maybe a bit "effectively wild", at the AAA level. The main 2 reasons his ERA number isn't better is due to his defensively-caused high BABIP-IFB (.342) and his BB rate. And we all are mostly in agreement that he's using his time now in Rochester in refining and in effect, overusing the pitches like the change-up that are not yet final products.

Obviously, you weren't around TD in ST 2013. If so, you wouldn't be making the wild and outlandish statements you are asserting here- which are demonstrably not true, if you just go revisit the Hicks threads at the time. Many of us pointed out, in preseason, and during his big Spring Training, of his minor league history, and the troubling aspects therein. And there were multiple discussions about the meaningless of Spring Training numbers in terms of ML predictability. The last week of 2013 ST, I essentially said, give him the job- there isn't a realistic alternative, but expect him to be making a couple return trips to the minors- and that is, in fact, exactly what happened. Doesn't make me Nostradamus, but the predictability of what happened does follow the typical path of a rookie, and especially one with Hicks's minor league track record- in point of fact, there were many, many reasons to believe that he might not be ready to play ML CF, let alone bat Leadoff. If "everyone" was in favor in 2013 for going with Hicks, it was because the Twins made no effort to go out and get another option, and hence, made a conscious decision, that there was No. Other. Option.

That's why I didn't use traditional stats, they're not the best measurement of how well a pitcher is performing. Nolasco month-by-month, 2011-13, I've highlighted his FIP totals, note the cascading trend of effectiveness as the season progresses: PITCHING MAIN [TABLE=class: stats sortable] Split G BF IP ERA FIP SIERA [/TH] [TH] [TR=class: hoverable maj] v L as R (MLB) 105 1434 318.2 - 4.38 4.47 [/TD] [/TR] [TR=class: hoverable maj] v R as R (MLB) 106 1342 328.1 - 3.11 3.52 [/TR] [TR=class: hoverable maj] at Home (MLB) 53 1392 325.1 3.96 3.50 3.91 [/TR] [TR=class: hoverable maj] on Road (MLB) 53 1384 321.2 4.78 3.97 4.10 [/TR] [TR=class: hoverable maj] Mar (MLB) 1 27 6.0 7.50 7.20 4.28 [/TR] [TR=class: hoverable maj] Apr (MLB) 19 491 117.2 4.05 4.01 4.42 [/TR] [TR=class: hoverable maj] May (MLB) 21 582 137.0 4.20 3.90 3.70 [/TR] [TR=class: hoverable maj, bgcolor: #CCFFFF] June (MLB) 16 422 96.0 4.97 3.75 4.51 [/TR] [TR=class: hoverable maj] July (MLB) 17 436 101.1 3.91 3.53 3.81 [/TR] [TR=class: hoverable maj] Aug (MLB) 16 440 102.2 3.94 3.65 3.86 [/TR] [TR=class: hoverable maj] [TD]Sep (MLB) 16 378 86.1 5.21 3.19 3.71[/TR] [/TABLE]

Yep. Antony already has this option set on "default" position in his roster settings for pitching.

And yet another player who didn't find much difficulty in reaching the TF right field seats. How "unfair" is this park for lefties, really?

Based on last year's history with Gibson, the Twins will give at least one more chance to every SP on Rochester with a heartbeat before they finally turn to May, and then, Meyer.

Nolasco is historically a very effective summertime pitcher, it's a good bet that his numbers will improve significantly. Hughes is performing precisely how we could have expected and hoped for out of Yankee Stadium and NY. Gibson is going to show flashes of excellence as he continues to learn on the job, my hope is that he can finish just below league average, but he'll probably be a little lower than that. Deduno is a potential upgrade, for as long as he stays healthy, anyway. Correia will be gone sooner or later. So, the best hopes for significant upgrades in the overall performance is Nolasco flipping the switch and matching somewhere near his 3-year trailing averages, ie, 3.60 FIP and for 1, or perhaps 2 guys stepping up and taking two of the starting jobs away and grabbing it by the horns. I am optimistic that all of these things can happen.....but..... The current yawning gap between the Twins and Indians staff will be difficult to surmount. Consider, the SP numbers for both teams, with respect to BABIP, LOB%, GB%, DIP% and HR/FB are virtually identical, and the teams' defenses are fairly equally "challenged". And yet, the ERA and FIP numbers favor the Indians by over 1 run. If anything, the "bad luck" and "good luck" numbers will normalize, and still leave the yawning run-producing gap between the two teams. The big qualitative difference is the K/9 rates.....Indians 9.06- which is MLB BEST......Twins 5.51- which is MLB WORST. The Indians combined K/9 is 9.13 is also #1 in MLB, a net advantage that will be hard to overcome. (Indians relievers K/9- 9.25.....Twins relievers K/9- 6.77). Obviously, the only direction the Indians can go from here is down, and for the Twins to go is up But given the above, I don't see them meeting somewhere in the middle, let alone have the Twins somehow surpass the Indians.

What's so wrong with some high-quality, finely-aged cheese?

Yeah. This is one instance where Gardy can't get his way, and implement his dream scenario from Spring Training, of Meyer in a RP role. Anthony put the big damper on the chances for any Meyer appearances with the Twins any time soon in his recent interview. And because of Anthony's now-public pronouncements on Meyer's inning limitations and evidenced in their extreme precautionary measures in pulling Meyer out of last night's game after 5 no-hit innings, I'm not sure if he gets the call-up this year at all, unless massive physical breakdowns take place, or both Correia and Pelfrey are no longer options on or around July 31.

See my post above, the current stats don't bear out the conclusion that the Twins have the better overall staff....perhaps that will change over the course of the season, but their SP current top 4 pitchers, plus all of their AAA depth suggests differently. In addition, the Tribe's relief core has a better xFIP by 0.35, and have a K% of 24%, vs. the Twins 17.9%.

Going into the season, I was pretty doubtful on the Indians chances and the jury's still out on if they can sustain what they're doing, but I was short-sighted to sell Terry Francona short. For instance, Carlos Santana's bat is finally waking up. Unlike the Twins, the Tribe didn't take their CF/OF situation for granted and brought in Nyjer Morgan and David Murphy. Both have proven to be excellent signings- Murphy has an OPS+ of 127. Morgan has been playing well subbing for Bourn and acting as the 4th OF, he is now on the the DL, along with Kipnis and Giambi, assuming they all come back and hit around career norms, they will provide a huge shot in the arm for the Indians going forward. Regarding the pitching....though they lost Ubaldo and Kazimir, it appears that they thought that likelihood out quite well. The Indians currently rank 2nd in MLB Starting Pitching, behind only the Tigers, and 5th in MLB overall pitching. http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=sta&lg=all&qual=0&type=8&season=2014&month=0&season1=2014&ind=0&team=0,ts&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0 They have a big 3 core starting group that the Twins would kill for: Masterson, Kluber, McAllister. And the Indians filling from within?... They had/have at least 5 capable SPs in AAA- Josh Tomlin has been called up and as we saw, has been dominant, and they have 4 more guys in Columbus that could be very impactful: Bauer, House, Davies, Banwart. That kind of starting pitching depth makes up for a lot of warts elsewhere, I no longer am dismissing their chances to hang around.

The Twins should have been reaching the end of their rope after Hicks completely crashed in 2013- why wasn't he working on right-hand-only batting beginning last August. and why weren't the Twins more insistent on "reading the riot act" on Hicks, playing, and working on making the switch in winter ball? As far as indictment for lack of a plan, how is it that Hicks has been in the organization for 7 years- and it only just occurs to the braintrust now?- ie., that Hicks needs to have a plan? How did they essentially give a guy, who'd repeatedly proven to be a very slow learner, the leadoff spot in 2013, and of course, the critical CF spot, unopposed, not once, but twice? As I've stated before, I am of the opinion that they just didn't care enough about Hicks as a long-term cog, and were counting on just getting by with Hicks until Buxton hit the ground running later this year or early 2015.