jokin

May pitched a complete game shutout and gave a lot of interesting quotes after the game (Cats' May tosses three-hit shutout | MiLB.com News | The Official Site of Minor League Baseball "My focus wasn't where it needed to be and I fell behind hitters," said May, who threw 63 of 104 pitches for strikes. "Getting out of [the first inning] was a big thing for me. I had a problem with stranding runners on base last year, and that's something I need to do." "I need to be able to get out of innings with one pitch, rather than pitching around guys. I'm making huge strides staying with my plan rather than worrying about who's on base or how many outs there are." "I felt like the three walks today were three too many, but as opposed to the past, my walks were more under control. They were smaller misses, a couple inches," May said. "I feel like my mind-set is there. Once I get in a routine, the walks will go down." "All of the home runs have been solo home runs and I think all of them have led off innings. I would much rather give up a home run in the first couple of pitches rather than with the bases loaded for a grand slam. I'd be in more trouble then." Very encouraging insights of a maturing pitcher who seems to understand he needs to be more focused on a consistent basis, and comes off as motivated to do the things needed to get to the next level quickly, and all things considered, a strong performance against a strong hitting team, where he appeared to have a conscious plan to be more of a "pitcher" than a strike out machine hoping for the best. New Hampshire is 4th in the Eastern League in BA and 2nd in OBP. Given that May was way ahead of Meyer in professional experience, 5 years to only 1 for Meyer, if May can keep this up, he may get the first promotion from New Britain. Perhaps when/if Gibson/Deduno/DeVries/Hendriks are sent up to the Twins (which may be sooner rather than later if Pelfrey needs to be sent down).

I thought it was "most ridiculous" that because "they didn't even know" about the TJ, but yet, they were still willing to let leak to the public that in their opinion, Baker wasn't toughing it out enough and be more willing to pitch through a little pain.

One could be tempted to say, "welcome to the mouth-breathing 20%". The Clete Thomas renaissance tour is just days away....

Solid outing indeed. In addition to the 3BBs, he also had a HBP. He might be the new "effectively wild" darling of the up-and-coming SP prospects. Maybe a good sign that he is learning to "pitch" better and evolving from less a "thrower"- ie, when he doesn't have his big "K" pitch working effectively at 100%.

Aaron Hicks is trending up. Over the weekend, he passed the first important ML hitting milestone in his young career. Can you spot it? Aaron Hicks BA: .059 SLG: .059 OPS+: -22 ISO: .000 BABIP: .100 Probably the worst-hitting pitcher in the history of the Twins, if not in all of baseball is: Dean Chance BA: .066 SLG: .069 OPS+: -46 ISO: .003 BABIP: .181

My thoughts are that you ought to consider how valuable your sources are who think Fien should be waived. Wood should be comfortable in Rochester until the Twins are forced to put him on waivers, he seems to love the I League, if he's claimed, he'll hit waivers again for the claiming team, and probably end up right back in the I League. It's soon time to start moving up the other young arms and possibly Harden and Perez in the mix and seeing what they have, anyway.

My issue specifically was the drawing pf broad conclusions and using statistically insignificant data when it suits one's purpose (axe-sharpening) and dismissing someone else's argument when it doesn't. While Hicks has looked a little better at the plate in the last 4 games, one could easily say that there was some bad pitching strategy and maybe some bad pitchers over these games. Notice that it is a fact that Hicks is only getting 48% of his pitches in the strike zone (almost a full percent less balls thrown in the zone than Joe Mauer!), and- this number has been trending significantly to increasing pitching wildness to Hicks in the last week. The Fox announcer on Saturday made a point of mentioning that Hicks has been frequently striking out on 3 pitches and that Mike Scoscia was very upset that his pitchers weren't going right at Hicks during the Angels series while he and Bert were wondering out loud why Floyd and the others were also nibbling at a guy batting .046. So it ends up fair to say that Hicks is becoming more patient and doing better at recognizing pitches out of the zone, but we have yet to see him come close to "breaking out". His LD% is all of 6.9%, 3rd worst in all of baseball!- and although game temperatures were frigid last week, Hicks wasn't exactly firing frozen ropes to the OF on this alleged epic "corner turning" run. Bottom line, more work to do on Hick's part and more data to be collected before serious conclusions can be drawn.

Bingo...but careful treading here on this subject matter, Ox....statements like these might cause some heart palpitations among some of the faithful- and possibly jeopardize your "real fan" status.

Doumit DH OPS for 2012: .858 AL DH avg OPS for 2012: .758 Doumit C OPS for 2012: .761 AL C average OPS 2012: .710 I'll take the 100 extra points or so of SLG, which accounted for the OPS differential at DH and the superior hitting numbers at C, for the comparatively cheap deal ($3,5M/yr) the Twins made (by comparison, Kurt Suzuki earns $6.5M and his putrid OPS in 2012 was .605- and was only .536 for the majority of his ABs- in Oakland). And pairing Doumit with Mauer at DH gave the Twins the 5th highest DH OPS in 2012 while keeping Mauer relatively healthy and in the lineup most of the year. Credit to Ryan on a good overall strategy around this acquisition. Having said that, I hope Ryan is listening to any decent offer for Doumit if/when the Twins are officially out of contention.

I'm tempted to ask: What plate coverage? and What power? seems affected? He has 3 singles RH and O LH. He has struck out 18 times in 48 PAs RH (37.5%) and has struck out 3 times in 12 PAs LH (25%).

This....Axes can't grind themselves...

Don't go around surreptitiously invoking the Maddon Rules in these here parts- that's bound to rile up some of the local faithful...

Well. the headline could be taken that way without further context.

Actually, the attacks and bickering began in the manner they usually do. Followed by a solid defense from the OP, followed by a a complaint to the mod from the original attacker that he is now the one being attacked. I ask again, does a broad topic- widely known and discussed- which were the lead quoted comments in multiple threads started on TD- and that was central to the offseason debate and the ensuing widespread discontent with what the FO did and didn't accomplish- require the OP to document the links? Is the failure to do so really the root cause of how things got "disruptive and disrespectful?" Or could the Brother TD Members at least accept the proposed premise at face value as another Brother's thought-out, evidenced-based position- if they were truly ignorant of all that transpired in the offseason- and then engage in the debate with politeness instead of pejorative?

I'm not following the logic here, Glunn. I haven't ever seen any Twins fan ever post anything on TD on a "concept based on rooting for an opponent when playing against the Twins." In this case, for this particular thread, that is clearly also not the intent. Furthermore, there is virtually no chance that Slowey would even pitch in this series. But the Marlins coming to town will still be a legitimate news story. Actually, it was already being hyped by both DicknBert and in the postgame recap. Dick even threw Slowey a mini-bouquet and RedDog is sure to do some media interviews regarding his time with the Twins. I am a little troubled that your comments are suggesting that independent thinking is somehow dangerous, that certain folks "know" what others are thinking, and that we all need to strive harder for some kind of groupthink consensus or all hell will break loose. Part of the problem is the constantly moving target of what exactly TD policy is. Interesting and lively discussion on how to make the team better seems to have already paid dividends- even if it was only a vicarious phenomenon. The Twins appear to be following actual statistical evidence on how to improve the lineup- I never thought that the FO would actually make the tacit admission that the soft-tossing P2C strategy should be scrapped, and I never thought Gardy would commit to move Mauer to the 2-spot on a regular basis or that having only 2 catchers is smart baseball, thereby giving you a viable bench option or two (witness Doumit yesterday). Seeking kumbayah consensus isn't all it's cracked up to be. Lively debate can generate more good ideas. I greatly admired the abilities of Jim Thome, Robin Ventura and Mark Buehrle but I can still separate that from the disappointment as a Twins fan when they were acting as Twins-killers. Former Twins get to be part of our extended family, and I generally like to see them do well when they move on- just not against the Twins! If Slowey is still pitching for the Marlins in June, I would enjoy nothing better than if the Twins knock him out with a 5 run first inning. In the end, we all hope and expect that the Twins will pound the living daylights out of the Marlins on Monday and Tuesday. And hopefully, the Twin FO also has learned that each player they control is an asset, and they should maximize the return from the asset- as a Twins player- developed and grounded in fundamentals to get maximum performance; as an injured Twins player, in helping them recover and rehab quickly and effectively from injury; and finally, that it's bad management practices, and entirely counter-productive to badmouth and sabotage (no matter how well-deserved) a current asset's potential value to prospective suitors and future prospective players.

Dateline- Cincinnati, 11:45 EST, April 20 Hello again, Twins fans. Slow-Poke here again. I was scoreboard-watching at Great American BP today and noticed a curious anomaly. My old mates came up with a very nice away win against the hated Tidy-Whities with a nice pitcher's duel, late-inninng, 2-1 win. Just to update your next opponent at Target Field on Monday, my new team, the Marlins, also got a nice 2-1, late-rally win against the Redlegs last night. It was my 4th outing of the season against one of the top 4 hitting teams in baseball, and coming off of consecutive 11 run games. Despite similarly difficult conditions to what you've become accustomed to in Minneapolis- 42 degree game time temp, quickly soon after falling into the upper 30s, I was able to hold the Reds to 1 run and 4 hits over 6 innings, lowering my ERA to a BUCK.90 and my ERA+ is now 207. How're the wrist and ribs feeling? Glad you asked. After a long, tough go of it, I'm finally fully healthy. My old Twins battery-mate, and now my boss, Mike Redmond, was quoted in the Herald saying: "I've never seen him pitch better than he is right now" But then, he's also willing to listen to me when I want to have an in-depth discussion on baseball math uses for parabolas from the Cissoid of Diocles; or whether alleged journalists like Jim Souhan, Jim Rome and Jim Gray are even worthy to carry the literary jockstraps of Grantland Rice, Red Smith and Shirley Povich. Of course, upon further reflection, that might be a bad choice of metaphor, Red Dog hasn't changed much- he still prefers having those locker room discussions sans jockstrap, or anything else on his body, for that matter. Not surprisingly, his loose vibe goes over well down here at South Beach, the losing puts itself in perspective when characterized by his free-spirited ways. Looking forward to saying hello to all my MN friends and well-wishers next week. Do you think I might get a chance to do an in-game, "welcome back" interview with DicknBert?

Not this year, unless there is a ridiculous, blow-em-away deal offered.

Neutrally-based question, Glunn. Would you agree or disagree that there is a level of rudeness and disrespect when someone begins an inane attack with embedded personal insults, and then inanely demands sidetracking, time-and-space-wasting and threadjacking links to details and simply can't accept the goodwill of the opposing presenter's premise to continue the friendly discussion- for friendly discussion's sake?- in particular when it is information that was widely disseminated and discussed just a short while ago.

That, and better and more consistent mechanics or he'll be heading for TJ-land

Me too. I too, still have my doubts- he'll always be a flawed player in my mind, but the first 2 weeks have turned me slightly more optimistic.

Break up the Miracle. 9 run 4th inning. 5 HRs so far. And Sano hasn't even gotten a hit yet! Baxendale cruising through 4.

I'm not arguing that what the Red Sox have done is, or will, be successful. It was the process they chose- I did argue that they reset their team with the clear intention to place themselves back in position to at least be competitive- in a division that will be up for grabs with all the Yankees woes.

The second part I agree with completely, but since there have been bombastic bet proposals thrown around lately, I'll take you up on Plouffe being the regular 3B all year, barring a game-changing trade, of course.

Hey, it's all good. There's no doubt Plouffe has holes in his game, FWIW, he does appear to be more comfortable in the field, even if the results aren't there, yet. And I like his approach at the plate thus far this season- no more of those Cuddyer-like low and outside flails with 2 strikes, and- lots more bad pitchers and soon to be tired arm pitchers to face as the weather finally heats up, the man hits a mistake pitch as well as anyone. I am willing to put up with his less than stellar defense if he can OPS in the 800s over the next few years.

It's in the Twins Daily archives from a year ago, not too difficult to track down if you're interested.