70charger

Don't like it. Do not like it. At all.

I do have an extra pin from my upper rear right groin.

Well. That was ...a thing.

Instructions unclear. Headed to hospital.

Missed that the first time round. Just figured it was a syntax mistake. Should have known that no one on TD would ever mix up who and whom.

I'll go check. Lemme get back to you.

Chih-Wei Hu. He's doing pretty well in the upper minors. Edit: "Chih," not "Chic." Stupid autocorrect. Though I'm sure he's quite fashionable....

This could be a selling point. "He's ineffective, but he's also injured, so you won't have to see just HOW ineffective. Eh? Eh!?"

Welcome the day-game threads. Sadly, the only kind I can really participate in. It's almost like some people are working. Lame.

Maybe he's trying to do the pull-power thing before he defaults to his high-contact strategy in the riskier 2-strike counts?

I want to know this too. Where do we find these stats?

Pretty classy little note, yeah. And you can tell it's genuine. I agree that he didn't need to bring up the money (not necessarily that he shouldn't have), because he doesn't need to apologize for a damn thing as far as his salary is concerned. If you think about it, any apology along those lines is an apology over the economics of a pro sport with a draft, a farm system, a collective bargaining agreement, and no salary cap. Unless he feels responsible for all of those things too, I don't think he's got much to say sorry for. It's very, very normal in baseball to get paid on past performance, and to get paid well beyond the years you're expected to be useful. That's a nice little return for the three years of "serfdom" and for the three more years of arbitration salary. Not that the rubes in the cheap seats would ever think about that - it's all about what they're making this year. But if you were to take lots of players with long careers and flip their earnings so that it looked like they got the minimum in their last three years, and arbitration in the last three years before that, it doesn't look so bad does it? Take our favorite salary scapegoat 'round these parts. Are we okay with paying $23 million for a year of .280 at 1B in 2016 when we got a year of .347 at C for half a mil back in 2006? What if we arbitrarily assign the $23 million to his 2006 season and the $500k to his 2015? Doesn't change the money spent, but maybe it looks better from those cheap seats. From a player's perspective, that's probably a fair trade. If I were Glen Perkins, I would take the paycheck that I earned - and he did earn it - and get as healthy as I possibly can for my family and for the rest of my life. If I can pitch again, gravy. And if not, then maybe I can take heart that some guy on a message board says "Thanks for the good times, Perk. Don't be a stranger around Target Field."

I keep seeing this over and over in the last month or so. Is this real, or is this just one of those memes without any statistical truth that get repeated because the narrative sounds good? (Remember the whole Twins' trainers are causing Tommy Johns thing a few years back?) I'm naturally skeptical, but if someone has done real research on the following points, I'd like to see it: Does the time spent in the high minors versus the low minors correlate well with major league success? I'm okay with tossing out outliers, and with separating pitchers and hitters. Do the Twins have any tendency greater or less than the major league norm to keep their players at certain levels - or simply high minors vs. low minors - for longer? Are the results any different when you filter for top prospects? I would expect that the players who make it to the major leagues despite being drafted outside of the first couple rounds are more likely to benefit more from more minors time, and vice versa. Does comparing Buxton's time in the high minors to Dozier's make any sense at all? Are the results different when you separate college and high school players? If this sentiment is true, would it be a better strategy to start college players at higher levels and then let them catch up, versus starting them lower and waiting until they dominate?I'm really most interested in #1 and #2. And I want statistics, not memes. Is this something that's real, or is it something we're all attaching ourselves to recently because it sounds good and fits the Buxton profile? Should this be a separate topic?

Yep. And I really hope Joe Mauer ages gracefully enough to be the second.

Pretty much this. If I could interpose a word that I think makes it clearer what (I personally think) he was saying: "If you have a guy that swings at everything you don't JUST want to tell him to take." Which is to say that it is way more than just telling a batter to look at pitches. It's about the approach, the chess match between the hitter and the pitcher. The pitch recognition skill. Basically, JUST telling a hitter to take is the same as just telling a hitter to swing at whatever.

Ouch. Ouch. ...but yeah.

I'm going on record as hating this move. Might it be better for Arcia? Sure, and good for him. Is it likely to be better for the Twins? Of course not, and if they had approached this situation with some common sense they wouldn't be in the position of giving away potential for nothing.

Now your analysis is breaking down. I don't think a ceiling of "above average RF" is correct. And I think the massively flawed All-Star voting process is hardly a useful proxy for talent.

Oh Jesus, what a metaphor.

Your analysis is reasonable, but you're way overselling your conclusion. Literally nobody is "likely to hit like [Harper]." If there was a guy like that in the draft, I didn't see him. We also picked 15th, not first. Also, top 20 in WAR is a pretty high bar for "one of the better players in the league." I'd say that's more like one of the superstars. A guy like Kiriloff can absolutely be one of the better players in the league, and for a long time too. I think the idea that position doesn't play any part in their draft planning is a little ridiculous. You balance premium defense with premium hitting, and you do what you can do at 15. And that's what I'm 100% willing to bet that they did. All things considered (and I mean that literally), they thought this was their best choice. But hey, what do I know? I would have nabbed a pitcher.

Yeah. That's the reason they say no...

Don't want to put words in his mouth but pretty sure that was a joke related to the fact that the Cubs haven't won a World Series since before the Great War. I chuckled anyway.

I think, to add to Bark's post, that it's also interesting to see that some of the very top guys to come out of recent drafts aren't the ones that armchair scouts like the people on this board would have been clamoring for. Was anybody here screaming about not picking Trout? As I recall, the Gibson pick was pretty roundly praised. Maybe some of us ought to take a step back from the ledge as regards the current draft too. We are not clairvoyant. Hell, we're not even that smart. And besides, isn't development a bigger part of the picture anyway?

Let's maybe not make "Rogered" one of them.

Woo! #freedChargois