Sssuperdave

Fair points. I was wrong about Tampa Bay. That said, here's a really interesting map showing favorite mlb team by county: https://www.vividseats.com/blog/most-popular-mlb-teams-by-state-county/map To me it really shows that market size is about a lot more than population. There are things teams can do to build fan bases that reach further. I think it's most interesting that in the 3 markets with 2 teams, one of the 2 teams is clearly the bigger dog. The Angels have a very small smattering of counties where the Dodgers have a bunch. The Mets have basically long island while the Yankees have the rest of the state, and the White Sox don't even show up on the map.

Frank Viola and Johan Santana stand out pretty strongly in my memory. Maybe two isn't "many" but they were both pretty painful at the time. Ironically the Viola trade actually turned out pretty good for the Twins - Aguilera & Tapani were core pieces of the '91 team. But I sure hated to see Viola go.

Sooooo many thoughts!!! First instinct - this is wonderful news. Yes, there are all kinds of ways it might go bad, and there are way worse owners than the Pohlads (more on that below), but seriously... I'm just more hopeful about the Twins today than I have been on any day in years, and it's not blind or unwarranted hope. Yes, the new owner could be worse, even a lot worse, but he/she/they could also be a whole lot better. Where the Pohlads stand is complicated. There have been some absolutely terrible, embarrassingly terrible, pro sports team owners. Think Donald Sterling, Marge Schott, Dan Snyder, and at least a dozen more. But still, the Pohlads volunteered to contract the team. I mean, they don't spew racist vitriol and they've never tanked like the A's or Marlins, but still, volunteering to contract the team? Even if the Twins didn't have a lease until 2040, I just don't see them moving. I mean, anything can happen (North Stars anyone?), but it just doesn't make logical sense. MSP is the 16th largest metro area, and I would guess the Twins Market is even bigger than 16th when you consider all of MN and the Dakotas. MSP is not a small market for MLB, it is a mid-sized market. We aren't NY, Chicago, or LA, but we aren't Kansas City or Tampa Bay either.

Man, this is a rough situation. I wholeheartedly believe in 2nd chances, and recognize areas in my life where I have been given 3rd, 4th, and 5th chances. That said, the thing I really struggle with in this situation is the thousands of talented young men who never even get first chances to play pro baseball. Obviously we will never know the whole story. If Bender was in the midst of a mental health crisis, hopefully he will get the help he needs and can work his way back. But if it is more a matter of him lacking the emotional intelligence to handle adversity better than this - and this is an incredibly low bar I am talking about - then his roster spot should being given to someone else.

I don't think I'd include Donaldson on this list. For me, the best part of the Donaldson signing was that it showed the Twins were willing to spend real money on a free agent from outside the organization. Big contracts like that rarely provide as much value per $ as smaller contracts, but they are necessary sometimes for a team to compete with the big spenders. He was hurt for most of 2020 but had a pretty good year stats-wise in 2021. Certainly not worth the $40M they paid him over those two years, but it's not like he was 2017 -2021 Albert Pujols. I think the flip side to my argument is that Donaldson's attitude/approach may have had a negative impact on the rest of the team. Probably don't want to open that can of worms again though. Well, maybe I just did. 🤭

This is not true. The flu has a death rate of 0.1%, and Covid-19 has a death rate of between 2% and 3%, that's 20 to 30 times the flu. Right now in the US the Covid-19 mortality rate is 2.84%, compared to 3.63% worldwide. You can find these stats at https://coronavirus.thebaselab.com/ Here's a helpful article with more stats and comparisons between Covid-19 and the flu: https://www.livescience.com/new-coronavirus-compare-with-flu.html

Several thoughts on this: Bonilla is still being paid $1.2M per year by the Mets, but that is not included in the dead money above (rightfully in my opinion). The Mets total is $9M, which is entirely David Wright. Those details are included in the article linked in the original post.Bonilla's amount is deferred compensation, which I do not think should be included as dead money, because deferred compensation is determined in advance and can be directly planned for.Again, in my opinion, dead money is not something that should be avoided at all costs. Once signed, player contracts are sunk costs, and management should do all they can to not include future amounts owed as a factor when determining roster composition.

I haven't been following the Dodgers or Maeda, but looking at his games logs for the pat couple of years shows usage that initially strikes me as strange. In each of 2018 and 2019 I didn't see any injuries, and he had a regular starters workload through July, and then sometime in August was moved to the bullpen. It looks a little sketchy, like the Dodgers were purposely avoiding giving him starts and innings. Can anyone that follows the NL more closely contradict this? I'm all for incentive laden deals, but this level of incentives, and structured this way, strikes me as problematic. $6.5M in incentives is tied up in number of starts. What if team uses an opener in all of Maeda's games? A totally valid managerial strategy would become a scandal.

So, I'm sure I'll be in the minority here, but these videos make me more concerned than excited. I can understand altercations over HBP, because that can cause injury, but only one of these involves an HBP. The ones with Kela and Perkins in particular are over nothing but words. I'm sure Kela and Perkins bear some responsibility, but the common denominator here is Donaldson. You don't see other players losing their cool over nothing but words over and over again. Where most of you see competitive fire and passion, I see behavior that is thin-skinned and immature. When I combine these videos with the fact that this is already Donaldson's fifth team, it causes concern for me. I hear so much about chemistry and clubhouse leadership... is Donaldson going to be a positive influence or a negative one?

I'd pass on all of these free agents. The Twins have plenty of internal options that are cheaper and possibly better than almost all of the arms on this list. Thorpe, Smeltzer, Dobnak, Poppen, Duran, and Alcala are all on the 40 man, and you've got Griffin Jax and Adam Bray in Rochester that I'd rather add to the 40 man than any of these free agents. I mean, I'm not hoping for significant innings from guys like Poppen, Duran, Jax, etc., but they are cheaper and more interesting plans B and C than any of these free agents, except maybe Walker. If they are going to add pitching, which I still think they should, they should aim higher via trade.

So here's my thought process on Pineda: 1. Was he getting any actual on-field benefit from whatever banned substances he was taking? If he was, you've got to assume some performance regression next year. 2. What's the temperature in the clubhouse towards him? Are players bitter towards him or are they forgiving? Next year, would he be a good or a bad clubhouse influence? Assuming the answer to #1 is that he wasn't getting any on-field benefit from the substances and assuming the answer to #2 is that the player are forgiving an he's a good clubhouse influence, then I think he is worth the QO. He's had enough flashes of effectiveness in his career that I think there's a good chance everything comes together for him and he posts an ERA in the low-to-mid 3's next year. If the answer to those two questions I posed goes the other way, I don't give him the QO.

I know there's a lot of pessimism right now, but I'm optimistic the Twins could take 2 of 3. The high leverage guys in the bullpen are well rested, so all you need today is 5 good innings from Odorizzi then parade in Duffey, May, Romo, and Rogers. Rest those 4 relievers tomorrow and then do the same thing on Sunday - 5 good innings from Berrios followed by the reliever train. Yes the lineup is rough right now but just between Cruz and Garver you could get a couple of dingers.

As usual, another spot on hilarious piece from randballs stu. I think I agree with Mr. Hanson that Berrios throwing meat is a 911 worthy emergency!

Amazing the difference a 3 game win streak can make. The Twins pulled out a winning month of July at 13-11. Their record has been above .500 every month in 2019.The Twins are now 2 games behind the Astros and Yankees for top record in the AL, and Cleveland is 3 games behind the Twins. So, they are closer to having the best record in the AL than they are to 2nd place in their division.The Twins are now 25 games above .500, which is their high water mark.

I hope I'm not derailing the conversation too much, but I'd like to share some random thoughts on some of the sabermetrics. I love Sabermetrics, but I've got one problem with the varying WAR stats, specifically the differences between bWAR, fWAR, and WARP. It doesn't bother me that the numbers themselves are different between the three, but when I look at the calculations it bothers me that the three seem to take very different fundamental approaches to the concept of Wins Above Replacement. When I think of WAR, I typically think of it as a "what actually happened" stat, as opposed to a stat that's intended to be predictive of future success. Take ERA vs FIP and xFIP. ERA is what actually happened, where FIP and especially xFIP are typically more predictive than ERA. I always think of WAR as more like ERA than xFIP. However, the three WARs all approach this differently. To me they seem to be on a progession from bWAR to fWAR to WARP going from most "what actually happened" to most predictive. A stat like DRC+ sounds really cool and really predictive, but I don't feel like it should be included in a WAR calculation. I guess what I'd really like is two stats: WAR and XWAR, where WAR would use more "what actually happened" stats, and XWAR would use more predictive stats. Kepler having WARP of 3.6, and being only 0.2 behind Rosario is preposterous if WARP is supposed to be a representation of what actually happened, but if it's meant to a predictive or expected measure, then it makes a lot more sense, and it's incumbent on the talent evaluators to decide whether there is something about Kepler that makes him consistently underperform expected stats. Take Ricky Nolasco - if I recall correctly he very consistently underperforms his xFIP. Kepler seems to have really low BABIPs despite his LD%'s. Is there something about him that keeps his BABIP in the toilet, or is he going to break out?

The comparison is about a lot more than size - it is about their profile as hitters. They are both extreme three-true-outcome players. For his Career, Carter has homered, walked, or struck out in 50.3% of his plate appearances. Sano has done so in 53.6%. They have almost identical Home Run %'s (5.5% for Carter and 5.4% for Sano), and Sano walks and strikes out a little more. The point is that if Sano continues with his current approach, several years from now he'll look back and will have had the same results as Chris Carter - made $2M-$3M per year for a few years and then struggling to stay relevant. An extreme alternative to that future is Giancarlo Stanton, another three-true-outcome player at 45.9%. The difference is that Stanton's Home Run% is higher than Sano's (6.4% vs 5.5%) and his K rate is lower (27.8% vs 36.1%). I don't expect Sano to ever have output like Stanton's, but if he can get his K% down to 30% or so and up his HR% just a little bit, he's staring at a $100M+ payday.

While a .650 OPS is very bad for a starting right fielder, there are several reasons why I think it would be acceptable for Kepler vs LH: Defense - Kepler is better defensively that pretty much anyone I can think of to platoon him with.Roster flexibility- As you lay out yourself, current options (Granite & Grossman) don't fit well as platoon partners, so if you carry someone on the roster to be a Kepler platoon partner, you have to lose someone like Granite or Grossman and what they bring to the table.Consistency - This one is squishier and I don't have any data on it, but it would make sense to me that being part of a platoon might cause deteriorating results from the players strong side if it causes them to get out of rhythm due to having somewhat random days off. I recall reading in Kent Hrbek's book about this as we was given a lot of days off against LH pitching towards the end of his career. If Kepler's OPS against left handers stays in the putrid 400s or 500s I think the drag makes it worth platooning, but I think .650 is worth keeping him in.

This, and so many other situations like it, leave me perplexed and downcast. Whenever allegations of the sort Sano faced come out, there are a wide range of reactions. One of the common ones is "don't rush to judgment... wait until all the facts come out." The problem is, in most cases the facts never really come out. In this case, people that suspect he was falsely accused will say "See! He was cleared!", where people that believe the accuser will say "This only shows there wasn't enough evidence to prove wrongdoing," and no one's mind will be changed. This is the case for me. I believed the accuser from the beginning and still do, but of course I don't actually have any clue what really happened, and I don't know any more than I did before this news came out. Perhaps that's okay though, maybe this all is just none of my business.

So, Dozier didn't say he doesn't want to be a Twin any more, and only one person is arguing that he should have said anything differently, but I'd like to address something it brings to my mind even though no one is saying it. I think the concept that a player should be loyal to a particular team is just silly. As soon as production drops meaningfully, any MLB team will not hesitate to kick a player to the curb as soon as their contract allows. In fact, fans on this very site would be up in arms if the team did not. Why should there be a double standard? I mean, Dozier himself was heavily shopped for a trade last winter. Why should he be want to remain a Twin when they would have had no qualms about shoving him out the door if the right offer had come along?

Nice list, fun to think about what it must have been like to watch Walter Johnson in his prime. In response to the first part of your statement, I don't see the Twins themselves ignoring their years as the Senators. It's not a black-and-white thing though, I think the Nationals have sometimes done things that recognize all of the Senators franchises as part of their history, even though those franchises technically weren't. I do see people like Seth and Aaron Gleeman make lists that start with when the Twins moved to MN, and I think the reasoning is pretty obvious. This is a fan site and the vast majority of us live in Minnesota or the surrounding states, and hence we are fans for our home team. Most of us have never lived in DC, so we wouldn't have ever been fans of the Senators, even if those of us less than 56 years old had been alive at the time. It makes perfect sense as a fan of MN sports to only focus on teams that actually played in MN. If I were purely a baseball historian I would completely agree with you, and I like learning and thinking about the Senators, but this a fan site not a pure baseball history site.

Another reason in addition to the longer seasons that I don't think we'll see another Bo Jackson style two sport athlete is how valuable the athletes have become as assets. I think any multi-sport stars of the future will be in more of the Herschel Walker mode, where they have a main sport and a side sport, like Track and Field, that has a less lengthy season and a lower risk of injury.

I like it! I like the new divisions, the new teams, and trimming the playoffs by 2 teams. My only quibble is that there wouldn't much of an incentive to win the division - the only advantage for winning the division vs just making the playoffs would be home field advantage in the first round. What I like best about the Wild Card game right now is that it really rewards winning the division as you don't have to play in a single game elimination. Here's an idea people will probably hate. :-) What if you kept everything in your proposal but instead of having 2 wild cards in each league you have 4, with the wild cards going to one-game playoffs to determine who advances to the next round to face the division winners? This would expand the playoffs rather than contract them, which is probably a negative, but would increase the reward for winning the division, which I think is a positive.

Sano, Buxton, Kepler,and Rosario are under team Control through 2021, with Berrios and Polanco under team control through 2022. All six of those guys are still very young and progressing up the learning curve, which in my mind gives the Twins a 3-year window of opportunity of 2019 - 2021. You've also got Romero, Gonsalves, and Gordon in the minors that could meaningfully contribute during that window. So, I think you start with that group of 6 - 9 and then look at how to build around them to optimize 2019-2021. Darvish would fit the bill perfectly, but if you don't get him then I think you go in to a light sell mode for 2018, where the assets you are selling are assets that won't be in their prime in 2019-2021. I think that includes Dozier and Santana as well as prospects like Royce Lewis and Wander Javier. In return, you need to get a very good pitcher that will be hitting his prime in that window. Perhaps a package with one of Dozier/Santana and one of Lewis/Javier could bring back a top notch young starter? I could actually see combining this light sell with Tom's option 1 of "lower their aim". Cobb and Lynn are young enough that they could be part of the '19-'21 window, so you could sign one of them along with selling some assets I laid out above. You don't want to completely mortgage the farm, but you do need to give up something to get something, and you need to be realistic about who the Twins are. I don't think they are ever going to be perennial contenders over a 8-10 year stretch, so they need to make the most of the windows they have while hopefully avoiding enormous dry spells like we experienced from '11-'16.

On one hand, I think you're being a bit too hard on yourself. The content at TwinsDaily is phenomenal, and I can think of dozens of things written by folks other than Nick, Seth, John, and Parker. In fact, perhaps the most memorable article I've read was a great story by SD Buhr about a guy using a shovel to get out of a hole when a ladder was available (I think that was it), clearly an analogy to Terry Ryan. In addition, the daily game stories that Tom does are phenomenal, and the minor league roundups are great and often written by other contributors. On the other hand, I can certainly understand your concern about the future of TwinsDaily. As you stated, eventually the core writers will need to move on to other things, and if there is no one left to contribute meaningful content the site won't survive. I really don't have any answers for you. On a personal level, I've never written a single blog post, but it has often crossed my mind that I would like to. The main things holding me back are time and standards. I just don't have time to write an article that I would be proud of, and if I did find the time to write one I certainly would never find the time to write them regularly. You are in a difficult situation. I get the sense that there is a "core" to TwinsDaily, made up first of Nick, Seth, John, Parker, and Brock (to do the website), followed up with a sort of inner circle of the moderators and folks that contribute to the handbooks and regular features like the minor league roundups. It would be great for you to expand both of these groups (the core and inner circle). However, you probably can't just take all comers, as you have a certain level of standards to uphold, and you want to make sure that all significant Twins events are covered in a somewhat coordinated way. Good luck!

The quality of content on Twins Daily, including the comments, is incredible, and the moderators are a huge reason why. Thank you moderators!