Unwinder

Should be able to fit in five or six innings by then.

This post is a bit out of date but expresses my feelings.

It's really a joy to see a borderline-giant like Sano move like that. What a thrilling play. I still feel really good about Ober. Fans always find a way to ask for more, but for a rookie going up against a really great offense, he did really well. Much better than I was expecting.

For those of us who already want to watch baseball, that would be very helpful! I've had some modest success online as a cartoonist, and while I'm not sure how much of that is applicable to promoting an entire sport, I've noticed a few things about how people choose what they consume: 1. If you put your comics behind a paywall, people will overwhelmingly ignore them in favor of the overwhelming amount of free stuff that's out there. 2. If you put your comics on your OWN SITE, people will overwhelmingly ignore them in favor of the stuff that's posted directly to social media, which they're already committed to browsing every day. 3. When people see your stuff regularly, they start to get attached to it. In order for new viewers to check baseball out, it doesn't just have to be available, it needs to be so convenient that they can slouch into watching it because they're looking for something to watch and it's right there. It's better for Bally to charge for their own streaming service, which we fans might find reasonable, but it'd be better for baseball if they could figure out some sort of a deal with some sort of existing streaming service.

They had him on DH not too long ago too, it seems like they're exploring just how to get him as many MLB at-bats as they can.

That certainly sounds generous on paper, but if I only care about Twins games that's what, one every couple of weeks?

What's ridiculous to me is that they paywall everything, yet they play more games than any other sport. You'd think they could spare a few!

On the other hand, I think baseball does have one inherent disadvantage in grabbing people's attention compared with other sports in that you can watch a whole game to see a star player and it's kind of a crapshoot if you'll get to see them do something cool or not. If you watch a basketball game to see Lebron James, Lebron will probably do at least one cool thing. Probably several cool things. If you watch a football game to see Tom Brady, he will get plenty of chances to throw the ball far. He'll try to do something cool every play. If you watch a baseball game to see Shohei Ohtani play DH, he'll get four or five shots to do something cool over the course of three hours. He might hit a couple of homers, or he might walk twice, strikeout once, and ground into a double play. I imagine this can be frustrating for curious new viewers tuning in because they heard some good buzz about a superstar player.

As a relatively new fan (I only really got into baseball in 2019) I feel like my perspective is probably pretty different from most here. I would say that the main reason I'm not watching baseball on a regular basis is that it's too difficult/expensive to do so. If there was some way that I could casually switch on a game without thinking about it, I would probably do it when I don't have anything else going on on a given evening. I have watched two Twins games this year. I watched one in a bar, and the other was at Target Field. I have caught partial games at bars and restaurants. I don't have cable (or even regular broadcast TV) and don't want to pay for cable. I've seen some fans on here say "just spring for MLB.tv," and that's a perfectly fine solution if you've been watching baseball for years and it's worth it to you, but no casual fan or newcomer is going to pay that subscription fee (or get cable) simply because they're curious about baseball. Ultimately, you just can't get young people interested in something that they need to go behind a paywall to even get a taste of. There's too much free entertainment out there. People in their twenties would rather watch Youtube than subscribe to Netflix. There is currently no equivalent to just turning on any old TV and tuning into the game. You need to choose to pay for baseball before you can figure out if you like baseball. There's no entry point for viewers who are just mildly curious (except for a few free games on Youtube which allow you to watch the home team just a few times a year). I dragged my teenage foster daughter to a Saints game earlier this summer, and after complaining the whole week before, and complaining the whole way there about how baseball is boring, she loved it. When she saw it, it clicked for her. She was absolutely captivated by it. The sport has not lost its ability to enchant young people. If you put it in front of them, they'll still get invested in it, it's just not conveniently available. Many of you have lost some interest due to changes in the game - The shift, three-true-outcomes hitting, longer games, etc. While I don't doubt that games may have been more interesting before these changes took place, I had no problem getting into the game during the Bomba Squad era. (in fact, the first player who I got excited to root for was Miguel Sano). I certainly wouldn't mind a faster-paced version of the game, but the current game has been perfectly sufficient for me to enjoy it, even as a social-media-addicted millennial. I'm also not losing interest now that the Twins are having a rough year and have a rough path ahead. Currently I follow games on Twitter, read recaps on this blog, and occasionally tune in on the radio when I remember to do it. I've been to six Saints games this year, and will probably be able to make two or three more (if I'm going to watch prospects, I might as well go where I can afford good seats). I don't want to pay for a subscription if I don't know how much I'm going to use it. Based on my personality (and I can't speak for all younger/casual fans here), the best way for MLB to get me to pay to watch baseball would be to provide a way to watch individual games for the price of a movie rental instead of requiring a subscription. But this would not appeal to me if I wasn't already following baseball. In order to hook new viewers, they need to bite the bullet and make regular (not necessarily all) games available for all teams for free (with commercials as needed) on a platform people already use. Which shouldn't be impossible, since they used to do it on TV and it doesn't seem like they went bankrupt then.

Great Wind Surge seats are like twenty bucks, so I guess there are worse places to shell out for a seat to sit around and text in.

I'm not sure what to expect long-term from Jax and Ober but I'm starting to avoid using "pitching pipeline" as a punchline. These guys are really working hard and earning these good outings.

How worried should Astudillo fans be about the 40 man roster crunch?

You can't compare Ober to Methuselah, it was a completely different game back then. The average fastball was 12 MPH, and starters were expected to go 90 innings.

That's gonna be some career.

We should extend him, yeah. He wants to be here, he's been pitching decently, and we could use some stability while we shuffle through our starting prospect options to see what sticks,

This trade deadline is good now.

I'm happy to believe him if he continues to back it up, but two good AAA starts don't mean that much.

I'd say the number of injuries is flukey this year, and depending on your definition of a fluke, I guess you can call it a fluke that the free agent pitching gambles went mostly good in 2019-2020 and mostly bad in 2021. If your definition of a fluke is really generous, you could call the timing of MLB-level changes like the deadened ball and the extra-inning runners a fluke, I guess. I'll also allow that if you can argue that the lost MILB season last year impacted the Twins more than other teams, that's a fluke. It's not a fluke that our division is a lot more competitive than it was in 2019. And it's not a fluke that a lot of players regressed a frustrating but not shocking amount from career-high seasons.

This is a historic first.

I'm assuming that Nelson Cruz's couple of out-of-nowhere stolen bases this year are why his disciple Sano has been attempting them lately. Meanwhile, I feel like I wrote Rooker off really prematurely. He's not Cruz but he looks solid so far.

Good! I want him to win a world series, but I don't want him to get too attached to Tropicana Field.

Logo here: I absolutely love the winged-god baseball icon, these are my hated division rivals and I would consider wearing that on a cap

I think it's actually pretty optimistic to expect us to go injury-free until Buxton's back on the field. I feel like Sano's due for an injury. I envision him starting to get hot in the middle of August and taking a line drive in the nose the day after Twins Daily posts a "Miguel Sano is back on top" article. (Or possibly a "Maybe now we can move Miguel Sano during the offseason" article)

Hashtag FreeMiranda

It makes me really happy to see Ober continue to be decent, especially after Jax yesterday, and especially with Balazovic on an ungodly tear. These pitching prospects are really giving me something to look forward to (or at least fantasize about).