biggentleben
-
Posts
4,657 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
3
Content Type
Profiles
Minnesota Twins News, Rumors & Analysis
Minnesota Twins Videos
2026 Minnesota Twins Top Prospect Rankings
2022 Minnesota Twins Draft Picks & Signing Bonuses
Minnesota Twins Trade & Free Agent Rumors
Minnesota Twins Fan Guides & Resources
2023 Minnesota Twins Draft Picks & Signing Bonuses
The Minnesota Twins Players Project
2024 Minnesota Twins Draft Picks & Signing Bonuses
2025 Minnesota Twins Draft Picks & Signing Bonuses
2026 Minnesota Twins Draft Picks & Signing Bonuses
Forums
Blogs
Events
Store
Downloads
Gallery
Everything posted by biggentleben
-
I guess I'm a Braves fan who went to every Braves game at the dome while I lived in the cities and made the six-hour drive to see them their first visit to Target Field, so I'm not understanding your comment. I also bought many tickets to see guys like Griffey, Ripken, Sosa, Clemens, Ichiro, etc. when I was in the cities as well, even though none were on my favorite teams. If I wasn't six hours away, Goldschmidt would be on the list of guys I'd buy a ticket to see live.
-
No thrill in seeing Paul Goldschmidt?! That's one thing where I think football way outdoes baseball - marketing young talent. Because of the ridiculous arbitration system, most teams don't want to overhype their own guy until he's locked in for years to come. That means most casual fans around the league don't have an idea who Tyson Ross of the Padres is or don't consider Paul Goldschmidt coming to town on par with Sosa/Bonds in their hey day. Talent-wise in the league there are maybe 3-5 on par with Goldschmidt, but he's on a horrid team this year. Sosa played on some putrid Cubs teams, but he was fun to watch when he came to town.
-
This we discussed earlier as really not true if you add up the time the ball is in play in each sport. It is certainly a perception, but because not every pitch turns into an out or hit, there's a perception that it's not action like a no-gain run or incomplete pass is in football, even though they accomplish the same purpose as far as progression of the game.
-
He always has been a very poor bunter. Akin to the receiver in football who is looking where to run before catching the ball, Schafer is notably moving toward first before securing the contact in a bunt.
-
I really think there's a $500K-$1M range above that $2M where I wouldn't blame a team if they really like the guy. I can't imagine Schafer would think he could get $3M and request that high, but he's very self-confident, so that's always a possibility. I didn't answer where the Twins should walk away, just where I would personally, but I'm in the same boat as the Braves were with way too much history of the guy influencing my decision, and I'll openly admit that. There's no reason a team like the Twins who have been impressed with what he showed in their uniform couldn't go to $3M, but I'd be questionable about getting any value at that pay scale. It's akin to paying a superstar $30M. That may be their value, but any dip in performance would immediately make that look like a bad contract. Schafer returning to his 2nd half 2013 through his release from the Braves in 2014 performance would never be worth $3M, so there's that risk. $2M leaves some room for him to play above that level. Yes, it's only $1M on a payroll of $100M (roughly, not starting any payroll arguments here!), but that's $1M not utilized elsewhere that it could be available.
-
The numbers I was quoting I will admit were off the top of my head and were based on a preseason podcast using multiyear averages. I will openly admit that the numbers this season could be far more even in total length of game. Lev, I think you have known me well enough to know that I was more counter-pointing the typical arguments against the game rather than stating purely my own feelings. I do believe the game could be drastically sped up, as evidenced by the game I watched with Santana. The issue is that there are plenty of issues outside of the pitcher's control that delays a delivery to the plate. The #1 issue I see with baseball's promotion right now is their ridiculous blackout restrictions. Other pro sports wish they had MLB's technical innovation, including but not limited to MLB.tv. The problem is that someone in Minneapolis willing to spend the money to purchase MLB.tv could never watch a Twins game, no matter where they are playing.
-
The least he could make in arbitration is roughly $875K. I would wager on him making in the $1.5-2M range, and that's not out of this world for a 4th outfielder. Anything over $2M would be very questionable to me.
-
Oh goodness.
-
Upton has been that terrible. He's being replaced by a guy who was released during spring training currently in the Braves lineup. They also have room for a guy whose contract will be off the books after 2016, when the extensions signed this offseason start to get expensive. Nolasco is more expensive and has one more year than they'd like, so he's not a good fit for what they'd like to do in moving BJ.
-
Yeah, what you said here...not a chance of happening. Gattis has received high marks from the Braves staff in his defense this season. The reason he's being considered for a move is that they have possibly the best defensive catcher since Yadi ready for the majors and Gattis is still cheap and could fetch a huge trade return. If the Twins opened talks with Kohl Stewart or J.O. Berrios, then Gattis may be a discussion, but that's really the only way the Braves will move him this offseason is if they're blown away.
-
Choo is done for the season at this point, and he has an incredibly nasty contract for the next 6 years that is extremely backloaded with $14M per this season and in 2015, then $20M each 2016-2018, and then $21M in 2019 and 2020. One of the worst contracts of the offseason.
-
There were never "talks" regarding Minor that got anywhere. The Cubs asked for Minor PLUS over half of Upton's salary to be paid. The Braves have reportedly confirmed that they'd have done the deal at the deadline (not now, as Minor's been one of the best pitchers in baseball in August), but it would have been BJ + a max of $10M for Jackson or BJ + Minor for Jackson + cash. The Cubs wanted significantly more than $10M. I don't see any possibility of Nolasco as the Braves are very familiar with Nolasco, and they were offered a deal before he was moved to Los Angeles for a prospect in the 30-40 range on their top prospects with the rest of the season paid by the Marlins, and they passed it up.
-
Boston traded for the rights to hire him away from Toronto, who he was still under contract with at the time, however. I know this mainly because one of the players involved in the deal is a fairly prominent part of the Atlanta bullpen, David Carpenter. This from his B-Ref page in the transactions section: October 21, 2012: Traded by the Toronto Blue Jays with John Farrell (as manager) to the Boston Red Sox for Mike Aviles.
-
There is a pitch clock in the rule book - 12 seconds. It is never enforced, and interestingly on his last start, Fox Sports South put the clock on Ervin Santana, who was the exact median in length of games started this season among qualifiers. Once the batter was in the box, on average he threw the ball at around 13 seconds, and he's average. I would love to see the same clock done on one of the notoriously slow workers like Clay Buchholz. That said, the pitchers aren't all to blame. Only two of every three pitches that evening with Santana was able to complete the clock once the pitcher was set because the batter would step out or call time, and even when they didn't, many were swinging and adjusting until nearly 8 seconds into the pitch clock, meaning they wouldn't have even been ready for a pitch thrown.
-
Dave's obsession was with Mr. DeRosa for sure. I'm quite aware as a Braves fan of her, though. With he and Javy Lopez on the roster, the Braves could make the argument of having the two most attractive baseball wives in the game at that time.
-
People complain about the length of baseball games, but the average baseball game is shorter by over 30 minutes than the average NFL game. People who want to say that baseball has no action would be surprised to find out that those 30 extra minutes that an NFL game is in length constitutes just short of the 35-40 minutes of actual play time during an NFL game between the huddles, Peyton pre-snap show, and reviews, which baseball can absolutely dwarf with an average of something like 75-90 minutes of actual play activity during a game. The major difference, I believe, has to do with the violence of the game and the mindlessness - and understand that I'm saying this as a guy who had every intention of playing football as a career before that was taken away by surgery, so I love football. Every moment of baseball is calculated and as much mental as physical. In football, it is rare that the better athlete doesn't win in head-to-head competition, but if that held true in baseball, Chris Young of the Mariners would be the best pitcher in the league, and Jason Heyward and Charlie Blackmon would be fighting for the titles of the best hitter in the game. I love the chess aspect of baseball, but much like our average newspaper has diminished to a sub-middle school reading level, Americans simply don't want to engage their minds that much in their entertainment - see video games, Michael Bay, and Skip Bayless.
-
He's been drilled on this for years, even by Glenn Hubbard, who Greg Maddux once credited with making him into a skilled bunter. Jordan has a lot of very positive skills, but his head has always been what got in his way. Perhaps his original organization finally getting tired of his lack of effort and poor clubhouse attitude drove him to put forth the effort and hard work that got Chipper Jones' attention before his MLB debut. He was compared very favorably to top-end Carl Crawford as he was coming up, with all the positives and negatives that entails - too many strikeouts for a speed guy, though he will take a walk, gets seemingly power-hungry at times and changes his swing which can lead to some long slumps, and lives on his speed on defense without really having great instincts - all the positives and negatives that Crawford in Tampa Bay possessed. If he can be 1/4 of what Crawford was for a 3-5 year run, the Twins have nailed this pick up. I am glad to see him finally playing like the guy who he showed he could be before his wrist injury in 2009.
-
About like me a couple weeks ago as Holt was in a huge slump. Now he's hitting better, and he's going to have SS eligibility most likely for 2015. That will be sweet!
-
There are many strong rivalries in the game now, though. The Nationals are the Braves' biggest rival by far, while they have a very fun back-and-forth with the four Marlins fans as well. Boston-New York is a legit rivalry, though most of America is tired of ESPN's obsession with it. Cardinal and Cubs fans can't stand one another, and Dodger/Giants fans genuinely dislike one another (though that got way too real recently). I don't think you can say there aren't strong rivalries, but I will say that unlike many pro sports, there isn't a rivalry for every team. The Twins/Brewers used to be a solid rivalry, but now they're interleague instead. Outside of that, the Twins have had a good back and forth with the ChiSox in recent history, but that was only as long as both were competitive teams.
-
Don't look now, but Appel has been nothing short of dominant since returning to AA. There may be hope yet for him...
-
Nice win for the Gophers last night, even though they were outproduced in every major statistical category other than TOs and scoreboard. The first few drives looked putrid, but the offense did find a rhythm once they realized the existence of the forward pass to offset their running. I was surprised how porous the defense was against an FCS competitor, though. That needs to change before the conference season begins!!
-
Too bad Soler waited until now to come up!
-
??
-
He's who I thought of when I was reviewing Archer's B-Ref page and noted the combination of trades and Dave's love for both players (albeit an unhealthy sort of obsession with DeRosa).
-
The answer is that both were at one time traded for a package of players that included Chris Archer.
