biggentleben

Rosario has been definitely struggling. Hard to watch level of struggle, no less.

Seth, sometimes I wonder if you guys are either in my head or reading my Slack channel as I toss out story ideas to my crew! Great piece! It'd be even better to see a few more of those arms up, like a Jake Reed or Randy Rosario or Michael Tonkin to add length to the team, none of which would even require a 40-man move.

That's where the biggest issue that I had with the first article was. There are thousands of athletes we can research now who have played for decades in much more violent sports at higher weights than Sano. So is it just the weight number? If so, is that saying something about the ignorance of the Twins staff seeing only the scale and not anything else? Or has Sano slipped on his workout regime? He came to spring with plenty of words published about how hard he'd worked over the offseason to get his body into the type of physical shape that he'd need to in order to handle third base, multiple articles specifically mentioning his work in flexibility and plyometrics along with his strength training that was hoped to help his agility at the hot corner. What's changed with his in season program? The biggest issue I had was that when I started researching this online, I found all kinds of articles with plenty of quotes from Sano about his weight and his size and his need to be in top condition to handle playing third. If he's willing to be quotable on this topic, why on earth was he not part of this article?

I mentioned this in previous discussion, but in watching the rare video I could find when doing a massive Twitter and social media search since last September, Sano was absolutely a newbie to power lifting. Within the first year of power lifting, it is not surprising to have someone have physical reactions of 15-30 pound gains in a 3-6 month span due to their first experience doing the new lifting with a different stress, like going to school, moving to a new community, or, quite possibly in Sano's case, moving to in-season programming rather than off-season. Of course, I'm not assuming 100% of the weight is "good", but I took multiple games from spring and tried to get a screen shot of each spring training, a game in May, and a game in August. There wasn't notable difference in his waist. There was, however, notable difference in his chest and thighs.

So this is something that a potential writer is really interested in doing for Puckett's Pond - scouring the internet for a post multiple times per week that would highlight the best original Twins content around the internet. He's given me permission that if he is unable to pursue PP (he got a brand new job just after signing on to contribute, so he's figuring out what sort of time his job allows him before committing going forward, and I'll for sure respect that!), I could find a writer to pursue that idea, if even for one post per week. I think there are plenty in the same boat as you, who would love to have one post with a set of links to the best stuff out there to help focus your time if you do venture off TD!

Best medical staff in baseball. Hard to imagine why Noah Syndergaard ever said a bad word about the handling of arms in that organization...

Thanks a ton for the kind words, Tom! I've got a small group of writers that are eager to learn right now, but getting some writers will make that site really take off. I've put up 140 articles my first two months with PP, and with a growing family and starting a new full-time gig, even if it is a flexible schedule gig, that's not exactly the way to grow the site. That said, there is a top 100 prospects list planned for this winter, some very fun interviews set up for the offseason with Twins fans in national roles in baseball or sports, and once the season is over, I can get into some video scouting, which is always fun for me personally! I love catching articles here, and I really will say that I don't have great places to add, but what I have found is that outside of Twins Reddit, the Twins blogging community is incredibly open, helpful, and willing to help prop up a fellow writer putting out a good article. I will say that I've already had to have a discussion with my director with FanSided due to retweeting Twins Daily articles, Brandon's articles, and other pieces, and I was encouraged to stay "on brand". I took a screenshot of an article of PP that was retweeted by Twinkie Town, two TD writers, and LENIII to show him that I intended to participate in the Twins community the way that the Twins community participated in good content. I haven't had another issue since! While I'm not dismissing anyone else on the TD team, I truly hope the TD readers realize how blessed they are with the minor league and draft coverage they have on this site. Best part is that the guys are open with their info and love talking the prospects. That's not the way it is across blogs for many teams around the game, so it's a pretty special thing in the Twins community. BTW, I would never, ever deny anyone the opportunity to blog here, but anyone wanting a spot to write consistently can feel free to drop me a PM as I've always got spots, and I don't have plans on going anywhere anytime soon!!

100% accurate. Even in my (extended) rant on the weight number issue, I'm not even saying Souhan is the culprit. My comment was that anyone in the org would report that he's overweight having looked at Sano this season. Still frames from spring to May to now showed minimal, if any, added weight in his waist area. He added weight in his thighs and chest, however, and that could be exactly where that number is coming from, so a good journalist would have sussed that out and gone deeper, not just left it at surface level.

There's SIGNIFICANT nuance to that, however. Bruce Matthews retired having played in one of the most violent sports there is for nearly 20 years at or above 285 for much of his career and still being considered one of the most athletic at his position. Baseball is, to be completely blunt, on the dumb side of the understanding of the body and the athlete. For so many years, baseball skills ruled and no one worried too much about how those baseball skills got there outside of a scale, not really ever thinking so much about what actually constituted that number on the scale. Then, the Oakland Athletics hired a renowned athletic trainer and strength coach who had worked with championship college football teams and basketball teams to be a full-time strength and conditioning coach. It was 1993, and he was the first person who was even half-time in such a role for a major league baseball club. The NFL essentially had strength and conditioning coaching teams by the mid-80s. The NBA had strength and conditioning coaches full time for every team in the league before 1990, and every team had multiple full-time staff in that area before 1995. In 1995, the Colorado Rockies became the first team to employ two people in strength and conditioning at half-time or more. There is so much that is still being learned about properly training a baseball athlete due simply to how late the highest level of the game was in adapting to proper care of those athletes in strength, conditioning, and nutrition. Notably, since the last of teams finally adopted the idea of strength training (much like analytics, it took over a decade for every team to finally hire a full-time person), the average ballplayer has grown in size significantly, though in one particular team's anonymous team height/weight/measurements their staff took, the average waist of an MLB player remained neutral to actually shrinking as weights increased. Sano made comments about seeking out ways to ensure his body could handle a full season at third base after his back issues last season. He was quoted often in the offseason about the weight lifting he was doing as part of that work. Many things, from someone experienced in the power lifting realm, were obviously new to him, and he was going to see some pretty dramatic muscle growth. That would be of concern, but his workouts also contained a very healthy dose of flexibility and plyometric work that would allow him to maintain or even improve his athleticism at his new muscularity. So, Sano quite literally could weigh 270-290 right now and be in better shape than he was at 260. That's 100% feasible. He also could have a very long career playing at 280 pounds on the infield. The number on the scale has minimal bearing on whether he's able to handle third base, it's 100% on the composition of his body as he attempts to handle the position, and Sano has missed almost nothing this year as far as games, outside of a few games early in August when he was plunked on the hand. The durability he's shown while getting very minimal days off from Molitor over the season shows exactly the type of athleticism and recovery his body is able to handle at whatever number is on the scale. That he is unable to immediately return from an injury is not a "told ya" moment for Souhan as much as it is evidence of widely-reported consistent impacts to his shins that had cause repeated trauma to that area. If he's even 80% and the team is able to handle without him now, wouldn't you rather him get closer to 100% and ready for a possible run in October than to come back and have the chance of just getting worse when he takes the next foul ball off the shin?

No it does not. I've stated multiple times that the Carolina League changed long-held rules recently on team ownership. I have not stated that all teams are community owned at any time. I stated that more were community owned and run than was being portrayed. I'll freely admit that my comment regarding a league having a rule requiring community ownership goes back to an interview I did with Bill Smith when he moved into the minor league baseball league offices. If he was mistaken, I never back-checked that bit of information, and that's on me. I cannot find such a league now, though there certainly are rules against individual private ownership and have been rules against team ownership in leagues that exist (or in the Carolina League, existed until just last fall). The comment about true individual ownership being unique is quite true. Much like major league teams, most minor league teams owned by private individuals are still owned by multiple people who have pooled money together. Those were the points I've debated in this discussion, but obviously it's not as much a discussion/debate regarding the existence of multiple facets as the extremes of any other facets existing, when that was never once the discussion, so I'll simply bow out at this point.

The Carolina League had a rule against team ownership that they removed in order to allow the new members of the league this year. The Northwest League requires all owners to be through a third party, not a direct individual ownership. The most notable is a husband and wife owner in that league who formed a LLC in order to get around that requirement. Those are two I know of off the top of my head that have specific rules on who can or cannot own the team.

I am a Braves fan, but I got a lot of the info due to covering the Braves, specifically the Braves minor league system. No idea why or how it got started, just that it did...

That is true in some cases, not all. Many of the teams in certain leagues have the set up that you describe. In other leagues, they do not even allow for private ownership of a team.

That's actually a good comparison...that or Enns by himself.

It's much more frequent that the city owns the facilities and the team in the minor leagues if the affiliate isn't owned by the major league team. The individuals that own minor league teams are notable because they are fairly few and far between. It's typically something the community owns and runs through a branch of the city council.

It's less about making money as controlling where their money is going. The teams won't be owning the affiliate in order to make a profit, but in order to control how the money spent on players is being used. They can control the quality of all aspects of the facility their players are being developed in.

Affiliates change quite a bit. Typically every 2-3 years there's what's known in the prospect world as "affiliate shuffle". When the Braves moved to Carolina, roughly 3/4 of the Carolina League changed hands that season. Two years later, the Braves moved to the Florida State League as two teams left the California League and moved into the Carolina League.

Pretty much. By men and women. When he came to the Braves last year, Mets and Indians fans both mentioned it to Braves Reddit forums, so it's a fairly well-established thing.

Cubs, Diamondbacks, and Marlins are my bottom three currently.

Recker's best attribute that fans enjoy is his posterior. Outside of that, not a whole lot that is worthy of note.

A Braves fan across the hall who was part of ESPN's forums? Hmmmm.... I did not realize I had missed essentially this entire thread. I, too, miss BYTO, though interestingly, I did put up some original stuff there that was part of how I first got a writing gig. Generally, I left the Twins talk alone and stayed in the rest of the forum, but I have been talking with many on this forum now since those Elysian Fields days...and really only one Twins fan ever got the ban hammer when I was in charge of the ESPN Braves site, but when they chose to let moderation go to an outsourced company, the forums turned into a comments section.

While they're still not out of the bottom 7-8 systems, the Angels are easily not the worst in the league anymore, and very possibly they might not even be bottom 5. That is an accomplishment for where they've been.

The attendance of the games themselves aren't the only things that the team can cost a community when the team owns the affiliate. They own the licensing for the logo as well, which is something the community would earn otherwise. Any events that happen at the stadium outside of baseball go to the community when the community owns the team, but not if the team does, even if the community builds the stadium....

I think an increase in pay to players will lead to an increase in teams owning their affiliates. It will hurt leagues like the Carolina League, where they've tried hard not to have team-owned affiliates. However, if teams now have to pay more to their players, they'll want to milk every nickel out of the minor league system, meaning the local community will likely build a ballpark for the team and make no money on the happenings within the stadium.

Arraez is almost exclusively a second baseman at this point. He played 3 games at 2B this year before injury. He also had a very good season with Cedar Rapids in 2016, but he didn't play any time at all at shortstop, playing about 90% of his time at 2B.