FrodaddyG

Yes. He has ridiculous natural athleticism. There's no way that should be wasted on the least athletic position on the field unless absolutely necessary. I'm guessing he's played first here and there simply as a way to get him into a crowded lineup. No way that becomes full-time when he can possibly be a top notch defensive outfielder.

But what about the lunatic fringe? Surely that is more important to appeal to than the body of votes that actually swings elections!

And by the same token, there's no way to have your field of vision covering the strike zone accurately. I've umpired plenty myself, (ten years of games with players ranging in age from 6 to 40) and you have to position yourself off-center in some degree or the catcher will be obstructing your field of view. It's all a matter of what call you are leaving more to chance. Are you skewing yourself inside or outside and leaving the opposite corner more open to human error? Are you setting up down the middle as much as possible, but higher up (to stay above the catcher blocking your view) and leaving the low strike more missable? It's all a matter of trying to minimize missed calls, but no matter what, even if you're umping a little league game, there's a human body that's going to be between you and the plate, and you have to adjust your field of view around it. Many times it still does come down to reading trajectories, not seeing the ball into the mitt, and making the call based on the best judgement of the umpire, and in the case of pro umps, the tens of thousands of pitches these guys have called for a ball or strike in their careers.

I hope this thread will eventually have a GIF of every pitch from the upcoming season so we can really evaluate the framing of pitches.

Yes. Speculation is pointless. The forum will be closed until opening day.

So it was Morris' amazing job on the mound that made the Twins play so awesome during game 7 that they needed 10 innings to score one run? Inspiring!!! Contagious!!!

It wasn't prompted out of any kind of seriousness. There was just a line in your post that seemed thought-provoking. (I know. I was amazed, too.)

If Ryan could fill out the MLB roster with 25 in a single year, he may get nominated for executive of the year. (By the Pohlads' accountants, that is.)

I've played baseball at every level from T-ball to three years of college ball. I coached everything from T-ball to Legion ball for ten years. I've obsessed over baseball since I could walk, mostly thanks to my grandfather, who played professionally back in the 40's. It's drivel. Talented teams win, bad teams don't. "Winning is contagious" just another mindless sound byte thrown out to try and sell hope for bad teams, when the actuality is this: winning is symptomatic of talent. I've played for and coached good teams, and I've played for and coached bad teams. Many of them were essentially the same teams, minus the turnover of a few players. When good players leave teams get worse, even if they won before. When good players get added to bad teams, they get better, even when they lost before. That isn't "winning" rubbing off, it's the effect of superior talent doing what it does, which is performing better. Baseball may have less "scheming" than any team sport, due to the mano-a-mano nature of it. No amount of success by the hitters around him will make Drew Butera hit better. Put Butera on the '29 Yankees and he's still one of the worst players ever to be paid to play the game of baseball. To genuinely think otherwise is simply foolish.

Anyone who has ever played baseball, or breathed oxygen, knows this is a completely meaningless statement.

Well, when guys get fired, generally it's because they weren't doing their job. Nobody else's heads rolled but Smith, so we can draw the conclusion that the failures of the the first base and bullpen coaches were the most unforgivable on-field sins from teams that sniffed 100 losses two years running.

This made me curious, so I glanced at the Twins' past 10 drafts (about half JR, half BS) to see what players came to see any noteworthy time in the majors. With the Twins or elsewhere. For the sake of recent drafts, I'll try and list some of the top guys (or just the top few picks from those drafts) who are still possible prospects, since most won't have sniffed the majors yet. (And just because some of these years would just be incredibly sad without listing even the guys who may barely ever see the bigs.) 2003 (Ryan): Scott Baker (2) 2004 (Ryan): Trevor Plouffe (1) Glen Perkins (1S) Anthony Swarzak (2) Matt Tolbert (16) 2005 (Ryan): Matt Garza (1) Kevin Slowey (2S) Brian Duensing (3) Alex Burnett (12) 2006 (Ryan): Chris Parmelee (1) Joe Benson (2) Tyler Robertson (3) Jeff Manship (14) Danny Valencia (19) Anthony Slama (39) 2007 (Ryan): Revere(1) 2008 (Smith): Aaron Hicks (1) Carlos Gutierrez (1) BJ Hermsen (6) 2009 (Smith): Kyle Gibson (1) Chris Herrmann (6) 2010 (Smith): Alex Wimmers (1) Niko Goodrum (2) Eddie Rosario (4) Nate Roberts (5) 2011 (Smith): Levi Michael (1) Travis Harrison (2) Hudson Boyd (3) Madison Boer (4) 2012 (Ryan): Byron Buxton (1) JO Berrios (2) Luke Bard (3) Mason Melotakis (4) Not an exhaustive list, and I may have missed one or two along the way, and I was only using the draft. No international signings. (Smith's tenure looks quite a bit better if you factor guys like Sano and Kepler into the prospect lists.) No matter how you spin it, that's a pretty sad showing for the 2003 to 2007 window that Ryan was running things. On the pitching side of things, they netted a total of two useful starting pitchers (Baker and Garza), two useful bullpen lefties (Perkins and Duensing), and whatever you'd call Kevin Slowey at this point in time (in the case of Dickbert, an ***hole). Hitting-wise, that same time frame saw Parmelee, Plouffe, Valencia, Benson and Revere. Three guys yet to fully prove themselves, a defensive CF, and Danny Valencia (see Dickbert's evaluation of Slowey, Kevin). When this is the cream of the talent pool being drawn upon to replace departing veterans, it probably shouldn't be a huge surprise the team results began to wane eventually. Now to hope the drafts from 2008 on start to pay a few more dividends than the lean years of the mid-2000s. (I used the draft results on the Twins site if anyone wanted to browse them and maybe catch someone useful I missed: Minnesota Twins 2003 Draft Results | twinsbaseball.com: Team)

Possibly. It would also serve for a nice JR sound clip in a month or so saying they "recently doubled the size of the statistical department".

And that's entirely on the manager's bad habits/philosophies, not common sense.

This is true. The numbers I assume Brock is drawing from are the 5 year totals. (Not that I put a ton of weight in this particular arbitrarily-drawn-up study anyway.)

Nurse refers to someone else as rude. DRINK!!!

Hey, don't be a sore loser because he beat you. You still get your participation medal and a hug.

"Over Ryan Doumit’s career, his team has won an average of 40.1% of the games he’s started (at any position, not just catcher). Over Ryan Doumit’s career, his team has won an average of 40.7% of the games he hasn’t started." So I guess we can also assume that given this stat, Doumit is a born loser.

And the counterpoint of "He's hurt, why take the risk?" is generally invalidated by the previous signing of returning-from-injury Pelfrey for the same money. Marcum is an injury risk, Pelfrey is returning from injury. One of these has at least a slight chance of being near the peak of his ability for the entirety of a one-year contract, and it isn't the guy less than a year removed from TJS.

This would almost be a useful point if they hadn't guaranteed just as much money to a guy coming off a surgery which typically requires at least 2 years to return to full effectiveness. But hey, why take a chance on the guy who might be injured and has been effective as recently as the end of last season when we can pay that money to a guy who was very recently definitely injured and hasn't been all that useful in three years!

You know what makes that win total slightly more achievable? Spending money on better players, so that you don't need every single thing to break right to have an outside chance of being "not the worst team in the AL, or at least if Houston hadn't switched leagues".

Pissed that someone's trying to steal your gameplan?

I dated a girl who asked me for a "Golden Butera" once. I had to fake my death to get out of that one.

Yeah. They'd probably be fine with it if he only got back to 89.

There's only one man to call: