Thrylos

Agreed on Sweeny. Disagree on Buxton. Buxton has a fatal flaw: He cannot hit major league breaking stuff or lay off major league sliders in the dirt. It is a pitch recognition thing. Hopefully he will grow out of. It is like with a smoker: seeing him/her smoke one cigarette is good enough to know that he hasn't quit.

Because it isn't It is pricing 101: you price your product at the highest possible price point that provides your targeted market segment enough value to buy your product. And that pricing point is different in different market segments. Twin Cities residents are a different market segment than St Louis or Chicago residents

That is a very easy answer: Because the targeted market segment sees enough value on the price of the Twins' TF product that is willing to pay the price the Twins are asking. Nothing more nothing less.

If you live in the Twin Cities and spend $200 a pop for family entertainment purposes or $50 a pop for individual entertainment purposes you are in their target market segment for their Target Field product. But you potentially have to chose baseball at TF instead rather in addition to ahother $50 or $200 entertainment choice. If you do not spend that much for entertainment, no you are not in their market segment targeted by the Twins TF product, but you are certainly in the segment targeted by their TV and radio products. Compare it to going from point A to point B in an airplane these days. Target Field live games are flying first class, cable TV is economy plus and radio is economy. Cannot fly First Class and pay economy prices (unless you are frequent flier which is akin to a season ticket holder...)

Sure. What do you want them to say? That they are not their target customers for their Target Field product? Good luck with that If they were, they would do what the casinos do and have free buses to TF. Do they?

There is a comparison of Groceries with Tickets to baseball games. This is not a realistic comparison because nobody (I hope) ever has to chose whether to spent their $ in baseball vs in groceries. Baseball has made themselves entertainment and competes for the entertainment or experience dollar and it is priced accordingly. So you have to go to a baseball game, instead of doing something else, like an expensive dinner. Insane? I don't know. It is like saying that it is insane that Mercedes Benz is pricing their new cars the way they are pricing or that a cruise is that expensive. Companies are pricing their goods at the level their target market segment is willing to pay. Period. They do not care about people outside their target market segment. For them they have other products (like someone can buy a 10 year old Mercedes for example), like TV and radio...

That's $200. Cannot compare it to buying groceries because the Twins are not competing with that. How much does an amusement park for a family of 4 cost? $200+. How much a dinner at the Butcher and the Boar for a family of 4 cost? $300? That's what the Twins are competng with.

It is. The team has many ways of watching the game and the one that involved butts in the seats is targeted towards the locals, just because someone who lives in MPLS has higher chances of going to the game than someone who lives in Ely or Mankato. They are of course welcoming fans outstate but if you are selling a product, it makes sense to market it to someone who will buy it. Outstate fans can follow using TV or Radio. Again (from #10 above) baseball's target live in ballpark audience is not the loyal fans, it is locals who are seeking entertainment. They compete with movies. Would you watch a movie in the Twin Cities if you leave outstate? Unlikely, unless you are travelling there. So you are not their target customer.

If Arcia does not make the team, the Twins do not have much LH power left. He has to make the team. Too many righties and most of the good pitchers out there, esp in the division (other than Sale and Quintana) are right handed. They just need that LH power

I talked about affordability in #10 above, so I am not going to repeat here. The fact is that the target market for the Twins as far as butts on the seats, esp. season ticket holders are residents of the Twin Cities and not outstate. Kinda hard to sell a season ticket package to someone in Duluth, St Cloud, or Rochester...

On baseball and pricing: The target market segment of baseball clubs for their rear ends to the seats customers has changed the last decade or two. The old days it was totally targeted to loyal dedicated fans, whose last decision before they bought a ticket was a "Will I?" type of decision, thus the prices should have been able to allow them to answer with a "Yes", regardless of financial status (thus the $3 upper deck tickets in ballparks like the Metrodome, which also had $50 seats for other customers) Now, the target market cegment is entertainment seekers, whose last decision before they buy a ticket is "which one?" i.e. they have answered the "will I?" decision and put $ aside for that. (The Loyal dedicated fan does not have to answer the "which one" decision, because from 7-10PM every day he/she watches baseball.) So you have potential buyers considering either going on a cruise or getting season tickets, getting a golf club membership vs season tickets, spending their vacation in the Summer in Europe or in the Spring in Florida, etc. as far as season ticket prices go. Single game ticket buying decisions are weighted against going to a movie, going to a concert (checked those prices out btw?), going for dinner to a fancy restaurant etc. This is the "experience" crowd. Even "Average families" do the above things, so I am not sure that it is priced to drive them away. What is actually happening is that they cannot do both a vacation and a season ticket plan, which at some time they might had been able to afford. So now they can still afford a season ticket plan instead of a vacation. What that has resulted is a huge difference in the nature of the fans who are watching ballgames in the ballpark from the past. The experience crowd, likely watches about half the plays (and most after they happened on the field in one of the multiple monitor or the huge one; and some times gets injured by flying stuff), hangs around in bars and restaurants in the ballpark, looks at the watch by the seventh inning and wants to leave to "beat the traffic", complains about the "long baseball games" and does not have the butt on seat glued to action, rooting for the team, and against the other, like it use to be when loyal fans were the majority of the fans in the ballgames Time are a'changing

Based on that article (with numbers up to 2015 btw, so no 2016 data) the Twins had the same price for the last 4 years. And it is $33 in 2015 which is about $3 more than the league average, or about 12% more. The housing index in Minneapolis (which is a good indication of what the market can afford) is 115, which means that it is 15% higher than the average. So yeah, it is about right for the market

He does. And that is not a compliment... They both are stiff on the field and better suited for DHs, a position that is Park's to lose. Arcia as a LH power hitter and Vargas as a SH power hitter are better options at this point. But Quentin might sell an extra couple hundred tickets at Rochester...

Rafael Valera would be a good trivia answer now once he plays his first official game as a catcher, because then he would have played every position in the field including P. Unrelated: was trying to find a list of players who made the jump from the DSL but couldn't. Any chance you might have one?

Yeah, but locks can be picked...

Not sure about the Russians, but have you checked Nolasco's career numbers? Have you seen his curveball in person? Just sayin'

Depends. There was a SS by the name of Rey Ordonez who has a career .600 OPS and he was 3 times gold glover and was a pretty big reason the Mets were who they were in their postseason and WS years And there is another SS with a career .666 OPS who is in the Hall of Fame. The issue with Vielma is that his glove is not Rey Ordonez or Ozzie Smith like...

Scary, but only Runzler and O'Rourke have pitched decently as far as LHPs go. I was so hoping that Melotakis or Taylor will just go out and win a job, but it is not happening. Seriously, this is the curse of Brian Duensing here... If the team can sign Aaron Thompson, his beard and his suspension paraphernalia to a MiLB contract, they should had signed Duensing who is a first class citizen to begin with...

Yes, as far as Twins' fans are concerned. I would expect that a Twins' fan would like all of the players to do well and keep the momentum over the season.

As far as velocity goes, the first couple of weeks do not really matter (it is building up time) esp. for starters. Wait for the starters to pitch a good 5-6 and then look at it (and it cuts both ways. e.g if Hughes pitched 20 in 3 innings and had to go and work in the pen to get his work in, a 93 could be lower if he had to hold to pitch a complete game.) The ones I really would pay attention to (and I will be able to let people know the next 2 weeks from the Fort) are the ones everyone is hush hush about: Perkins and Jepsen. And they got to be good, because the slew of lefties that Ryan has brought to compete for a job are mostly failing, and some of them miserably so far.

Should be Polanco's job to have. I like Palacios a lot but his glove is a work in progress at this point. He is a feather in the wind as well, much skinnier than even Vielma I would like to see more that what I have seen from Gordon: For what is worth, Niko Goodrum had much better numbers at Gordon's 2 stops, albeit a year older. Need to make sure that Nick will not turn into Niko. Vielma has excellent instincts and athleticism, and has improved with the stick, but he has concentration lapses similar to Danny Santana in all aspects of his game. Lots of potential here, but he really needs to tighten it up. You actually left someone out who might end up having a better career than all of them at SS, 17 year old Wander Javier. In my 2016 prospects list (links will go to their profiles in those rankings, for more information), I had: Javier 7th Palacios 8th Gordon 9th Vielma 23rd Polanco graduated from my list (because my criteria are different) but I am probably one of his biggest fans. In my 2015 list, he ranked second (link to his profile there,) behind only Miguel Sano and ahead of Byron Buxton. Same age with Buxton, much ahead with the stick, average to potential above average defense. I'd dare to say that Jeter might be a good comparable as far as his ceiling goes.

FWIW Catapult has been around for 10 years and according to their website they have 750 pro and amateur team clients. So there are not in the bleeding edge of technology and the Twins are not early adopters here...

I'd wait for Berrios and Buxton (and maybe even Park) to make the team first and then declare them ROY candidates... At this point they are 25 man roster candidates.

Dorslifexing one's foot is the hallmark stretch one needs to do to get rid of a gastrocnemious muscle cramp as well Back in the day the tell-tell sign of Plantar fasciatis was pain after periods of inactivity, like hard time walking when waking up. Also, pain that was relieved when you did the roller stress test (get a solid cylindrical object -like a bat- and have the patient place it under their arch and roll back and forth). If pain went away very likely was plantal fasciatis. The other thing a trainer (or an MD) would do is to put pressure with a thumb or a finger at the area of the red stuff up in that foot. If pain went away, it is plantar fasciatis. These days I suspect they might even use MRIs to diagnose it, but that's after my time practicing. Seriously. Look at where those cleats are. And that looks like a brand new pair of shoes. Miguel is likely having a shoe breaking in issue, or something of that sort (and yeah heel spur is technically a calcium deposit that can lead to PF, but non-technically they are synonymous)

if where his fingers are is where he is hurting, it is not likely plantar fasciitis. Heel spurs (another name for plantar fasciitis) hurt at the arch end towards the heel. This looks like in the toe base area. Maybe he just needs different cleats http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xSgImaimFm8/UYE8iB_DxuI/AAAAAAAAAjo/3ne-wEV9pFQ/s1600/Plantar-Fasciitis%5B1%5D.jpg