Willihammer

Who is the better bat - Pinto or Vargas? I like what Vargas has done so far, but his track record is much shorter than Pinto's. Its far from clear Vargas is the better DH option than Pinto, in my mind. If Pinto is the better bat, he should be the primary DH and instead we should be asking, what do we do about Vargas? Its also worth mentioning both players minor league platoon splits since 2011 are basically zero.

Do we want Pinto cutting into Mauer/Vargas at DH?

Better results lately but he still gets burned on good waist high fastballs. Struck out on another one last night from Kluber.

What happened to the ignore feature?

Ugh. That was not his best PA. Takes ball 1-2-3, then takes strike one, and then swings at ball 4 for strike 2, then swings at ball 5 for strike 3. It looked to me like he pushed it because he didn't want to take a walk after Santana had risked the SB of third (successfully). Any ball in play would have scored him.

Is there any chance the Twins add Reynaldo to the 40 man and call him up in September?

I'm not sure why Pierzynski winds up in every conversation about Mauer. Yes, AJ has logged more innings at catcher since 2010 despite being older. A lot more. So he's tougher, one of the toughest players in baseball probably. He's also allowed baserunners to steal at will, can't frame pitches, is a poor baserunner, and isn't as good of a hitter. So, he's not as good, and hardly any cheaper. In fact on a per WAR basis since 2010, AJ's produced 1 WAR per $4.7m. Mauer? 1 WAR per $5.7m. I'm glad the Twins have the better player, even if he's more expensive. I wish they would get a whole bunch more players like that. (I shall now go to the WAR thread and try to defend WAR.) All that being said, I think a lot of the armchair doctoring about Mauer is borne out of a frustration with the fact that the lineup is almost unwatchable without him in it. If the players around him were better, and the team didn't lose 90 games a year, Mauer wouldn't catch so much heat. Maybe its kinda like KG and the crummy T-Wolves teams earlier in the 2000s. KG was among the game's best players and still people said he wasn't "clutch" or whatever. Pretty soon he had enough of it and went and won some championships in another city. We're lucky Mauer seems to like it here a little more, even if some fans don't appreciate his output.

Good read - minor quibble. The strikezone might be smaller than it was 20 or 30 years ago, but since the pitchf/x era began, its actually grown around 5%, and also changed shsape (tighter left to right, bigger in the bottom of the zone). http://www.hardballtimes.com/the-strike-zone-during-the-pitchfx-era/

why not 1000? Why any limitation at all? Is there a technical reason?

Brock, why the limitation on likes? Its the 4th inning and I am out of likes again. Need moar likes for game thread.

That is maybe my favorite feature of the new site. Very convenient.

Its hard not to be encouraged. Vargas comes up, gets peppered with offspeed stuff, makes an adjustment, then takes an offspeed pitch deep for his first HR. All within the span of a week.

Undoubtedly. But I don't demand quality from a free site where anyone can register and submit an article. If you are going to insist on quality writing then it seems to me you will have to change the entire model TD has going here, which will utlimately translate to less content, no? And OC is a big reason I come here, even if every authors prose isn't Shakespearean or some arguments are unsound or unsupported by facts. In fact I'd argue that the discussions those postings sometimes initiate is where TD really shines. edit: here's a perfect example http://twinsdaily.com/blog/356/entry-5291-what-does-walker-have-to-do/

I vote for more lax editorial standards. TD is a free site, I don't expect ESPN insider-level writing from every author. And there is a lot of downtime in the offseason (and during the season when the club sucks) where I would rather have a bunch of short, perhaps poorly-written posts to read and comment on than a few long and well-written ones.

I think so too. That would seem to be consistent with Ryan's MO and the reputation he seems to cultivate. If you look at the top candidates for release to make room for Meyer, you can find similar reasons Ryan wouldn't DFA or relase - eg. Colabello: turned down $1m Korean offer to stay with Twins. Deduno: pitched well since moving to zero leverage mop up duty. Burton: no quite disasterous enough to justify cutting bait in a contract year (same as Correia) The Twins might very well believe Meyer has earned a promotion but are running into a conflict with the way they prefer to deal with releasing or optioning players, and the FA reputation they want to uphold. Its kinda sad that Pino seems likeliest to get optioned again despite flashing better peripherals than Correia and more long term promise.

Maybe not ideal but I say its a lot better context than say, spring training.

Any chance you would make em unlimited again? I really wanted to like a "bitch Sox" post in the game thread but didn't have any left

So what are you saying - that TR had a trade offer in hand and put an ultimatum on Suzuki? I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case but we have no evidence other than the timing, do we?

Sorry to nitpick but do we have any reason to believe the Suzuki extension was related to the trade deadline? I would judge them separately: A on the Fuld trade - I'm not that familiar with Milone but looks good on paper. D on the Suzuki extension - the other day TR said there were other things they valued besides framing, and mentioned durability. Well, hope they are ok with 1800 PAs at a .690 OPS and no added defensive value from the catching spot for the next three years. Suzuki just doesn't break and with $6m up for grabs, he most definitely won't.

I find it unlikely that Suzuki agreed to a contract with a PA-based incentive in order to be a backup, or split much time at all, with Pinto (or anyone else)

Since 2006, 851 players have logged at least 200 PAs in the Florida State League (High A). This is a sample of players that includes guys like Giancarlo Stanton (age 19), Jay Bruce (20), JP Arencibia (22), Allen Craig (22), and Domonic Brown (21). Download attachment: Sano_Miguel_Landscape.jpg Another 746 have logged at least 200 PAs in the Eastern League (AA) since 2006. Players include Brandon Belt (22), Matt Wieters (22), Pedro Alvarez (22), Ike Davis (22), Kevin Kouzmanoff (24), Josh Reddick (22), Carlos Santana (23), Brennan Boesch (24), and Adam Lind (22). Miguel Sano has logged 200 PAs in both leagues. He's also put up the single highest ISO since fangraphs started tracking these statistics in 2006. In BOTH leagues. (ISO, or Isolated Power, is Slugging Percentage minus batting average. So it measures pure power - how good a player is at accumulating "extra" bases in the form of doubles, triples and home runs.) Here's a quick look at the top 50 performances, by ISO: http://i.imgur.com/n2om1ZW.png?1 Five players posted .250 or better ISO seasons at age 20 or younger in the Florida State League. Of these, only Giancarlo Stanton went on to post a better ISO in AA as a 20-year-old in the Southern League (although Javier Baez is holding a .352 ISO through 194 PAs, also in the Southern league). As stated above, the sample includes all players with a minimum of 200 PAs in either league. If a player hit a lot of gap triples and bloop doubles, ISO could be measuring speed more than power (ISO is Slg%-Avg, or total bases, not including 1st base, divided by ABs). In order to eliminate that possibility, we can just look at home run rate, expressed as AB/HR. http://i.imgur.com/pBT7I0K.png?1 Sano ranks 2nd and 4th in home run rates (tops for the EL) since 2006. If you have been following Sano's year, this shouldn't be a surprise - he has 31 bombs after all. And look at the ages at the top of that list. One of these things is not like the other. So there you have it. Sano's 2013 ranks among the top power seasons in both the Eastern League and the Florida State League dating back to 2006, in just about any way you care to measure power. And he's done it at a younger age than anyone except Giancarlo Stanton. Click here to view the article

Trading Nolasco now would be a blunder I think. Today's Lackey trade is evidence that FA disasters can turn it around and become quite valuable.

Evidently the Royals are looking for pitching but have set their sights a little higher than Correia. I wonder if TR were inclined to flip Milone, what the Royals would give?

They got Moss, Reddick and Crisp for outfielders now. They could probably swap in a RH bat for Reddick when facing lefties. They ought to see little or no decline in OF production from this trade, IMO. All 3 are under control through 2016 too

D'oh, there it is, thanks.