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nowheresville

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  1. nowheresville
    The Official News Release: https://www.milb.com/pensacola/news/blue-wahoos-announce-new-affiliation-partnership-with-minnesota-twins/c-296809140 The interesting tidbits: it's only a 2 year agreement, I would have guessed 4 - although with the larger change in the MLB/MiLB agreement coming in 2020, it's not a shock. Also, they did say the reader poll was a factor in the decision (although the fact that the Twins took 75% of the vote does make it easy to say that after the fact).
  2. nowheresville
    Neither partner really has any leverage in that situation, and the recourse is to sign a 2 year deal and to try again for a better partner during the next dance. Generally speaking, the milb team that's last to pair up is the team in the least desirable location with the worst facilities, so they're probably going to be cycling through teams more often. In this case, it seems clear Pensacola was the first choice, and Amarillo was the last choice. When the Reds felt like they weren't going to get to stay with the Wahoos, they jumped on the Lookouts to avoid being stuck in the Texas League. I'm guessing the only reason we haven't seen an official announcement from Pensacola yet is because the Twins might be working on a 4 year deal, rather than just 2 years. The better example might be in AAA this year. The final 2 spots were Nashville and Fresno, and when Nashville picked Texas over Washington, the Nationals were left with no choice but to sign a 2 year deal with Fresno. You can be sure than 2 years from now that Washington will be trying hard to get a AAA team that isn't on the opposite side of the country. Of course, Washington had been in Syracuse prior to this year, and the Mets, who had been stuck in Vegas, were so desperate to get a team back out east that they actually bought the Syracuse team to guarantee themselves a spot closer to home.
  3. nowheresville
    The Padres are heading to Amarillo, so it looks like the Twins won the Blue Wahoo's competition! http://www.milb.com/content/page.jsp?ymd=20181001&content_id=296787484&fext=.jsp&sid=t5368&vkey=
  4. nowheresville
    We should finally get an answer very, very shortly. There are reports that Amarillo is expected to announce their affiliation early this afternoon, and it seems that Amarillo and Pensacola are the only teams still dancing in all of MiLB. I thought the deadline was yesterday, so I'm shocked we hadn't heard any updates since the Reds officially paired up with the Lookouts last week.
  5. nowheresville
    I'm getting the impression that the A's/Midland situation is a lot like the Cubs/Tennessee where they have a deal but it hasn't been announced. I asked an Oakland best writer about it and they thought it had already been settled but didn't remember a specific announcement. If the newspaper poll has anything to do with the decision in Pensacola, it's great news for the twins, since they had more than 80% of the vote as of this morning. Also, Pensacola must broadcast all of their games online, as from reds fans, one of the biggest complaint about going back to Chattanooga is that the lookouts aren't on milb.tv If the twins do get sequestered in Texas, I don't know that it will be quite as bad as some are thinking. You'd think a brand new Park should have everything the team wants and while the travel isn't great, they're really no worse off then any is the other Texas teams. The trip to corpus will be brutal, but Midland and Frisco aren't really much different than what they were doing in San Antonio, and they're closer to the northern teams in Oklahoma and Arkansas.
  6. nowheresville
    What is it about being walked off at Oakland? That happened twice last year too, including the game where there twins officially became sellers, trading away Garcia right after the game was over.
  7. nowheresville
    The President of the Wahoos did a radio interview this morning about the process of picking a new MLB team. Mostly the same stuff that was in the newpaper story, but a few little tidbits, like having the Twins also being in the Central Time Zone being a positive and hoping to use the partnership to encourage people to come to Pensacola's beaches (which would seem to make San Diego an underdog). http://podcast.newsradio1620.com/post/5416/Jonathan_Griffith_-_President_of_the_Pensacola_Blue_Wahoos.html
  8. nowheresville
    The other part of this article I really enjoyed at makes me excited about the possibility of a Pensacola partnership is how the team there is looking for a Major League team that they can really do a lot of cross promotions, a lot like we see in Cedar Rapids. Despite the distance, New Britain used to do a nice job of that - I loved their nb hat that was styled to look like the Twins "m" logo, and they had a lot of Mauer, Morneau, Ortiz items in their gift shop - but I didn't get the impression that Chattanooga ever did much to promote the relationship with the Twins. A side note, we won't be seeing ex-Twin Denny Hocking in Cedar Rapids again next year. He's with Seattle and had been the manager of the Clinton Lumberkings, but Clinton will be a Marlins affiliate next year, with the Mariners moving to West Virginia in the Sally League.
  9. nowheresville
    There are no openings in the Eastern League, so no chance of that happening. I'd say the worst case would be the Twins getting stuck in Midland. That's a really interesting article though. I would not have expected the Padres to be in the mix for Pensacola. With the Padres having their High-A team in California, and their AAA team in El Paso, I would have assumed they'd welcome staying in the Texas League, especially with Amarillo getting a new team and facility. The article also didn't mention the Cubs at all, who haven't officially renewed with Tennessee, although it seemed like that was likely to happen in earlier articles I had read.
  10. nowheresville
    I'd be very surprised if we don't know by the end of the week. All the shuffling has already been decided on both the AAA and High-A levels. Even in the levels that are left, it seems like once one domino falls, everything else should shape up pretty quickly. From the little I've been able to gather, Pensacola's franchise seems like they are the side more interested in splitting from the Reds, and their facilities are a fair bit nicer than Chattanooga, so it could be a chance for the Twins to upgrade. As far as what is a Blue Wahoo, whatever that is, it's better than the name for the new Huntsville team: The Rocket City Trash Pandas.
  11. nowheresville
    It didn't take long for the AAA dance to wrap up. The Brewers stayed with San Antonio (moved from CO Springs), Texas is now joined with Nashville, presumably Houston will head to Round Rock as expected, leaving Washington stuck out in Fresno. AA is on the clock!
  12. nowheresville
    I've been waiting to see some news about Chattanooga. The only thing I've been able to find is basically a quote from the Lookout's that implied they reached out to the Twins but didn't have a deal. I've got to think the Twins might be trying to move to Pensacola, that has a relatively new ballpark, and will stay in Chattanooga if they can't make a deal there. I'd be fairly shocked if the Padres and A's leave the Texas League, especially with the Padres already having their AAA team in El Paso and the A's just moving their AAA team to Vegas.
  13. nowheresville
    Kernels at Beloit postponed. Game one tomorrow in Beloit, Double Header on Friday in Cedar Rapids.
  14. nowheresville
    The Kernels are doing everything they can to avoid playing in Beloit this year. After having the entire 1st half series in Beloit cancelled and moved to CR, and waiting 6 hours - and a Timber Rattlers win in Kane County - to play Sunday, they Kernels and Snappers are again being delayed by rain! I'm guessing if it's cancelled, we'll have a Double Header in CR tomorrow, with Beloit batting last in game one. Side note - it looks like the Kernels could be the last team to ever play at Pohlman Field, but not for the reason you'd expect. The Snappers announced yesterday they finally have a tentative deal for a new stadium to open in Downtown Beloit in 2020, and next year's schedule again has the Kernels finishing the year in Beloit.
  15. nowheresville
    2020 could be the end of the line for Beloit. That's when the current major/minor league agreement ends, and when MiLB could easily take the franchise away. It won't happen until then, because the team is community owned and does just enough to break even, despite the abysmal leadership at the top of the franchise. As far as what it would take to get a team to Minnesota: A miracle. The midwest league simply isn't coming to Minnesota . As has been discussed numerous times, the MWL footprint has been moving away from Minnesota for 2 decades, and even more importantly, when you've got the Northwoods League - that doesn't have to deal with the April and May games that are brutal even when you don't have a year as bad as this one - there's just no compelling reason for anyone to try and bring MiLB to Minnesota.
  16. nowheresville
    Actually they aren't anymore. They were for years, because longtime Commissioner George Spelius was from Beloit, but he retired in 2015, and passed away in 2016. The MWL offices are now in South Bend, which also happens to be where current Commissioner Richard Nussbaum lives.
  17. nowheresville
    What I was told by a member of the Snappers staff is they can play up to 2 Doubleheaders in 3 days and up to 3 over 5 days. However, I've also seen plenty of cases where they simply cancel games, and I wouldn't be surprised if at least one of those games does get cancelled, especially when nearly every team in the league already has a long list of double headers now on their schedule. Looking at the schedule, both the Snappers and Kernels do have a scheduled off day on June 4th, right before starting their next series at Cedar Rapids (and both teams will already be in Iowa on 6/3), so it would be possible for them to squeeze in 6 games over 4 days, if they do need to make up all the games.
  18. nowheresville
    The Kernels got "rained out" on a sunny 50 degree afternoon..... Despite pushing the scheduled start time back by an hour, the Snappers grounds crew apparently couldn't get the field in suitable conditions for the game to be played. The 3rd base area was basically a mud pit, and there were still a few small snow piles in center field at the 5pm rescheduled start time. And as bad as the field was, the Grandstand was even worse, with 3 inches of snow over large parts of the covered metal bleachers that hadn't been shoveled at all. If they would have played, I don't know how they get through the game without a fan getting hurt! But at least the Kernels got to enjoy a 3 hour bus trip to play a little catch in the outfield and have some of the pitchers do some bullpen work, and I suppose Toby Gardenhire got a reminder that things haven't changed much in Beloit since he was a Snappers player a decade ago.
  19. nowheresville
    Add another DH to the list, Tonight's game is postponed to be made up as part of a Doubleheader on Thursday. Tomorrow's game is technically still on, but considering today is 35 and sunny in Southern Wisconsin (although the ground is still snow covered) and tomorrow calls for a high of 33 with an 90% chance of snow/sleet/freezing rain, I'd say the odds of that game happening are extremely low. At least Thursday is supposed to get up to around 40, so at least the weather should be good enough to play, the question will be is the field in any shape to play.
  20. nowheresville
    Wow, QC is doing a split double header? I honestly can't think of any time I've ever seen a split DH in the Midwest League. I'm guessing with the split it will be two 9 inning games, instead of the 7's that are normal for double headers. I'm also surprised that CR agreed to back to back Double Headers. I know last year there were a couple games across the league that just weren't played because of an excessive number of rainouts and teams didn't want to their pitchers having to do back to back doubles. I have to think cancelled games will be the next step if spring doesn't show up pretty soon.
  21. nowheresville
    Disagree.
  22. nowheresville
    I can tell you this, I know at least one former Twins Minor League coach, who had been a coach in the organization for much longer than Dougie has been coaching, was let go over the phone, and it wasn't Terry Ryan on the other end. That coach - who also had a decent major league career before coaching - was also interviewed after being let go by the Twins and while he admitted he was surprised and disappointed, he also went out of his way to make sure that it was clear, he wasn't mad at the organization and still said many positive things about the Twins and his former bosses.
  23. nowheresville
    Dougie's reaction to the firing, to me, is pretty strong evidence that letting him go was the right decision. It's never fun to be fired, but then to complain about the timing because they told you as soon as the decision was made, is childish. It's even worse to complain that he was fired by the guy who was his immediate supervisor, with whom he had a relationship, rather than directly by Falvey or Levine, who he even admits he's only talked to once. That's just complaining, publicly, for the sake of complaining. I've been in the position where I've been fired, because the head of the company changed and wanted to bring in his guy, but it was my boss, who I worked with on a daily basis, who officially gave me the news, and it would have been silly for me expect anything else. I am curious about what this will mean for the other minor league coaches/managers. I spoke briefly with Tommy Watkins at the end of the season, and he was very aware that with the new management that no ones job was safe. The fact that Steil was promoted is a sign that the Twins are actually examining each position, and aren't just getting rid of people simply because they were brought in by the old regime.
  24. nowheresville
    The key play that cost the kernels the game won't show up in the box score. With 2 outs in the 7th and runners on first and second, Diaz made a great diving stop, but pitcher Watson forgot to cover first until it was way too late. It goes down as a single, but if he fields his position, the kernels get out of the inning without giving up a single run. Making matters worse, the tying run was scored on a very questionable call at first. Lewis bobbled a grounder up the middle, before firing to first. If he fields it cleanly, the batter is out easy, but as it was, it turned into a close play that the ump ruled safe, but would certainly have been challenged if there was replay in low a.
  25. nowheresville
    Rehabbing MLB players can be assigned to any minor league team that is still playing, just like the regular season. There are no additional restrictions on where or when they can play during the minor league playoffs.
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