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jeffk

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Everything posted by jeffk

  1. jeffk
    If you narrow your goal to being very specifically "what can we do to optmize the chances of a World Series in five years", then yes, one can't really argue with this article. I also know there's a bit of one-upsmanship around this forum as to who can be the coldest, anything-to-win armchair GM. But this prospect is so entirely depressing that I'm kinda surprised anyone sees things in terms that limited. He's one of only a handful of watchable aspects of this team, and his contract quite obviously represents a gentleman's agreement regarding not being traded. You trade him and even more people stop watching and stop caring. In fact, even if the goal is a World Series, trading him and giving people another reason to stop showing up may end up undermining you by reducing ticket sales even further.
  2. jeffk
    "Where are the dingers?"
  3. jeffk
    Maybe this is just denial, but with several years left on his contract he should still be cheap and dominant in a couple years when, with any luck, the Twins have completed their rebuild, at which point he's quite useful.
  4. jeffk
    We've become crazy blessed with a great local brewing in just the last few years. It's important to remember that the new Renaissance of craft beer - both here and nationally - is only possible because of what a handful ballsy brewers did back in the 1980s. Thanks to Summit, not only for the sponsorship, but for real beer!
  5. jeffk
    This came up some last year as well. I actually don't see why not break down the distinction between "starter" and "reliever". The added flexibility would keep oppoents off-balance in terms of platoons, and you would be free to quickly remove a pitcher who wasn't having a good day. Nobody would wear themselves down throwning 100 pitches. Pitchers who only have two good pitches wouldn't be as exposed, and most would only see each batter once or twice at the most. The entire distinction seems somewhat arbitrary, borne out of baseball history. Maybe it wouldn't work. But when you have nothing to lose and terrible starting pitching (not to mention decent relief pitching) perhaps it's the next moneyball.
  6. jeffk
    I think they've worked themselves into a position where not competing next year isn't an option. As much as the baseball mega-nerds on TwinsDaily.com don't care about 80 wins and would happily trade off everything, accept another two seasons of awful play, and then try to turn it around with a 95-win World Series competitor, the consequences of fielding another 65-win team on the third year of a new stadium would be devestating. People would simply lose interest, profits would continue to fall, the payroll would continue to shrink, and the death spiral would be unavoidable. The Twins need to field a respectable team next year, even if it means only 80 wins, just so people find showing up at Target Field appealing.
  7. jeffk
    I'm a believer in cheering for division-mates in the post-season when your team doesn't make it. I never understood the thinking behind hoping your geographic copatriots get crushed by the Yankees because you weren't able to do it. I'd love to see them get far.
  8. jeffk
    You can statistically fluke your way to a high BA for a few months. It seems less likely that you can fake your way to 10 HRs in 22 games or whatever his crazy tear consisted of. A home run just isn't an accident. He clearly has something. Even if he were half the player he was during June and July he'd still be a permanent solution at 3B.
  9. jeffk
    How is $14M not significant? That's not a sure thing; even if he's good, as we saw this year there's a limit on what you can get for a 3-month rental. I don't recall any top prospects being moved for future free agents.
  10. jeffk
    The folks pushing for mixing in Parmelee with the other DH/1B starters are not making the most efficient use of our resources. On a team with money and depth and no major issues, then it's really nice to have a good young prospect play half the season behind a core of veterans. In the case of the Twins, with their gaping holes and budget issues, there is simply not that luxury. The loss of Morneau will be sad, but even if we don't get much in return, that $14M is two decent starting pitchers. A team with Parmelee at 1B and two good starting pitchers is a better team than one with Parmelee at AAA and no decent starting pitchers. Someone getting injured is just a risk you have to take; not trading Morneau is guaranteeing failure for the team by virtue of having no starting pitching.
  11. jeffk
    A lot of people are dismissing his success as low-BABIP luck... however, it's hard not to notice the pitchers you mention as having low BABIP are more less recognized as excellent pitchers - something about what they do keeps hitters from making good contact, and we accept that they're aces. Now, those guys also rack up strike outs and limit walks, so nobody's saying Deduno is an ace. But maybe he's a #3 who will continue to give up walks but not hits. I understand it's statistically rare and I wouldn't bet much on it, but I also think there's more to it than the idea that everyone should have the exact mean BABIP or else they're just lucky.
  12. jeffk
    There's been some comments on TwinkieTown about moving Mastroianni to 2B, which is actually his original position. Given the glut in the outfield and his fairly impressive season, is this a good time to give it a try in terms of planning for the future? If he continues to hit and can handle it, you've plugged a huge hole with cheap, team-controlled player for several seasons. He could be the Plouffe of 2B. If it doesn't work... what's to lose?
  13. jeffk
    I'm sympathetic to the original poster. On one hand, the point of a forum like this is so a bunch of baseball nerds can bitch and discuss hypothetical scenarios. Certainly it's boring if it's just a bunch of cheerleading. On the other hand, for some people the wheeling-and-dealing mindset has gotten out of hand. Why would you trade Revere? He's good, young, cheap, and you developed him. That's the kind of player you trade *for*. If you are dead set on trading an outfielder, you trade the veteran Span.
  14. jeffk
    I'd just like to point out that all those people who wanted him platooned were wrong. What a short-sighted waste that would have been, not given him a chance to work it out and turning a former MVP into a platoon player with minimal value, all to save a win or two for a losing team.
  15. jeffk
    I don't know about his past or projected future, but this year his 104 OPS+ pegs him as a dead-average hitter, which would play pretty well as a starter at 2B - particularly with what we've been fielding there for the last few years.
  16. jeffk
    I'd contest that a 3.09 ERA is pretty decent. He had a couple of fluky bad outings. I don't think there's any indication he's any less dominant than last year. He's probably as good as all but a small handful of closers, and he can be our closer, cheap, both during and after the rebuild. And he's a local boy who presumably signed cheap in hopes he'd get to stay in MN. He should be kept.
  17. jeffk
    Yeah, I think Aaron was arguing that the variation in Lirano's performance is normal. It's probably a question that could be answered quantitatively, for example, what does the run distribution by inning for a typical starting pitcher look like? Perhaps for a guy with a ~5 ERA it's something like 0 1 0 2 0 1 0, for example (specifically, you'd be looking at the standard deviation of runs by inning). For Liriano, every time it seems to be 0 0 0 0 0 0 5. It's hard to say for sure, but I would guess that either he's a head case or there's something about his pitching style that makes huge innings more likely.
  18. jeffk
    Fun fact: as of that home run, Plouffe is hitting home runs at a higher rate per plate appearance than Jose Bautista. 11th in the AL in home runs even though he doesn't have enough PAs to qualify.
  19. jeffk
    This is just frustratingly short-sighted. Morneau isn't some marginal minor-league call-up. He's a former MVP who got creamed in the head and is fighting a long road back. He's made progress, against some tall odds. The Twins aren't in it anyways. This is his is best shot to get back to his former self, and a 10% chance of that is better than a short-term fix to try to snag another run or two over the course of the rest of the season.
  20. jeffk
    During the draft there was some of talk - by me and others independently - about simply sending out three pitchers a day, roughly three innings each, and dissolving the distinction between "starting" and "bullpen" entirely. While traditional, when you think about it, it does seem kinda arbitrary that some pitchers throw 100 pitches, every five days, for a total of 200 innings in a season, and others throw twenty or so every few days for 50 innings a season. When it came up before, people noted a number of advantages and very few disadvantages. Nobody explained, I didn't think, in a satisfactory way why this is *never* seen, especially when "relievers" are a dime a dozen and quality starting pitchers are few and far between.
  21. jeffk
    I think this is an interesting take on the whole "let's scrap the whole works are prepare for 2018" mentality. The fact is, the Twins have ONE problem, not ten. Of course, it is a huge problem. But they're not a team that is troubled across the board. The other issue with complete-rebuild plan is that it leaves bunch of a fans with a brand-new, beautiful stadium and no reasonable team to watch play in it. I'd rather see the Twins build slowly and play .500, watchable baseball than become a AAA team for four years in hopes of scoring a World Series win in a timeline nobody wants to wait for.
  22. jeffk
    Burton and Perkins' value are artificially low because they're not "closers", even if they have the good stuff.. Move Capps if anyone.
  23. jeffk
    Platooning him would be crazy. The Twins are not contenders, so it's much more important to try to get him back up to his former self. And it's going better than anyone could have guessed - the lefties are his only weak point, which is really actually great news. Benching him against them is essentially quitting his rehab when he's 90% of the way through it and decreasing his value immensely.
  24. jeffk
    I think the color vs. play by play distinction is reasonable, although I don't mind when he does two innings. One of his more excellent moments from last week was when, at the suggestion of a schedule that put them in Chicago for a full week, he said by the end he'd need to "be on the disabled list". Cory's getting better at handling him. The first two weeks I can only imagine the number of "WTF?" faces he must have been making.
  25. jeffk
    In the spirit of the Jim Souhan thread - and I'm with those who find him boorish - here's the same question about Gladden. Am I the only one who finds his off-the-wall weirdness endearing? I admit that back in the John Gordon days it was a bit of a rudderless ship but now that there's Cory Provus who is so professional it seems like a good dynamic, even if Cory is occasionally left speechless.
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