Otto von Ballpark

I often consider myself a bit of a purist / traditionalist about baseball, but surprisingly, I think I like them all! 1. 3-batter minimum (or end of inning) for pitchers -- I was against this since it wasn't really going to speed up the game, and it was kind of painful a few weeks ago to watch that game where the Pittsburgh reliever just couldn't find home plate. But I have to admit, it has been refreshing to never see a manager jog out to make a pitching change both before and after a single batter, even if the impact on overall time of game / pace is minimal. (And a couple LOOGY types, Caleb Thielbar and Oliver Pérez, have even looked good facing more batters!) 2. Designated Hitter in both leagues -- I have some sentimentality for the no-DH game, but it's also been nice to not see the futile attempts of pitchers hitting. 3. 7-inning doubleheaders -- With so many doubleheaders, this was an absolute necessity for 2020. But with 9-inning game times still around 3 hours, I might not mind seeing it continue into 2021 (assuming teams don't abuse it -- a team with a weaker staff might be more likely to postpone a game due to weather so they only have to throw 14 innings rather than 18? Or am I overthinking this?). 4. Runner starts on second base in extra innings -- Maybe the most controversial new rule, I didn't like the idea at all (for the majors anyway), but I'll be darned if I don't like this one too! It's exciting, it emphasizes "small ball" and defense at a time when they've been overlooked for other skills, and it just seems kind of natural that if two teams fail to produce a winner after 9 innings, they change up the rules a tiny bit. And a lot of those "epic" 14+ inning games of the past were frankly kind of boring -- a lot of 3 up, 3 down innings. At least now, if a game goes 10+, you know there was some excitement!

With Twins baseball on hold for a second consecutive day, I thought it might be a good time to ask -- what does everyone think of the rule changes so far? 1. 3-batter minimum (or end of inning) for pitchers 2. Designated Hitter in both leagues 3. 7-inning doubleheaders 4. Runner starts on second base in extra innings Edit to add: 5. Expanded rosters

I like Jeffers too, but isn't he still a bit of a "dark horse" in prospect value? Fangraphs still has Lewis as the #11 prospect in baseball, 60 FV, compared to Jeffers at 45+ FV (basically in a 50-way tie in the 120-170 range). Of course, that doesn't mean the Twins have to value him like that, but baseballtradevalues.com isn't necessarily wrong in assigning that value to him right now either.

FWIW, this site has Lewis nearly equal to Hader by himself: https://www.baseballtradevalues.com/trade-simulator/ Of course, we'd likely have to go beyond, to motivate Milwaukee to finish the deal. But Lewis a very, very good start; if you're leading with Lewis, you can likely find another piece or two in your system that Milwaukee would want and you don't mind giving up. Name Position MTV ($Ms) Lewis SS 54 Jeffers C 13.1 Rooker 1B 4.5 Total Value: 71.60 Name Position MTV ($Ms) Hader LHRP 56.4

As the third piece in the deal, after two up-the-middle guys as pieces 1 & 2, I don't think position will be too important to Milwaukee. Plus, they will likely have a DH going forward, and Braun's contract is up this year, etc.

Well, you could ask for a *better* chance to win.

A DFA’d player can only be returned to the roster in this manner if his vacated spot hasn’t already been filled. So in most cases, including this one, it isn’t possible.

This is a tangent now, to be sure, but I'm not sure how you came up with this. Statistically, Drake had a 3.21 ERA, 11.3 K/9, and 3.68 K:BB last year, in a full season of decent-leverage MLB pen action (his 1.28 leverage index would have slotted him behind only Rogers and Romo/Parker among our regular relievers last season). Not that Drake is some great bet that we sorely miss, but I don't see how you can make a statistical case right now that he isn't an upgrade over Thielbar and Gearrin. Those two guys aren't necessarily bad themselves, but they don't really have anything like Drake's 2019 results on their recent resumes. (As a bonus, Drake also got his feet wet in the postseason last year.) Obviously Drake's current status on the IL is meaningful, but that would seem to be a factor outside of a "statistical" case.

I'm not knocking our pen or our organization at all. But I think it's a stretch to suggest that the first-place Rays use of our cast-offs is any extra testament to our current organization. Gilmartin was a literal warm body for them for a doubleheader (and hasn't been in the Twins org for 6 years!), Slegers might not be far behind warm body status given how he has been shuffled, and Drake pitched for a record 5 teams in the one season we had him -- our organization has no claim on finding or developing his talent at all. Guys like this are constantly churning through all kinds of organizations. Looking at it another way, does it meaningfully reflect well upon Seattle, NYY, etc. that we had Gearrin on our roster a few days? You're right that I wouldn't necessarily need any of those guys back except Anderson (obviously) and maybe Drake, but I wouldn't lose sleep over losing the last few guys on our current depth chart right now either. (And we might lose them when Pineda and others come back.)

To be fair, the Rays have 5 pitchers on the IL. Only Anderson and Drake were on their opening roster (and Drake is one of the IL guys now). The rest are pretty much the equivalent of Thielbar or even Gearrin. Gilmartin was only on the roster for a day to pitch long relief in a doubleheader before he was DFA’d, and Slegers has already been optioned twice around pitching 3 times in 5 days on the roster — pretty much a fresh arm bubble guy. Curtiss does seem to have earned some leash, drawing an opener assignment vs the Yankees yesterday.

That would be my guess too, but it would be a little odd that they didn’t use it until now. They could also put Gordon on the MLB 60-day IL (actually only 45 days for 2020), although that would shut him down for the season. (He’d get a little MLB service time that way, though!)

That can’t be quite right because there are 41 names on the 40-man roster page right now, without Gearrin but including Jeffers: https://www.mlb.com/twins/roster/40-man

The game is also on FS1, apparently. I'd be curious if folks outside the Twins normal blackout area are blacked out from this game on MLB.TV? It's a little unusual to see a game on both FSN and FS1.

Astudillo was sidelined for awhile, so maybe he's not in the best condition for regular duty behind the plate? Avila is a <50% starter at this point of his career, so whoever replaced Garver was going to get a lot of reps.

I wonder when that data was collected? I know a few people who have gone back to work since June, plus stores and restaurants that have re-opened since then, and of course schools and universities have started or are preparing to start in many places now too. Even so, people working from home during the day and unemployed people are not really a great audience to target. One group is, you know, distracted by work, and the other likely has little or no disposable income (and is probably much less likely to be subscribed to cable or RSNs or even MLB.TV to actually see any games). And you can still reach all those people with primetime evening games -- plus you reach virtually everyone else too, all of whom have been accustomed to evening games for 20+ years.

Didn't I read recently that Nick Gordon still wasn't active? If he's not eligible for the special COVID IL, perhaps they could place him to the 60-day (now 45-day) IL to open up a 40-man spot. Gordon would be done for the year then, although it would get some MLB service time.

Not necessarily. If Littell spends fewer than 20 days on optional assignment this season, he will get credit for a full year of MLB service time and not burn an option for 2020, thus he would still have an option remaining for 2021. And it wouldn't surprise me if Littell is back within 20 days. EDIT: And he's back today, per Seth's tweet below!

Good post, thanks for the info — I haven’t been tracking all of these pitchers. The Maeda trade would certainly appear to rank very well among these acquisitions! And hopefully Bailey and Hill can join him yet.

Bumgarner was only a “relative bargain” at the time if we take him and his agent at their word that they had bigger offers. That’s usually a pretty dubious proposition, and it is bearing out so here. (Not that Bumgarner would look any better right now on a 4/70 contract, like the Giants reportedly offered him — but Arizona’s 5/85 was likely the best deal he could get anywhere, not a discount he was willing to take to be near his horses.)

It’s not a gimmick that was made up somewhere along the way, but rather it is part of the foundational principle of the sport: a batter-runner is presumed safe until a fielder puts him out (think “innocent until proven guilty”), and in order to record a putout, a fielder has to have control of the ball. If applying that principle would cause frequent chaos and manipulation (for example, forcing baserunners to advance on dropped third strikes), an exception has been made. But it causes no chaos with first base unoccupied or with two outs, so the principle has been preserved in those situations. It seems strange to us now, but the sport wasn’t founded on the idea of pitchers earning strikeouts by themselves. The sport evolved so they very much do so now, thus batters reaching base on dropped third strikes feels like an anachronism. But as one of the rarest outcomes in the sport (or any sport?), it doesn’t seem like we are asking too much of catchers to continue following the principle either.

I don’t get this — it was likely the 2nd most interesting/important half inning of the game, next to the game-winner. Of course I want to read about it! If you don’t want to dwell on it, that’s one thing, but to ignore it completely, dismissed with a meme? I had to miss much of this game and came first to TD to read the recap because I like this community and thought it would offer the best perspective, but I wound up recapping the rest of the game elsewhere. All of baseball, even the bad half-innings for the Twins, are part of my escape from actual bad stuff happening in 2020.

Every other putout requires a fielder to secure the ball; why not putouts by strikes at the plate too? In this age of the K, in the absence of frequent contact, there’s an argument that the rule could go even further in favor of the batter-runner.

FWIW, Tatis did exactly that. No bat flip, ran the bases without emotion... he did some celebratory high fives with his teammates after crossing home plate and in the dugout, but nothing showy.

Seems odd that, even without counting Dobnak, the top 5 would all be from 1987 or later, 4 of the top 5 from 2004 or later, and 3 of the top 5 from the last 10 years... Obviously any kind of list like this will be subjective, but I would have liked to see some research into less recent/familiar Twins teams and players. Who were the lovable underdog Twins from the 1961-1986 teams? Griffith was cheap and largely running the show on his own, so there must have been a few. I do appreciate that some attempt was made at diversity -- too often, similar lists have focused on players who historically benefitted from opportunities not available to everyone. Although perhaps 1st round pick Revere isn't the best Twins example we can find. I too am not terribly familiar with those pre-1987 years, but just looking at Twins of color at B-Ref, it seems Bobby Darwin would have an interesting story -- longtime mediocre minor league pitcher turned regular MLB outfielder for the Twins at age 29. Gary Ward was signed as an undrafted free agent and had a fairly undistinguished minor league career before getting ROY votes at age 27, MVP votes at age 28, and becoming an all star at age 29 for the Twins. Jose Morales (the old one) basically became an MLB semi-regular for the first time at age 33 for the Twins -- and batted over .300 twice in 3 years here. Albert Williams was smuggled out of Nicaragua to pitch for the Twins. And these are just Twins of color -- obviously looking beyond them, you'd find even more players from those eras.

NBA and NHL are playing day games now by necessity, not by design. They can’t play all the games simultaneously in their bubbles. When MLB gets to their postseason, you will see those games spread out too. There isn’t much of a national audience for regular season MLB games. The people willing to tune in to Cincinnati-Detroit or whatever random day game is on the schedule, while they work from home, is not a large audience — hence why national broadcasters are not interested in buying those rights. MLB would rather reach all the more casual fans in Detroit and Cincy, who are still far more likely to be able to watch — and be able to pay attention — to the game in prime time on their local RSN.