Otto von Ballpark

Joke all you want, but players are thinking sacrificing helps the team more than it really does. Who is ultimately responsible for managing that?

Although also notice that Escobar kept on trying to bunt to "help the team." I think the culture of sac bunting is ingrained, and I want to see Molitor breaking that. It's probably going to take more than calling it off at 1-1 to do it, but it is his job.

Yeah, something like that. I was thinking more team composition than record. Still, saying they were a 70 win talent team that year means 2015 was probably another underachievement too, given they were coming off 70. We're finishing up the 6th full season since our 2011 collapse, ~83 wins should be the baseline expectation by now. Glad we're finally meeting it, but after a few years of underachieving toward that goal, I'd kind of like to overachieve for once -- it's hard to get too excited about just meeting modest expectations. Another big one for my is the Yankee/playoff curse. They didn't move foward on that in 2015, and if they don't in 2017 either, that's going to affect my feelings about this team too. Even if they are otherwise meeting expectations.

Yeah, I could see a 46% chance of winning the WC game once we have clinched the 2nd WC, but that seems high right now. FWIW, Fangraphs has us up to 88% chance to get the 2nd WC, and a 37% chance to advance to the ALDS. That implies something like a 42% chance once they get to the WC game, which seems about right given records as the road team. (Without any Twins-Yankee curse adjustment, of course!)

Mejia was injured shortly thereafter, so there could have been room for both. (And there was a case for sending him out instead of Gibson too, he wasn't pitching very deep.)

No one is claiming the probability percentages are perfect. But "this isn't likely" could mean 51% or 75% of 99%. Some of us enjoy seeing probability in less binary terms, grayscale instead of simple black and white. (Imagine the killjoy who says with every plate appearance, "a base hit isn't likely here" ) Feel free to disregard, if you prefer. FWIW, Fangraphs "coin flip mode" is a decent sanity check with so few games remaining -- since game outcomes are indeed binary, if you simply flipped a coin for the results, what are the odds you could make up a deficit of X flips with Y flips remaining? Twins are at 75.5% there right now. Obviously no one is flipping coins and we will all watch them play the games, but I enjoy seeing that 75% as opposed to just "this is/isn't likely", which could be equally applied to a variety of deficits right now. Also, semantics, but describing a 2.5 game deficit as a "5 game swing with 9/10 remaining" sounds like you are double-counting the numerator (5 combined Angels/Rangers wins and Twins losses) and only single-counting the denominator (since each team has 9/10 games remaining, so there are actually 19/20 events to make up the "5 game swing"). I tend to think of days, so the Angels/Rangers need to make up ground on the Twins for +3 days over the next 10.

Sure, but it wasn't a butt slide either. His knees, hands, and wrists were making impact with the ground, and he was tumbling over after the catch. Players should almost never risk crashing into each other at any time, and not often crashing into a wall either. But the standards are changed in a blowout -- heck, Granite himself was in the game as defensive replacement to reduce injury risk to a regular. But he's important enough (4th viable outfielder) that I think I'd still want him to exercise a bit more caution in that situation too.

Interestingly, Seattle hasn't fallen back too much in that time -- 3.5 games to 5 games behind the 2nd wild card. But as late as it is, their playoffs chances have gone from long shot (5.3%) to virtually zero shot (0.3%). As noted in the other thread, they are a risk for rolling over for Texas next weekend.

Re: Granite's catch in the 9th -- I guess he's not a starter, but is that a smart risk in the 9th inning of a 12-1 game? If he gets hurt, we're going to need Grossman, Adrianza, etc. in the outfield in more meaningful situations...

Yup, got it. Sorry, wasn't really questioning you, more or less just thinking inspired by your post!

Interesting that the Rangers have pulled even with the Angels. They have 7 of 10 with Oakland, but 3 with Houston too. The Angels have 3 with Houston starting today, then 4 with the White Sox, and 3 with Seattle who will almost assuredly be mathematically eliminated by then (odds down to 0.3% at Fangraphs). Interesting to compare the 3 projection models at Fangraphs: Projections: Angels 14.7%, Rangers 5.4% Season to date stats: Rangers 12.4%, Angels 9.8% Coin flip: Rangers 10.3%, Angels 9.6% Twins odds are 73.3%, 75.5%, and 76% by those 3 models, respectively. Looks the Fangraphs "projection" has Adrian Beltre missing the rest of the season, but he homered yesterday playing through a hamstring strain, so we'll see. Hamels and especially Cashner have both out-performed their FIP so far too, so we will see how they finish (Hamels tossed a gem last night).

And now your correction is outdated too -- we have a 2.5 game lead for the 2nd wild card.

Brock had a post recently about how we are always missing key players for postseasons -- some of this is bad luck, but I wonder if the Twins / training staff deserve a portion of blame? Morneau's 2010 concussion -- nothing we could do about that, really. But his 2009 back problems? Maybe that could have been managed better? Remember Mauer actually returned not long after his 2004 knee injury, and hit great, but then went on the shelf again. Maybe that could have been managed better? And now Sano. (Some blame could be on players in these cases, as some are doing for Sano now, but ultimately the team has to manage these assets too.) Looking back, I don't know if we pushed Liriano excessively in 2006, he wasn't running up high pitch counts nor was he near an innings limit yet. Radke was maybe managed poorly that year, should we have gotten him rested earlier? Some of that extends too to team construction -- maybe if the 2009 team was built a bit better, we wouldn't have been chasing the Tigers so desperately at the end and we could have rested Morneau better, for example? Same for the summer of 2006. Just spitballing here, not necessarily assigning blame... I am curious what our rate of injuries impacting postseason play is like, compared to that of other teams.

You know, I was thinking more about this, and maybe we're being too hard on the 2015 team? Yeah, they were great in May, poor record in June, but they were about .500 the rest of the season, and that's including a poor start in April and punting the last game of the season, some non-health/performance circumstances limiting Ervin's and Sano's contributions, etc. And on a component level, I'm not sure the degree to which today's team is in a better place. How much has really changed since then? Sano has probably taken a step back in performance/health. Buxton looks like he has finally put some things together -- but remember he actually looked OK after he got his feet wet in 2015 too, and he was still arguably the best prospect in the game, so he wasn't starting from zero in an October 2015 forecast. Same for Berrios, Polanco, and Kepler, who have performed roughly in line with consensus expectations overall since. And similar for Rosario stepping up this year -- much appreciated, but he did have a rookie season of some promise in 2015. Those guys all get some credit for actually developing, and that probably pushes 2017 above 2015, but we probably would have forecast some similar development back then too. Trevor May has taken a big step back since then, and Hughes and Milone went from looking like cromulent starters in 2015 to nothing. Gibson's best season overall was 2015. Ervin and Dozier are better this year -- but they were fine in 2015 too, and now they are older, so I am not sure how much their future outlook is better. Mauer is better, but also older. We signed Castro, but it's not like the 2015 team was doomed to start Suzuki for all eternity -- we knew they were going to sign and/or trade for someone within a year, right? I guess Hildenberger is a plus? But overall, the pen is still pretty modest with plenty of uncertainty. I too like the current squad more, but I'm not sure it's enough just to be content with matching 2015 record-wise. I think playoff results are going to factor into my evaluation of the 2017 season. Not enough to call it a failure, but enough where it could notably temper any conclusion of "success." (Not to say I haven't enjoyed the season from an entertainment/interest perspective, of course -- it's baseball!)

Yeah. While the Angels haven't gained ground relative to the Twins / wild card since the trade, they have likely gained ground relative to a hypothetical Angels team that did not trade for Upton.

The threshold there is missing ANY time in those seasons, not necessarily whole seasons. I would guess the average health player would probably hit the DL 3 times in 6 seasons, no? Not an iron man, but I wouldn't call that a "very high" occurrence.

Is this directed at me? I just thought "his career high in games played is just 116" was rather misleading, and not particularly meaningful at this point of his young career. He has 6 full pro seasons, and he's missed time in 3 of them. That includes his TJ surgery season. Not a perfect record, but not terrible at this point either.

Fangraphs has the Twins odds at 61-65%. They could still miss without an "epic collapse", it's just 2 games (and only 1 loss difference right now) in 10 days. FWIW, Rockies have roughly the same odds in the NL right now, with a 1 game lead on the Brewers. Per 538, the Cardinals had a 62% chance last year on Sep. 22 and missed. They were tied with the Mets and Giants that day, and finished 6-4 -- but both the Mets and Giants finished 7-3.

FYI, Sano is 24 now. (He debuted at 22, two years ago.)

Yes. A game 163 would guarantee 1 extra game at home, but it would lower our chances of winning the wild card game and the guaranteed home postseason game that would come with that. Not to mention, since we already have a lead, a game 163 would likely mean we blew that lead, which would be a bit of a sour taste before we even played the game. (The 2008-2009 Game 163's were pretty much us coming from behind to force them.)

That's fair. I could see being more encouraged by 2017 than by 2015. But not enough to say I'm fired up by the former enough to disregard the outcome of the final 10 games and postseason.

We have gotten a lot more from the $4 mil we are paying Nolasco this year, than from the same amount we are paying Jaime Garcia, that's for sure.

So you're "fired up" that they are back to 2015 levels? I am enjoying 2017 too, but I'm not giving them bonus points for being so bad in 2016. Going further than 2015 would be nice.

144 games played in 2015 (despite the AA season starting a few days late, and Sano had 2 all-star breaks too). 2012-2013 were full seasons as well. Outside the TJ surgery, 2016-2017 have been the first seasons where Sano has missed time / hit the DL. Could be the start of a bad trend, but it's not really a long history at this point.

The groundhog is currently injured, perhaps exacerbated by his weight? They hope he will be ready by Feb. 2nd, although folks are starting to doubt that. Even if he gets healthy, he is unlikely to be in shadow-seeing shape by then.