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Otto von Ballpark

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Everything posted by Otto von Ballpark

  1. Otto von Ballpark
    Related thought: I wonder if we don’t plan to use, say, Berrios on the season’s last weekend, if we could option him to open a spot for, say, Dobnak, but still put Berrios on the playoff roster and disregard the 10 day option rule. I suspect we can, but it is different than a normal season (you can’t option a player to a minor league team whose season is over, so normally you can’t option a player after mid-September — but obvious 2020 is anything but normal!).
  2. Otto von Ballpark
    They have 2 off days next week, so they can actually skip Odorizzi’s spot. Maybe he comes back for a few innings on the season’s final day, if they don’t want to pitch any of their top 4 postseason SP that day. We could also see Bailey activated for a few inning audition too, although we would need to clear a 40-man spot for him to return, in addition to a 28-man spot.
  3. Otto von Ballpark
    I believe that if the Yankees win 2 of their next 5 games (1 vs BOS, 4 vs TOR), the Yankees will secure the tiebreaker over the Twins for playoff seeding.
  4. Otto von Ballpark
    I think "implosion" is an oversell here. Ottavino has an ugly ERA, true, but the rest of the regular NY pen has been pretty solid. Team regular season bullpen ERA is misleading when evaluating a playoff matchup, because there are usually a few poor performers at the bottom of the pen who won't even sniff the playoff roster. The top 6 Yankee bullpen performers have a cumulative 3.09 ERA; the top 6 Twins, 2.70. And even that might overstate the difference -- one of the Yankees top 6, Chapman, missed the first month of the season with COVID-19 and gave up 4 runs in his first 4 IP. Since then, he's been extremely dominant: 5.2 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 2 BB, 13 K. Ottavino is a bit of an odd case too -- I know you can't just throw out a player's worst game, but his worst game is an extreme outlier: he was charged with 6 runs without retiring a batter! Suffice to say, if he's utilized in the postseason, I assume he won't be allowed to let 6 batters reach without retiring any of them.
  5. Otto von Ballpark
    Restaurant staff have to clean the floor of the restaurant all the time too, but you'll probably be asked to leave if you deliberately dump your food on the floor in front of them. Again, you can like what Donaldson did, totally endorse it -- that's absolutely fine. It's sports! It's entertainment. But I doubt that even Donaldson himself would claim that he didn't expect to be ejected -- in fact, that was probably his goal.
  6. Otto von Ballpark
    You know who has to clean home plate, right? It was a deliberate and obvious act, and judging by Donaldson's reaction afterward, he did it to provoke the ump and fully expected to be tossed. You are welcome to enjoy and endorse what he did, but let's not pretend that the consequences of the act were somehow unexpected or unjust.
  7. Otto von Ballpark
    Don't know where else to put this, but wow, the White Sox are calling up their 2020 first-round pick (11th overall)! Left-handed college pitcher Garrett Crochet is completely skipping minor league game action to make his pro debut out of a MLB bullpen: https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2020/09/white-sox-promote-garrett-crochet-2020-draft.html The White Sox did a similar thing with Chris Sale back in 2010.
  8. Otto von Ballpark
    I agree. The proposed 13/14 pitcher roster limit was suspended for 2020 too, so teams could really go wild with pitchers on their 28 man postseason rosters! Yes, I assume that rule hasn't changed.
  9. Otto von Ballpark
    I would have like that for replay in general, instead of manager challenges. Just let the umps on the field make the immediate call, but have an ump in the booth who can buzz an override to his colleagues if something is worth closer examination on video. Not sure it works on balls and strikes, though -- there are so many borderline pitches, I think you'd have players constantly making appeals, hoping to get the attention of the ump in the booth. Whoever makes the initial call there has to have final authority, I think. Just go full automated strikezone so the ump is simply delivering that call, no appeals or overrides are necessary, and you keep that authority but you also gain the accuracy.
  10. Otto von Ballpark
    They need an umpire on the field anyway for other calls, and also as backup in case the automated system fails to function. And given his proximity to the action, and the fact that players are already trained to listen for his call while they follow the action on the field, it makes sense to have him signal the call as he currently does. I know folks have been frustrated by human umpires, but we've been dealing with that frustration since the dawn of (baseball) time. It's relatively easy to wait a little longer for the automated system. Don't worry, it's coming -- I don't think MLB would have sponsored the system in the Atlantic League and Arizona Fall League if they didn't have an intention of bringing to the majors once it was ready. But MLB teams and players aren't willing to be guinea pigs like indy leaguers or minor leaguers either.
  11. Otto von Ballpark
    Postseason rosters this year are 28, just like now, so they have more spots to play with. I don't think they will carry 3 catchers, so they could swap out Astudillo for someone else. Wade probably won't make it either, so that's another flex spot. If Arraez comes back and is healthy, they could swap him for Adrianza? And obviously if Odorizzi or anyone else goes on the IL, that could open a spot too.
  12. Otto von Ballpark
    I think the tech issue at this point isn't accuracy, it is speed -- they need to get the call to the ump on the field immediately so the rest of the play can proceed (think baserunner advancement, etc.). I think I read that in the trials they have done so far, there were occasional delays -- they need to eliminate those before they can deploy at the major league level. I don't doubt there will be other resistance to the idea, but there are still real tech challenges here -- it's not just an excuse.
  13. Otto von Ballpark
    Here's the zone for Twins batters yesterday: https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/gamefeed?game_pk=631485&game_date=2020-9-17&type=team_home&chart_view=pitch&chart_type=description&inning=&count=&batter_hand=&pitcher_hand=&filter=Ball,Called%20Strike&player=home-pitchers_517008&view=Umpire&coloring=Pitch%20Type According to this, there were only 2 errors against Twins batters -- the outside strike to Donaldson in the 6th, and the inside strike to Marwin in the 5th. The very next pitch to Marwin was one of 3 errors in the Twins favor -- a called ball that actually clipped the bottom of the zone. Kepler in the first also got a ball call in the zone, as did Cruz in the 8th (on an 0-2 pitch, and Cruz singled later in the at bat). Although in Donaldson's defense, he didn't stick around to see that.
  14. Otto von Ballpark
    I don't think anyone is suggesting we should schedule Duffey for the 7th & 8th innings of game 1 right now! But if you want it as an option, based on the score and lineup and how Duffey's first inning goes etc., it's probably a good idea to stretch him out now, like they did the other day.
  15. Otto von Ballpark
    We are 4 games up on Cleveland in the win column, and we have the tiebreaker so that's effectively 5 wins up. Cleveland also has 4 with the White Sox next week among their 10 games remaining. If they sweep DET and PIT, and split vs CHW, that's 8-2. The Twins would need to go 3-5 in that scenario to drop to third place.
  16. Otto von Ballpark
    Good question! I think first tiebreaker is head to head, which obviously does not apply this year outside the division. Next is record within your division. Twins are 21-17 with 2 games left with Detroit; Yankees are 20–13 with 3 games left vs Boston and 4 vs Toronto. If they finish tied in division record too, then the tiebreaker is last 20 division games record, and stepping up by 1 (last 21, 22, etc.) until the tie is resolved. Edit to add: on that latter tiebreaker, note the Twins are 10-8 in their last 18 division games with those 2 remaining vs Detroit. Yankees are 8-5 in their last 13 with 7 remaining.
  17. Otto von Ballpark
    But Colome hasn't been generating many strikeouts this year. Jeffers K rate is 33% right now but that doesn't seem too egregious. More than contact, you need to reach base to stay alive at that point, and Jeffers has a .365 OBP -- Astudillo's MLB career is .319. And ideally, you want a double or HR to plate the runner from first, and obviously Jeffers is a better bet for that too. Jeffers even drew a walk from Colome back on August 31st, so I'm not sure what about that matchup would scare Baldelli.
  18. Otto von Ballpark
    Not really hindsight -- 4 innings to protect a 1-run lead looked like a tall task after the pen threw 5.1 innings last night. Edit to add: unless they simply planned to lose the game, so the pen would only have to throw 3 innings.
  19. Otto von Ballpark
    Has there been any explanation for why Astudillo pinch-hit for Jeffers at the end? I mean, I know it likely didn't make a difference at that point, but it seemed so odd. Was Jeffers hurt or something?
  20. Otto von Ballpark
    I don't think anyone disputes that, in general. The question is, what do you do once you've failed to raise your own? (Or enough of your own?) Although the White Sox specifically haven't "raised their own" pitchers entirely either -- Giolito, Cease, Dunning, and Kopech (and yes, even Reynaldo Lopez) were all acquired by trading good players under contract for several more years (at good prices too). And it took several poor performance years after those trades for them to get to this point. Not every team can (or should want) to emulate that strategy.
  21. Otto von Ballpark
    Not to rehash the whole debate, but the results so far have pretty much supported the Red Sox position in that trade. They are bad enough that Graterol's relative chance of starting long-term was a very important consideration for them. And given how he has been used by the Dodgers, it seems quite possible that there was something in the Twins medical disclosure that implied starting was even less likely for Graterol than his on-field track record would have suggested. On the larger question of the trade, yeah, they could have afforded Betts, but Betts probably wouldn't have salvaged the Red Sox in the near future. And Verdugo has been one of Boston's better players (albeit not as good as Betts, but obviously much cheaper going forward). Judgement still pending on the minor league prospects they received, obviously.
  22. Otto von Ballpark
    Tanaka is pretty darn good, especially in the postseason. I'm not sure I'd put him in the "pretty beatable" group. Top prospect Deivi Garcia has looked good too, through 4 starts (although one would hope we could get to him in his postseason debut, like we did with Severino). The pen does seem a little weaker, but Chapman got a late start and appears to be heating up now, and it looks like still have 4-5 healthy effective guys setting him up, some of whom are capable of throwing multiple innings.
  23. Otto von Ballpark
    With all the HR that Buxton has been hitting lately, maybe the Pirates' Miguel Del Pozo was on to something by walking him earlier this year? I think it would be in the best interests of potential Twins playoff opponents to employ Mr. Del Pozo and other pitchers like him!
  24. Otto von Ballpark
    Even just looking at the Twins batter charts, it appears that the Tuesday ump was incorrect on 5 pitches, vs. the Wednesday night ump on 3. The Tuesday night ump did have the most egregious mistake of the two (the one low & away strike). The rest of their collective mistakes seem comparable in degree. Note that the Wednesday night ump's 3 mistakes all favored Twins batters (1 pitch on the inside corner, and two that caught the bottom of the zone, all called balls). This is probably a non-trivial factor in how Twins fans are grading the two umps! Also note that the Tuesday night ump had to render a judgment on ~5 pitches that were very close to clipping the edge of the zone during Twins at-bats, as compared to the Wednesday night ump who only saw ~2 such pitches. Opportunity rather than skill?
  25. Otto von Ballpark
    It can't be that hard to throw 5.1 perfect innings, right?
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