Otto von Ballpark

It's absolutely fair if you don't want to deal with it here, and Twins Daily is always open for more baseball discussion! I've largely ignored the big discussion thread from yesterday (even though I'm an moderator so I probably shouldn't ), and I just started a thread in the "Other Baseball" forum if you want to check it out: http://twinsdaily.com/topic/40261-what-does-everyone-think-of-the-rule-changes-so-far/ If you don't see a baseball article or thread that you want to comment on, start your own! Just don't wade into articles and threads you don't want to deal with, just to say you don't want to deal with them. (Not saying you're doing that here, just a general observation.)

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

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.

You can do the "player to be named later" thing. In fact, there have been several such minor deals so far. I suspect the restriction was to limit the number of players travelling this season, not to handcuff teams in making trades.

Yes, and I'm saying the "evening out" of balls and strikes (via umpire performance) is comparable to the "evening out" of factors that we readily accept. We'll all have different places where we draw our subjective line, and some folks will accept the umpire performance and some won't, and that's fine -- but the principle of "evening out" in the sport is not unusual by itself.

Splits are tough to judge over a season or two because they are relatively small samples, and reliever splits especially because a reliever's normal workload is pretty small as it is. I don't doubt that pitchers would have reduced effectiveness on zero days rest, but MLB isn't quite like most other pro sports -- you can't avoid back-to-backs forever. Pennant race, postseason, eventually you're going to need to ask your best players to perform in these spots. So it's a bit of a balancing act, just like managing days off and pitcher workloads. So I wouldn't say Rocco should never do it again with Rogers, but hopefully everyone involved is trying different things and figuring out how to make things work best when it comes to crunch time.

I'm not claiming that pitcher performance should be equal between these splits, but I think they likely overstate the real magnitude of difference. Statistically, the smaller the sample, the more prone it is to variation, even without causation. Rogers had his worst game last year on zero days rest, and as it is the smaller of the two samples, that bad appearance is given more weight. There may also be other factors at play. Pitchers may be more likely to be asked to pitch on zero days rest in tougher circumstances. Of course, tougher circumstances could also include trying to pitch back-back against the same team like last night. Gyorko saw 4 pitches from Rogers on Monday night before hitting a deep fly, and that could have contributed to his second-pitch HR off Rogers on Tuesday night -- that would still be on Rocco if he pitched him back-to-back vs Milwaukee when he didn't have to, but it doesn't necessarily say much about Rogers' effectiveness pitching back-to-back versus two different clubs in the future.

Unless one insists that every game should be played indoors, avoiding the effects of sun, wind, and rain, we're all accepting of the "even out" principle in some form. The players don't compete in a vacuum. Some folks just view human umpire performance on that same continuum, while others do not.

Duffey was called up for a doubleheader as the designated "26th man." And because the 26th man is exempt from the 10-day minimum for optional assignments to the minors, the Twins knew they could pitch him in the doubleheader, option him back down the next day (when he wasn't likely to pitch on consecutive days anyway), and then recall him the day after that when he was fresh again. So no worries, I suspect he didn't actually fly to Rochester for just 1 day!

Anderson wouldn't have been "entrenched" after a 2018 audition, but he most certainly would have stuck around longer than Drake. Drake (age 31) was out of options, so he was going to cost a 25-man spot going forward; Anderson (age 28) would have only cost a 40-man spot.

I think a lot of teams wanted Drake in AAA, off their 40-man roster, but nobody really wanted to give him a MLB roster spot for very long. Even the Rays did that with him after his successful stint with the Twins (which was in extremely low-leverage situations, by the way) -- the Rays lost him on waivers less than a month after claiming him from the Twins, and later traded cash to get him back from Toronto, and finally put him through waivers again, only giving him a MLB look after he spent 2 months in AAA.

Hendriks was a B grade prospect per Sickels circa 2011, reaching MLB at age 22, had comparisons to "prime" Kevin Slowey who had been a 2nd round draft pick. Hendriks certainly wasn't overpowering, but when I think "fringey" I imagine someone older or even less of a prospect. And it may have taken Hendriks five years to become a top closer, but it didn't take him nearly that long to find success in an MLB bullpen. Just one season removed from the Twins org, in his first action as a reliever, Hendriks posted a 1.5 fWAR relief season for Toronto in 2015, followed by a trade to Oakland and 1.4 and 1.0 fWAR years in their pen over 2016-2017. (Of course, he scuffled in 2018 and was available to the whole league on waivers before Oakland outrighted him to AAA for a few months, so it wasn't all smooth sailing!) Lesson there is, you probably should try a guy like that in the pen before casting him loose. And to our credit, we did that with Duffey more recently.

FWIW, today is the 20th day of the Twins season. So any player called up for the first time in 2020, from here on out, won't get a full season of MLB service time, even if they spend the rest of the year on the roster. (The rule is normally 19 days or fewer on optional assignment and the player still gets credit for a full year, and I don't think that has been adjusted for 2020.) Not that I think that was really a factor with Duran, but maybe clubs will be more likely to try younger players now and going forward.

Looking at the video, I've got to say -- the pitcher Yardley was hitting his spots, and the catcher Pina did some excellent framing. The first and last strikes are maybe a quarter of a ball's width outside the box, so other factors like that could definitely come into play. The second strike was the biggest outlier. Looks like Meals was set up more behind Kepler, which must have impacted his sense of the outside edge of the zone. Then the pitch came in straight, the catcher didn't have to move, and he gently pulled his glove over the edge of the plate while receiving the pitch. I'm not excusing it or anything, but it's definitely easier to understand on video than on Gameday.

Not all random events will be distributed evenly over any given sample, though. I don't think Meals was intentionally favoring the Brewers over the Twins. Could have still been random, but there are other factors which could have contributed. The Twins had 5 lefties or switch-hitters in the lineup vs. the Brewers 2, which means ump positioning would have varied. The Brewers catcher could have been framing differently than the Twins catcher, and the pitchers may had different angles/movement which could have influenced it too. Note the pitcher to Kepler was a side-armer.

While I sympathize with your feelings about the ump in that situation, I don’t think we can infer that it should have been a walk. The pitcher may not have continued throwing it off the plate if he wasn’t getting the calls there. Correctly down 2-0, the pitcher likely tries to come into the zone — he came into the zone on 5 of 7 pitches to non-Kepler batters that inning, so it’s not like he was completely lost. As a rough barometer, last year Kepler was 10-41 with 34 BB in 77 PA which started 2-0, including 5 2B, 2 HR, and 7 Ks. So about a 60% chance of reaching base, but still 40% chance of an out (or two, like Polanco’s DP following). Not that I am defending the ump, just clarifying the probabilities!

Gausman just turned in a very nice start vs the Dodgers on Sunday. He is up to 20 IP, 4.05 ERA, 2.27 FIP, 2 BB, 23 K for the season. Of course, San Fran, like many is teams, is still within a half a game of a playoff berth...

I think you can still trade any prospect in 2020, but you just have to do non-60-man guys as a “player to be named later” who won’t be officially named until after the season. There have been several such trades already in 2020.

This is actually what happened in the 2019 postseason. First reliever to come in was Littell in the 5th in a tied game 1, then Duffey to get out of the inning, followed by Stashak to begin the 6th inning behind by 1. (And finally Gibson in the 7th down by 3.) Game 2, down 1 in the third, he went back to Duffey with disastrous results. Didn’t use Rogers until facing elimination in game 3, and inexplicably tried to stretch Romo out to 2 innings near the end of the game with a fully rested pen otherwise, extending our deficit from 2 to 4 runs before our last at-bat.