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Otto von Ballpark

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Everything posted by Otto von Ballpark

  1. Otto von Ballpark
    .211 relative to that league = ¡Ay, caramba!
  2. Otto von Ballpark
    I would definitely take Lew Ford back! Still a star (and hitting coach) for the Long Island Ducks, I believe. Just turned 40 a couple weeks ago...
  3. Otto von Ballpark
    I'm not sure -- which is worse, promoting Schafer because you don't plan to sit Grossman, or promoting Schafer and STILL sitting Grossman?
  4. Otto von Ballpark
    I did find Matt Fox, who was added to the roster September 3, 2010 and DFA'd two days later, although that was obviously a year of contention. Interestingly, Fox was DFA'd to call up Ben Revere. Maybe Schafer will be DFA'd to call up Revere comparable Zach Granite? (Although Chattanooga tentatively has a playoff berth.) 2008, Mike Lamb DFA'd 8/25, again another contending season, though. Going back to 1991 in the FOX Sports transactions page, Fox and Lamb (jokes, please!) appear to be the only in-season Twins DFA's of a player on the MLB roster after August 1st each year. (A couple more guys were DFA'd from the minor leagues, like RA Dickey in 2009. I also obviously didn't count Albers' unusual DFA before his option a couple weeks ago.)
  5. Otto von Ballpark
    The other team's lineup? They're not going to pass up a chance to make history!
  6. Otto von Ballpark
    Fair enough on Bernier specifically. But the larger point still stands. How many players do you think get DFA'd in September by non-contending teams? In 2015, there was only one such DFA -- Matt McBride of the Rockies, and it wasn't to call up a minor league, it was to activate Morneau from the 60-day DL: http://www.foxsports.com/mlb/transactions?year=2015&month=9&type=12 I am sure you will find a few more non-contender September DFA's from other years, but not many, and quite likely none who were just added to the roster less than 10 days prior. If you want to win your "less than a dollar" back from the Albers bet, I will bet you that Schafer stays on the roster through September. And if that's the case, we only currently project to have room for one non-40-man September call-up (assuming we transfer Park to the 60-day DL). Last I read, Milone and Boshers began throwing on August 22nd, so they are likely to be activated yet again this season rather than be 60-day DL candidates.
  7. Otto von Ballpark
    Good point. Even just counting Santana's 3 appearances in LF over the previous 9 games, that's 12 PA. And another 6 PA in RF. Only 4 PA (8 if not for injury) as a CF. I'd guess Molitor will be less inclined to play Santana's replacement than he was to play Santana, but that's not a great defense of picking a worse replacement...
  8. Otto von Ballpark
    Well, some guys make more than $25k in the minors. 40-man roster players, minor league free agents. Some make a LOT more -- guys on optional assignment might be making up to $300k (has to be at least 60% of previous season's combined MLB and minor league salary). There aren't a lot of these guys, though, and their salaries might be more accurately rolled into MLB payroll. Of course, nobody makes absolute zero in the minors either, so it wouldn't be anything near $3.75 mil in new expenses. It would just be $25k minus the average salary of the guys making below $25k, multiplied by the number of guys below $25k. Might be more like $2 mil per team in new spending? And of course they could negotiate lower deals with minor league free agents to offset some of that, if they wanted -- we wouldn't have to offer, say, $100k to someone like Logan Schafer.
  9. Otto von Ballpark
    Schafer has over 2.5 years of MLB service time already, so he's made something like $1.25 mil in MLB salary to date. Also, his minor league salaries in 2014 and 2015 had to be at least 60% of his previous year's salary, which for all of 2013 was the MLB minimum (~$500k). So he's probably been making up to $300k (annual equivalent) even while on optional assignment to the minor leagues in 2014-2015. Not sure what his 2016 salary has been in Rochester, but suffice to say, it probably dwarfs Walker's ~$40k and Palka's $1700-$2150 per month. (All 3 of Schafer, Walker, and Palka were 3rd round draft picks out of college, so they probably got similar bonuses too?) http://www.sportslawblogger.com/baseball/salary-information/minor-league-salary/
  10. Otto von Ballpark
    "Anchored" is an appropriate word for a rotation that's drowning.
  11. Otto von Ballpark
    FWIW, a Palka or Walker recall today would have provided a fine positive story...
  12. Otto von Ballpark
    Please don't completely abandon clothes while the team is bad, though.
  13. Otto von Ballpark
    The team votes on rookie of the year? Also, "spin on Dean"? The context of the comment was the team's decision to bring May back to the bullpen at the beginning of July. It has nothing to do with Berrios.
  14. Otto von Ballpark
    But don't you think that is unlikely? How often have the Twins added a player this late in the season, only to DFA them a week later? In addition to Albers recently, Doug Bernier 2014 seems a good comp -- added September 2nd, finished the season in Minnesota. If it's likely that Schafer sticks the rest of the season, even just taking up a 40-man spot in a bench role, doesn't that make this decision a little less "easy", and make you a little less "fine" with it given that you prefer to do otherwise?
  15. Otto von Ballpark
    This is fair. The bigger problem is Grossman playing every day. But, we were stuck with both Grossman and Santana on the 25-man roster -- neither can be optioned. So we had to use one of them as a starting outfielder, and one as the "4th outfielder". Once one of them got injured, there was some hope that the team would put the other one into the 4th outfielder, and tab a new starting OF with their newfound roster flexibility.
  16. Otto von Ballpark
    Grossman has ~1000 career pro games in the outfield. LF-specific reps, a couple weeks shy of his 27th birthday, are nowhere near equivalent to 3B reps for Sano, who at age 23 has only ~100 games at 3B the last 3 seasons, and only one half-season of consistent 3B starts in that time span.
  17. Otto von Ballpark
    It was relevant to the point. He is defending this move, in part, because he says it is easy to cut the player in a week, when history suggests otherwise.
  18. Otto von Ballpark
    I don't think the Twins are "slow promoters" to any great degree, but it is interesting/odd that Garver will turn 26 this winter and might have zero MLB experience (or perhaps just a couple token September appearances, if they do indeed call him up after Rochester's season ends but fail to deal Suzuki). While that may look unavoidable because he started the year in AA, and Garver was a 22 year old college draftee, but we also sent him to rookie league ball at age 22, and then we made him spend a whole season, his age 23 season, at A ball in Cedar Rapids even though he hit quite well the whole year (while at the same time, we pushed Turner to skip that level and not hit so well at high-A and AA). And it doesn't seem like we held Garver back to work on his defense -- in that whole season in Cedar Rapids, he barely caught 50% of his games. Org filler Michael Quesada took significant catching reps from Garver that year, and again the following year at Fort Meyers, before apparently washing out of pro ball by his 26th birthday. And while I don't think Garver is some great prospect, I also wouldn't point to his modest minor league batting lines as evidence that the Twins were wise to hold him back. Adjusted for league, his batting lines have been pretty consistently good-to-great in pro ball, and his K/BB rates have been very good too, suggesting a player who could have been challenged more: http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=sa578988&position=C/DH
  19. Otto von Ballpark
    The poster referred to Garver's age in the very next sentence, which you blatantly omitted from your quote. You can disagree with him, but don't be dishonest about it.
  20. Otto von Ballpark
    That wasn't Nick's opinion by late June: http://twinsdaily.com/topic/23013-article-setting-up-for-the-second-half/ Maybe it still was in May: http://twinsdaily.com/_/minnesota-twins-news/minnesota-twins/trevor-may-is-leading-an-evolving-bullpen-r4673
  21. Otto von Ballpark
    Do you think adding Logan Schafer now makes it easier to add "guys with a future" to the MLB roster next week? My money is on Logan Schafer finishing the season in Minnesota. They haven't even cut Albers yet, as was often predicted after his "emergency" call-up a few weeks ago. Speaking of Albers, Seth, how did this prediction of yours work out? "I'd bet any amount of money (less than like $1) that Jason Wheeler will make a start on Monday or Tuesday." https://twitter.com/SethTweets/status/769334374613422080
  22. Otto von Ballpark
    This doesn't really make sense here. I fully admit, teams have some obligation to the minor league affiliates, but we just called up Wimmers, a few weeks ago we called up 3/5 of the Rochester rotation over 3 days, they called up Chargois and Light recently, they kept Vargas up here for a few weeks as a bench player, they called up Polanco and Berrios a month ago, etc. (This month, in their "pennant drive", Rochester has been stuck starting a 3B with a .492 OPS thanks to that Polanco promotion.) There is no way you can draw a bright distinction between making those moves, but not calling up Walker or Palka today. Also, if the Rochester pennant race was so important, why not let them keep Logan Schafer and sign someone off the street instead? Otherwise, don't we either have to replace Schafer there or make them play shorthanded? Heck, Schafer was written into the #3 hole in the Rochester lineup yesterday before he got scratched to be called up, although admitted he has primarily been a reserve lately -- since we gave them Buxton back. And it's not like it has been a one-way street. On the flip side, we just gave them Duffey and Berrios, plus Buxton and Vargas and Mitch Garver a few weeks ago, and signed Mujica. As for playoff minor league baseball being more important to a player's development, why did we promote those guys listed above? Why did we promote Kepler?
  23. Otto von Ballpark
    You could make this argument at any time, to delay any promotion indefinitely. At some point you will have to call those players up. Might as well be now, when you have an opening in a lost season, even if they won't get a determinative number of PAs by season's end. And if the front office previously overvalued the Septembers of Parmelee and Pinto (and I don't think they did, both opened the following season on the bench and found themselves back in AAA soon thereafter), the lesson to be learned is not "don't play prospects in September." The lesson would be, don't over-value September results.
  24. Otto von Ballpark
    If Rosario gets injured, they can make a roster move after the game for a Logan Schafer type. Kepler would only have to be an in-game emergency CF.
  25. Otto von Ballpark
    The just mentioned on today's TV broadcast that Stewart is going to the DL, shut down for the balance of the season.
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