Otto von Ballpark

If we define "starters" as starting pitchers, the Twins roster doesn't even have five to name at the moment! Officially down to 3, at least until tomorrow's starting pitcher is announced. From ESPN's schedule:

Actually, one of Falvey's first moves with the Twins was selecting Miguel Diaz with the first pick in the 2016 Rule 5 draft, then immediately swappin him to San Diego in exchange for a different Rule 5 pick (Justin Haley) and cash. Diaz is currently in the San Diego bullpen and has been reasonably effective in mop-up duty -- he could conceivably be on their roster for the wild-card game, when teams load up on relief pitchers.

Strained oblique for Big Mike. Ralph Garza Jr is a reliever claimed off waivers recently from the Astros. Speculation is that the Twins will make another move before Pineda's next turn in the rotation (Wednesday) -- could be the return of Lewis Thorpe, who started yesterday for St. Paul.

Moran "only" has 7 games in AAA, but 15 IP. How much does a reliever need? Graterol had 4 games, 5.1 IP at AAA; Alcala had 5 games, 7.2 IP; Stashak, 12 games and 22.1 IP, etc. It's not like Moran is some out-of-nowhere guy either -- 7th round pick in 2015, and even after missing most of 2016-2017 with injuries, he still managed to reach AA and the AFL in 2019. Also, before adding Vincent, our staff had 9 RHP and 3 LHP -- not exactly out of balance. And as noted above, Moran is pitching multiple innings per appearance in AAA anyway, so I expect they'd like to see him face RHB too. Per B-Ref, RHB are only hitting .074/.160/,176 against him this year, for a .336 OPS -- even better than he has done vs LHB (.427). I expect we'll see Moran added when rosters expand (albeit only to 28) in September, but I'm not sure what we gain by prioritizing Nick Vincent over him right now.

Thanks. Now I see that "Injured 7-Day" is Scherff's roster status on his MILB page, but it doesn't show in the transactions list. And his placement on the injured list was mentioned by various Twins writers when we acquired him, but no one has apparently disclosed what the injury actually is.

I wonder where Alex Scherff is -- he hasn't appeared in a game since we got him for Robles.

I suggested calling up Moran or even Vasquez instead of Vincent.

That was my bad -- I edited the title to include him. I strongly suspect it was auto-correct on my phone, but I will bear the consequences of this misspelling.

I don't think the concern here is about "service time" -- but rather who needs 40-man spots this winter. Yennier Cano doesn't need a 40-man spot, he is not yet eligible for Rule 5 this winter. Ian Hamilton and Ryan Mason would be eligible for Rule 5 but both might be fringe candidates to be selected, and neither will be eligible for minor league free agency. Calling them up now may just be auditioning them for clubs to claim them off waivers later. Still, Jovani Moran is an obvious guy who will require a 40-man spot, and he appears ready for a MLB opportunity. Andrew Vasquez will be a minor league free agent, so we might as well give him a look too. Either of those guys would probably be a better investment of innings here in August than Nick Vincent.

Giants signed Matt Shoemaker to a minor league deal.

Also, I wonder how accurate these ratings are. Especially as live TV audiences in general shrink, I think this would be harder to measure. This snippet from the Forbes article suggests there's more to it than just ratings:

I suspect Aaron may have averaged the percentage changes among non-Bally teams. You're right that if you add up the raw numbers for each, they had a slight collective drop too. Although FWIW, this report excludes the Blue Jays, since it is just US teams. Dodgers have a big gain, but they're hardly alone. From the Forbes article, here are the teams with gains relative to 2019: Tigers (+40%), Padres (+71%), A’s (+24%), Giants (+54%), Dodgers (+49%), and Chicago White Sox (+123%). Interesting that Tigers, Padres, Giants and White Sox represent 4 of the 5 biggest winning percentage jumps from 2019 to 2021. And the other team in the top 5 is the Blue Jays, which isn't included in this report. Two of those are even Bally networks!

Keep in mind, the stable of RSNs that Sinclair bought mostly includes the least valuable: Arizona, Atlanta, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Kansas City, LA Angels, Miami, Milwaukee, Minnesota, St. Louis, San Diego, Tampa Bay, Texas Note no NY (Yankees or Mets), Chicago (Cubs or White Sox), Boston, Dodgers, Houston, Canada, San Fran, Philly, etc. Mostly the same story with the NBA and NHL properties attached to those networks too (Timberwolves!). And even though MLB would have some unique opportunities, owning the RSNs of their teams, the fact that these networks represent only 16 of 30 MLB teams would have limited the speed and scope of those opportunities anyway. I really doubt those networks were worth $10 bil. I think it is telling that no one else outbid Sinclair either -- not Fox, not Amazon, etc. Before the ink was even dry, it was apparent that Sinclair was losing big money on the deal. Can't blame MLB for sitting out that round, for those properties and at that price. As it is, if Sinclair doesn't get its act together in the next year, MLB could have a chance to buy them again for significantly less. Or they may have an opportunity to negotiate the streaming side with a better partner, after the old cable/RSN bubble has naturally contracted a bit. Although the trend of expanded gambling may make them a bedfellow of Bally anyway...

FWIW, the local ratings decline may be entirely due to the Bally situation: “Collectively, the 16 teams on Bally Sports are down 19% vs. 2019. Teams not on Bally Sports are up.”

FWIW, not sure if this was mentioned elsewhere, but all Twins Monday through Thursday evening home games in 2022 will start at 6:40 PM. While not a direct attack on the pace of play issue yet, this is still a positive development.

Up here in MN, the Loons MLS team has 34 games this season, and 19 of those are simulcast on free TV -- CW 23. CW 23 is kind of BSN's overflow network, it seems -- a couple Wolves games got bumped to it, during conflicts with the Twins and Wild. I'd be curious what kind of viewership numbers the free TV games attract -- and I wonder if BSN will want to keep those games if they go the direct streaming route next year.

Football (American fútbol ) has all of their games on free local TV (even the MNF games are simulcast locally) -- but this is sort of intertwined with the fact that they only play 1 game a week, mostly on fall/winter weekends with a single national marquee game on Mondays and now Thursdays. Each game is event viewing. Baseball, every team is playing every day, for 6 months throughout the spring, summer, and early fall. By the end of the era of the Twins on free local TV once a week (2010), nobody seemed to know or care. I actually remember people complaining when those games weren't on FSN and they had to find the channel number for WFTC or KSTC or whatever. The baseball schedule is so intrinsically different, there's really no way to leverage free local TV like the NFL does. I wonder if the better play would be going all-in on an app to align themselves with Netflix, Disney+, etc. Not MLB.TV but something like MLB Network without the highly produced shows -- could be free (and cheap to produce), with live look-ins and highlights and maybe even a few marquee games. I think they might be looking in this direction because MLB.TV this year has a "Big Inning" show on weeknights which is basically that -- highlights and live look-ins.

I don't think there's any "prime time" for live TV in regards to kids in 2021. They just don't watch anything in that format. Notice how there are no weekday afternoon or Saturday morning cartoons on free TV anymore either -- those channels aren't losing that audience, the audience is just not there. For targeting kids, highlights seem to be plentiful on social media, and it appears MLB: The Show is among the better selling video games.

If that. But, that's still more access than the NHL or NBA or most major college leagues. NFL is kind of an outlier since they only play 1 game a week. And it's not that far off past broadcast history either -- I think the Twins free games on local TV were only once a week from 1990-2010 or so, and the last few years they were reduced to Sunday afternoon games. Maybe that would have fit your needs, but most people weren't particularly interested in that either -- they tune in to the baseball team when they can, not the one day of the week that the baseball team makes itself available. It's still an area for development as broadcast models change. Looking north to Canada, their two big sports networks -- Sportsnet and TSN -- both have standalone streaming packages available by the month or by the year, and TSN even has a day pass option. Bally is exploring something similar for its US networks in 2022.

Not true -- see my post above. There is a free national YouTube game every week, a free MLB.TV game virtually every day (although blackouts still apply), plus the occasional FOX game. ABC carried a playoff game last year and is getting Sunday Night Baseball this weekend. Also, the MLB All-Star Game and World Series are still free on FOX. By comparison, in basketball, I think the 2021 NBA All-Star Game was only on TNT (cable), and there's no free games streaming in NBA League Pass, For hockey. Games 1 and 2 of the NHL finals were only on cable too; NHL.TV does a handful of free games only every few weeks.

Great post, thanks for sharing! Note that MLB.TV usually offers at least one free game every day -- no subscription required. Available in the MLB app on every phone, tablet, and TV box, right alongside apps like Netflix, etc. They also do a free game every week on YouTube with no blackouts -- the next one is Twins vs White Sox next Wednesday August 11 -- although it appears that most of these are weekday day games.

JA Happ made his Cardinals debut last night, 5 IP, 2 runs. Left with a 3-2 lead but the Cardinals eventually lost the game.

In terms of performance, Polanco is about even with Torii Hunter through the same age (27). Also with Justin Morneau. Note that Polanco will add to this WAR total through the end of the season: # Name Team G PA BB% K% ISO BABIP AVG OBP SLG wRC+ WAR 1 Justin Morneau MIN 732 3011 9.1% 14.8% .217 .290 .281 .348 .498 117 11.3 2 Jorge Polanco MIN 595 2517 7.6% 16.1% .163 .309 .277 .335 .440 107 10.4 3 Torii Hunter MIN 691 2648 6.0% 18.7% .190 .296 .266 .316 .456 96 11.6 Of course, Torii's Twins teams also had a positive "face" of the pitching staff too, which the current team lacks.

The post to which I was responding also implicated the coaching staff, and Wes Johnson didn't join the staff until the 2019 season. Can't hold Odorizzi's 2018 against him too much! On Pineda, his ERA+ in every season as a Twin has been better than any other season of his career, with the exception of 76 innings in 2014. A cumulative 112 ERA+ as a Twin, and 107 this year at age 32, compared to 101 with each of NYY and SEA. Maybe other metrics narrow that gap but he's certainly not a failure of the coaching staff or front office. Maeda's performance has been up and down -- but again, hardly a failure overall. His 110 cumulative ERA+ as a Twin is still better than his 105 as a Dodger. And depending on the metric, even Maeda's difficult 2021 isn't much different than at least one of his Dodgers seasons as a starter: # Season Name Team ERA- FIP- xFIP- 1 2021 Kenta Maeda MIN 107 101 90 2 2020 Kenta Maeda MIN 60 67 59 3 2019 Kenta Maeda LAD 99 91 94 4 2018 Kenta Maeda LAD 100 82 86 5 2017 Kenta Maeda LAD 105 98 91 6 2016 Kenta Maeda LAD 87 88 90 And he's been great since July 1st, with time left to improve those 2021 season numbers even more. That's not to say the front office and coaching staff have been perfect -- far from it. But there's not much evidence to suggest that they've been particularly deficient in their handling of veteran pitchers, as that other post claimed.

Twins claim reliever Ralph Garza Jr, assign him to St Paul: