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Otto von Ballpark

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Everything posted by Otto von Ballpark

  1. Otto von Ballpark
    Worrying doesn't mean giving up on the guy or anything crazy. It's just plain old worrying, which I think is appropriate in this case given the data. (And it's not just performance worry, it could also be a health worry.) If Buxton was performing like Ben Revere two years after being drafted, I think it would have been fair to worry about him too.
  2. Otto von Ballpark
    Where would he go if the 2013 draft was re-held today? Looks like he already dropped out of Baseball America's and John Sickel's top 100 lists this past offseason. He gained position on the MLB.com and Baseball Prospectus lists, but I suspect that could be fading with his early season results.
  3. Otto von Ballpark
    I have no such immediate expectations. I just want the Twins to eventually sustain a plus offense this year and beyond. Working Buxton and Sano into the lineup now gives us a better/faster chance of achieving that goal than, say, running out Shane Robinson and Vargas/Nunez for a couple more weeks.
  4. Otto von Ballpark
    The linked article says: Twins officials are expecting anywhere from 31,000 to 35,000 in ticket sales for the highly touted prospect’s local introduction. St. Louis's average road attendance is in that range. Heck, even the 2014 Twins averaged over 30,000 for June-July-August last year. The "Buxton bump" is probably only a couple thousand, max. And that's for the debut, with diminishing returns afterward unless the team and/or player does well. You really think that's a factor at all in Terry Ryan and Paul Molitor's decision making? I don't doubt the team will market the new guys to the hilt and welcome whatever boost in tickets, ratings, and merchandise sales they can get, but it is highly doubtful that it is affecting the player's promotion schedule (it certainly would not delay Sano's promotion for multiple weeks while we are still contending).
  5. Otto von Ballpark
    Torii's OPS+ and wRC+ marks so far this year are his lowest since 2004. Both figures are also presently below AL average for RFers or DHs. There's still plenty of time for that to change, but if these trends hold, next year he will probably be below average with the bat (and that's assuming that age 40 doesn't accelerate the decline). I really don't want to lock that into RF or DH yet. If we still want to re-up Torii in the offseason, due to failures of other OF/DH options and/or a strong finish by Torii, I doubt we will be outbid.
  6. Otto von Ballpark
    June 22-24 they play the White Sox. June 26-July 1 are the only games in NL parks left on our schedule. I wouldn't call Sano up immediately prior to those 6 games, but if they call him up a little earlier, 6 games isn't too much to work around. Sit Plouffe once and Mauer twice and Sano can still start half of them. 2 of the games are day games after night games, or day games before travel, perfect excuses to adjust the lineup anyway. And I doubt the Twins are thinking ticket sales. I mean, they will try to sell tickets upon his promotion, but I highly doubt ticket sales are given any consideration about his promotion. They are not run by Calvin Griffith anymore.
  7. Otto von Ballpark
    The Hicks injury obviously affected the day they called up Buxton, but I doubt it affected the month or possibly even the week. He wouldn't be here now if the team wasn't planning on him coming up very soon regardless of Hicks. At this point, 15 games aren't likely to make or break a season, no matter who your DH is. But your DH over the next 3.5 months could/should have an impact. We've got time to try addressing the latter (3.5 month DH plan), without quibbling around the margins of the former (15 game DH plan).
  8. Otto von Ballpark
    Of course, nobody here is claiming any kind of "magical boost" in the first 15 games.
  9. Otto von Ballpark
    Promoting a top 15 prospect (top 10 before 2014) with over 500 career PA in AA, when he's a slugger on a month-plus hot streak and your DH production has been bottom-quartile and trending down, is not "calling people up willy nilly." Do you think we only called up Buxton out of injury desperation?
  10. Otto von Ballpark
    I don't know if it's really "trashing" Walker to say that he should probably work on improving his strikeout numbers at the level he is at, before moving up any further (to one step away from MLB, no less). Personally, though, I'd say that he's had plenty of time to do that already, and he hasn't, but he's also continued succeeding as a power hitter and run producer. So maybe he needs to be challenged to the point of failure first? Not an ideal development path, but in the real world, it's probably a practical one sometimes. That would be my argument for a midseason AAA promotion, and assuming his success quickly translates to that level, maybe even a September call-up to MLB. (I'd plan to protect him on the 40-man roster this winter, at least until he fails to produce somewhere.)
  11. Otto von Ballpark
    In 11 MLB seasons, Mauer has spent a month or more on the DL in 6 of them, including 2014 as a first baseman. Also, Plouffe has had one DL stint in each of his three full MLB seasons thus far. Sitting Mauer and shifting Plouffe an extra game or two a week would not only help give Sano everyday opportunities to adjust to MLB, it would also better prepare us for a Mauer or Plouffe (or Vargas) injury (which right now would involve scrambling and giving a lot at-bats to scrubs like Nunez, etc.). And it improves our chances in 2015, our preparation for 2016, etc., much more than the marginal improvement from continuing to give Joe the extra 8 PA a week to break out of his funk that we've been giving him the past year-plus.
  12. Otto von Ballpark
    Nobody assumes that. But what many including myself realize is that if there is any chance of the Twins being close to a playoff spot late this season, it's probably going to take an infusion of new plus performers. Even assuming an initial adjustment period, Buxton and Sano are much more likely to deliver that level of performance at some point than Nunez, Vargas, or Hicks. If it was Sep. 16 rather than June 16, your point would be much more valid, but the next 15 days don't have to make or break our season.
  13. Otto von Ballpark
    "A home that some Cardinals officials had lived in" suggests the "hackers" don't occupy high-level positions in the Cards FO (although perhaps their actions were directed by someone higher up). Maybe some junior staffers that could have had a beef with Luhnow, either dating from the Cardinals days or why they weren't offered jobs with the Astros? Should be interesting.
  14. Otto von Ballpark
    Not sure if they "stole" passwords, so much as used password lists that Luhnow and other Astros executives had left behind with the Cardinals. And the "hacking" was probably just using those passwords on Astros servers and accounts. Not an excuse for the Cardinals at all, but if the "hack" wasn't an advanced technique, that's probably why no advanced techniques were used to mask their trail.
  15. Otto von Ballpark
    Interestingly, Schwarber and Sano are about the same age, although they obviously have taken very different paths. In his brief pro career, Schwarber has struck out less and been a more consistent .300 hitter than Sano, but on the other hand, Sano has had more flirtations with extreme power levels (.325+ ISO). Both obviously draw a lot of walks. If one's ready for a DH look in MLB, I'd say they are both ready. And I wouldn't wait to promote them while I tried to get a guy like Kennys Vargas on track.
  16. Otto von Ballpark
    We always hear about a team "sending a message" by signing/trading for a guy. I think calling up a top-rated prospect, like Buxton, Sano, or back in the day Mauer, maybe even Garza (and hopefully Meyer again and Berrios), etc. can send a similar message. We're playing to win, now. (Lesser prospects, such as Pinto, Polanco, Harrison, etc. -- I agree, they are more likely to be called upon once the team's season goals shift away from immediate contention and back to development.)
  17. Otto von Ballpark
    Schwarber, like Buxton, wasn't even on the 40-man roster. Sano's already on the 40-man roster, and we're already passed the Super-2 date. The time for Vargas' MLB audition this year was April and May, and the Twins already squandered much of that with benchings and a demotion. Now is the time to call up Sano and see where he's at. He can always go back down, perhaps to AAA, if he's not yet up to the task of DH.
  18. Otto von Ballpark
    No prob, Cubs AAA team is indeed in the PCL. But Schwarber is coming up from AA.
  19. Otto von Ballpark
    Posey "only" got 9/167 from SF three years later, but of course that bought out four arbitration years. He was 26 years old at the time, but Mauer only turned 28 in early 2011 too. I think 8/184 was a definite possibility for Joe on the open market that winter, but I don't think he would have done better than that. Which does suggest the Twins didn't get much of a hometown/extension discount signing him to those figures the previous winter. They should have signed him much, much earlier, or made his first contract after 2006 some form of "lifetime" deal.
  20. Otto von Ballpark
    Actually, I kind of like the whole thing (assuming we can still get Dozier on the team). The voting has already been much more interesting than normal, and if the "all Royals" plan succeeds, the game promises to be one of the most memorable all-star games of my lifetime regardless of what happens on the field. I wish it had been my idea and I had successfully delivered these results! Still 2+ weeks to go, too. I think MLB probably likes the attention -- I bet Tigers and Jays fans are feeling super-motivated to vote for Cabrera and Donaldson now, just to name a couple examples.
  21. Otto von Ballpark
    Dick and Bert could not contain their disdain for the current results when they had to plug the All Star Game balloting during last night's game. I thought they were overly harsh, though -- they said that only one Royal deserved it (Perez), but I think if you primarily look at the current season, and incorporate defense, you can make a case for a few more. I think it would be better to focus rage on the couple that least deserve it, like Infante and Rios, rather than the group as a whole.
  22. Otto von Ballpark
    I don't think that it's ever been a DAILY limit. I think it is per email address (so theoretically, per user). And it's 35 now. I just set a calendar reminder to vote the day before the balloting ends, so I can best target who to vote for (and sometimes more importantly, who to vote against ).
  23. Otto von Ballpark
    That's my take too. The one exception might be a Yankees playoff series, around 2009-2010. By that point, I probably would have given up something for a guaranteed win against them, and then taken our chances in the rest of the playoffs. (Or just one game win, and take our chances in the series.) I actually remember, in the 2009 Game 163, promising to give up complaining about various players if they could win the game for the Twins. The parameters were vague, though, so I am not sure if it was very binding or enforceable.
  24. Otto von Ballpark
    If the Cardinals had a beef with Luhnow and the Astros, they should have gone to MLB, not resorted to illegal tactics. And how do you really prevent someone from taking an "idea"? We're not dealing with patents and things here. If he took the actual database or its component data, that's another thing, but if he just took information he was aware of when creating the Astros database, not sure if that's really something that's preventable or even bad, in the context of MLB.
  25. Otto von Ballpark
    Interesting to note that it was the final of a 3-game series. Knoblauch played LF in the first two games too without any major incident. The power of the student section! (And abundant foil hot dog wrappers.) The general admission LF student tickets lasted through at least 2002, if not 2003 too, so they must not have viewed it as too big of an issue. (Once those seats became more profitable as reserved seating, the student tickets were moved to the upper deck.)
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