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Otto von Ballpark

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Everything posted by Otto von Ballpark

  1. Otto von Ballpark
    I believe the full quote at the Twins official website is, "Bartlett... sprained his ankle... sliding home in the 6th inning yesterday... yeah, that's the ticket!"
  2. Otto von Ballpark
    If Bartlett has in fact been injured, this would be similar to the Mastroianni situation at the beginning of last year. The "Bartlett was a mistake, but he deserves a graceful exit" angle makes the Twins look better by comparison.
  3. Otto von Ballpark
    Not trying to pick on Arcia, but when he's the #2 defensive outfielder on your team, at this point of his career, that's a problem.
  4. Otto von Ballpark
    Hermann was the first guy called up after an injury to an outfielder. That's not exactly an odd "contingency" situation, it happens to virtually every team, probably multiple times per season. The Twins OF depth chart is apparently something like this: Hicks Willingham Arcia Kubel Bartlett Colabello Hermann ??? And that's the beginning of the season, with full health, after an offseason of planning, after every team has made their spring cuts and the Twins still have two open 40-man spots. I get that Bartlett is the standout oddity here, but that's one strange "Plan A" OF depth chart all the way through.
  5. Otto von Ballpark
    Ortiz: 25.3% pulled AB Thome: 18.6% Bautista: 24.7% Cabrera: 21.3%
  6. Otto von Ballpark
    No doubt there have been MLB power hitters who can successfully hit the other way, like Ortiz -- but that's not the question. Can a power hitter who *almost exclusively* hits the other way have sustained MLB success? As to the Ortiz example, more than half of Ortiz's career HR have been pulled, according to B-Ref. He's a good hitter who is also good at going the other way. Colabello hasn't pulled anything at MLB level yet (B-Ref says 4-22 with no XBH in his career, including a scant 0-for-2 this year so far -- closest he's come I guess is just left of center, which still counts as "up the middle"). Only 10.7% of his career AB have had pull outcomes (infield, outfield, outs,... everything pulled), and it's not trending up. Even Mauer has pulled 15.1% of his AB in his career, Ichiro is 17.3%... and these are left-handed AVG hitters. Can you imagine a RH power bat with a far lower pull rate than them? Again, love Cola, just setting out what I want to see before I can really believe: pull the ball! (Although if he can keep leading the league in RBIs in the meantime, I will enjoy that too. )
  7. Otto von Ballpark
    I guess I won't go as far as mike, but it is a strange situation. Relative to other spots on the roster, backup corner OF might be the absolute easiest spot to fill with a player who possesses both acceptable hitting and defense (if not average to above average skill at one or the other). All the Twins currently have available to them (on the 40-man) aside from their platoon (perhaps primary?) DH is a 34 year old SS who's been out of baseball for 1.5 years, and a poor hitting AAA catcher who's had spot starts in the corner OF. This is rendered all the more bizarre given their two STARTING corner OF (Willingham and Arcia) are already considered poor defenders, their lone CF on the 40-man is a young player who struggled mightily last season, and they have two wide open spots on the 40 man roster. Add to it their supposed organizational emphasis on defense, and their apparent construction of a flyball staff, and this is weird stuff.
  8. Otto von Ballpark
    Did I miss a discussion of the new trees yet? Seems like they are in a terrible place -- those were solid standing room spots to watch the game. At the very least, they will also largely obscure the view when one is walking through the concourse in that particular spot.
  9. Otto von Ballpark
    I love Cola, he's my favorite guy on the current 25-man roster, but are we witnessing his "Andrew Albers" moment? He's still sending almost everything the opposite way (I think yesterday's double was the first time he went left of CF at all). Has any power guy had sustained success doing that?
  10. Otto von Ballpark
    Out of curiosity, how do folks here prefer to monitor and participate in game threads? I've tried during the season's first week, but it seems cumbersome -- I have to constantly manually refresh the page to look for new posts, if I make a new post I have to scroll back to read other posts I may have missed while typing/submitting (and when we all post after a particular event this happens a lot), sometimes I even have to jump back a page if my post went on a new page, etc. Maybe this is part of the game thread experience (and it certainly is a more casual affair than regular forum threads), but this seems like the kind of thing that real-time chat would be good for? I saw Nick had a separate real-time chat for Friday, but that seemed like a very different thing from the game threads. Not a big deal, and I probably shouldn't get sucked into this anyway (I waste enough time on the regular threads here!), just curious how others were participating.
  11. Otto von Ballpark
    I am using the mobile forums interface. Any chance this server-side caching could be throwing off how threads are marked read/unread and where the "goto=newpost" links go? I noticed this morning that some threads last updated Saturday were marked as unread for me, even though I know I read them through the last post. And other threads, when I clicked on the "goto=newpost" link for them, it took me to posts I had already read last night. I am accessing across multiple devices and browsers (desktop Safari/Firefox, mobile Android/Chrome) -- maybe that is the source of the trouble? At this very moment, my "read" threads on my phone and desktop do not match. I am logged in and have cleared browser cache on both, and am refreshing the main forum thread list pages. Not a huge deal, but I loved how this feature worked before. EDIT TO ADD: Seems to have settled down on my desktop now, although if I log in with my phone at this moment, none of my activity from the past few hours is apparent in the unread threads / new posts. So the delay could be when switching devices? I guess I was using my phone last night, and desktop this morning... UPDATE: Definitely seems tied to devices. On my desktop now, it is showing as new/unread all the things I caught up on earlier using my phone (again, logged in on both).
  12. Otto von Ballpark
    I don't think anyone was claiming he was "brutal" in a stone hands or letting a ball through his legs sense, obviously. He's been close but awkward on three key plays out in LF already today. (Would be fascinating to see his reaction time and route efficiency in the new "fieldFX" system.) Hope he gets better, but that's pretty unacceptable from your only backup OF. And he shouldn't be learning the position at the MLB level either. Let him play everyday in the Rochester OF for a few weeks first, if you really want him to be a super utility guy. And if Willingham wouldn't have been any better... well, maybe the Twins ought to have figured that into their planning for LF/RF/DH while they were simultaneously building a flyball staff. As it is, they have multiple questionable defensive outfielders, and NO legitimate options for defensive replacement.
  13. Otto von Ballpark
    Best part of the Cola hit: he finally pulled it (to left-center, at least).
  14. Otto von Ballpark
    How much did we pay the Cleveland pitcher to take Bartlett out of the game?
  15. Otto von Ballpark
    I hereby support any plan that removes Jason Bartlett from the outfield.
  16. Otto von Ballpark
    Let me add that I'm a cord-cutting radio listener by habit anyway. The occasional TV game is fun, but I don't think I'd really watch it enough to justify an MLB.tv purchase, much less cable/satellite.
  17. Otto von Ballpark
    Does a particular sports channel have a natural right to exist on ALL TV providers? And on basic tier TV service? Has it ever been easier and less expensive for a viewer in Iowa to get every Twins game on TV? I'm sorry, but this is sounding more like a minor inconvenience than any kind of corporate injustice. So to get your business, at $130/year, these entities should risk losing current cable and satellite customers paying $840+ per year? A la carte entertainment is awesome, but it just doesn't make a lot of business sense for sports leagues right now. Iowa is kind of a tricky place. It's far enough away from Minneapolis that it's probably not a sound business decision for cable companies to pony up for FSN, nor does it make sense for FSN to try adding a few viewers at that distance with discount pricing. But it's close enough that what fans are there, they can probably be considered strong fans and are likely to attend a few games and subscribe to a national satellite provider to watch the games, and really shouldn't be offered or relegated to streaming-only options (which are more for league fans, travelers, "snow birds" etc.).
  18. Otto von Ballpark
    Can you drop Mediacom and go satellite? Honestly, it's hard to blame Mediacom in this situation. Iowa's pro sports allegiances are at best divided (and probably somewhat tenuous to any single team), so it may not make financial sense for them to pay for FSN, even as an extra tier of service (particularly if FSN isn't offering Mediacom a very good deal). Satellite companies are much better situated to deal with those fractured niche audiences, and the cost should be comparable to cable, no? MLB and FSN are far more culpable -- if Iowa fandom is so divided and tenuous, it probably shouldn't be on 6 teams blackout lists. But the availability (and cost similarity) of satellite vs cable seems to mitigate most of that, even if it's not the most convenient and cost effective solution (MLB.tv).
  19. Otto von Ballpark
    Yeah, I'm not sure if that was just worded poorly? I haven't see the details of the lawsuits. It's cheap and easy to see MLB out-of-market games. The problem is local blackouts (and cable RSN unavailability) that aren't that "local".
  20. Otto von Ballpark
    Although the knock on Hughes has been inconsistency and high pitch counts, and both of those were on display yesterday. But yeah, I don't expect his HR/FB rate to continue at 33% which should help a lot.
  21. Otto von Ballpark
    Yeah. Even though he's been streaky, and usually streaky bad rather than streaky good, Plouffe still managed to be a near league average hitter in over 500 PA last year. If he's also an average defender at 3B (and B-Ref thought he was last year, FanGraphs not so much), that's a reasonable value player, certainly worthy of a modest salary and lineup spot on a poor team, possibly even a utility spot on a better team.
  22. Otto von Ballpark
    Uh, I think a ton of people would drop their cable subscriptions if they could get the content they want (particularly live content like sports) available a la carte online. I could see more networks offering streaming for cable/satellite subscribers, like the WatchESPN app. But that's just an extra feature for existing subscribers. I don't see any quick resolution to the blackout rules -- live sports is just about the only worthwhile thing cable/satellite offers that can't already be consumed a la carte online.
  23. Otto von Ballpark
    Is it really that unfair? Yeah, it would be better (and more logical) if cable providers could at least offer the "local" RSN for purchase, but that's about the extent of the unfairness. Satellite sports packages (including all of your "local" RSNs) are ~$12 extra per month if you are a satellite subscriber and don't already receive FSN. Just eyeballed Dish Network and the regular price of their standard package plus the sports add-on is $70 per month. Doesn't that compare to cable? If you are worried about losing your bundle discount with cable+internet, there are DSL+satellite bundles just about everywhere now too. This situation isn't ideal for everyone, but it's not a travesty, and it's probably light years ahead of what was available even 10-15 years ago. As to MLB.tv live streaming blackouts, I'd guess at some point they'd almost rather have online viewers than cable/satellite viewers -- better user tracking and targeted ads -- but I guess we're not there yet. It's pretty easy to circumvent online location-based blackouts anyway, so it's probably a moot point for many.
  24. Otto von Ballpark
    You all thought Colabello only hitting to right was a flaw. Turns out, he's been training for Avisail Garcia!
  25. Otto von Ballpark
    At what point would it have been worth it to trade for De Aza, just so we didn't have to face him?
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