Otto von Ballpark

Of course, his Twins minor league K rate is still 4.9, nowhere near the 7-9 range he posted in the Phillies upper minors (and Phillies MLB). Not sure if they are trying to change him or if he's just lost a lot of stuff. I think he just needs 10-20 more days in AAA to delay his first arbitration eligibility until after 2014 -- safe to say that will probably happen. And it's probably good so we can figure out what we really have in him, before committing any serious cash, although I feel bad for Worley as his first "big" payday is delayed.

No team is ever going to announce a firm playing time limit, ever. Even with Strasburg, the Nationals were very cagey. In injury situations, teams don't want to appear arbitrary, even when there isn't really a better way to do it. In their more candid moments, they will refer to precedent and other players usage, but they aren't going to put a hard number out there for anyone -- even when it's blindingly obvious that a hard number is pretty much the driver behind any shutdown decision (like how Zimmermann and Strasburg were both shut down at the exact same threshold). Players probably wouldn't like it either, although it would be interesting to hear what conversations the teams have with the player about such a limit (if any). If that's the evidence you are looking for, you are never going to find it.

I think you may want to check the record again: Parmelee never OPSed higher than .800 in any full minor league season. He would have been very fortunate to become an .800 MLB OPS guy based on his record prior to September 2011. Just to clarify: I don't advocate sending Parmelee down, in fact I'd start him over Doumit. I'm just not worked up about his playing time so far, given his MLB performances to date. Hopefully this past weekend was a sign of things clicking for him, like Plouffe last year -- still wishful thinking rather than a trend, though.

Not directed at me, but I will answer: the 2012 Twins had absolutely NO ONE to play third base for next 2-3 years. (And we were looking at similar dearths in the middle infield, where Plouffe could have presumably still been an option.) When your other options at a position are 2012 Danny Valencia and a 38-year-old Jamey Carroll, yeah, plug in whoever you want and hope for something better. The 2013 Twins do not appear to have a similar lack of corner OF/1B/DH options, particularly if you don't think Willingham and Doumit's careers are cooked (in fact, depending on how you view his 3B defense, Plouffe might be one of those options, in addition to usual suspects). I have nothing against Parmelee. Personally, I'd put Doumit into more of a traditional backup catcher role right now and let Parmelee play everyday. But Chris hasn't shown much to earn that yet, so I'm not too worked up about him continuing to see bench time.

Of course Parmelee's performance Saturday counts. But his recent good hitting is nowhere near a trend yet -- it's almost literally one game. And your 55 day sample is more of the same -- before Saturday, he was OPSing ~.670 over his previous 55 days. Did that trend do a complete reversal in one day? Now, if he is indeed a true .770 OPS hitter, that's great. Just don't try to prove that to me when he posts a .770 over a small sample that conveniently concludes with a 2 HR game. Right now, he looks more like a .700 OPS hitter (.687 MLB OPS over 2012-2013), who can occasionally post a .750 over a month or so. He's got some work to do to convince me otherwise -- not necessarily a repeat of September 2011, but an .800+ OPS stretch would be nice. You sure about that? Both are signed at reasonable prices for 2014, and as much as the Twins are rebuilding, I'm pretty sure they don't want to punt 2014. And why do the Twins have to find out about Parmelee right now? According to Baseball-Reference, he won't even be arbitration-eligible until after 2015. In fact, given their salaries and contracts, it might be more prudent for the Twins to use 2013 to determine if Willingham and Doumit are cooked or too injury-prone. Same with Morneau, if there's a chance we could re-sign him at a reasonable rate for 2014. (Willingham and Doumit could likewise be signed cheaply past 2014 if they rebound from their sluggish starts this year.)

Could Gibson travel with the team but not be added to the roster? Would he just not dress in uniform for the week? Or could he not show up at the ballpark? It looks like the Mets called up Zack Wheeler as their doubleheader "26th man" to start last Tuesday, then sent him back to AAA Las Vegas as a procedural move, but have flown him to Chicago and will activate him to take his next turn to start again Tuesday. Sounds like he did not stay with the team when he was optioned out. Alternatively, they could have sent him directly to Minneapolis to prepare for Saturday -- I'm guessing that wouldn't have run afoul of any roster rules. They could even have flown him to Miami if they wanted to see his bullpen and introduce him around the clubhouse, then to Minneapolis if rules simply prevented him from dressing or observing the game.

Nothing disingenuous about it. He also posted a .750 OPS last September. Problem is, if his PEAK month is a .750 OPS, he's going to be a well below average hitter at 1B or RF. He really needs to AVERAGE a .750 OPS and so far he's nowhere near that. And his June 2013 OPS was .542 before Saturday night's game.

That's basically the last two games, and mostly Saturday's. If you had run this report Saturday afternoon, this is what you would have seen: Last 7 days: .250/.250/.375 (.625) Last 14 days: 200/.238/.300 (.538) Last 28 days: .255/.328/.436 (.764) One or two games does not a trend make!

So we're basing playing time decisions on partial season platoon splits now? Doumit is almost an .800 OPS guy vs RHP career (and was .823 last year), and Willingham is .838 OVERALL for his career with a pretty tiny split (.828 career vs RHP). The fact that Parmelee is barely keeping pace with a slumping Willingham, and not far outpacing our slumping backup catcher, is not a very good endorsement of more playing time for Chris. I'm in favor of playing the young guys too, but Parmelee is nearing the end of his leash -- he hasn't posted a monthly OPS higher than .750 since his Sept. 2011 debut, and a .750 OPS is still below MLB average for 1B and RF. As much as it might help the Twins to figure out if Parmelee can be a cheap cromulent 1B/RF, it's also worth knowing whether Willingham or Doumit are actually cooked or just slumping this year. Both were plus bats last year, and are under contract at reasonable rates for next season. At this point, both are probably more likely to be positive contributors in 2014 than Parmelee.

The tricky thing, at this point, if he really struggles, is it due to the recovery, and does he need to be shut down? Or is it just regular rookie adjustments?

Interesting. Right now, primarily due to birthdays (at draft time, Trout was still 17 while Buxton was 18 and a half), Buxton trails Trout's promotion schedule a little bit. But an August 2013 promotion to AA would basically match Trout's April 2011 AA debut. It would definitely be cool to see if he keeps raking at high-A!

After his super-hot start, his HR power has come back to earth a little bit -- not surprising for a guy his age, Mike Trout's minor league power was largely based on doubles and triples too. He can still hit the ball a long way, though -- hope to see that continue, even if he's not a 30+ HR type hitter yet. I was really skeptical of Buxton around the draft, and even after his rookie league season, because I was afraid he would be more tools than performance. He's really proven me wrong so far. Congrats to him, keep it up!

Late to the party, but what is the manufacturer and model number for this extender? I would have assumed it stayed on the same network/subnet but I guess I haven't used these specific products. I have used a second router set to "repeater bridge" mode, which was ideal for extending a network.

Just stumbled upon this old thread, but the above statement is nowhere near true, right? I mean, on some subjective level, you might "feel" closer to the action at Target Field, particularly since the seats are properly oriented for baseball, but generally, the upper level seats at Target Field are much higher and further from the field than their Dome counterparts (accounting for the fact that the Dome had ~8,000+ more seats than Target Field).

As much as Correia's value might be at an "all-time high", it's still not that high -- teams know about his history as much as we do. He signed a modest two-year deal this past offseason -- I doubt anyone is going to give the Twins much of anything for him now. Could the Twins unload his salary? Perhaps, but I doubt they want to do that. It's not unlike the Willingham situation last year -- a lot of fans wanted him traded while he was hitting well, but he was a few months removed from signing a modest 3/21 deal with the Twins. Again, he could have been traded, but he wasn't going to bring anything back. And the Twins generally don't trade for salary relief (mainly because they don't often pay much salary to begin with!).

I think it's a big reach to definitively say he would get bombed in the majors -- such a result is probably a slim chance, maybe 10%. He also probably won't dominate -- again, another 10% chance. Most likely, he will be a little inconsistent and still working towards his peak potential, but that would be true if he was up a month ago, and it will still be true if he doesn't debut until 2014. And a guy can post decent MLB results within those parameters too. We've already seen Correia, Walters, and Deduno have good results so far this season despite worse pedigrees, some inconsistency, poor rate stats, etc., so I think Gibson could stand a reasonable chance of doing the same.

This is pretty extreme cherry-picking. You identified 3 starts out of 9 that meet your criteria, you discarded Gibson's shutout from those 3, and determined that he fared poorly in the remaining two. And this means what, exactly? Against the best team OPS in the league (Buffalo), Gibson has a total line this season of 11.2 IP, 6 H, 1 R, 2 BB, 11 SO. Is that two start sample more or less informative than your two start sample? I don't think I'd call Gibson "elite" either, but frankly I don't think he is/was an "elite" type prospect so I don't think that's the right bar to use. I think he's always projected as a #2-3 type, more like Scott Baker. And his AAA rate stats right now are tracking pretty close to Baker's.

No doubt. I actually wasn't referring to last night's game at all -- earlier this week, Gardy used Duensing in the 8th when I thought he could have easily used Perkins. Why is it preferred to use a generic lefty reliever to preserve a lead with 4-5 outs to go, but not your ace dominant left reliever until there are only 3 outs to go? Can you imagine if the 2010 Twins pinch-hit with Jim Thome exclusively in the 9th inning, and would instead use Casilla/Tolbert/Punto for all 8th inning pinch-hitting opportunities even if a good situation developed in the 8th? And if a team has two good arms leading the pen (like Perkins and Burton), there is no real reason to designate one exclusively for save opportunities and the ninth inning, especially if one if a lefty and the other is a righty. Currently, the setup guy probably gets overused and the closer gets underused. I know these slight modifications to reliever usage wouldn't add more than a couple wins over a season max, but they do bug me (just like batting a crappy hitter at the top of the lineup instead of the bottom). Especially when the current model is linked so much to the save stat. I wonder what would happen if the rule was changed to require record 4 or more outs to get a save, otherwise you'd only get a "hold"? Would we magically start to see more closers entering in the 8th inning? Would they lose significant effectiveness if forced to occasionally go more than 1 inning?

I think the "warm up quickly" part might be an issue. Wondering how much warmup time really varies among relievers? Plus "high leverage with guys on base" situations can develop pretty quickly, and anywhere from the 6th-7th inning onward. If you want to push the current model even further, if a reliever is pitching well, I'd much rather see him throw two innings instead of one, maybe even three innings instead of two if he's really cruising, even if that means he's usually unavailable the next day and he posts fewer overall appearances. "Ride the hot hand", if you will. I don't really understand always limiting guys to one inning so they can pitch the next day if needed, when you have 6-7 of these pitchers on your active roster. You don't really need 6-7 relief pitchers available every game if you are willing to have any shred of creativity or flexibility (but maybe Gardenhire and Perkins really mean near-100% rigidity when they talk about roles/habits). But I'd be happy if, like I mentioned previously, teams weren't afraid to warm up their relief "aces" like Perkins a little early in close games. To offset any increase in appearances/innings, you could never, ever warm guys up, sit them down, or otherwise deploy them based solely on the save rule. Three run ninth inning lead should not mean automatic Glen Perkins appearance. I absolutely hate when a team stretches a 3-run lead to a 4-run lead in the 8th inning, and the announcer says that the closer is sitting down in the pen. Or the closer is loosening up forever in a tie game just waiting for a lead while a parade of lesser relievers come and go. Or the closer has to come into a blowout just to "get some work in" because a "save situation" never developed over the previous 3-4 games despite them being close.

2011 was pretty inexcusable. The Twins lost several top setup men prior to that season, and actually went out and traded for Jim Hoey and gave him 26 games, signed Dusty Hughes and gave him 15 games, continued using Alex Burnett and his 5+ ERA instead of finally giving him some AAA time, etc. Slama was healthy until July, but only got two games with the Twins before going back down. Certainly one of those early-season audition spots could have gone to Slama, who was already dominating his third season at AAA while the Twins struggled out of contention. 2012 wasn't much better. Although the Twins MLB bullpen was improved, the team wasn't overall, and they still went out and got Jeff Gray for the whole season, Matt Maloney, gave 40 appearances to Tyler Robertson, etc. Slama was healthy until June, and came back looking good in August, but never made even one appearance for the big league club. I don't think he would have been a star, and other teams and scouts frequently passed on acquiring him, but it was pretty lame that the Twins didn't even give him a look beyond 7 innings over two last-place seasons. Who knows, maybe the scouts were wrong and they could have netted some Neshek-style performances for awhile.

BB-Ref doesn't break it down by province, but just scanning the Canadian player list for major Saskatchewan cities, all I noticed was Reggie Cleveland (who was an "all-star" of sorts ). http://www.baseball-reference.com/bio/Canada_born.shtml EDIT: Found another list which says Terry Puhl was born there too, and he was active until 1991: http://www.baseball-almanac.com/players/birthplace.php?loc=Canada

First of all, as candid as Perkins may be, I still would not expect him to publicly disagree with his manager on something like this. That said, I'm guessing that Perkins and most pitchers genuinely believe this right now, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is actually optimal. They are creatures of habit, so they naturally prefer the status quo -- their current habits. Warm up your closer in the 8th inning once a week, and eventually that could become part of their habit too. I admit, that may be easier said than done, but it doesn't have to be really radical or aggressive. The Phillies have some heart-of-the-order lefties due up in the 8th inning of a 1-run game? I'd have no problem warming up Perkins at that point -- either you will bring him in to squash a rally in the 8th and/or to close it out in the 9th as usual. Do we really think Perkins is incapable of shifting his warmup routine by one inning from time to time? Or incapable of starting an appearance mid-inning with possible men on base? I am definitely not suggesting sitting him up or down frequently, rushing his warmups, or warming him up without using him. Those are more than "habits" and should be cardinal rules that should apply to all relievers. I just think it's sub-optimal to default to using your ace reliever/closer the least of all of your relief pitchers.

Not sure about the Fien-Duensing situation, but I'd love to see Perkins in situations like that. 13.3 K/9 right now, but he's got the fewest innings of anybody in the pen. A tight game in the 8th inning with runners on and lefties due up is a perfect fit for a slightly longer save chances, as long as his save chances look to be sporadic in the near future anyway.

Correct me if I am wrong, but aren't they already recording video of the game for the team to use? Maybe it's just two cameras, but that's plenty for a minor league game. Your "producer" just has to switch between the two feeds, I guess. Add in the local radio play-by-play and you've got yourself a broadcast, just have to feed it back to FSN. Do it on a delay and it's even easier, you don't need a live satellite link. Again, I am not suggesting they do this with every game (unless they want to do it for MiLB.tv) but just do it more frequently.

What kind of viewership does FSN normally get when the Twins aren't playing? I could easily see minor league broadcasts (or even replays) drawing better than fishing shows or whatever. Particularly when the Twins have a couple top-ranked prospects they are hyping. I could see Minnesota bars and restaurants showing a few of these games instead of the usual Sportscenter loop they do during lunch and in the afternoons. Replays, if they wanted to go that route, would work even better than MLB replays because far fewer people would already know the outcome of the game. And I imagine that showing a minor league game when the Twins have an evening off (or a rainout) would attract a bunch of Twins fans tuning in at the normal time for the MLB game, might even keep a few and build an audience for the minors. How many Twins fans are going to stumble upon this replay tonight? How many could have stumbled upon a game last Friday night? And it doesn't have to be an expensive affair. They don't normally need the studio hosts etc., just show the game, which is already being recorded anyway, right? Maybe get TK or whoever on a conference call to add some audio commentary. They'd have to get broadcast rights with the minor league affiliates if they don't already have such an agreement, but I'm sure the minor league clubs would love it since they're all located outside the FSN range anyway. For that matter, the Twins should really expand their MiLB.tv presence. Just eyeballing it, but it looks like the Twins are one of only 4 MLB clubs to not have an affiliate below AAA participating in MiLB.tv. With the state of the organization, that should probably be improved.