Otto von Ballpark

First of all, your "Bobby Tewksbary" link is broken. Secondly, Bob Tewksbury, hitting instructor? Love that people are breaking down his possible flight info here. Thanks for the news, Seth. And congrats to Colabello!

There were similar questions last year about Strasburg and an innings limit -- a lot of people said, there isn't a 160 IP limit, there's no direct quotes from the Nationals about that, they will play it by ear... and then they shut him down at 160. I think teams and GMs just don't like to disclose this info, for whatever reason, so you're not going to find that form of evidence. But that doesn't mean that hard innings limits aren't there. It will be interesting to see where Gibson ends up. 160 like Strasburg seems realistic. I think a lot has changed even in the few years since Liriano's surgery -- I doubt they let Gibson keep going beyond 160 this year, regardless of how he feels.

Well, a move will need to be made on the 25-man roster too. I guess Thielbar could go back down.

I'm going to say that both of those scenarios (Sano in MLB on Opening Day 2014, Buxton 2015) are extremely unlikely. Really, only Mauer was on a track that fast in recent Twins history, and he was very polished in all aspects of his game. Remember, Sano is still K'ing in 25% of his PAs, Buxton almost 20%. That, plus Sano's defense... I just don't see the Twins promoting these guys that aggressively. I think neither one will appear in MLB before their age-22 season (2015 for Sano, 2016 for Buxton). That would put them more on the Morneau/Kubel/Cuddyer path.

I don't think TR was mocking any skepticism of Hicks; he was just saying service time wasn't going to be an issue with how they handled him. So Hicks won the job a bit more by default than by performance -- I'm not sure I see the big deal here. Maybe TR was aware that Hicks isn't a future star and thus he's not going to save anything by playing service time games with him, and potentially taking some lumps at the MLB isn't going to hinder his non-existent star potential?

Interesting study. I think the "just 10 regular position players in 15 drafts" stat is a little misleading, though. For one, it's not realistic to expect the last few years of draftees to be starting yet, so it's really more like a 10 year sample, or about 1 per year. And starting your study in 1998 eliminates a lot of regular position players from previous drafts: 1997 had Cuddyer/LeCroy, 1996 Jones/Allen, 1995 Mientkiewicz, 1994 Walker/AJ/Koskie, 1993 Hunter, etc. It would be interesting to compare drafts and if/how they influenced later MLB success for the team. Have the Twins become less reliant on the draft? How much do the Twins poor draft years correspond with big club struggles later?

I don't know if that's the only Twins one. It's Cuddyer's only one, I just scanned his HR logs. You might have to be a Play Index subscriber to do any more advanced searches (like HR log for all players at Target Field).

Interesting idea. Don't know if I've seen that before, a demotion without any pretense of performance tied to it. Don't think it would fly -- best case, you get a grievance and piss the player off. Worst case, you get all that plus he's awarded full service time anyway as a result of the grievance. I seem to recall that the Cubs demoted Steve Trachsel in 1994 just before the strike: Trachsel Sent To Minors - Chicago Tribune Not sure exactly what happened, but as best as I can tell, he got full service time credit that year.

But by the same token, those couple weeks aren't going to make much of a difference in the future either. If these guys are any good at all, they're almost certain to sign multi-year deals covering those seasons anyway. When was the last time the Twins went year-to-year with a guy like this? (And a player's salary in his last year of arbitration isn't likely to be much different than his annual salary in free agency. Heck, going year-to-year in search of savings through arbitration might cost you MORE if the player has a fluke performance spike.) Moreover, any potential contract lengthening or cost savings correlate with player quality. Judging by what we have seen thus far, Hicks might be fortunate to still be a MLB regular by the time he hits free agency -- his service time should be the least of our concerns right now. Arcia has obviously looked a lot better (on one side of the ball), and Gibson has promise, but I think people are forgetting that neither one of those guys ever projected to be a superstar. I think Kubel and Radke are better comps, and those guys just don't offer a lot of service time savings opportunities.

Y'all realize Harper is only 7 months old than Sano? Again, not a knock on Sano, but damn, Harper is good.

"Sheer upside" in the sense they're the youngest tandem in this list, thus have the most time to morph into Barry Bonds if the fates allow, I suppose. Otherwise, realistically, their potential is MLB All-Star which has been very nearly attained already by Miller, Machado, and Goldschmidt. Goldschmidt was a college draftee, but wouldn't we be thrilled if Sano had his career to date (currently leading the league in OPS) by age 25? Or if in 18 months, Buxton was posting a 135 OPS+ in the majors with great defense like Machado is at that age? I think it's better just to say they are the best prospect tandem, now that these other guys have graduated to the majors. That's not a knock on them, I just think it gets very messy to compare minor leaguers, especially low minors guys, to guys who are already performing in the bigs -- it's kind of a silly exercise, really.

According to BB-Ref, Cuddy did it on April 21, 2010: April 21, 2010 Cleveland Indians at Minnesota Twins Play by Play and Box Score - Baseball-Reference.com

I was thinking Randy Ruiz -- who actually did have a nice little run one season for the Blue Jays.

They were going to get into the game regardless. Correia was under no circumstances pitching beyond the 8th inning.

Not sure about the conventional wisdom, but I like to stretch out and challenge good starters when they are cruising, and just about any pitcher if they are doing well and you've got a comfortable lead. However, when your bullpen is generally better than your starters (the Twins case the past few years), it's better to remove a guy too early than too late in a close game. I didn't see the game last night, but based on 1) pitch count, 2) times through the order, 3) the Twins offense scuffling that night, and 4) Correia's history, he wasn't pitching past the 8th inning under any circumstances. So given that the 8th is his last inning of the night, there's really no downside to having someone ready right away and keeping him on a very short leash. The bullpen might need to face an extra batter or two, but the game is on line at that point. I don't think anyone, anywhere is ever going to second-guess removing a guy like Correia in the 8th inning of a close game. I know Gardy was trying to save the bullpen a bit, but this just isn't the starting staff you do that with in close games. Every time he's tried it this season, it seems like the starters have gotten into trouble and the bullpen has had to come in anyway. After the leadoff double, there's no chance for a GIDP and Correia is unlikely to record a strikeout, so leaving him in almost guarantees the White Sox will either advance the go-ahead runner to third with less than two out or just score the go-ahead run right there, both situations you want to avoid. Furthermore, if you are concerned about bullpen workload and when to pull your starter, you've got to be looking at your upcoming schedule too. The Twins have an off-day Thursday, and no travel since they are back at home Friday. No sense trying to force bullpen rest in a close game when you don't really need it. (And not to get too far off-topic, but the Twins bullpen is probably not overworked this year, at least not in terms of innings. Burton is ahead of his 2012 pace, but Roenicke and Fien are not, and Perkins has been severely under-utilized. If the bullpen has any usage issues right now, it might be appearances rather than innings, which is compounded by letting starters getting into jams and mixing-and-matching relievers to get out of it... but I digress.)

Perkins has kinda been criminally underused this season. I wouldn't mind seeing him in the 8th of a tie game if you really need to protect the rest of the pen.

I would have signed Carlos Villanueva for his mustache alone: GIF: Mustache Watch: Report: Carlos Villanueva Has Mustache | NotGraphs Baseball

I just realized that Joe Mauer has never won a playoff game. Not a knock on him, but boy have we had a bad run in the postseason lately...

Wayne spent most of 1991 in AAA. Interesting we only had 9 pitchers on the World Series roster. And one of them (David West) barely pitched in that series. Would be interesting to see how they construct a World Series roster today... hopefully we find out sooner rather than later...

Twins are 11th out of 15 in the AL for runs per game. 2nd to last in the AL in HR (and 3 to last in MLB), last in extra base hit percentage. On the pitching side of the ledger, we are 2nd to last in the AL in quality start percentage, 2nd to last in IP per start, and 2nd to last in strikeout percentage. Outside of Correia, the starting staff has been VERY poor overall. We're also 3rd in lowest HR allowed percentage, so maybe there has been some HR suppression at Twins games this year?

I still think the Santana trade was pretty awful. There's no reason we had to trade him -- we came up 1 win short of the playoffs in 2008, and we could have used the compensation draft picks in 2009 to help restock the system. On top of this, Johan's no-trade clause severely restricted our potential trade partners, and the Twins seemed to artificially limit his trade value too by targeting "prospects" at just two positions (CF and SP). Furthermore, the Twins normally shrewd trade acumen all but disappeared that offseason. It really felt like Bill Smith was making moves based more on position and reputation than any type of real scouting or analysis. Losing a power hitting CF (Hunter)? Trade for a power hitting outfielder (Young) and a CF (Gomez). Trading starting pitchers (Santana & Garza)? Acquire starting pitchers (Humber & Mulvey). Trading your shortstop (Bartlett)? Acquire a shortstop (Harris). All of it was a disaster. Ramos-for-Capps and the two Hardy trades fit this bill too. Smith's only excuse that I can see is that maybe he relied too much on Gardy for input on these deals. I really wonder what would have happened if TR had stayed on after 2007 -- I don't think the Santana trade happens, for example. It would be an interesting exercise.

Actually Gomez was 22 when he came to the Twins. He was 21 for his debut with the Mets.

Yes. Pretty sure Brock is familiar with it, but basically you run the linker tool on your pages/posts: Automatic Player Linker - Baseball-Reference.com Then submit your content RSS feed to BB-Ref and they will periodically scan it looking for those links, and link back to you on relevant player pages: Submit your Content to Player Newsfeeds - Baseball-Reference.com

Actually, with some starters struggling and the rest of the bullpen being used conservatively, the long reliever role is pretty important right now for the Twins, and if Swarzak is doing well in it, don't mess with that. Maybe he could turn in an early Matt Guerrier type season.