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cmathewson

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Everything posted by cmathewson

  1. cmathewson
    4-1 with Grienke as the obvious favorite. I'll take your bet with a honey bee, if you're interested, and willing to stick around here to the end of the contract. I am obviously very high on Meyer and short on Grienke (because of the injury risk).
  2. cmathewson
    About once a century :-). I should have added an ellipse at the end to indicate that not all those guys will work out, but enough will that we should be competitive when they are ready. And we will need to fill holes with FAs and acquisitions.
  3. cmathewson
    There might be a chance of acquiring him down the road. Zito and Santana have been available for free (with salary help) for the last two years. The odds of him having an arm injury increase every year, to the point where there is a good chance he will be out for more than a year of the deal, when you would have had a chance to win if you only had the cash for that one last piece of the puzzle. Personally, I'll take my chances with Meyer. He's likely to win more games than Grienke over the life of that contract.
  4. cmathewson
    Arcia was in Fort Myers at this time last year. So anything's possible. But I do think mastering the pivot at a major league level will take more than a year.
  5. cmathewson
    Progress in the minors. When Buxton, Arcia, Sano, Rosario, Hicks, Polanco, Harrison, and Kepler are regulars, it won't be hard to get free agents to come here. Until then, we'll have to deal with retreads and trades like we made with Span for Meyer. If Willingham and Morneau can produce this year, we'll have more chips with which to trade.
  6. cmathewson
    I would be very reluctant to give a pitcher like him a long-term deal like that. All you have to do is look at some of those deals to know they are very high risk (Zito, Hampton, Santana).
  7. cmathewson
    The most interesting discussion is about free agent pitchers. If you believe him, they had offers on a lot of pitchers who didn't come here for reasons other than money (geography, league, winning, etc.). They also refused to offer some pitchers deals because of health issues. They were "in on" Blanton until the very end.
  8. cmathewson
    That makes sense to me. The key differentiator is defense. I am just going off of anecdotal evidence here. But Borbon is the better defender. Boggs can play center. But if you had both players in the same lineup, you'd have Borbon in center and Boggs in right.
  9. cmathewson
    McCarthy: 0-2 7.47 ERA 2.03 WHIP
  10. cmathewson
    He's 39 years old. He's already a major outlier on the age/performance bell curve. Having an option on his 40th year seems prudent to me.
  11. cmathewson
    I agree, but it's anyone's guess when he'll get his control back. His arm strength is almost all the way back--maybe a couple of mph off his peak. But he is missing his spots by three inches or more consistently. He might not get the good control back this year. He still might be good enough to get something in return in a trade. Either way, I don't see him in the rotation in the second half.
  12. cmathewson
    Ryan claimed a lot of guys in the last 18 months, many of whom are on the big league roster: Burton, Fien, Florimon, Roenicke, Mastroianni, Ramirez, Wood, Deduno, Boggs, etc. Perhaps he reached a state of saturation with replacement players, given the development of prospects. For this reason, I don't think waiver claims over a relatively short period is a good indicator of GM success. I'd like to see the list of the most active GMs in the last 18 months. That might more accurately reflect his waiver activity. One other thing: In an ideal world, you wouldn't need to make any waiver claims for replacement players because you would have developed or otherwise acquired enough quality players to contend. Obviously, the Twins are not even close to that level. But I wouldn't laud Cashman for leading the league in waiver claims. It says more about the poor job he's done with almost unlimited resources than anything. My question is: Is Bourbon better than Boggs? If so, grab him. If not, give Boggs the next shot.
  13. cmathewson
    As others have said, I would agree with this approach in most cases. But he was pressing so bad, it was clear the pressure was messing with his head. At least to have the option to do extra work in the cage with Bruno and take the night off from the pressure cooker would have been nice. The Mastro injury made that impossible.
  14. cmathewson
    I think he's kind of a player-coach at this stage, helping the other middle infielders learn the tricks of the trade when he's not playing. That said, he's also good depth in case of a complete implosion by one of the inexperienced guys. Considering their track records, I'd like to hang onto him for depth in addition to his mentoring role.
  15. cmathewson
    I guess the Rangers will find out.
  16. cmathewson
    Oh no! The Twins called up Arcia and then had a rain-out followed by an off day. They just wasted two days of service time! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!
  17. cmathewson
    ____ and ____ and pray for snow. Fill in the blanks.
  18. cmathewson
    I love this kid. Our future closer, imho.
  19. cmathewson
    Yeah, I thought that the minute I posted it. It's my main problem with Pitch F/X, which represents the strike zone in two dimensions. That's particularly problematic for breaking balls, which can catch the front corners of the plate and be caught behind the batters' box. I like the Fox Trax views where they show the strike zone in three dimensions. I don't think it would be that hard to implement a review system using something like Fox Trax. I agree a booth challenge system would be better than the managers challenging. Something needs to happen. They just get way too many calls wrong.
  20. cmathewson
    For what it's worth (and I realize my opinions are not worth much around here) I think rigid pitch counts are ridiculous. Some guys can throw 120 pitches without much harm. Other guys need to stay between 100 and 110 to reduce risk of injury. But I think the Twins' reliance on pitch to contact is so intertwined with pitch counts, it's almost impossible to separate them. I get that they want to protect their most precious commodity. But there comes a point when it is counter-productive to winning.
  21. cmathewson
    Oh, I thought the thread was started when he went on waivers, which was more than 72 hours ago. Maybe I confused a rumor with a report.
  22. cmathewson
    There will come a time when a mechanical balls-and-strikes umpire will be clearly more effective than a human. I remember when Wimbeldon went to our system (I work for IBM) for line judge calls. It took that error out of the game. Now, that's in one dimension and the strike zone is in two dimensions, so it's more complex. But just looking at Fox Trax gives me confidence that a machine would be better than many umpires right now. Given Moore's Law, it's a matter of a couple of years before the machines are better than all human umpires. At the very least, they should consider a system like the NFL has: Managers get a few calls a game to challenge. If the system shows that the ump made an obvious bad call, it will be reversed. If not, the manager is charged with something--a ball to the next batter or something. That call in the Rangers/Rays game would never happen with such a system.
  23. cmathewson
    Meaning, he has passed through waivers by now and will be reassigned to Oklahoma City.
  24. cmathewson
    I think Hernandez just had a cramp and was fine the next day. They waited until the next day to announce the Hendriks demotion, just in case Hernandez needed to go on the DL. And he didn't. Towards the end of spring training and after the Dominican win in the WBC, Ryan said on the air that Deduno was "on track to be in the rotation" before the injury. He'll need some rehab starts, but I don't think his status has changed since then. I would think when he's ready, he'll replace Hernandez, but I don't know how they'll make room on the 40-man for him. The Twins have a lot of injured pitchers to make room for: Wood pitched his first rehab game in Fort Myers and is scheduled to pitch another before going to Rochester to complete his rehab. Devries is playing long toss and should go out on a rehab soon Harden is pitching in extended spring Ditto for Perez And then there are Gibson and Deduno. It's a good problem to have. But I don't know how they'll make room for all these guys.
  25. cmathewson
    Did you hear DickNBert last night talking about Hicks? At one point, Hicks had walked in three out of of four plate appearances. I took that as a positive sign that he might be seeing the ball better. They were acting like it is a huge stretch to think of a kid taking walks as a positive. Said Dick: "Of course, he wants a game in which he gets three hits in four at bats. But at this point, we'll take anything that isn't an out." I just thought it odd that they seemed to be completely dismissive of the offensive value of walks. But on the other hand, Bert is the first one to practically scream bloody murder when the pitcher walks someone. It's a disconnect.
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