singlesoverwalks

That's a 19th century poetry reference, you philistines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Byron

For the record - and I can't take credit for this - his nickname should be Lord Byron.

Let's say you have a couple of players you really value long-term (Rooker and Kiriloff) and a couple of players who seem like decent wildcards (Astudillo and Garlick). The long-term guys look a little less ready than the wildcard guys. And you need ready players in the lineup every day, because you're a contending team. That means if you call up the long-term guys, and they fail, you can't bench them, so you have to send them down, which means you've burned one of their options. And their options are much more valuable than the options on the wildcard guys that you will burn when you probably, eventually, move on from the wildcard guys. Guard the valuable options, gamble with the less valuable options. Good roster management.

I still love Willians Astudillo, but I just want to point out that he has an 826 career OPS in spring training, and 747 career OPS in the regular season at the MLB level. His spring chicken promise is yet to be fulfilled. That being said, I'm glad he made the team.

His arm looks better than Greg Gagne's, and that's saying a lot. If his range is still there post-injury, it's definitely better than Gagne's. That would make him the best Twins shortstop in my memory.

"Rediscovering that visceral disgust in my heart, it’s like riding a bike made of spite and angry thoughts.” ^This is the best sentence I've read in five years, comma splice and all.

Dan Gladden. He might not be a Sabermetric favorite, but when they made that trade it gave them a feeling of legitimacy.

Answering my own question, and quoting myself, yes. Here's the ranking of the top five 1987 Twins by latest retirement year: 1. Gaetti, 2000, at 41, with the Red Sox. 2. Mark Portugal, 1999, at 36, also as a Red Sock. 3. Greg Gagne, 1997, at 35, as a Dodger. 4. Frank Viola, 1996, at 36, as a Blue Jay. 5. Joe Klink, 1996, at 34, as a Mariner. No, I never heard of him either.

At the risk of this devolving into a list of players I loved who got traded, it was really weird when Gary Gaetti was a Cardinal. P.S. Gary Gaetti was one heck of a baseball player. Was he, in the end, the last member of the 1987 team to retire? I know this is an answerable question on the Internet. I just want to muse on it for a second before I go look it up.

Cabela's manager goatee

I'll say it. Laurels. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/rest-on-your-laurels

Just because Thorpe, Dobnak, and Smeltzer looked kind of good in a small sample in 2019 doesn't mean you should really count on them to fill two spaces for 2020. Rookie starters flame out all the time after scouts and hitters get familiar with them. I would be much more comfortable if Thorpe, Dobnak, and Smeltzer were backup options. The Twins are going for it, trying to compete for a World Series, and they have enough payroll space to add another good bet at starter. They should do that.

Season-opening pitching staffs 2019 -> 2020 Berrios -> Berrios Odorizzi -> Odorizzi Gibson -> Bailey, Homer Perez -> TBD (Rich Hill's arm hopefully good for more than 58.2 innings this year?) Pineda -> TBD (Pineda back in June?) Looks shakey to me. I'm not super optimistic about the existing options for TBD. Pitchers get off to a good start all the time before the league figures them out.

Leading the division in July is not automatic. Compare the April-May 2019 team to the April-May 2020 team. The 2020 starting staff will (likely) be _worse_. The lineup will add Donaldson and Arraez but subtract Schoop and Cron, who were pretty good for that time period. There's a chance the lineup could be better, or they could be worse. Donaldson has plenty of recent history of injury. Arraez could have a sophomore slump. Add in baseball stuff (i.e.,randomness) and the improved White Sox and, yeah, it would be hubris / jinx territory to type in a blog comment that we're assured of first place by July. You don't want to be responsible for this team's epic collapse, DO YOU?

I really respect the scuff level on Berrios's shoes in the picture. Hopefully that doesn't change after he hits arbitration.

Looking at the 2019 Fangraphs "Inside Edge" fielding stats, Thames was actually arguably better than Moreland. Moreland made slightly more of the routine plays (and that would average out to like 2 more over a full season), but Thames made substantially more of the difficult plays. Moreland's reputation for defense is well founded if you go back to 2018, but he slipped last year. Neither is super exciting. But if I had a choice between those two at roughly similar costs, I'd choose Thames. He's one year younger and was injured less than Moreland last year. And I'd prefer either of them to any other first baseman still on the market. Here's that data for all the first basemen still on the market: https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=1b&stats=fld&lg=all&qual=0&type=3&season=2019&month=0&season1=2019&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=9393,2530,11850,2502,7185,3086,9205,9957,3312,7619,3711,7539&startdate=&enddate=

Watch video of Rosario from May. Watch, say, that game where they hit 8 home runs against the Angels. He's noticeably faster than he was at the end of the year. He burns down the line for an infield hit, scores from third on a sacrifice fly to shortstop, and does a pretty good job cutting off a double in the corner. He had that ankle injury, and that slowed him down. That's why he looked so awful in the outfield. If you've ever had an ankle injury, you know they don't get better if you run on them. And I have another theory. I think he gets bored. He's a bit of a space cadet, and if the situation isn't dramatic, he spaces out. Once the Twins had the playoffs more or less in hand and were playing that long string of games against mediocre teams, he checked out mentally. But when it came time to play the Yankees in the playoffs, he was really good again. He is such a clutch player. He just is. If you need statistical evidence of that, here's a Fangraphs custom table listing all Twins with over 20 PA sorted by WPA (win probability added). Rosario, despite his relatively pedestrian aggregate numbers (reflected in his paltry WAR), still comes out 6th. That shows that he performs well in high-leverage situations. Name | PA | WAR | WPA Nelson Cruz | 521 | 4.3 | 3.62 Max Kepler | 596 | 4.4 | 3.01 Luis Arraez | 366 | 2.1 | 1.85 Jorge Polanco | 704 | 4 | 1.77 Miguel Sano | 439 | 2.7 | 1.29 Eddie Rosario | 590 | 1.2 | 1.28 Mitch Garver | 359 | 3.9 | 1.27 Marwin Gonzalez | 463 | 1.4 | 1.23 Byron Buxton | 295 | 2.7 | 1.03 LaMonte Wade | 69 | -0.2 | 0.47 Ehire Adrianza | 236 | 0.6 | 0.42 Willians Astudillo | 204 | -0.2 | 0.04 Jake Cave | 228 | 0.9 | -0.12 Ryan LaMarre | 26 | 0.1 | -0.12 Jason Castro | 275 | 1.6 | -0.47 Jonathan Schoop | 464 | 1.3 | -1.1 C.J. Cron | 499 | 0.3 | -1.59 If you want to know how bad WPA can get with a player with lots of plate appearances, check out C. J. Cron and Jonathan Schoop. lol.

I immediately thought of my dad saying "Never make the third out at third base." That was what pissed me off. That being said, a lot of Twins didn't get two hits last night.

(To be clear, just kidding.)

*Chuck Berry is not ragtime. You could have gone with No Particular Place to Go. Downbound Train. Try harder next time.

Claim to fame: https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/on-this-date-20-years-ago-david-ortiz-was-a-player-to-be-named-later-in-a-trade/

This aged well.

The Twins' 9th-best home run hitter (Marwin Gonzalez) has as many home runs (14) as the Tigers' best home run hitter (Brandon Dixon). They could field a lineup in which every player save one had more homers than anyone on the Tigers.

If he were a Tiger, Buxton's 8 home runs would lead the team.