The Great Hambino

I don't know if we're disagreeing as much as making two different points. I agree with you in general. Rocco's ship has been too loose for some time and no one wants him back. Just saying that if someone in Outman's position can't be internally motivated, then they really don't need to be here

Jones had just turned 21 when that happened. I'm not saying managers shouldn't hold players accountable. I'm saying players are ultimately responsible for their own actions, and dumping it all on the manager every time absolves players of their personal accountability. A 21 year old doing it should be benched - Cox did the right thing. a 28 year old fringe player doing it should be DFA'd

Sorry wasn't clear, I was trying to add on to what you were saying, not push back against it. I think we can expect players to act like professionals independent of the manager. Not everything has to be blamed on him. There's already enough legitimately put on him.

I mean ... he's 28. If he needs that level of babysitting at this point, he doesn't need to be here

21,837 I guess this is one of those "matching T-shirts in the upper deck" days that doesn't necessarily translate to TV

Shouldn't someone with the drive and determination to get to the majors in the first place not need the external motivation from the manager to try at a baseline level? Understand that they're playing for their next opportunity and that everyone around the league is watching? I know Rocco is some juicy low-hanging fruit, but aren't professional players responsible for their own actions at some point?

Go on...

What do you mean, no repercussions? He got traded to the Twins! Oh, you mean repercussions from the Twins?

The lowest announced attendance in the second half was 18,448 yesterday. I think it will be within 1,000 of that

There's a difference between aggressive an reckless

Well, Clemens certainly was aggressive there ...

We just missed the elusive 3-4-1 putout at first

Does that count as another failed contact play?

Having been down this road before, all I'm going to say is this: I hope you're right!

Yeah, MLB only pressured the A's after three straight years of finishing dead last in payroll. I haven't seen anything that would suggest MLB being proactive in preventing a team from running a low payroll - they'd likely have to actually put out that low of a payroll multiple times before any action took place

I thought they could potentially push his arb eligibility into 2028, but I also don't fully understand the super 2 rules. If they can't then I'm really confused

The short answer is no one. But service time manipulation isn't just about retaining control for an extra year; it can also delay the built-in raises that come with arbitration. I wouldn't put it past the Twins to be trying to push arbitration raises as far into the future as they can, especially if my theory is correct that they're running expenses as low as they can while banking on/hoping for a better structure for them post-CBA

I suppose they have to come up with a reason since they can't explicitly state the actual reason: service time manipulation

But why? What can be developed in AAA that can't be developed in the situation the Twins find themselves in. Can't be cuz the results don't matter. They matter as much in St Paul as they do in Minneapolis right now. Wouldn't it be better to get some immediate feedback on how the changes play in MLB? Instead of guessing/hoping they'll translate to MLB next year? Even if he gets shelled - which, again, who cares if he does, the results don't matter - they can identify which elements might be working better than others, then build off that into next year. And it's not like we're talking about throwing someone with limited experience beyond A ball into the fire. Bradley and Abel have already seen MLB action. Bradley's seen plenty.

I do not understand this idea that the bullpen will be fine next year just because pieces can be found cheaply. You can round out a pen with those types of acquisitions, but you can't build an entire one - including an entire back end of one - from scratch, which is what they are doing. Who is going straight from failed starting prospect or scrap-heap free agent and immediately and reliably filling the role of closer, or even primary setup man? That's what you're counting on happening if you think the Twins can be competitive next year. For those that keep on saying that bullpens can easily be rebuilt on the fly, please provide an example of someone restocking an entire bullpen this way in a year. And no, the bullpen that got traded away at the deadline is not an example of this as it was developed over the course of multiple seasons. And it really didn't turn out to be that good anyway, which is part of the reason why the fire sale took place

Family reunions on my dad's side?

There's a chance that there is someone at Target Field tonight for whom Gasper is failing to OPS their weight. The chances would be higher if the Brewers were in town

I'm pretty sure some season and career figures are getting commingled here 58 PAs with RISP is this year. I've long been searching for a good way to find an easy source for how a player has done driving in runs relative to their opportunities. The best I've found so far in the game log section of BBRef. For any given year, there's an "RBI opportunities" section that shows how many RBI a player has relative to the MLB average given the number of PAs, as well as the number of PAs with a runner on each base, also relative to the MLB average. For our friend Matt Wallner, this year his 27 RBI in 291 PAs is below the league average expectation of 33. However, he's also had definitvely fewer opportunities than the average MLB hitter based on who's been on base for his PAs. PAs with a runner on: First - Second - Third Wallner: 77-48-17 (142 total, 65 RISP) Avg MLB: 87-58-28 (174 total, 86 RISP) In other words, Wallner has had significantly fewer RBI opportunities, and fewer good opportunities, than the average MLB hitter. So if you think Wallner's driving in fewer runs than his OPS would indicate, you're right! If you think Wallner's raw RBI total has been suppressed by relative lack of opportunity, you're also right! Ain't math fun? I wish they took this a step further and presented the number of RBI Wallner would expect to have given the runners he's had on base. Comparing that number to his actual RBI total would really tell us how effective he's been driving in runs. Effectiveness is better measured by a rate or a comparison of actual vs expected than a raw total. It's why we don't give the batting title to the player with the most hits.

I don't like the assumption that we're heading to 4 4-team divisions regardless of how realignment shakes out. That just exacerbates the issue we've experienced with weak champions getting produced by a 3-division setup. I suppose this could be mitigated by re-seeding (it makes no sense that the #1 seed faces one of the top two wild cards while the #2 seed gets either the worst division winner or the worst wild card), but that's getting a little off-topic. It makes for a playoff bracket that's more fair and more reflective of the regular season if they had 2 8-team divisions in each league. Your two division winners get the byes, top 2 wild card teams host the bottom 2. That weak champ from the 4-division setup is now in the wild card mix (or left out entirely) and doesn't get preferential seed treatment by virtue of just happening to be grouped with 3 other weak teams

Here is an article that reports this all starting with Jim Crane playing golf with Joe Mauer, of all people, during the HOF induction weekend in Cooperstown, which was the weekend before the trade deadline and before Falvey had broached Correa on the subject. There's a few interesting tidbits in all of this - How was Mauer a part of this at all? Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but could this mean he's part of one of the limited partner groups? - Not only did Crane go over Falvey's head - he also went over Joe's head directly to Jim. Makes sense considering Joe sure seems like he's in over his head. Feeds into my developing theory that Joe is never actually in charge of the businesses he runs; instead, he's the family human shield they use whenever an asset is floundering (see also: the radio stations he apparently ran into the ground) - Given what has transpired since then, this passage is wild: " But Crane didn’t back off [after the Twins laughed off his initial offer]. He doubled down, framing the deal not as a salary dump, but as a strategic move to make the team more appealing to potential buyers. The Twins, he argued, could better position themselves to sell if they cleared payroll — starting with Correa’s contract." If this is true, the Twins hastily cleared all this payroll for a sale that disappeared in a matter of weeks. Yet another example of there being no plan whatsoever