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The Great Hambino

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Everything posted by The Great Hambino

  1. The Great Hambino
    Hogan Harris My dad still talks about seeing him face Crusher Kowalski at the Armory in 1971
  2. The Great Hambino
    Only came up 350 feet short
  3. The Great Hambino
    No stadium means bidding war for public subsidies development opportunities
  4. The Great Hambino
    This is all divvying up what used to be ESPN's package for the next three years. Fox and TBS have no change until 2028
  5. The Great Hambino
    I'd never want to take away your right to go postal
  6. The Great Hambino
    I don't dislike this
  7. The Great Hambino
    This is disconcerting.
  8. The Great Hambino
    I caught a bit of the Foul Territory podcast that had Dan Hayes talking about the non-sale. Didn't learn much we didn't already know, but Pierzynski did have a fun story about how ol' Carl didn't know any of the players' names. He walked up to him and called him Torii. So ... yeah. The legacy lives on!
  9. The Great Hambino
    I am too, I just don't trust the owners to willingly put a meaningful floor in themselves, which is why I push back against the idea of busting the union to achieve this. It's been a big day for arguing the minutiae within the realm of general agreement around here
  10. The Great Hambino
    You could pool all revenue and divide it completely equally, and that still won't get the budgetball owners to invest in their teams. They'll just pocket even more revenue. Those owners have already shown through their own behavior that increased shared revenue will not automatically find its way to payrolls. The players would have to be fools to trust them to do so in any meaningful capacity That high floor (and yes, accompanying revenue sharing) that the NFL has in place wasn't put there out of the goodness of the owners' hearts. It was the product of tough negotiations; a major concession won by the NFLPA in exchange for the cap.
  11. The Great Hambino
    I guess it depends on how finely you splice those individual factors. More that any one specific player? Yeah, probably More than units like lineup or rotation? I don't think so. I believe a team's talent level is the main driver of a team's success, and a manager's influence is more in the margins. Now when I say marginal, I don't mean to put down or discount that effect. I mean for most teams that aren't either uber talented or the White Sox, the teams hovering near playoff contention, those marginal differences can be the difference in making the playoffs/winning the division/winning it all. Also, managers are cheap relative to players, which means it's an area that a team on a budget can put their dollars to very efficient use. Anyway, this is a lot of arguing about a manager that no one wants to be retained.
  12. The Great Hambino
    You're not getting a floor and cap within $50MM of each other by busting the union. We know this because of the pathetic offer of a $100MM floor with no mechanism for increases that was proposed by MLB in the last round of CBA negotiations The Pirates of the world would fight against that kind of floor almost as aggressively as the players would fight against a cap. Maybe we have different definitions of what "busting" a union means. I read it as complete capitulation by the players
  13. The Great Hambino
    Wasn't trying to single out you specifically. But that statement or similar statements I think are a little more prevalent than you might realize. Just as comments that managers are meaningless are maybe a little more prevalent than I might realize. I think most of us fall on the spectrum somewhere between those two poles. You think managers matter more than I do, but I think (or at least want to think) that we fall in the reasonable section of that spectrum. And it's natural for the extreme opinions we disagree with more strongly to stick out more in our minds.
  14. The Great Hambino
    I didn't say they needed to win 95 games to make the playoffs. My point is twofold: 1. If the claims that Rocco was costing the team 15+ wins a year were true, then the Twins must've been a 95+ win team based on talent. 2. Pushing back against that idea is not equivalent to saying managers are meaningless I'm not disputing that Rocco should be replaced. I don't know if anyone is at this point.
  15. The Great Hambino
    Yeah, there's a bit of a gulf between "people claiming that Rocco is costing the Twins 15+ wins per year are overstating his effect on the team [an actual figure that has been thrown out multiple times by multiple posters]" and "managers are essentially meaningless and anyone can do it". The 2024 Twins weren't close to a 95+ win team on talent I don't know who/where/what are these voices claiming Rocco is doing a good job and should be retained. I think the closest anyone has come to a defense of Rocco lately is "it doesn't matter because he'll be replaced by a clone." I don't really agree with that, but that's hardly a ringing endorsement
  16. The Great Hambino
    For what it's worth: Here are the current NL league-wide standings: 1. MIL 2. PHI 3. LAD 4. CHC 5. SDP Here are the current NL rankings in total bWAR: 1. MIL 2. PHI 3. CHC 4.SDP 5. LAD If you squint hard enough, you can see some correlation
  17. The Great Hambino
    Re: Rocco, I was later than many/most here to hop on the FIRE ROCCO train (for the record, it was when they came out completely flat out of the gates this year). It was my belief that he was good at those things that, like you said, happen behind the scenes and out of the public eye. But this story kinda puts the final nail in the coffin of that theory (if it hadn't been fully sealed already). If you're not able to control the clubhouse culture, and you're not a master tactician, and you're not known for player development ... what exactly is it you do here? Rocco is overdue for his meeting with the Bobs
  18. The Great Hambino
    Culture, chemistry, vibes - whatever term you want to put to that intangible sense of positivity within a team - I would agree is essentially a proxy for winning. Believe it or not, I've never played sports at a professional level, so perhaps there's an extra element or two at play when you're making your living with it and your teammates are also your coworkers. But I did play a whole lot of team sports growing up and into young adulthood, and I experienced the whole spectrum of relative success on those teams. In baseball, I was on a state championship team as well as one that didn't win a league game. My high school football career record was 5-22; in college, it was 31-9. I've been on great teams, horrible teams, and everything in between. My biggest takeaway from all of those experiences was that winning breeds chemistry more than the other way around. Maybe they breed each other to some degree. Chicken or the egg? I dunno. But the core of the team that apparently desperately needed a cultural reset when it got broken up at the deadline was essentially the same one that went on the playoff run that had team vibes flying the highest they'd been in a generation. Seems like the culture turned sour once the winning stopped. Or maybe Donovan Solano was the thing holding everything together.
  19. The Great Hambino
    I'm not saying he has been a success or that he should keep his job (his track record says no but every action ownership has taken says yes), but there has seemed to have been a pivot in recent years toward more athletic, more defensively-minded players. Since drafting Sabato, their first-round position-player picks have been: Noah Miller - defensive wiz, zero power Brooks Lee - great hit tool, not exactly Vince Coleman but profiled as having the hands and arm to be good defensively at 3B Walker Jenkins - true 5-tool player, any FO would've taken him with that pick in that draft regardless of philosophy Kaelen Culpepper and Marek Houston - shortstops with power being their weakest tool In free agency, their biggest position player signings in each of the last 3 years (non-Correa division) were signed with defense in mind: Vasquez, Santana, Bader If this has been a philosophy change, he's implementing it with the speed and urgency of someone turning an ocean freighter. And none of these pieces have really impacted the core yet. But there has been a definite increase in balls put in play (up to 65% of PAs from 56%) and decrease in strikeouts (nearly 2 fewer per game) since The Year Of The Strikeout in 2023. (There's also been a nearly 50 point drop in OPS and they're scoring 0.62 fewer runs per game since then, but that's for a different discussion on another day)
  20. The Great Hambino
    It would be nice if this were true. Unfortunately, the Pittsburgh Pirates exist and show that it isn't. They've been doing what we fear the Pohlads might be in the process of doing for years. They've done this with no repercussions. They have "sell the team" chants. They have faced a union grievance. They've been next-to-last in NL attendance every year since 2018. Doesn't matter. The profits keep coming. If boycotting or chanting "sell the team" or anything like that gives you some form of catharsis, then by all means, do what makes you happy. If you think your entertainment dollars are better spent elsewhere, go for it. You don't owe the Twins anything. But if you think that these things will spur any sort of positive changes we fans would like to see, then I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed.
  21. The Great Hambino
    So that's what they mean by bulk pitchers
  22. The Great Hambino
    I know - my best bet is to raise them as Lions fans. Or maybe one Lions, one Bears. Then we have the whole division covered
  23. The Great Hambino
    We shouldn't need to resort to harmful pejoratives here Their name is Pohlad. Show it some respect. And the answer is two. Joe writes an open letter to it assuming that will solve everything, then Jim comes in to clean up the mess
  24. The Great Hambino
    I walked into that one
  25. The Great Hambino
    Cory's favorite fair food is bottled water
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