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mikelink45

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Everything posted by mikelink45

  1. mikelink45
    Varland needs to step up, SWR just put the pressure on him. Sands has surprised me in a good way. I am also delighted by Funderburk and his performance this year. Hopefully Jeffers and Julien can join Kiriloff and start getting some hits on a regular basis.
  2. mikelink45
    Give Maeda credit - he did not have the strikeouts of Ryan but he went six and gave up 2 (1 earned) Who is Bowman? Why would you pinch hit for Kiriloff, the only batter over 250 and not Santana?
  3. mikelink45
    Will he strain an oblique coming out to remove the starter?
  4. mikelink45
    Thanks for remembering my comment on Spring Training. I was really frustrated by it. We seemed to be more interested in getting the scrubs playing time than getting our regulars to find their bats and arms.
  5. mikelink45
    That was brutal and it comes on the day when ESPN has their writers making predictions. They're asked to come up with something that was startling and one of the writers chose Detroit to win the American League Central. Of course another one chose Kansas City. Minnesota needs to regain some respect
  6. mikelink45
    We no longer have the marquee match ups - Spahn and Marichal, Martinez and Clemens, Koufax perfect game against Hendley 1 hitter, Or Harvey Haddix throwing 13 inning no hitter only to lose to Burdette who also went all the way. Nor do we have a Morris - you are not taking me out.
  7. mikelink45
    Of all of them, Cesar Tovar was my favorite - he did everything with spirit. Jimmie Hall was a comet - amazing then flaming out. Lenny Green was our first and seldom gets mentioned. In 1962 he had 3.1 WAR. Shane Mack and Dan Ford also did well for us. It is interesting to see fangraphs going back to our Senator roots and listing Sam Rice first. He is a HOF player with 50.7 WAR. Clyde Milan is second from the Senator days with only Rice and Puckett ahead of him.
  8. mikelink45
    What I find most fascinating about baseball is the fact that it is an individual game within a team context. It is pitcher versus hitter - no one else can be involved unless it is the catcher. The players are not covered in uniform like NFL or NHL. We see that individual. Teams are known, but within a team there is individual identity. Shohei, Trout, Judge, Betts standout as individuals and their individual stats matter and are what we judge them by. As an old man who grew up on box scores I still celebrate these individual triumphs and failures. And I loved seeing Warren Spahn win 20 games 13 times. If it did not matter why couldn't more players do that? I admit that we no longer let the starting pitcher go deep enough to control the game like they did in the past, but we still assign wins and we judge teams by how many games they win. I just do not find it a stupid stat.
  9. mikelink45
    I do like and care about wins. I love all the 300 game winners, but they are from another era and today most Twins pitchers go only 4+ innings in many of their games. This is the modern era of BP ball, but still a good 4 inning performance like Paddock had is better than a 1/3 inning reliever who happens to come in to finish the inning and is lucky enough to be the pitcher of record when the team scores go ahead runs. I have always disliked the way wins are allocated and I know in this era only us old timers care about wins. I love Verlander and his 257 wins and desire to get to 300. Only once did I care about RP wins when Roy Face got 18 wins in 1959. He had two more seasons with 10+ wins and 20 WAR for his career. Otherwise, the win for RP is even more worthless than many of the save records. The rule for wins: "A pitcher receives a win when he is the pitcher of record when his team takes the lead for good -- with a couple rare exceptions. First, a starting pitcher must pitch at least five innings (in a traditional game of nine innings or longer) to qualify for the win. If he does not, the official scorer awards the win to the most effective relief pitcher. There is also a rarely used clause where an official scorer can deem a relief pitcher's appearance "brief and ineffective." (For example, if a reliever relinquished a one-run lead by allowing three runs, but was still in line for a win after his team scored four runs in the following inning -- that may qualify.) If that's the case, the scorer can award the win to a pitcher who followed that "brief and ineffective" pitcher. Which relief pitcher earns the win specifically is also up to the judgment of the official scorer." It is time to invoke the second paragraph in the rule. Or maybe we recognize the era we are playing in and rewrite the rule.
  10. mikelink45
    Great trade. Right now Luis is batting 250 and has a negative -0.3 WAR. That will change. Of course we could still use him and I would love to have Steer in our lineup, but that is the nature of trades.
  11. mikelink45
    Is it time for Major League baseball to redefine? What a win is. Paddock going 4. 2. But that's not enough. That's what you're going to get in this era. He should have gotten the win.
  12. mikelink45
    Only cost cash - this is the team that does not have cash. I heard that all off season.
  13. mikelink45
    Wow - we bragged about how many BP arms we picked up this off season. Too many to fit on the MLB roster. We were sure we had the number 1 BP in the league. Where are we now? Where is Blewett, Bloushley, Blowman, Boyle, Brigham, Castillo, Harris - all over 30 and all on the Saints. And then there is Henriquez who is young and was supposed to be a promising BP piece. I guess the Twins are just flush with money so they bought someone instead.
  14. mikelink45
    I know others will wonder 2 - 0 1.45 Not bad.
  15. mikelink45
    In the Athletic team rankings the Twins are 12th - middle of the road, but the comment that went with the ranking applies to the entire team not just Julien: "So long as we’re extrapolating tiny samples, let’s consider the Twins as they square off against the Dodgers. Minnesota last year led the AL in homers (yay!) and strikeouts (whoops!). That all-or-nothing approach has been tweaked. Now it’s just nothing. Through their first seven games, the Twins had the fewest homers in the league (three) and the second-highest strikeout rate (26.7 percent). Carlos Correa and Alex Kirilloff are off to strong starts, yet we’re still waiting for a homer from them or Byron Buxton, Max Kepler, or Matt Wallner."
  16. mikelink45
    As I see the twins batting averages, it is frustrating when I see that steer was the national League player of the week. Let's hope those bats can warm up quickly and turn this around.
  17. mikelink45
    See Ken Rosenthals essay today in the Athletic - the pitchers who went nine, induced ground balls and DP also lasted longer and had less surgery. Time to figure this out. If pitchers are going to get contracts like Cole, they have to be on the field.
  18. mikelink45
    Glad to see Miranda up, but this does confuse me - will he step in as a RP like Sano?
  19. mikelink45
    I love the article. But put me down for the electronic zone - no hesitation. Get it right and move on. It is silly to want to have umpires determining their own version of a strike zone. Unless you are a Greg Maddux who knew how to use this to advantage it is just a frustration. I want the game decided by hits, strikes and errors, not umpires. I remember the adage that the best umpire, judge, referee is the one you do not hear about. It is like the poor linemen who are only named when caught holding. I do not have another place to put this, but Ken Rosenthal had an intriguing take on pitching which is outside the strike zone and worth considering too - maybe it goes with my Maddux comment - "The hyperfocus on velocity and spin, he said, was achieving the desired results. Pitchers have never been as nasty as they are today, and teams win by pushing them to their physical limits. "Pitchers might experience spikes in performance. Their respective clubs might draw the accompanying benefits. But no one can possibly say the current trend is good for the game. "Ask the Braves about their World Series aspirations without Strider, whom they signed to a six-year, $75 million deal in Oct. 2022. Ask the Guardians about their postseason chances without Bieber, whose $13.125 million salary accounts for nearly 15 percent of their payroll. Ask the Marlins about even trying to be respectable without Pérez, who also is about to join their staff ace and biggest long-term investment, Sandy Alcantara, on the seemingly endless list of pitchers to undergo elbow-ligament repair surgery." "But the entire sport should hit the pause button. Pause on bowing to the Driveline gods and all of the technology and data that make pitchers better but not necessarily healthier. Pause on rewarding 120 innings of max effort from starting pitchers when 180 from command-control specialists might prove even more valuable."
  20. mikelink45
    Well where do you see Martin playing? Santana is not producing, only Correa and Kiriloff right now. I am looking for a spark of life so 1B and DH for a week is fine with me.
  21. mikelink45
    I am not expecting him to be the answer, but the players on the field are not producing and we have minor leaguers who might. Use that 13th position for something useful. In the meantime I also recognize this is too early in the season to jump to conclusions. My only take away so far is that we have started slow two years in a row. Maybe Spring Training routine has to change in the future.
  22. mikelink45
    We had a relief pitcher without knowing it - Miguel Sano - yesterday 0.1 innings three pitches three strikes and one out! Who knew?
  23. mikelink45
    Ober needs to be what we have seen in the past and Varland has to step up or it is time for another arm in the rotation. Headrick has not impressed me in the past, but I am willing to see him get some starts if things don't change in MPLS soon.
  24. mikelink45
    Miranda makes sense, Martin is a waste of space on the bench unless Rocco decides he should get out and play - I mean start and get 3 - 4 games of real effort. No one gets hits when they get 3 ABs in how many games? Margot has not shined - I know it is early season, but we need some new energy and Kepler and Wallner are not giving us what we need in the OF. The team slash line is 191/308/300 - no one wins with that production. The pitching staff has a 3.54 era - not bad, especially if you remove Varland and Ober from the stats. The Twins have scored 3 runs per game - It is necessary to score more than the other team - maybe Rocco should explain that. We have two players hitting over 300 - Correa and Kiriloff. We have six of the regulars hitting in the 100s (actually Kepler is 050). On the bench Margot 250 and Farmer 231 are the leaders.
  25. mikelink45
    I never heard of Rayne - where did he come from? Richardson is not making the Twins anxious to join the rotation in MPLS I want to compliment you on the writing and thank you for listing the prospects on the other teams. I like that. I do hope TD at some point starts identifying the players in the photos like you did today. That helps, I assume there are others who have no face recognition of most of the players.
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