Jham

Not to quote my own quote but.... Also do the Hunter-less Twins seem awkward in celebrating? They should be having more fun after a win like that considering this weekend. It seems pretty forced.

Is Meyer available tonight? I've been waiting to see him ever since Milone started struggling.

At least he cares whether we win or lose.

If Murphy chose to go home over a call to the bigs, he should go on the DL and have his head examined instead. I don't think it matters however, because that sort of rogue out of nowhere refusal to earn Major League money is so unpredictable I can't fault the organization for not planning for that. We have a 40 man spot open right? So it wouldn't necessarily mean Mastro or Beresford, although I imagine it will be Mastroani who is more valuable at this point that Buxton and doesn't have to play like Buxton or Kepler would. Again, it sucks that we sent down Buxton and Kepler first, but Murphy refusing his promotion? I've literally never heard of that. It's not all that. It's the "Danny Santana shouldn't be on the team" the "Duffey should get sent down" even though he's injured and he can't, the JR Murphy needs to be sent down or start, the Twins have no plan at CF despite still have 2 capable CF's on the roster, with 2 young ones sent down, accusations that are unnecessarily piling on. There's lots to criticize. You can even criticize going into a game with a 2 man bench, but it's not fair to ignore 3 IP by Gibson, Tyler Duffey being hurt, but not bad enough to DL him, Santana being hurt but not bad enough to DL, and 16 innings the day before. Santana is the most obvious move, 15 day DL would be taking away 2-3 starts with the most obvious replacement nursing a bruised shoulder. I'm fine waiting an additional day or two in order to see how those 2 injuries progress before making a decision for the next 2 weeks. I don't think not having Mastro or Beresford or ABWII or even a recalled Polanco or Kepler makes much difference for the next 2 days. If ONLY we could have pinch hit... we'll say Polanco tonight, man this game would be so different... Not buying it. I'm not saying there isn't room for valid criticism, but there's also room for valid defense.

I really like the way Nunez takes professional at bats. I'm glad he's producing now that he's getting a chance. He's fun to watch, easy to cheer for, and representing well for the so called expendable replacement level veterans.

I'm all for venting frustration, discussing roster moves, and critical fandom in general, but this thread is a veritable witch hunt. First the baseless David Murphy terrorism. Then all the bashing of a 1 day roster forced by an injury and 16 inning game. Somehow, little mention of the 16 inning game directly following a 3 inning start from Gibby. I'm fine with 14 pitchers for 1 day when Sano, Santana, Nunez, Rosario and Arcia all have some level of position flexibility. Good grief. We've played the ESPN computers power ranking teams Nats (2), Royals (3), Orioles (4) and White Sox (6) for 12 of our 14 losses. You'd think we'd win some of ;those games, but what are you going to do? We were in many of those games with a lot of our young players doing next to nothing, and hopefully learning a little about getting yourself ready for the season. Rational suggestions please.

I don't mind the fastballs. Harper wasn't catching up. I mind the location. Keep the ball up. Don't throw one at the knees where he can drop the barrel. He gave in instead of just challenging him up high.

I blame the ump. Harper struck out. It's one thing to give the outside outside corner and still give the inside corner, it's another thing to do that for one team but not the other. BS.

Dozier is approaching Lew Ford Territory. No one's coming up and in on Doz anymore. He's not adjusting. Pretty soon he's going burn himself trying to iron a shirt while wearing it. On an aside I always wonder if the "going with the pitch" approach is a tad overrated. Two of the best and handsiest hitters I've ever seen, Derrick Jeter and Dustin Pedroia had 20 HR power and ability to go to all fields. Neither really went with a pitch unless fooled. Instead, each would pull their hands in on inside pitches and allow their barrel to trail. This keeps the bat in the hitting zone, allows the hitter to contact the ball a little deeper and not have to guess or open up in order to catch up. The result is solid contact to the opposite field. This allows Pedroia to dive over the plate to pull middle and away pitches over the Monster. This allowed Jeter to drive middle and away pitches out to center and right. Joe Mauer in his prime had this too. Remember when he'd take the inside pitch up the middle or over short with that wicked reverse spin? That was him pulling in his hands to barrel up a ball. Now he's been taught to pull that pitch and he roles it over to 2nd. That said, I think Dozier's biggest problem is the K's and BB's. He's not being patient enough to get his pitch, and he's not good enough to hit theirs.

Ok, Milone has not been a train wreck. He's been an odd mix of really good with command and strike out stuff, to very bad and extremely hittable in the same starts. That's a little strange. I want Berrios in the rotation soon. I'm just not positive Milone is the guy to move. Nolasco is pitching too well right now. I think Gibson will be our best overall starter this season. And based on spring, I expect there to be a substantial learning curve for JO when he comes up. There's no guarantee high prospects will be great MLB pitchers. Phil Hughes was BA's #4 overall prospect in 2006. Higher than JO or Meyer. Ervin Santana was the 29th ranked prospect in 2003. Each is in the tail end of his prime, and we're certain guys like Berrios or Duffey will be better? We don't have Harvey and Syndegaard and de Grom. Our prospects have flaws. I get wanting to see these talented arms, I just don't get the rush. We can compete this year. We'll likely need some of these young arms to perform better than expected. We'll also likely need big years from some veteran arms. These are pretty big decisions to force after 3 starts.

I get Fox Sports Go, but not the regionals. Lame.

I refuse to watch Twins broadcasts without Dickbert!! I'm a reverse cord cutter. I am a cable subscriber who then attaches to a Slingbox to get my Twins games on my phone or tablet. I start less fights at the bar that way since I don't have to ask the bartender to change the channel from grown men on ice skates to a real sport. I can just pull it up in HD on my phone! And it's pretty fast. After the Twins started 0-9, I took it upon myself to change their luck and went to the Friday night game against the Angels which started a 4 game winning streak. (Your welcome). At one point, there was a close play, and per MLB stadium unwritten contract, they refused to show the replay. I pulled it up on my phone for the TV broadcast to see the replay. Umps got it right. But when they returned to live action, I was astounded. The Slingbox feed was ahead of the live action! I won some beers from surrounding fans betting them on what would happen next in the game. Then I shut it off because people were complaining that I was cheering over the broadcast before the play happened in real life. Well it's not quite that fast, but it's impressive. I have two TCL Roku enabled TV's. They're great, cheap, and well reviewed. I'd recommend for cord users and cutters. I'm loving the Bob Ross Joy of Painting channel. All 22 seasons of hippies painting trees and mountains. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2469204,00.asp

Park has 4 HR. 3 on hanging breaking balls, 1 on a 3-1 fastball taken way deep to right (pitch was away). This is a very Kirby Puckett type approach ("hanging breaking balls are a gift from God"). Except Park is a power hitter. In general, I think once (if) he starts pulling fastballs out, you'll see an even bigger jump in HR's (and K's perhaps). That's the profile of most power hitters. Of course, you're susceptible to the breaking balls that way, which he's currently guarding against. Ultimately, that style of hitting then takes incredible discipline. Dead red on fastballs, patience to get into fastball counts, ability to lay off low breaking balls even if they're strikes. So for now, I'm happy watching him adjust his approach to make more contact and feel out new pitchers in a new league.

Good learning experience for a young team. You have to bring it everyday. When you have a young team, sometimes celebrating wins hangs over into noon games.

Buxton - 10.75 seconds home to third on his RBI triple. Fastest triple this season, and 2nd to Kiermaier in the last 2 years. Kiermaier has the Statcast record. I'm sure there are stop watch records out there. http://m.twins.mlb.com/news/article/173124474/twins-byron-buxton-hustles-out-triple FTW on USA Today has Neon Deion Sanders at around 10.5 and Hamilton as fast as 10.13. Those two were from the left side though. But I bet Buxton can break 10.5 this season. http://ftw.usatoday.com/2014/04/billy-hamilton-deion-sanders-very-fast-cincinnati-reds-mlb

And a very loose helmet. ..

Nunez has a magic bat. ..

Of course, the lefty HOF, WS MVP who shall remain nameless that Meyer is oft compared to had a devastating 3/4 delivery. He seemed to lose arm angle and movement after the shoulder, likely dropping down to protect the shoulder. This was blamed for struggle. But he went over-the-top and the results were worse. The bigger story to me, was an apparent loss of velocity and likely spin. Flat sliders and straight 94 gets hit. If he's hitting 99 on the gun, and not walking guys, I'll take my chances whatever the arm slot. In fact, I think much of RJ's success was releasing heat basically straight at a lefty's face. Most of the time the ball angles over the plate, often low and away, but if he's coming inside, well you saw John Kruk.

Interesting discussion. Some of the posters are debating semantics, some are debating extremes. My take on things is this. Part of the confusion is probably the old school tools evaluation. Buxton has 5 tool potential, but that the two hit tools aren't fully developed. And neither account for K's. His defense and athleticism are fantastic, but likely to gradually decline as he ages while his bat improves. This makes it awfully tempting to rush him up in order to take advantage of his youth and athleticism while his bat develops. The Mike Trout comparisons are several years old. Expectations have already been tempered among scouts. Put the guys he was ranked against who have graduated to the bigs, and suddenly Buxton isn't a top 2 prospect anymore. Trout's continued level of success is amazing, Buxton has not developed at the same rate. More recent comparisons have been McCutchen or Justin Upton on upside. The bottom range of the prospect scale is never really mentioned. People just hear "Trout" or "McCutchen" and they expect MVP seasons. But those comparisons were best case scenarios from the beginning, and not really expectations. Or they shouldn't be. For every Trout there's a BJ Upton or Austin Jackson. The fairest way to assess Buxton is to temper your expectations to something more realistic from the beginning. Predictions here tend to range from MVP caliber to league average bat. Those seem like reasonable parameters. Let's aim for somewhere in the middle. Gomez is a good comparison, although his initial struggles were over-aggression, Buxton seems to me, to be too tentative, which leads to my third takeaway. There is a risk of stunting a player's development by sticking him in too early. It was fashionable to blame Santana's BABIP for his horrible 2015, but HR aren't factored into BABIP. He went from 7 to 0. He got tentative and started slowing down his bat, trying not to strike out, which led to bad approaches, bad swings, and more K's. Point is, striking out all the time can lead to horrible habits. Rather than learning to read pitchers, read pitches, and stick to your approach, you go up with a survival approach. Gomez never had that. Ozzie doesn't have that. Santana had that, Hicks had that, and Buxton looks to be getting that. I'm not sure it's a good thing that he's striking out after 7 pitches instead of 4 if it means he's more tentative, ie fouling off pitches that he was whiffing at in exchange for not hitting the pitches he used to crush. That's what people are describing when they say "over-matched". The danger with Buxton, is that he's smart enough, and talented enough to likely gain a level of progress just trying to survive. But survival will only get him to those bottom projections. Personally, I think Delmon's career was stunted in this manner. He was called up early, he could hit a fastball along way. He flailed at breaking balls. By the time he left the Twins, he could hit a hanging breaking ball, but a good fastball was a foul or swing and miss. Your success as a big leaguer is pretty limited if you're fighting off fastballs and trying to hit breaking balls. He was talented enough to hang around doing that, but his career is disappointing in comparison to his potential. I'd like to see Buxton go down to AAA to work on confidence and approach. Worry more about pitch selection and hitting your pitch then fighting off their pitch. I think he'll be at least as good as Gomez, but probably not for 2 years. We used an option year last year when we didn't need to. There's a very real possibility that he'll be nearing but not at max potential at the time he's looking for a contract extension. If he shows signs of breaking out or has 1 great season, but hasn't done it consistently, but wants a huge deal, well at that point we screwed ourselves. We'll have to overpay for a risky contract (Mauer situation), lose him as he's reaching his prime (Hunter), or we'll have to trade him because of that one or two weeks last August.

Re: goalies, that's my point, it equals out. But certainly more blame falls on their shoulders than is probably deserved. Re: Closers... I agree with you that closing is more difficult. You get every batter concentrating their absolute hardest and possibly adjusting their approach. You probably face more pressure. Expectations are higher. Your failures are more well publicized. Human nature gets involved on more psychological level due to the finality of the situation. I think good closers are able to identify and take advantage of batters wanting to be the hero and those that are scared to be the goat. Perkins apparently learned this from Maddux. I know Pavano was a big proponent of body language as well. But the numbers guys will berate you with statistics about how coming in with two on in the 7th is more difficult, the difference between the best and worst closer is relatively insignificant etc. You know how it goes. But usually the difference in pay is fairly dramatic.

Closers also get paid like 3 times more than relievers who do basically the same job. Goalies also get credited with wins regardless of how well they played individually. I also don't follow much soccer outside of World Cup, but as my memory serves me, the guys taking the penalty shots and missing are much more likely to be accused of blowing a game than a goal keeper.

Seth, as an experienced writer for this team, you know Perkins' history of getting shelled, then bringing up an injury. Gardy specifically called him out a number of times. Several local writers and media members connected to this team have questioned Perkins conditioning and off-field habits. We're not all as in the loop as you are, so these open criticisms are what we have to go on. And over time, they should necessarily require a second look. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me again... and maybe there's a real wolf this time, and some poor kid gets eaten, and then I can't wear my three-wolves-howling-at-the-moon t-shirt in good taste anymore. Point is, Perkins has wore through his benefit of the doubt period when it comes to getting shelled then reporting an injury that will probably require nothing more than rest and strengthening which he should have been doing all off season... As long as questioning Perkins work ethic and timing in reporting injury is taboo, then I might as well admit that I have questioned what he did on one of those rehab stints back when that allowed him to come back to the pen and throw 97 and get a big contract. If it's legit, I hope he does it again. Now that sort of question might not be fair. But the injury reporting is a pattern.

Agree here. Quentin possibly even Sweeney could have at least taken professional at bats.

I'd call up Adam Brett Walker and start him at first base and see if we can be the first team in history to get no-hit on 27 strike outs. #unbreakablerecord Honestly, mixing threads here, but I want Mientkiewicz working with the prospects that he helped develop. Molitor has looked over his head in one plus years of in-game managing, often too late or too scared to make a move. He's also now failed in getting his team ready for the regular season. At this point, there's not a ton we can do with the line-up, but doing some reshuffling can't hurt. 1) Mauer 2) Escobar 3) Dozier 4) Plouffe 5) Rosario 6) Nunez/ Arcia 7) Kepler 8) Suzuki 9) Buxton I would give Park and Sano several days off or a brief stint in the minors. Park reminds me of Pedro Serano from Major League. Straight ball he hits very much, but curve ball... bats are afraid. I dunno, maybe Jobu needs a refill...

I find the clutch/choke arguments very interesting in that there tend to be strong opinions on each side, and to me, it is the perfect highlight for both the usefulness and shortcomings of sabremetric analysis. Pressure affects human performance. And it does not effect everyone equally. On top of that, it does not affect the same person equally in all cases. There's lots of variables that determine whether pressure is likely to "burst pipes" or "make diamonds". The numbers become quite useful in dispelling heuristics like hindsight or confirmation bias (I told you Buxton was going to strike out) or availability heuristic (at bats / appearances offering greater emotional response are more memorable and affect perception of frequency). The numbers will probably show that none of us are much better than a computer at predicting outcomes of Buxton ABs, and our memories of 2015 Sano were probably tainted by his unprecedented first month to the extent we ignored his last month. Nevertheless, there are lots of numbers guys out there who claim clutch or choke don't exist because of the difficulty in measuring it. Blame the countless variables of baseball, but pressure affects humans in lab settings, it affects pro-golfers, NFL kickers, public speakers, etc. Sometimes it makes us better, sometimes worse. Confidence, experience, and whether you're narrowly leading (closer) vs. narrowly trailing (hitter) all matter. http://www.jneurosci.org/content/34/45/14833.short There are many explanations for numbers that deviate dramatically from the expected result. Luck is only one of them, albeit a convenient one, especially for the numbers guys who can then simply dismiss any element of the sport that can't be quantified. On other hand, those who care more for the adversarial nature of the game, and the chess match played between pitcher and batter, love watching each side deal with pressure. For my .02, I think it's predictable that clutch would not show up on the baseball card since both the batter and pitcher will be under pressure at the same time, with both likely to be affected one way or the other. It's also true that most studies of performance under pressure look at players in close games towards the end of the games. But as the above John Hopkins study shows, your aversion for losing, love of winning, and whether your ahead or behind would alter the outcome. There's room for more study for metrics folks willing to dig deeper.