Hosken Bombo Disco

Where is that data? I would love to see it but have been too lazy to look for it.

I am going to miss Mauer anchoring first base. Even with his declining production this season, I think he has more good offensive seasons in him and would be comfortable with him leading off another year. The Twins are going to have to take a temporary step back at that position when he retires, certainly with the fielding.

I thought he looked passable last season, and at times pretty good, but if the numbers say he was near at the bottom I won't disagree with that.

Expiring deals (off top of my head): Gibson, Odorizzi, Pineda, eSan, Castro, Reed. Biggest need? Why, another Primary of course; they can't go into 2019 with just Kohl Stewart as the only primary. J/k I'm guessing they decline Ervin and Morrison's option and just roll into 2019 with a league low payroll (certainly bottom 5) and a lot of playing time for youngsters and reclamation projects, along with some more analytic experimentation in mind. Given where they are at this moment, it wouldn't be the worst plan. As someone said, there's just too much to do now. Polanco took a big step backward, Mauer will retire, and aside from Sano and Austin, who are basically part timers in my opinion, the team pretty much needs a whole new infield. Not to mention another middle of the order bat, not to mention getting Buxton straightened out, and most importantly, needing to fill out half of a pitching staff that has no closer or no ace. The front office will trade some guys at the deadline again next year, scratch out another 70-some wins with smoke and mirrors, and the media will heap praise upon them, given their constraints as a small market franchise trying to compete in a division that has a good team like Cleveland in it... but call me an optimist.

There was also the incident a few years ago when the Nationals hired Bud Black to be manager, then inexplicably low-balled him in the salary negotiation, so much so that Black withdrew.

I think the team took the trade of Escobar pretty hard. I think that could affect their play, absolutely. The edge is gone. Maybe next spring can be a new start. Until Escobar and Pressly were traded that night, I thought the team had the same "team" quality that they had in 2017, and sure, I thought they were good, people can disagree, but I did not think they were on the level of the best teams. Lots of posters here gave up on the team in 2017, too, and I disagreed then as well.

The front office pulled the plug. There's nothing inconsistent here, unless you're of the type who believes players are mere emotionless stat producers (and you are of that type). But, players are humans and Escobar/Dozier were key players--and yes Dozier has fallen off a cliff. Then Rodney was traded, and Buxton was sent home. It was a good team from 2017 to mid-2018. Now it's a complete mess.

Let me say it again, Buxton was playing hurt. His swing was off. He didn't attempt stolen bases when he was put into games as a pinch runner. He started slow in 2016 and 2017 too, but in 2017 turned around his season without needing a trip to Rochester. As long as his performance continues to be attacked, I will come to defend him.

Buxton was playing hurt

Lots of people wanted to play Buxton, Escobar and Dozier down the stretch, too. Not many fans ordered this current product. A lot of loud TD posters, maybe, but not the fan base in general.

I think it's a good, even-handed take. However, I personally am skeptical of the "sustainability" talk, particularly if what Seth says is true about their cold personalities. I am neutral on Molitor. I don't think Molitor is a good fit for what they want to do, but then again, I'm not sure what they're doing will work without him, either. Bringing in a different manager might make the coldness problem worse, because despite Molitor's flaws, he at least has relationships with these players that go back years. I'm afraid to find out who they think would be a good person to hire in his place. And Molitor also has a relationship with the city and with ownership, like it or not. Welcome to the top, fellas! Tough decisions must be made.

My heart says fielders, my head says bats ...at least for the scenario as it was presented. I saw Hanley Ramirez and Miguel Sano play outfield, and it wasn't pretty.

I think I agree hitters, especially the way I wrote it there. But doubt there are 9 players at any given time capable of hitting 40 home runs, so if the conditions were different I think the fielders would be more competitive.

I appreciate your effort to change the subject or remove this discussion back to the abstract, but I want to take it back to the specific, real-life example I provided. I think Buxton in center saves three runs there. Defense impacts games in subtle ways, that can't always be measured--even by Fangraphs. Good defense is taken for granted, and great defense is under appreciated. Also, Bourjos is 31

I posted this idea in a discussion thread, but I do think it fits better in the blog section or in its own thread, but chose blog. I will leave the scenario as I posted it in the other thread. Anyway, in light of a recent debate on the value of defense, I came up with a problem. It would be interesting to run a simulation on this or hear what inputs others might have on it. Anyway, here it goes: There are two teams. One team is full of great hitters, 1 through 9, these are .950 OPS, 40 HR types of guys, don't strike out much, can draw a walk, but they are sloppy with the defense, all of them, and some in fact are downright terrible (the worst one is trying to hide in left or right field). Also, let's say they don't run much and are station to station baserunners. The other team is full of defensive whizzes, who make all the plays, throw to the right bases, great range, great gloves, rarely make an error, but are sub-.200 hitters. The great offense hits against the great fielders, and the poor hitters hit into the poor defense. All pitching is equal. They play a game. What happens? Now, the two teams play a 162-game season against each other. How does that turn out? Or say these two teams existed within MLB as it is now, 2 teams among the 30. Again, all pitching normalized. Where does each team finish in the standings? Have at it, blog readers!!

Most of what you say is true, in a general sense. However, I am trying to demonstrate with a specific example how Buxton's defense can impact a game. If Buxton is out there, and makes that running catch, the game stays 1-0 and everybody forgets Buxton is even in the game, at least until he comes to bat again and gives people a reason to bitch if he doesn't get a hit. But at least the game is still 1-0. Without Buxton out there, the game becomes 2-0, then 3-0, then 4-0, and out of reach.

Since defense was raised here, I will point out a play from just last night. Twins trailing 1-0, two outs, top of seventh, runner on third. Merrifield hits a very shallow fly ball to center-right, just the sort of ball we see Buxton get to frequently, but this one last night lands safely as an RBI single, and then two more runs score later in the inning. Notwithstanding Fangraphs's DRS stat, that single play right there Buxton would have saved three runs making that catch and ending the inning. I will concede that offense is more important than defense, but will go no further than that. I don't know by how much, if by a lot, or if much at all. It may or may not be telling that Levine did not raise the issue of Buxton's defense in explaining the decision to send him home. To deeply discount defense the way some posters want to, especially Buxton's, is counter-productive to the debate, in my opinion. That's all. I apologize if I am mischaracterizing the quoted posters' positions. I just thought that play last night was worth mentioning.

Thanks for posting. I've always accepted the "third time through the order" wisdom as true enough in general, if not quite true for a specific reason -- the stated reason being a hitter sees more of the pitcher's pitches or can read tendencies of a pitcher over the course of a game, and the hitter is more likely to succeed each successive PA because of that. I also think pitcher fatigue is part of it. A pitcher reaches x number of pitches (repetitions of hand, arm, body, etc) in a session, and the later pitches simply aren't as good in form as the earlier ones. The batters being able to repeat their good form (swings). The data that supports this "third time through the order" assumption also seems to contradict other data floating around, that the first inning is the highest scoring inning. That says the manager puts the very best hitters at the top of the lineup. For this "first inning is highest scoring" belief, I assume it needs pitchers like Gonsalves in its population, Gonsalves being a guy who is probably not good enough (yet?) to make it through two trips through the order, regardless of which inning or to which spot in the order he comes in to pitch. Why does that contradiction exist, or am I looking at it wrong? It would be interesting to isolate the better individual pitchers and batters from the larger set, elite ones like Mauer in his prime, or even pitcher-batter matchups (Mauer-Verlander during their peak years, est. 2006-2010) and see what happens during their successive PAs through the order. It's all still very much up for discussion and should not be a settled question.

The post you are replying to seems more reasonable and accurate than your reply to it, unless I am reading your reply incorrectly. Of course the front office planned on Buxton being an integral part of the team this year. That doesn't mean they couldn't have started manipulating his service time about halfway through.

"Hey Byron, you've had a bad year. You've been hurt. How can we help you be successful from this point forward?" "What do you need from us?" That's all they had to say.

As far as non-start of career players, as the other poster is saying, you just don't see or hear about it with players like Byron Buxton. This is not Drury or Profar or whoever. Regardless of your opinion of Buxton he did lead the team into the postseason in 2017 with his bat and also win a gold glove. That's why the national media is writing about it.

Dozier is not coming back, so it's irrelevant whether we want him back or not. A streak of 6-39 would not persuade me in any case. Yes, I still would have preferred the front office kept the 2017 core together for the remainder of 2018, rather than breaking the team up resulting in the product we are seeing now, and the unmeasurable costs the team is paying for that breakup.

I’m about a quarter or third of the way through the podcast so far. Good point about TwinsFest. Isn’t there also some all employee banquet before that that players are required to attend? By all accounts Buxton feels angry and humiliated right now and I can empathize with that. I have no problem with fans expressing their dislike of the front office at this point. I wouldn’t call them phony but to each their own. Many of us have been baseball fans longer than they have been alive! They have a lot to learn about people still.

I agree with the above poster and I will one-up him. By the time 2020 rolls around, we may wish we had stuck with Dozier and Escobar and extended those two short extensions or qualifying offers, signed Mauer and kept Molitor, let him manage one more year with those players familiar to him, and just in general rolled with the core we had through the end of 2019 and then made significant changes after that.

This is about more than just Buxton. It's about a front office that doesn't have the best interests of its players at heart. Word is out. Lukewarm free agent signings last winter; who will agree to play here next winter? Pulling the plug on the season at the trade deadline before the season was completely over, with Escobar finding out he was traded from teammates who saw the ESPN ticker. That's not leadership. Manipulating Buxton's service time in September, because they can. These too-clever-by-half types of things backfire more often than not. Players are not widgets. Organizations that do business this way do not win. That's my short-winded feeling on it.