Hosken Bombo Disco

Two different pitchers this season with 6+ inning outings vs the Yanks and only one hit surrendered. Two different TWINS pitchers did that...

Well Molly and Odo should be all in now

yep

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

yeah, our series Pythag W-L could come out of this lookin’ pretty good!

Mauer, hr, 4 rbi

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.

Maybe, but I also heard he's being eased back for precaution.

What's with all the complaining about the lineup. Other than Kepler and Austin, everyone else is either hurt, traded, quit, or sent home.

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.

Toronto's front office is made up of former Cleveland Indians execs, so...

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.

In my world, pitchers with perfect games in the 9th get borderline strike calls

And for the first time in weeks, Twins fans at Target Field have a reason to applaud. ‘night, all

Shakes off Perez, throws ball four What a rook

Last KC no hitter : Saberhagen wow

Gotta admit, this would be a great warm up act for the Vikes tomorrow!

Hey remember when Addison Reed was the set up guy, and the Twins were good, and stuff? Yeah me too, that was awesome http://www.thatericalper.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/maxresdefault-182.jpg