Teflon

Good point. Last year's opening day obligation was $82 million and the Twins current 2014 obligation is currently around $76 million although that doesn't factor the returning ex-Twins Kubel, Bartlett, or Guerrier who signed minor league deals. The $22 million in salary they rid themselves of in jettisoning Morneau, Doumit, and Carroll was essentially redirected to Nolasco, Hughes, and Suzuki. To be more accurate, what's "uncharacteristic" is - not the money being spent in total - but the money being spent on free agents. Of course this raises the question of what the Twins are actually planning on doing with the additional $25 million they received as their share of the renegotiated national TV deal with MLB, doesn't it? They could have gone harder in pursuit of a top-tier pitcher or major-league quality shortstop.

Name anyone Barry Larkin has ever dated. PS - If you were Jim Rice would you have prefered to NOT be a Hall-of-Famer as opposed to now being the Hall of Fame's Mendoza Line?

1. Require TC Bear to wear pants or allow us not to. No more double standard. 2. Allow somebody other than a Twins fan to raise the Twins territory flag. Perhaps the hamster rancher in Luverne who supplies the hot dog meat or the volunteer from Sharing and Caring Hands who disinfects the urinal flush handles. They also provide a valuable service in Twins Territory. 3. Demonstrate to fans before each game that the WIN in the middle of the TWINS sign atop centerfield lights up independently to highlight a Twins win in case they've never seen it lit. 4. All in-park music provided by paint-bucket drummers from 6th Street. 5. No more selling 64 oz. beers on the plaza and then telling us we can't take it into the park. If that's indeed the rule, limit all beverages sold on the plaza to shots.

Thank you 24-hour sports news media and the blogosphere for clamping onto Richard Sherman for dear life and not letting go since, if not for Sherman, all of this broadcast and blogging void would have had to have been filled with even more dissection of Peyton's use of the word "Omaha" at the line of scrimmage.

Kind of makes you want to relive the 2013 season all over again. (The funny bits, anyway.) Thanks!

While the Vikings turned out the lights on the Metrodome this weekend, it's the Twins' years that I'll remember when I think of it. While it was much-maligned, it undeniably provided the Twins with a home-field advantage as visiting teams struggled with the quirks of the dimensions, surface, lighting and noise levels. Another undeniable home field advantage was the degree to which some notable Twins batters favored hitting in their home park as opposed to the road. Three who were most comfortable in their environs -with home/road splits that were almost Jekyll and Hyde-like in nature- were Kirby Pucket, Kent Hrbek, and Michael Cuddyer. To highlight the differences, (just for fun) here's a look at their home-road slash-line splits along with with a comparable career slash-line from another major leaguer.

Unless the Twins have a great underground pharmaceutical lab, don't expect Sano's power to build into his late 20s. It's starting to look like after the PED ban that players' power curves don't peak and decline - they just decline. Are Aging Curves Changing? from Fangraphs

The Twins have an extra $25 million for 2014 thanks to the new national TV deals MLB negotiated. Since that more than covers the per annum expense of Nolasco and Hughes, you can't say the Twins are digging deep in their pockets to make these acquisitions - so, no, I don't think their philosophy is changing. The just happened to be walking by the liquor store and found a $20 on the sidewalk.

http://hall-fame.com/ricky_manny.jpg I think he looks more like Manny from Modern Family.

Can somebody tell me what happened to Nolasco at the end of the season? He fell off a cliff at the end of September getting clobbered in three consecutive starts to the tune of 19 runs over 11 innings. He gave up another 3 runs in a 4-inning post-season start. Was he pitching hurt or something? Should I be concerned?

Only 4 times in the history of baseball has a batter had 20 or more doubles, 20 or more triples, 20 or more homeruns and 20 or more stolen bases in the same season. Surprisingly, this rare feat occurred twice in the same season when both Jimmy Rollins of the Phillies and Curtis Granderson of the Tigers surpassed those numbers in 2007. Prior to that the 20-20-20-20 had only been accomplished by the great Willie Mayes in 1957 and Frank Shulte of the Cubs in 1911. (George Brett in 1979 and Cleveland's Jeff Heath in 1941 both came within a few stolen bases of doing this.) The closest a Twins player came to these combined figues in a season was probably Rod Carew in his MVP season of 1977 with totals of 38 doubles, 16 triples, 14 home runs, and 23 stolen base or Zoilo Versalles in his MVP season of 1965 with totals of 45-12-19-27.

That Mackey's piece on how to fix the Twins is now referred to as an annual article by Seth is a bit depressing.

Very true. Kudos to the Twins batters for their sensing of when they were going to ground into one and having the good sense to strike out, instead.

Unfortunately the Twins low rate for grounding into double plays was a consequence of their ridiculous strikeout rate rather than a mastery with the bats or their speed to first base.

The fallacy of believing you can offset the ERAs of your starting staff with the ERAs of your relievers and achieve the same number of wins is the fallacy of believing that innings pitched by relievers when trailing occur in wins as frequently as innings pitched when holding the lead.

Credit the Twins for realizing that changing the manager now would be about as effective as changing drivers in a race where the other entrants have Corvettes and you have a tiny clown car with a flat tire.

First of all, in a business scenario Gardy isn't merely an important employee, he's an executive in the company. Secondly, companies don't choose termination because they are too lazy or unwilling to shoulder their part of the responsibility. They choose termination because there is an immediacy in business to respond to customers, shareholders and the stock price. Show me a board of directors that says to their execs, "Our stock has sunk 50% over the last three years, here's a two-year extension for you and your staff" and I'll show you a business that will quickly have no capital to operate. If the Twins' level of season ticket income, TV revenue, licensing money, share of opponent's gates, and portion of other MLB revenue sources actually mirrored their decline in wins, don't kid yourself, this team would be under new management in a heartbeat. That's why this is a bad analogy.

http://hall-fame.com/callaway.jpg You cannot discount the change in management and pitching coach for Cleveland's improvement since it's primarily the same starting staff as last year putting up significantly improved results. With over 6,000 batters faced in each of the two seasons by the Indians pitchers, the dramatic change in numbers transcend any effect of just luck. Cleveland pitchers struck out 6.8 batters per 9 innings last year and 8.5 this year while hits per 9 have dropped from 9.4 to 8.5. Justin Masterson had a K/9 rate of 6.9 last year and 9.1 this year. Ubaldo Jimenez was at 7.3 last year and is at 9.3 this year. Corey Kluber improved from 7.7 to 8.3. Only Zach McAllister had a fall-off in K-rate (7.9 to 6.8) but his hits per 9 dropped as did his home run rate. Mickey Callaway is obviously doing something impressive with this staff.

For most batters the leg kick is a timing mechanism and will vary from pitcher to pitcher and pitch type to pitch type.

Actually the GM will need to find a 1B who can outhit Mauer - not Pinto - since Pinto still ends up catching when Mauer takes another one off the noggin back there.

The line from home plate to CF runs from south to north at Coors Field while it runs from west to east at Target Field. Not comparable from a batter's eye background, sorry.

Arguments in the vein of "Mauer provides more value relative to the competition at catcher than he would at another position" only make sense if you're playing fantasy baseball. Since the Twins currently have a batting order featuring crap, crud, and flotsam Mauer's position change does nothing to weaken this team. It only weakens his chances of making future All-Star games.

The Twins should actually cut payroll in the off-season, ridding themselves of Doumit's and Willingham's last years if anything of a modicum of longer term value can be gotten in return for them. Knowing the Twins, however, they'll convince themselves that they can get more in return if they wait on the pair until the trading deadline which, when you factor the $10.5 million combined salaries for the two, will just be a waste of money on a team that still won't pitch adequately enough for Doumit's and Willingham's bats to matter. (Plus the Twins never seem to make out all that well at the trading deadline, anyway.) It also clears the way earlier for playing time for the young 'uns.

I've been looking at what the Rockies did last year at it appears they had 5 different phases of how they managed their rotation. Phase 1 - Starting Normally They started the season with a traditional 5 man rotation, pitching all 5 even when off days presented themselves. As a result, there were a number of starts early in the season with 6 days rest. Pitch counts seemed to be limited around 100. They did this up through the end of June. Phase 2 - A Quick 4-man Appearance For one pass through the rotation at the beginning of July, the Rockies used only 4 pitchers and brought the first one back (Jeff Outman) with only 3 days rest. This may have been in response to his short outing in his previous appearance and a desire not to pitch the normal next pitcher in the rotation, Alex White, who had gotten clobbered in his last start. Phase 3 - Back to the 5-man Routine After the single 4-man pass, the Rockies returned to the 5-man set-up for two more trips through the rotation sandwiched around the off days for the All-Star game. Phase 4 - The 4-man Test The Rockies' experimentation with the 4-man starting staff lasted 8 trips through the rotation, from the middle of July to the Middle of August. Starters were cutoff at 75 pitches and faced around 19 batters per game. Phase 5 - The 5-man Test For the remainder of the season (9 trips through the rotation) the Rockies reverted to 5 man rotation but kept the same reduced pitch count limits as they had used in the 4-man trial. I'm in the process of trying to quantify the results from each of the phases and will post them when completed. My early take on the numbers is that the 5-man trial with reduced pitch counts at the end of the season was the most successful phase, but will do comparisons before stating that as a fact.