IndianaTwin

Will the marketing slogan for the Cleveland Gardyans be “We battle our tails off”?

After Hrbek lined into the double play in the bottom of the eighth, said brother called from 300 miles away to say, "Did I just hear glass breaking?" Yeah, pretty much.

...it was, "We'll see you tomorrow night!" Which led to tomorrow night and "Out there, out there" on the 3-2-3 to end of the top of the eighth. And "The Twins are going to win the World Series. The Twins have won it!" I've still got goose bumps from those two nights. Even my brother, who can't stand baseball, got sucked into watching it.

From Rotoworld.com: Astros owner Jim Crane said Thursday that the team will "probably" extend a qualifying offer to impending free agent Justin Verlander. Verlander is said to be looking for a multi-year contract, but the qualifying offer -- which was one year, $18.9 million last winter -- could be rather enticing after he missed all of the 2021 season following Tommy John surgery. The veteran right-hander will turn 39 years old just before the start of spring training in 2022. He posted a stellar 2.56 ERA and 12.1 K/9 in 443 innings (69 starts) for Houston between 2018-2020. SOURCE: Houston Chronicle Oct 7, 2021, 2:49 PM ET ------------------------------------------------------------------ From IT: That insight is worth what I paid for it, and Rotoworld is a free site, but in the midst of CBA negotiation, etc., it seems like quite a risk for Verlander to turn down a QO if it comes, particularly from a World Series team.

The excellent* overlay shows that he has a “highly repeatable” motion. That’s a buzzword that’s worth something for him, isn’t it? *And by excellent, I mean it had me laughing at the variation. It’s almost like a live batter could have swung at both of them.

When combined with shorter relief outings, the "strategy" that the NL game provides at this point is not so much about whether to pinch hit for the pitcher, but rather which pinch hitter to use.

Can we please just go ahead and put this farce of pitchers hitting to bed and admit that we're pretty much playing with a DH already? If I compiled this correctly, in 15 NL playoff games so far, managers have only let their pitchers walk to the plate 42 times (notice that I didn't say "hit," for reasons that will become clear). That's essentially 2.5 plate appearances per game. Not per team per game, but per game. So essentially, half the starting pitchers bat once and half of them bat twice. (There was that fluke when Graterol stayed in to hit flail before being pulled, since Roberts didn't want to waste another pinch hitter in a 6-2 game, and since Roberts certainly wouldn't want to exhaust the incoming pitcher by having him carry a bat all the way from the dugout to the plate and back.) And in those 42 plate appearances, we got the drama of 23 strikeouts and two hits, for a whopping .053 average. The math checkers among us will note that the .053 average comes from a divisor of 38 at bats, since we also have to include those four scintillating sacrifice bunts that were laid down. Two of those sacrifice bunts were with one out, which is code for "let's just hit hope that our pitcher doesn't pop up the bunt into a double play, but at least by having him bunt, we can lessen the likelihood of him getting enough wood on the ball for the defense to get a double play, and hey, we might actually salvage something from this pathetic ineptitude by getting the runner to move up a base. Oh, and please, please, please don't run hard enough to pull a hamstring on the 12 steps you loaf towards first if you actually get the bunt down." Sorry, folks. In a time and place when guys like Gibson, Drysdale, and Kaat actually worked at that aspect of the game enough to be passable hitters (though still weak ones, as their .206, .186 and .185 averages, and .545, .523 and .494 OPSs can attest), maybe, just maybe, there's a small argument against the DH. (And for the record, Mario Mendoza, whose ineptitude got a line named after him, was at .215 and .509, so these "good hitting pitchers" were essentially at his level as hitters.) But we are way past that by now. With any luck at all, we are down to no more than six more games remaining before they put an end to this misery. (Stepping down from the soapbox now.)

I'm not sure that DeJong is the answer. He's owed a bit more than $6 million in 2022 and $9 million in 2023, followed by a $2 million option. And his declining OPS is already below Simmons' at a similar age.

“Like” button for the excellent analysis, though I don’t like your conclusion. I regretfully agree with that conclusion, however.

I was also thinking of the similarities between the Mauer and Buxton situations and wondering if anyone else was doing the same. Thanks, Vanimal, for starting the conversation. The similarity in the two cases is the fan clamoring to Pay The Man, but I do see a couple places where I don’t think the comparison is quite the same. Mauer’s contract ended up at $23M, which is somewhat higher than what the guarantee seems to be with Buxton. And there’s inflation to consider. If Mauer was at $23M at a time when the team total is $115M, that’s 20 percent of the total. If Buxton’s guarantee is $14M at a time the team total is $140M, that’s only 10 percent of the total. There’s a lot more salary room to put a team around Buxton than there was around Mauer. Mauer was for eight years. If Buxton ends up at five years, that’s significantly different. Said another way, I don’t think people would have been hung up on Mauer’s contract if it was only the first five years. His first three years were primarily as a catcher before moving to first, The response would likely have been more like, “It was a good contract for three years — bummer we had the extra two years. Instead there was five years of hand wringing. The positions are different. It was huge that Mauer was a catcher, but there had to be a sense that it was unlikely he would make it eight years as a catcher, even if he doesn’t have the concussion. His offensive skills didn’t translate to what people expect at first, and he had to learn a new position (which he did, quite well). By contrast, if Buxton loses a few steps and can’t play center (hard to imagine), he would have a seamless switch defensively to one of the corner OF positions and he’d still be a productive corner OF offensively. So yeah, similar to the Mauer, but a whole lot different as well. If there was agreement on 5/$70M, but differences on the incentives, keep using that as the starting point and give him what he wants in incentives. If he plays 140 games, he’ll be worth the $23M and more.

I checked out the job description, and other than the first seven pearled items* in the "required" category, I am eminently qualified! *There are only seven pearled items.

Please not Stroman. I'm not sure I can handle several years of TwinsDaily articles arguing whether or not Stroman is an "ace." ?

I think Chief was using baseball-reference.com, while you were using Fangraphs. Or the other way around, I'm not sure.

I'll also add that Rod Carew has called it the most memorable day of his Twins career. If it was his best day as well, I can't be wrong, right?

Easy. It's 6/26/77, which I recounted in a Game Thread intro a couple years ago.

I just realized that the tag-on day to a work-related trip has me in Ft. Myers on Oct. 19-20. Are there any things that would be happening in the Twins Complex those days that are open to fans?

Looking at his game log on baseball-reference.com, I’m struck by two things. First, including his time in the minors, he has not missed a start since his first outing on May 8. Second, in the majors, aside from one outlier above and one below, he has thrown from 59-82 pitches in every game, averaging 74 per game. This year, he has averaged 4.52 innings over his 24 total starts and averaged 16.4 pitches per major league inning. His first start was on the day of the Twins’ 32nd game, so assume six more starts up front and one remaining for 31 total starts. At 4.52 innings per start for 31 starts, that is 140 innings. If he were to average 10 more pitches per game at the same number of pitches per inning, that would be 10/16.4 * 31 equals 18.9 more innings. (That .9 inning is going to be interesting to see!) That would put him at 159 innings, and assumes health that allows him to make every start. It’s hard to imagine a number higher than that as a goal. The likelihood of missing a start or two makes 140 seem like a more realist number to project.

Mostly tongue-in-cheek and having fun with numbers. Bit in one sense I do hope he makes a run at it, because that would mean he upped his overall production, potentially including his defense, enough to have continued earning playing time rather than following the regression pattern of most of the guys I mentioned.

With that kind of start, one has to look at where he might end up on the career list. The current leader is Reggie Jackson at 2597, prompting two questions — can Sano get there and can anyone beat him to the mark. To the first, with 1,000 strikeouts in 661 games, he’s essentially striking out 1.5 times per game. Continuing at that rate, he’d need to play about 1065 more games. How reasonable is that? On its simplest terms, we have a concern about health, thinking he’s missed a lot of games. However, last year he played 53 of 60. Over a full season, that’s pace for 143 games. This year he’s on pace for about 133. If he averages 133 games per season going forward, he ends up with 200 whiffs. That would mean being able to play eight more seasons to get the roughly 1,600 he needs. That’s to age 36. In the baseball-reference.com “Similarity Scores,” six of the 10 players most like him through age 28 are still active. The other four are Carlos Quentin, Rob Deer, Jay Buhner, and Bo Jackson. Quentin had his last productive year at age 30 and retired at 31. Jackson’s career ended at 31 due to injury. Deer’s last year as a regular (I hesitate to call it “productive,” based on his stats) was at 32, followed by a handful of games a few years later. (I don’t remember that gap — was he hurt?) Buhner’s last year with more than 120 games was at age 32, though he had several part-time years after that. Of the guys whose career stats are similar to Sano, you can add Adam Duvall, Joey Gallo, and Marcus Thames. Duvall is playing somewhat regularly at age 32, Gallo is only 27, and Thames never played more than 120 games on the way to playing 36 games at age 34. The common thread in those is not being a regular past the early 30s. In Buhner’s case, he also relied on his defense for playing time. Those comps don’t paint a rosy picture for Sano playing another eight years. There are two other interesting cases near the top of the list. Adam Dunn is third. He actually played 131 games in his final season at age 34 and had an OPS+ of 115, He well may have had enough in the tank to get the 218 he needed, particularly given that he had 159 whiffs in that age 34 season. The other is Jim Thome, who is second only to Reggie, falling 49 short. Thome played regularly until age 38 and then semi-regularly for two more years and part-time for one. His OPS+ was still above 100 at the end, so it’s conceivable he could have played the remaining games he needed. The difference here, of course, is that Thome was much more effective as an overall hitter than Sano has ever bend. Thome got a slight head start by making it to the majors as a 20 year-old, but he had “only” 882 whiffs by age 28. Thome appeared washed up at age 34, when he appeared in only 59 games and had an OPS+ of 85. Had he retired then, he would have ended with just 1762 strikeouts. However, it was at age 35 that he transitioned to becoming a full time DH. From then on, he played another 805 games, striking out 786 times. Throughout his career, his strikeout rate was much lower than Sano’s, as he struck out only five more times than games played. Bottom line is that he was so productive that he stayed around a long time. Barring Sano turning into Thome, I can’t see him making it to Reggieland. But even if he did, would that be enough? Perhaps not, In my mind, one particular player seems positioned to make a run at Reggie — Giancarlo Stanton. Already fifth among active players with 1543 through age 31, he has whiffed 1.18 times per game. Continuing at that rate, he needs less than 900 more games. He’s on pace to play 137 games this year with an OPS+ of 134, just below his career average. With his overall hitting, he has a much better likelihood of having a Thome-like end to his career. If Thome can play 800 games after age 34, Stanton can easily play 900 after age 31. Finally, I’ll note that if Stanton DOESN’T reach Reggie, it could well be because of the significant time he missed the past two years, with only 18 games in 2019 and 23 in the shortened 2020. In those two years, he probably lost about 200 games. Another 236 strikeouts would put him close to 1800 by the end of his age 31 year, meaning he’d only have to play 675 games going forward at his current whiff rate. That would be five seasons at 135 games, which seems eminently doable.

Buck will be holding down the bench in the solidest and speediest way possible.

Thing is, that's exactly what my friend the White Sox fan said about. "He was pretty effective, but he was maddening to watch. I'm glad he's gone." I think that comes with the territory with him. I, too, am in the camp that says they might well (and maybe even should) bring him back. Even with the start, his ERA+ has actually gotten back to the plus side at 107. I do think that his propensity for walks and soft (bloop) contact makes him particularly ill-suited for the stupid extra-inning rule that has him starting with one of the bases already occupied.

Yeah, I found "abstrusity" a little obscure and hard to understand. Then I looked it up.

And another save for Everyday Alex.

Cody, with this title, are you suggesting he spend the offseason hanging out with Liam Hendricks or someone in Australia?

They changed the scoring to an error on Verdugo, followed by an error on Motter.