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Taildragger8791

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Everything posted by Taildragger8791

  1. Taildragger8791
    I don't criticize Mauer for that plate appearance at all. If you get 4 balls and a marginal strike from a pitcher who's struggling to throw strikes in a bases loaded situation then a hitter should take that walk every time. We'd be lauding any other hitter for their patience there. But, more broadly speaking, I get the frustration. You can't deny that over the course of time Mauer has generally deferred the responsibility for driving in runs to the guys behind him. He wants the liner to left field or a walk, and occasionally will capitalize on the mistake pitch in his wheelhouse. After that he just tries not to strike out. In other words, Mauer is the baseball version of a checkdown QB or non-scoring PG. He won't lose you a game with turnovers and 3-and-outs or missed shots, but he often isn't going to change a game either. Even though the team (lineup) is consistently arranged for him to do so.
  2. Taildragger8791
    I think it was more about getting Gimenez reps at 3rd than it was about getting Sano reps at 1st. Although that wasn't such a bad thing either since he's technically a backup option for 1st.
  3. Taildragger8791
    Sano! Wow. That ball was a lazy fly-out for almost any other hitter.
  4. Taildragger8791
    Getting back on topic... 12-15 seems awfully optimistic. His 2nd best season ever was 13 HR and that was over 10 years ago. Mauer isn't going to be that aging hitter who starts biasing his approach to get more power to stay productive. He's had one single batting approach his whole career and it will be that same approach until the day he hangs 'em up.
  5. Taildragger8791
    Cheating the quota system? That's a paddlin'.
  6. Taildragger8791
    And the intimidating Grossman forces the 4-pitch walk with bases loaded, stirring up memories of Albert Pujols in his prime.
  7. Taildragger8791
    For how impressed DickNBert are with sky-high popups you'd almost be fooled into thinking they count for something.
  8. Taildragger8791
    Yeah, I'm a little underwhelmed by the power in the middle of this lineup. After Dozier the only real power is Sano and who knows when he'll ever put rubber to the road with his strikeouts. Hopefully the 40% rate in spring training was just another number that doesn't matter...
  9. Taildragger8791
    I could go either way. I kind of like the idea of Polanco/Kepler/Rosario hitting in front of Dozier. It's almost like having another (poor man's) top-of-the-order going into a second clean-up hitter (Dozier). There are some good baserunners in that group, if they can get on base that is.
  10. Taildragger8791
    Gonsalves has had issues with his shoulder off and on that he needs to get right before pushing him up the ladder. Looking at Bob's report it's pretty clear his velocity is down a little, which is concerning but also suggests he isn't going all-out yet. I doubt he'll be stuck at AA long if he's dominating. There are hints that he's getting by against less advanced hitters despite spotty control and not having overpowering stuff, partly due to his advanced changeup which hitters aren't used to seeing at those levels. He was putting almost as many guys on base via walk as he did via hits. I think they just want to see him make some progress on that so he doesn't get destroyed in the majors (see: Berrios, Jose). And on top of all that, there really isn't that big of a jump between AA and AAA like there is between A and AA or AAA and MLB. The hitters there won't generally be that much more talented, just more experienced. So starting at AA and moving to AAA after a month or so isn't going to hold him back.
  11. Taildragger8791
    See it a lot with football teams with a coach who thinks "the name on the front of the jersey is more important than the one on the back."
  12. Taildragger8791
    Danny is that guy at the office that everyone knows is terrible at his job but at the same time has somehow made himself indispensable.
  13. Taildragger8791
    As if it was even a competition when to pit Hicks against a 6-foot-7 275-lb slugger with the name "Judge".
  14. Taildragger8791
    I think of a little under .200 reasons why JRM wasn't entrusted with the backup role. The backup catcher spot is pretty far down the list of reasons this opening day roster confuses me. I'll wait to get too riled up until games are played and we see how the roster shakes out over the first month. But I also don't buy into the idea that the opening day roster doesn't matter. As we found out last year the games count in the first week as much as they do in the last week. I'm going to be seriously disappointed if we start out losing big with a bunch of uncompetitive games, ending yet another season before April is over.
  15. Taildragger8791
    Alex Meyer, the one with a 7.20 ERA and 2.20 WHIP in spring training for the Angels this year? That Alex Meyer?
  16. Taildragger8791
    Arcia's problems had nothing to do with being sent down/up. The dude is a thick-skulled knucklehead who stubbornly believes that the only plate approach that matters is swinging hard enough at every pitch to throw his back out every year. He seems like a good guy and teammate, but proved to be incapable of learning the finer points of the game required to be successful in the majors. Vargas isn't at all like that, I think he just doesn't have the requisite contact skills for his role. He has a decent plate approach and will draw walks when his pitches aren't there, which is good. But he's a bit of a guesser and a mistake hitter. He only hit .200/.292/.400/.692 with a 35% strikeout rate in 41 games after the all star break last year. That's brutal production out of your designated hitter. Vargas is going to get extended run in Minnesota this year so starting in AAA shouldn't be a big deal. There will be plenty of at-bats to go around between Mauer, Park, and Vargas for the DH/1B roles. But for now he hasn't done enough to displace Mauer or beat out Park for the everyday job.
  17. Taildragger8791
    While I'm encouraged with Gibson's spring I'm also hesitant to get too excited since he's a bit of a spring queen. His ERA is 2.52 since 2014 in spring training. As we know his regular season ERA is nearly double that, so I'm trying not to get my hopes up too much yet until I see his new approach working in April or later. But maybe that's just the abused Minnesota fan in me that is scared to have good feelings about anything lest they be yanked away in the most painful way possible.
  18. Taildragger8791
    This is true. I also think part of the reason we see players coming up and performing at younger ages has to do with the amount of training and focus kids put on their sport of choice these days. Not to mention the number of teams they can play on nowadays. An 18-year old with pro prospects can be so much more developed than he would have been 20+ years ago.
  19. Taildragger8791
    Dominating AAA doesn't prove MLB readiness by itself. They aren't sending him back there to make him dominate AAA some more. They're sending him back there to work on the root cause of his severe struggles he encountered trying to pitch to actual MLB hitting. He's proven that he can't hang with MLB hitters right now. Where do you draw the line on a young pitcher with regards to letting them work through struggles or sending them back to the minors with things to work on? 7.00+ ERA? 10.00 ERA+? You have to draw a line somewhere. He's already north of 8.00 in MLB and didn't show any improvement in camp or the WBC. Why would you run him out there again before having confidence that he's made an effective adjustment? The guy is young and he's an extremely hard worker. He'll get there but you have to have patience. It's perfectly okay to give him a controlled environment to get comfortable with his mechanical adjustments before throwing him out there against the best competition in the world again. Trying to do that at the MLB level while getting utterly hammered and knocked out of the game after 3 innings isn't going to be very productive.
  20. Taildragger8791
    Thanks for sharing, that was interesting. What was with the overly dramatic music and tone in the video? Yeesh. I felt like I was watching a seriously tragic documentary or something.
  21. Taildragger8791
    It's all relative. For some teams their top pitching prospect is a can't-miss stud who would never put himself in a position to be blocked by marginal back-end pitchers. For other teams that top pitching prospect is an at-best mid-rotation guy that is mightily struggling to leap from AAA to MLB. When your top pitching prospect is completely and utterly out of his element against major league hitters, and hasn't shown any progress towards competence, then yeah it makes sense to let them develop in the minors where they won't utterly destroy his own and your team's morale.
  22. Taildragger8791
    Okay. I don't know why anyone would be upset at the Twins over this development. Disappointed, sure. I am too. But often times things don't go perfectly and there are little setbacks along the way. That's especially true in baseball.
  23. Taildragger8791
    I'm not sure why anybody is surprised Berrios went to AAA to start the year. It's not like he's being punished or banished. He was dreadful in MLB last year and hasn't shown any proof this spring that he's addressed those root cause of his issues. Even the limited innings he got in WBC were basically a repeat of what we saw last year in Minnesota. If he'd stayed in camp and worked with his coaches in a controlled environment then maybe they'd have worked through those issues a bit and he'd get more of an opportunity. Instead, he'll have to go to AAA to work on it while the Twins use this last week of ST to get the actual rotation candidates set up for Opening Day. There aren't enough innings to keep 7-8 starting pitchers going in this last week. Also, despite what some people think Santiago was in far better shape with regards to innings/pitches thrown. He'll probably throw 75-80 pitches today and has another appearance later this week. He'll easily be ready to throw 100 in his first start of the season.
  24. Taildragger8791
    Agreed. If Sano is healthy this year and doesn't hit at least 30 bombs it'll be a disappointment, especially when you figure there's no chance his strikeout rate drops below 30% or his AVG gets above .260. His game right now is extra base hits and HRs.
  25. Taildragger8791
    I think Stanton is a bit of a frustrating player because of how good he is and how much game-changing ability he has, yet he also goes into prolonged slumps where he's racking up strikeouts in bunches. Kind of like how Dozier was driving us mad with his hot/cold streaks, except our lineup wasn't built entirely around Dozier's power-hitting threat.
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