Sam Morley

knowing what pitch is coming is a much greater advantage than the benefits of PEDs. I can't think of a bigger advantage a hitter could have. the punishments are ridiculous. the competitors should take advantage of the tools at their disposal. 'here guys, have all this tech- all these cameras, and this video, and these monitors, and these computers- use it all, but morally police yourselves on how.' get rid of video. no video for "player development". no video for in-game scouting. no video for review. no video for sign stealing. you can have post game access to the TV broadcast video that everyone else gets. you can take video in practice for development purposes. take the damn headsets of, get out of the video room, quit with the fussing and nitpicking, and play the game on the field. we've seen the game on juice- it was very interesting and also entertaining. I'm glad we saw it. I'm also glad that era is probably over. It wasn't pure human competition. now we've seen the game on tech- it's also very interesting and entertaining. at home, we probably all feel more included in the game than ever before. we get to make and discuss all this analysis- we get to feel like we know more about the game than people who have been in it at the highest level their whole lives because we can process some metrics they don't give a rip about. I'm glad for it, I've enjoyed it. I hope it's just another era of the history of the game coming to it's end. I want the game on the field, played by the best in the world, without the tech, without the over analysis, without the second guessing.

We aren't really going to know anything about the Falvey/Lavine team until the org's current top prospects come to fruition. My feeling is that the Twins have had a history of bungling the development of their most talented prospects. That paired with an inability/unwillingness to build the team in the offseason makes for a pretty impotent on field product. The team's success usually relies on a core of under the radar prospects who over achieve and establish themselves as solid big leaguers (Kepler, Polanco, Rosario, Garver, Dozier, Plouffe...) Of course, we're always wondering about regression and how long their success will last and whether we should try to trade them. If our prospects with the highest ceilings were being managed and developed to their potential, we wouldn't even be having this conversation about signing old guys in the off season. We'd be clamoring for extensions for our own stars. Berrios, Buxton, Sano- all enourmous talent/potential dramatically underachieving. Maybe Falvey and Lavine do not bear the full weight of those players' shortcomings. So, we will have to wait and see what becomes of Lewis, Kirilloff, and Graterol. I don't know what the problem is. I don't know what the answer is. I know that successful teams don't mess up their studs. My feeling in the past has been that the likes of TK, Gardy, TR, and Molitor were always trying to turn guys with buckets of talent into guys with limited talent who have to poke, and scrape, and hustle extra hard. It seems like the new guys could be a departure from that, including Baldelli, and that seems so much more important to me than what they can fanagle in the free agent market, especially given payroll restrictions.

Have to wonder how things would've turned out for Arcia under different management.

I don't understand why any team would be interested in this kind of acquisition. When you have a minor league system full of young players that you have scouted and developed, and know pretty intimately why would you sign someone who is older and about whom you have very little knowledge- and one of things you do know is that he has a fastball in the low 90s? These guys put up decent standard stats (with no analytical peripherals available) in leagues no one seems to have a bead on how to compare competitively to leagues in the States (is the Japanese league comparable to triple A or whatever the league is that the Saints play in?), and then they require a major league contract and roster spot. I don't care at all about the money. But the 20 lousy-mediocre starts it takes to find out he's at best not any better than Thorpe/Smeltzer/whoever is a huge loss for a competitive team. The Twins should be looking to sign starting pitchers/any player with the least amount of risk of not improving the team. A list pitcher types ranked starting with the least amount of risk of not improving the team: 1. Proven veteran Ace under 30 years old with immediate recent success 2. Proven veteran Ace over 30 years old with immediate recent success 3. Proven veteran Ace with relative diminished recent success 4. Solid veteran 2-3 with relative recent success 5. Unproven promising high ceiling young guy with recent Minor league/early MLB success 6. Any of the above (formerly) returning from recent injury with promising recovery expectations 7. Guy from Japan/Korean/Taiwanese/Cuban pro leagues absolutely dominating their league (ie Ohtani) 8. Solid veteran 4-5 with relative recent success and former 1-2-3 relative success 9. Minor league high ranked prospects in own system knocking on door 10. Minor league high ranked prospects in someone else's system knocking on door 11. Minor league low-non ranked prospects in own system knocking on door 12. Guy with former MLB success most recently pitching for an indy league team and dominating 13. Guy from Japan/Korean/Taiwanese/Cuban pro leagues with recent relative success 14. Guy from indy league with no MLB experience recently dominating I'd say Yamaguchi fits squarely in to #13 and should be a hard pass for any team with serious playoff aspirations in 2020. If you could sign him and put him at AA or AAA and see what happens, that seems great.

Dobs is a reliever. You can tell by his goose gossage mustache and antoine carr oakleys. Let the back-of-head hair flow long out the bottom of your cap, figure out your favorite Metallica/Megadeath song, heat up that straight-ball a few ticks, and go to your home.

Mike Moustakas is the purest Brewer since Jeremy Burnitz. I don't know how that fan base will cope if he doesn't resign in Wisconsin.

LaTroy Hawkins calling Dick Bremer "Richard" is the best thing there is in the Twins TV booth all season.

"Many times watching the Twins and MLB in general is an exercise in cognitive dissonance. I want the team to do well, but I can’t cheer for some players." Yep. Like it.

Right. The OP is pretty good too. I had to reread it to get back on track. So we like Rosario, but we are afraid arbitrators will over value him based on baseball card numbers, pricing him out of a fair extension offer, thus depriving the team of the value that he does provide and us from watching him provide it. So should we find a trade partner in anticipation of this over valuation, or should we brace ourselves for the inevitability of having to let him go because of it, and attempt to assuage our disappointment with hopes for prospect realization and tales that he isn't really that good anyway? Well, I say The money is arbitrary and its not mine, so pay the man! Twins. Get to know 'em

Right. He'd be Yelich or Trout if he was able to be a little more selective. The approach you described is the perfect approach, and if a player with Rosario's natural talent can apply, he's the best player in the league. I don't think it's fair to ask him to be the best baseball player in the world, in order for us to appropriately value his contribution to the team. Of course a batter ideally wants to be aggressive on pitches in the strike zone, and passive on pitches out of the strike zone. But a batter doesn't know whether the pitch is going to be in or out of the strike zone, and he has a tiny amount of 'time" to "recognize" its type and potential location as it's being delivered. Some batters are good at using information to guess what pitch is coming. Some batters are good at recognition and reaction in the moment. Some batters can just put the bat on the ball. Because batting is so complicated and so many different combination of things can happen in a plate appearance (in a series of plate appearances, for that matter) a strategy is often to simplify. One example of simplifying is never swinging at the first pitch. Another is to only swing at fastballs. Another is swing at just about everything. In each example, some consistency of application is necessary for the simplification to work. If you always take the first pitch, you accept that many first pitches will be called strikes, but you are prepared to capitalize on the ones that are not and enjoy the benefits of being ahead in the count. If you only swing at fastballs, many breaking balls will be thrown for called strikes, but you are playing the odds that at some point you will get a fastball and that by disregarding the breaking balls you will be more ready to damage the fastball. If your strategy is to swing at everything, you accept that many times you will look foolish swinging at pitches out of the zone, and often working from behind in the count, but you are ensuring that when a good pitch to hit is thrown you will not miss it and you are playing the odds that it happens 3-4 out of 10 times. Oversimplifying leads to exposure. Adjustment is usually needed to stick around, and then balance learned from experience. It doesn't really seem like Rosario is trying to adjust or find any balance. It seems like he is forcing his will on pitchers and continuing to produce despite what should be obvious ways to expose a batter with his approach. Which is amazing. The Twins 2019 offense was amazing, and Eddie was right in the middle of it. After decades of power impotence, the Twins finally have a lineup of crushers and the guy everyone is going gaga over is a slow running, slap hitting 2nd baseman because he has a good eye. Unbelievable. The most prolific offense in franchise history. The best record in franchise history. And no seriously helpful moves at the deadline. Put the same lineup on the field. Sign the best 2 or 3 starters on the market. Forget the bullpen- it's a roll of the dice anyway. If room needs to be made for Kiriloff, Larnach, or Lewis, maybe keep an eye on the 40 year old DH, the perpetually injured CF, or the fluky, limited 2B.

RBIs count. They are, as is every statistic, opportunistic. Aside from the rare bases loaded walk/HBP, you can't get RBIs unless you swing the bat. Kepler, Polanco, and Cruz, often hit in front of Rosario, and often in that order. They all have good OBP, all higher than Rosario's. Scenario: Kepler draws a walk to lead off. Polanco hits a weak ground ball, getting thrown out but advancing Kepler to second. Cruz strikes out. Rosario hits a single. Kepler scores. Sano Strikes out. Inning over, RUN SCORED. Flip Kepler and Rosario- same scenario, same individual production for each player. Rosario singles, advances on Polonco's out. Cruz Ks. Kepler walks. Sano Ks. Inning over, NO RUN SCORED. It's just one scenario, right. But it exemplifies the value of the single in comparison to the walk depending on lineup construction. The best a walk can be is equal to a single, but often, a single is far greater than a walk. Kepler's walk total is comparable to Rosario's singles total. If Rosario traded 20 of his singles for 30 walks, it would be a significant bump to his OBP, but his RBI total goes down, probably under 100. Taking a walk when given it, and having a measured, consistent approach to batting are valuable to a team's success, undoubtedly. These are not a part of Rosario's game. Everyone crushed Mauer, wrongly, for the duration of his career for being one of the best ever at practicing such an approach. He got crushed for not being willing to guess or expand or surprise. Mauer is an all-time Twins great, but he wasn't willing (in his approach to batting) to take a risk or a chance to be a hero. He wasn't willing to gamble on his own natural ability as a hitter in favor of doing the right thing as a batter. I'm a fan of Joe. I loved watching him play. I wish he was in the dugout/on the field for the 2019 run. But, there were many times when I was ready to lose my mind watching Joe take a walk with a runner on when we needed an RBI. And that doesn't mean he was wrong. It does mean I'm happy to have Eddie up there going after that RBI, even when he ends up looking like a fool. It's pretty hard to strike a balance between patience and aggression. I mean, they are pretty antonymous. Most guys are going to sacrifice a fair bit of one for the other. The guys that have it balanced, the best of both, are Mike Trout. So if Rosario could add 20 walks to his 2019 total, without losing any singles, he'd be even higher on that list of MVP candidates, he'd be a lot closer to Mike Trout.

I'm a fan of Rosario. I think he's probably my favorite player on the team. I hope they extend him. Of the Twins outfielders, I think Rosario has been the most productive over the last three seasons: Byron Buxton: G- 255 R- 125 RBI- 101 HR- 26 BA- .245 Max Kepler: G- 437 R- 245 RBI- 217 HR- 75 BA- .239 Eddie Rosario: G- 426 R- 257 RBI- 264 HR- 83 BA- .284 The fangraphs 2020 projections have Kepler and Rosario nearly identical, with the exception of BA and BB rate. But when you add their hits and walks they both come out around 200. It seems like many commenters are placing a high value on plate discipline and on base percentage, which generally equates to more walks and fewer hits, (evidently the case with Rosario and Kepler). They both hit a comparable amount of extra base hits; the difference is that Rosario hits more singles, and Kepler draws more walks. So which is more valuable, the walk or the single? It depends on the percentage of those singles that come with runners on base or runners in scoring position. If the amount of times that you are on base is comparable, then your opportunity to score is comparable. But if the way you arrived on base is by hit, rather than walk, you have a higher chance of having driven in a run. So, to me, all other things equal, the natural hitter is more valuable than the plate discipline guy. Obviously a plate discipline guy helps run up the pitch count, and free swinger is prone to a quick out. So that's a point for the plate discipline guy. Frankly, the more I talk about it, the more I think you need both types, and the Twins had a nice balance and maybe that's why they were so good.

The takeaway quote from the article for me is, "A lot of people are going to a lot of baseball games."

THIS

Bob Gibson would probably deliberately harm a fellow baseball player

I'm just in on the thread now, so I haven't read the 79 some previous pages of comments. But, I assume I'm about to beat a dead horse. This game was horribly managed. Good on Arraez for being willing, but he probably cost the game. Couldn't get to the pop up; couldn't beat out the back end of that DP; didn't cover 2nd on the Encarnacion "2b"; Threw the inning ending DP turn into the dirt. Should not have been in the lineup, especially with Schopp on the bench. Obviously Arraez has meant a lot to the team, but even healthy, he is a one tool player. The one tool is valuable in our lineup, but it's also valuable coming off the bench as a pinch hitter late in a close game. Pulling Berrios was questionable. Pulling Berrios for Littell was abominable. Littell should be pitching with a 6 run deficit, not ever with a tie game. No matter what is going on, your best starting pitcher is better the third time through the lineup than your worst reliever on his first. Duffey almost bailed him out, at least kept us in the game. Stashak?!?! The other AAAA guy?!? Maybe Rocco is just playing the long game and getting the young, marginal bullpen guys some playoff experience for when we make our playoff run in a couple seasons. oh, wait, aren't we in the playoffs now?

I didn't read this yet, but the answer to the question title is: no.

I think you better... "Twins Daily commenter bullied by other Twins Daily commenters for homemade jersey receives season tickets from Twins and authentic autographed Thad Motter jersey."

Puig was giving 100%. He was 100% engaged in that AB, physically, mentally, emotionally. That's why he reacted the way he did. He was pissed. If he didn't care, he would've jogged it out, but he was furious. His teamates know it. His manager knows it. Giving 100% is laying out for a ball on the track; it's going first to third on a single and going into third headfirst; it's battling hard for a hit in every AB. That's who Puig is. That's why he didn't get pulled for lack of hustle, and why he never will. As for those in this thread who have a different opinion of what hustle and giving 100% are about, you have a valid opinion. It's different from mine, but I don't have a problem with it. As for the fans who booed Puig the other night: Fans are stupid. They're also at least a touch racis… ahh, well... Go Twins!

A team reliant on Mike Pineda for success in the post season has no chance in the post season anyway.

I meant by "appears" is that he pitches well enough by combination of stuff and experience to get out AAA hitters and put up good stats. He could be good enough to get AAA hitter out but not good enough to get MLB hitters out. I hope you're right. You probably are. I still don't think any of the scenarios are implausible, maybe unlikely, but not out of the question or even without precedent. It seems possible to me, that whether or not he is "fixed" (which is just a muddy a term in this context as "appears" was in mine) he will be given an opportunity because of his past success and because of his relationship with Falvey in Cleveland, not to mention the state/performance of the current bullpen. Those are good reasons. It seems worth the risk to me. It is not without risk.

Hypothetical Scenario: He appears to pitch great at AAA. He gets called up. He stinks and costs the Twins games. Hypothetical Scenario 2: He doesn't even pitch well at AAA. He gets called up anyway because of cognitive dissonance. He stinks and costs the Twins games. Hypothetical Scenario 3: He pitches great at AAA. He gets called up. He pitches fine, maybe even well, for a while. The FO thinks the bullpen problems are solved and don't acquire an actually good relief pitcher. After it's too late to do anything about, maybe in the postseason even, he stinks and costs the Twins games and maybe even the season. Those are three realistic scenarios. I'm not saying they are likely. I'm not saying I think it was a bad signing. People are saying there is no risk. I'm pointing out that there is. The risk is that he performs badly and costs games and takes the roster spot of someone who might've performed well.

The risk is that he stinks and that he costs 2, 3, or 4... games before the Twins move on. Maybe the Twins can afford that. Maybe it's worth the risk; it probably is. But there is definitely a risk.

Miguel Sano is a very good player. He's a very good hitter and a very good third baseman; today. I think he's probably going to get better. I think he'll probably have several all-star caliber seasons. One determining factor will be whether he can avoid injury or not. Another factor is whether he is motivated to be his best and maintains his optimal performing fitness. Maybe those two factors are connected. I don't feel very confident about him being succesful in either factor. I think avoidance of injury can be connected to both luck and maintainance of fitness. I think maintainance of fitness is connected to work ethic. I think work ethic is connect to character. I doubt his character. I doubt his work ethic. I doubt his ability/willingness to maintain fitness. I doubt the likelihood of his avoiding injury. I think his pure athletic ability could carry him through a lot, along with some good fortune. I was a huge Sano fan. Like most TD members, I followed his career from signing- probably on a daily basis through the minor leagues. I don't think I had ever been as excited for a prospect to arrive at the Twins, as I was for Sano. In my mind, he was a superstar before he arrived. What a player does on the field is obviously the biggest factor in their level of popularity and recognition, whether or not they reach star status or superstar status or whatever. But what (ASIDE: as I type this, Sano just hit a bomb to right center in whatever the Tigers' stadium is called now) a player does off the field also impacts their popularity and stardom. There's nothing Sano can do on the field that will erase, for me, the wrongness of what he was accused of. Even If there were anything he could do off the field to make up for it, he won't. If he did what he was accused of, he did it because he thought he would get away with it. And he did. The league, the team, and the fans let him off the hook. I began by saying that I think Sano is good and that I think he will get better. I think this because of his talent, and despite his repeatedly demonstrated poor character. But I think that a case can be made that because of his poor character, he will not get better. He will stay the same or get worse. In which case, a reasonable action would be to move him. Therefore, I don't think the premise of this article is as bad as most of the posters in the thread do. Otherwise, in order of preference, I suggest: Cut him and sign Mauer Cut him Trade him Mandate attendance of sexual violence awareness classes indefinitely That's just me though, and my opinion is pretty disconnected from his performance. (Though, his long term performance may be connected to his quality of character, which I estimate to be poor).

Sano was cleared of all accusations? When? By whom?