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gunnarthor

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Everything posted by gunnarthor

  1. gunnarthor
    So Trump has vocally hammered Amazon, which I'm sure his kids shorted beforehand. Trade war with China is increasing and the Dow has dropped 5% in less than a month. Probably not the economy the GOP wants going into election season.
  2. gunnarthor
    This will be a really exciting team to watch. Nice write up!
  3. gunnarthor
    Twins Record: 92-70 (1st AL Central) Offensive Player of the Year: Sano Most Home Runs: Sano Starting Pitcher of the Year: Jose Berrios Relief Pitcher of the Year: Addison Reed Twins Rookie of the Year: Curtiss
  4. gunnarthor
    In fairness, Cleveland was third in runs, we were fourth. They outscored us by 3 runs. They were third in wRC+, we were fourth. They were second in wOBA, we were fourth. It's not exactly the impossible hill to climb to be better than them without much going right, frankly. (Not sure how park factors play into this but it's probably not much since both teams have been, more or less, constructed for their home parks).
  5. gunnarthor
    Originally I was going to mention Lindor (easily my favorite non-Twin since Ichiro) but I didn't want to jinx it. He's pretty good.
  6. gunnarthor
    This season sort of has a 2002-2004 feel. Every year we read about how the Twins weren't as good as either Cleveland or Chicago (and sometimes both). The Twins are young but they have some solid vets and no major weakness (save maybe manager). I think the Twins have a very real argument for the best player in the division if Buxton plays like I expect him to and I think their offense will be top 3 overall. Cleveland has been great two years in a row but I really do think they'll have a bad year. They've played an awfully lot of games the last two years and finished with absolute Viking-level gut punches in both post-seasons. I just think that puts a toll on a team. If Buxton and Kepler and Berrios make the strides that we expect them to, we're pretty good. (Of course, the Twins do have a chance of another 2016 disaster season. You can easily see a scenario where Buxton presses in April/May, Kepler doesn't improve, Sano/Rosario go to the DL, the fip of Ordozzi/Lynn/Santana catches up to them, Mauer falls off the cliff, Molitor does Molitor things, the FO folds early and trades away Dozier, Lynn, Morrison etc. But **** that. It's nearly opening day so be hopeful).
  7. gunnarthor
    I dunno dude. I'm not sure why we would think Rosario went from a major plus defender in 2015 to a disaster in 2017. The main difference is that Rosario isn't covering as much range now as he did in 2015 but that's because Buxton is the full time CFer now as opposed to Hicks and Robinson then. In any event, Rosario is a pretty fast guy with a strong arm so I don't think we need to overly worry about one year's sample of defensive metrics. I'm fairly confident we'll have a strong OF in part because Rosario is out there.
  8. gunnarthor
    Take those numbers with a huge grain of salt. If you believe them, those suggest that Rosario was a worse LFer than guys like Willingham and Young. Clearly not true. The reality is that defensive stats aren't that accurate yet - in both measurement and value. A few years ago, hardball times wrote about the problem of defensive metrics in OF that have three strong fielders. They noted that in OF with a very strong CFer, (they looked at Jim Edmonds impact on Pujols and Drew as one example) one or both corner OFers would get dinged more than they should. I'd bet that's what's happening here. Rosario generally looks good in the OF. He's certainly not at the level of Hammer or Delmon.
  9. gunnarthor
    I'm probably ready for Kepler to be a platoon but if the Twins want to give him a bit more time (or trade him away), that's ok. I just don't think he's going to get it against lefties and maybe Granite or Wade could eventually be a better fit + whatever the trade piece is. I love Rosario and Buxton. I've said many times that I think Buxton will be an all-star this year but Rosario is really underrated. His bat really makes our lineup deeper.
  10. gunnarthor
    The Twins have nice depth so they should be ok. The offense will lead them so the pitchers just have to be adequate and they look like they can pull that off. If Lynn or Ordozzi fail, we have Romero (who I like a lot) in the wings as well. It'll also be fun to watch how Thorpe handles AA hitters. He's close and has some big upside.
  11. gunnarthor
    If Morrison's break out last year is legit, than our offense is going to be very, very good. I like Diaz in the minors more than most but he's a long way away. Rooker will get DH at-bats at some point as well.
  12. gunnarthor
    I honestly didn't think he'd get suspended for a number of reasons. But I'm glad it's over and hopefully everyone can move forward and hope he leads the league in home runs.
  13. gunnarthor
    So who had a good stock day today? No one? Thought so.
  14. gunnarthor
    The sample size is too small to say really anything.
  15. gunnarthor
    Not a huge deal since April rosters are rarely the best 25 players. What's the plan with Duffey - is he a starter? Swingman? Reliever? It'll be interesting to see how the play him in AAA.
  16. gunnarthor
    Is that from last year or how he's predicted to be this year? I think Mauer is firmly in that third tier of first baseman now but another .390 obp year is good enough with the rest of the offense around him.
  17. gunnarthor
    Here's a bunch - AL Central final standings: Twins 92-60 Tigers 81-81 Cleveland 80-82 Royals 68-94 White Sox 62-100 I think the Twins have three all-stars - Buxton, Sano and Dozier. Rodney finishes #3 in saves but no one trusts him in the post-season Buxton finishes top 5 in MVP voting. Sano finishes top 5 in HR. Sano, Morrison, Dozier all top 35 HR Kepler is traded as part of a package for Archer during the season. Kiriloff is minor league comeback player of the year. Baddoo has a huge jump in prospect rankings. Twins draft Tristen Pompey in the first round.
  18. gunnarthor
    Again, Nick is the one that is suggesting that "people are cheating but it's not fair for the DR players because they aren't as good at cheating." I certainly never made that claim. As for the claims you're hyping, yes, I think we've seen with BALCO and a few other large scale doping like Biogenisis that America is far ahead of the DR in terms of places where players can get masking agents and designer PEDs. A disproportionate number of PED suspensions in baseball have been of Domincan ball players. There could be several reasons for that but very likely one of them is that they are not getting the highest level PEDs in the DR. Yes, MLB's testing procedure is a joke unless you think only about 20 or so players have been using PEDs since 2014. The NFL, in the same time frame, has caught many more players despite having a less rigorous testing plan. The reason for such an ineffectual plan is either mlb is incompetent or that the league wants the good PR of drug testing without actually getting PEDs out of the game. Or, I suppose, you can believe that players policed PEDs out of the game themselves. I'm not sure where you think I said no one thinks the players are to blame. I've pointed out that they are not the only ones to blame. A bit of a difference there, chief.
  19. gunnarthor
    If you wanted to, you could build quite a few bricks with all the straw men you created there.
  20. gunnarthor
    I think the masking agents in DR aren't as good as the agents the players in the US are using.
  21. gunnarthor
    The penalties are unfair and the testing is a joke. MLB has set up a system that will catch a handful of players a year while letting most get through so fans can pretend that PED use isn't still part of the game. According to wikipedia's list, only 19 ML players have been caught since the renegotiated system in 2014. I'm not sure if 19 is the exact number but it feels right. I'm pretty confident a lot more than 19 ML have been using PEDs in that time frame. Masking agents have improved greatly which is allowing athletes to use more and better drugs. We've seen that in the Olympics (where Russia essentially put all their athletes on something), we've seen it in chess, football, horse racing. But, yeah, baseball is super duper clean. Baseball teams are investing millions to figure out how to have players perform better are completely ignoring drug use b/c AJ Preller and Thad Levine are virtuous guys.
  22. gunnarthor
    You're missing the point. The player and the team both want the same thing. They want the player to use PEDs. If teams didn't want this, there are concrete actions they could take to stop it. This isn't "babysitting." It's an investment.
  23. gunnarthor
    I'm not even sure what that means unless you're suggesting players aren't roiding as much as 10 years ago which of course you have no evidence for.
  24. gunnarthor
    Poor multi-billion dollar owners. If only they could have done something about the PED problem in the sport. Oh, wait. They created a system that completely blames the players and gets fans to side with them. Great job, victims! If you think baseball teams are ignorant of the PED use, fine. There isn't a lot of concrete data out there but we have several examples of the Yankee and Red Sox front offices knowing of PED use among players on their team and on other teams. I'm sure as front offices have gotten smarter, they've decided not to keep tabs on those sorts of things. The Twins could easily set up their own training compound in the DR and fill it with their own trainers/medical people/dietitians if they wanted. Teams didn't do this at the height of the PED era for a reason. They wanted plausible deniability. They aren't doing this now for the same reason. They want the benefits that the drugs can give their players to help the team.
  25. gunnarthor
    I hope that the players will insist that PED penalties affect both the player and the team in the next round of the CBA - even if it's just making the lost salary get donated to charity instead of staying in the owners pockets. And no one is saying Polanco shouldn't be blamed. But he's not the only one who should get blamed. MLB has created a system that pushes PED use. The Mitchell Report even said that. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that both sides - not just one - should be penalized. The Twins knew (or should have known) who their players are training with in the off season. And they also knew (or should have known) where these guys are training and the risks that might create.
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