gunnarthor

So we're moving to the Southern League. They had been the Dodgers AA team for the past few years.

I think most of us, when we are speaking of the type of pitcher, are talking more in the scouting sense. Radke, for example, was a #3 pitcher whose results were better than that. (this is a good article on that) A guy like Harang had some strong seasons and led the league in K once and starts once. But he wasn't really a true #1. Same with Radke. I think May's stuff make him a #3 if it breaks right (one true plus pitch and two avg pitches w/avg command/control or better). And those kind of pitchers (Radke and Hughes probably fit that bill) can have some really good seasons. But May's most important thing, I think, will be his ability to eat innings.

Getting back to the topic - here are some pictures of Stanton's injury and a note on his progress in getting better - http://deadspin.com/giancarlo-stantons-broken-face-is-improving-1635374599

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=24660 Jason Kendell - who was a bit better than you remember - wrote a book about baseball. The reviewer at first seems like he's going to pan the book and Kendell (who is really old school while the reviewer is not). But, surprisingly, the reviewer enjoyed the book. One example of Kendell's gamesman ship was written about - "After a pitcher’s final warm-up pitch, baseball dictates that the catcher fire the ball back to second base, which is almost always half-hearted practice but it’s baseball and that’s just what you do. With a veteran pitcher on the mound and an inattentive umpire, Kendall would intentionally one-hop that throw to the second baseman, so that his pitcher may have a scuffed ball to start the inning." Now I'm going to pay attention to if that ever happens in a Twins game.

I think May is doing more or less as expected. I figured he'd get hit around a bit and have some control issues early - although I didn't guess it would be that bad. But the Twins keep letting him go back out and he's certainly adjusting. (It also didn't help that his first starts were against playoff teams fighting for position). He definitely has some swing and miss stuff when he's on. I always thought a good comp for him was Aaron Harang. Both came up in the age 24 seasons and had some issue with walks but flashed potential. Both have some strike out ability but both are probably more innings eaters than front line guys - but can be very valuable.

Yeah, Rasmus on a one year, make good deal makes a lot of sense. Holds CF down while Hicks and Buxton work in the minors. He still has potential despite some rough seasons. And it lets the Twins find out what they have in Santana at short. That said, by itself it doesn't clean up our problem in LF unless we think Scheffer can hold it down. I also agree that the Twins should be a lot more aggressive on the Cuban free agents.

Yeah, me neither. But Mayo is pretty plugged into FO so Silva might be a guy to watch going forward.

I didn't see this posted on here so I'll post it. Mayo at mlb.com ranked the Twins 21-25 prospects. http://minors.mlblogs.com/2014/09/04/bonus-twins-prospects-nos-21-25/ This is Mayo's intro: "Next up are the Minnesota Twins, one of the organizations I like writing about the most. I’ve long liked the way they go about their business and their system is one of the better ones in baseball. Even with injuries to the top guys, No. 1 overall prospect Byron Buxton and No. 9 Miguel Sano, the Twins have a tremendous amount of potential impact talent. Including Buxton and Sano, the Twins have six players in the top 40 on our Top 100 list, with the addition of Nick Gordon via the 2014 Draft. No. 11 prospect Kennys Vargas just graduated off, meaning No. 21 below is now officially in the Top 20. The 21-25 list is still pretty solid, showing you just how good this system is."

You set up a thread based entirely on "how concerned are you that Dozier has hit one home run since July 22." Most people have pointed out, correctly, that they are not concerned and given their reasons. (You are also wrong by claiming it was home runs that made him a fringe elite player. His on-base ability is much more important in that regard).

Yeah, babip (about .391) has helped him a lot - if his babip was .300 (and not changing anything else), his avg would be about .228. I'm not quite sure what the Twins have in Santana. Part of this reminds me of the Span discussions we had in 07/08. Span came out of nowhere and was pretty darn good. His babip was over .340 for his first two years. But Span also had some pretty good bb/k ratios. Santana has never shown that skill and will always be reliant on high babip. Santana's not a complete nobody. While he wasn't a top 10 Twins prospect (EDIT: actually, he might have made the backend of a few top 10 lists), he was occasionally mentioned by professional scouting guys as a potential sleeper. Mayo wrote this about Santana in his 2013 write up: "2012 might be the year the Twins look back and say was when Santana became legit. Santana moved slowly through the system, including parts of two seasons with Beloit in the Midwest League, before advancing up to Fort Myers in 2012. He's played all over the field and looked a bit like an organizational filler type, but really took off, settled in as a regular shortstop and finished second in the organization in hits. Santana has the chance to be a solid Major League hitter, one who has a line-drive swing from both sides of the plate. There's some extra-base pop to come as well, though power isn't likely to be a huge part of his game. His speed and his defense will be, however. A plus runner, he's still learning how to use that to his advantage on the basepaths and it helps give him outstanding range. He has great hands and a plus arm, giving him every opportunity to be an everyday shortstop at the big league level." Obviously, he's earned his chance to get an extended run as a starter and I think he'll get another 500+ AB next year between CF and short. He's on pace this year for about 5 WAR over a full year, (if you like WAR), so even if he comes back to earth, he has some room.

I think Santana will start in CF again and then take over SS after Hicks is called up in May/June.

I wonder if that has something do with where he's hitting (1 or 2) and/or if who is hitting behind him has any impact?

Nobody's accusing you of any sin. Most people understand that home runs aren't hit on a schedule. Most hitters have hot and cold months so judging how a player is doing solely on home runs isn't a good way of evaluating how well the player is doing.

His babip is really irrelevant. The sample size is so small that it's nearly worthless. His babip in August was .326, in July it was .253. Do you know how much that difference equated to? 6 hits. Take away those six hits and he still had about a .370 OBP for August. The reason most of us aren't worried about Dozier's non-home runs is because he's still getting on base at a great rate - it isn't babip driven. In July, he walked 3 times and struck out 23, in August he walked 25 times and struck out only 18. The only month he's been a low .700s OPS guy was July. And it's not like his power has completely disappeared. His ISO % by month: April - .227 May - .158 June - .179 July - .190 August - .141 All of those numbers are very good.

How about we leave it at this - you are undervaluing on-base and over valuing slugging percentage? His OPS by month - April - .791 May - .729 June - .800 July - .682 August - .834 September - .440 His best month, OPS-wise, was August.

Cripes, he's a 5 WAR player. It's not like he was a high level pick or a high rated prospect. He's doing great. Every single player has home run droughts - he wasn't going to hit 30+. As pointed out, while he's been in his home run funk, he's still managed to get on-base at a very high rate. This is a very good player.

I think we got the #5 pick nailed down at this point.

Of all the things to be concerned about, that's pretty low. In that time frame, he's walked 31 times and struck out 32. His OBP is .364. He'll run into the occasional homer but he's pretty pull happy to get it there.

http://deadspin.com/the-nfl-finally-explains-why-it-suspended-ray-rice-inde-1634008557 This is odd. I think we can all agree that Ray Rice's actions were beyond horrible, that domestic violence is a real problem that shouldn't be made light of and the NFL's first suspension of him was tone deaf and appalling. But the NFL still has to follow rules when it suspends someone and had to come up with a reason to change Rice's suspension from 2 games to "indefinitely." I assumed they'd do it based on his actions in the elevator but that doesn't seem to be the basis. From the article, "It appears that the NFL's official stance for changing its Rice punishment (and completely ignoring its "new" domestic violence policy) is that Rice lied to Roger Goodell and other league bigwigs in his description of what happened in that elevator." So the longer suspension isn't based on the DV but rather for the video showing "starkly different" version of events than what Rice told the NFL. Essentially, the NFL is saying Rice lied about what happened in the elevator when he talked to them, although all accounts seem to indicate that Rice had been forthcoming about that. As the article says, "Thus, the NFL is retroactively claiming that the reason it came down with a universally-derided two-game suspension in the first place is that it ignored hard evidence in favor of a first-person account given by the person accused of committing domestic violence. This is the league's actual excuse!" So now the NFLPA could file a strong appeal on his behalf (and here the MLBPA and NFLPA are pretty much complete opposites in terms of ability to stick up and fight for their members). From the article - "The NFLPA, which as far as we can tell is run by a guy who is actually Roger Goodell in a wig, has three days to file an appeal. Rice appears to already be laying the groundwork for that appeal, with "four sources close to Rice" telling ESPN that he "told the full truth to Goodell." Earlier this week, by the way, Ravens executives said Rice's description of the incident to them was exactly what the video showed." Roger Goodell makes 44 million a year.

http://m.mlb.com/video/topic/11493214/v36174175/must-c-clips-stanton-hit-in-face-benches-clear Hopefully the link works - it's from mlb.com. Also, it's not pretty. Stanton was hit be a fastball square in the face, sorta like Kirby. He's almost certainly out for the season. Early tweets say he has some facial fractures as well. http://deadspin.com/giancarlo-stanton-removed-on-stretcher-after-fastball-t-1633816961

And has been stated previously, Dougie Baseball was punished for his actions.

You are the one that called being hit by a baseball an "assault", not me. A big guy throws a baseball inches away from a hitter on every play. The possibility for violence in baseball is a natural part of the game unless you only think of violence as tackling or punching. You somehow think that baseball fights are a violent, end of society, criminal acts while ignoring the more common, more violent and just as illegal violent acts in football. All sports police those actions in some manner and yet you (and Boom Boom) have called for criminal investigations of baseball players and/or players getting fired for baseball fights and excuse football players for doing what is part of the game. That's what is silly about these discussions. I pointed out that Captain Munnerlyn threw a defenseless receiver out of bounds last week. Here's video of him grabbing Percy Harvin's facemask 10 yards out of bounds and twisting and then throwing haymakers. Clearly, this guy is a dangerous guy but "boys will be boys" in one sport and criminal acts happen in another sport. Should I bring up some clips of hockey players swinging sticks at each others heads? But baseball is the problem sport. As to the rivalries, you're still being pretty selective. The Red Sox/Yankees were already an extremely big rivalry prior to the 3-0 comeback - in large part the rivalry was created by Red Sox pitchers showing they weren't scared of the Yankees by constantly hitting Yankee hitters. This is true - every series between the teams in 2002, the Red Sox hit at least one Yankee batter - Pedro was the primary combatant. And they did it again in 2004. Sure, extra curricular stuff (as the Munnerlyn stuff was described) is rarely the only part of a rivalry but it's always a big part.

Obviously, Scherzer is the dream but I don't think the Twins will sign him. Of the top four, Shields makes some sense since I think he feels the most like a "Twins pitcher." But the reality is that most pitchers aren't that good in their mid-to-late 30s and Ryan isn't going to make that kind of commitment. I still think Ryan somehow trades Nolasco this offseason, signs another Correa like pitcher and goes with a rotation of Hughes, Gibson, Milone, May, FA/Meyer out of ST.

Kind of a rough year for our hitters. Vargas might be something but I think the rest of the top 6 are all bench type, avg starters at best and many probably don't get past AA. Bummer.

I agree that the fight is a bad reason to think he'd be a good manager. I think he'll be the next Twins manager but it has nothing to do with the fight. I think the FO likes his ability to win while developing young players and, like Gardy, he came up with a lot of the young guys.