LJHoes

And over the past 9 years, they have a .495 winning percentage, with 1 post season appearence (thanks to a Jim Thome homer). The same period of time shows the Twins to have a .485 WP, and 3 post season entries. Since 2006, the Sox have yet to post consecutive winning seasons. I don't think the Twins want to go about emulating that.

Baseball is a game. It might feel like more, but it's just not. If your local team is causing you angst, just step away.

So don't. It isn't really a good comparison, it's just a snarky poll. Joe was far better last year than Torii in many measures. And it was a down year for Joe.

This guy is just making stuff up now. The rotation needs 'veteran leadership?' Who's the source? A packet of ketchup? They have plenty of Veteran presence in the rotation. But beyond that, Vogelsong has barly more MLB experience than Hughes or Nolasco. If they're in on him, it's because they think he's good. That's a different debate, of course. But this is spurious reporting at best. So much so that MLBTR has ignored it all day.

It's absolutely hilarious to watch a bunch of anonymous commenters go on and on about how a pro athlete should have responded to someone who was basically dissing him and the team. His questions reeked of 'isn't it true that you're toxic and the only reason you signed here is because you're not viable anywhere else because you're a jerk?' He saw Berardino as a prick and told him so, repeatedly. Then everyone sits around and talks about it like it matters at all. The hilarious part was it was a prick move. It was a gotcha-question meant to get a stupid response from a fiery guy. It wasn't meant to discuss the underlying bigotry in Torii. It was meant as a way for Berardino to get the last word in on his angle that Torii really didn't want to sign here. I'm not particularly happy the Twins signed Torii, because he is a prick and we've all known that for a while. This is the sort of nonsense we all knew about. I don't think that it's any sort of scandal that Torii told the reporter off. Oh and by the way, I find Torii's bigotry really disturbing. I hope that someone can find a better way to help him see the light than trying to embarass him on live TV, or casting aspersions his way from bully pulpits. Maybe he and Billy Bean need to have another sitdown.

If that's the paper thin calculation of WAR, then it's absolutely useless.

This is the article most directly about Torii's defense, so I guess this is the place to talk about it. The only actually reliable numbers we have to go on are the video scouts. They say that Torii converted an out on Converted outs at an 88% clip. The average fielder is not listed, since I'm guessing it probably undermines the intended point. Let's be charitable and say that the average fielder converts 93% of all chances. (The video scouts include impossible chances in their measure so nobody is going to be too close to 100%) Now, let's also say that every single ball put in play this year is going to go to right field. That means 100% would be 4374 outs over 162 games. The average right fielder is going to put 329 baserunners on due to fielding mistakes and general bad luck. Torii is going to put 596 baserunners on a game. 267 more baserunners allowed over the whole season. That's 1.6 baserunners a game if every single ball is hit to right field. It's barely enough to guarantee an extra run per game in that insane situation. This isn't to suggest that Hunter is the best or even a good fielder. It's to suggest that outfield defense is not worth the stress so many of you are putting yourselves through. Considering that Hunter has been at least 10% better than average on offense for the past 8 years, he's clearly a net positive, since he's guaranteed 3 chances a game to play offense. There's no guarantee that he'll get even that many chances on defense in any given game. Even if they have a recent history high 37% fly ball and 22% line drive, that still only gives Hunter a Maximum of 16 chances, with only 12 of those being realistic catches, thus a maximum of 1 or 2 that will fall in extra. Again, that's assuming that every line drive and fly ball is hit to right, and there are no strike outs. It's not so bleak, ya'll.