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Eris

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Everything posted by Eris

  1. Eris
    Fundamentals. The Dodgers played mostly fundamentally sound baseball during the WS. The Yankees mostly did not. If the Yankees had played mistake free baseball 2 of the games might have had a different outcome.
  2. Eris
    Trying to understand the totality of optimized contact. I didn’t see strikeouts mentioned. I didn’t see RBIs with 2 outs and RISP.
  3. Eris
    The MLBPA will not strike over this imbalance. This is exactly what the players association wants—a few rich teams to drive up salaries.
  4. Eris
    “To be clear, if the Twins had the extra $20M to work with this past season, they almost certainly would have walked into the playoffs.“ This team had many issues including poor defense, lack of situational hitting, poor base running and way too many players who did not contribute down the stretch. Hindsight is wonderful. A key component to the collapse is Miranda, Lewis, Lee, Julian, and Ryan—players who were expected to be part of the core for many more years all failed down the stretch. Money would not have solved this part of the problem.
  5. Eris
    Unfortunately there are 2 issues that will maintain most of the current revenue/ salary structure. 1). The players association has always been about the best players in free agency having an opportunity to make the most money. This requires a few financially well off teams to bid up salaries. 2). The big market teams will lose a number of the advantages they have in player procurement with the more revenue that is shared. These owners have no incentive to give that advantage away. There was an article on TD a few days ago about the coming end of lucrative deals from regional sports networks. This will be painful for a lot of people in baseball. Average players approaching final arbitration years or free agency will be particularly negatively impacted.
  6. Eris
    Who do you have in mind as a replacement. There are no MLB ready replacements at catcher in the Twins system. It could be much worse, see John Ryan Murphy for an example.
  7. Eris
    As a Twins fan for more than 5 decades, I have always understood that for the Twins to be competitive they have to develop talent. They could never compete with large market teams in FA contracts. There are multiple failures for this team related to drafting, trades, injuries, and on field performance. The list of players who failed down the stretch or were unavailable for large parts of the season would include almost the entire roster of hitters. It is hard to win with the level of offensive ineptitude exhibited by many of the players in September. For an unknown reason I’m not able to link the fangraphs search here. The list of players with 0 or negative fWAR for the final month of the season includes: Castro, Vasquez, Lewis, Lee, Miranda, Julien, Kepler, Margot, and Jeffers. This is the primary reason the Twins are not in the playoffs. If just 1 or 2 of these individuals would have stepped up during the final month of the season, the outcome would likely have been different.
  8. Eris
    While I don’t disagree with this comment on viability, the core aspect of the issue is that consumers are looking at their $120 - 150 / month cable bills and are looking for ways to reduce costs. They start by looking for options where they are paying for what they are watching. The reality is that many sports channels have been subsidized by non sports fans for many years. As consumers cut their cable and turn to alternatives, cable companies are pushing back or they will lose more customers. I cut cable along time ago, primarily because my spouse was not happy about the bill. I rely mostly on radio and the MLB at bat app for baseball. How many Twins fans would pay $150 / season to watch the Twins? 500,000 at 50% margin gives about 37 million. Is this achie able.
  9. Eris
    The greatest point of failure for the Twins is that too many players did not show up when they were needed. For some because they were injured. For others we don’t know at this time. What frustrates me a lot about this team is that as a team they do not play fundamentally sound baseball. Lack of situational hitting and poor base running are two examples. Maybe also poor defense.
  10. Eris
    Lack of situational hitting has been an issue for the Twins all season. In a must win game, they were 2/19 with RISP.
  11. Eris
    Of the hitters only Wallner and Correa showed up last night. Detroit is only a 1/2 game behind in the wild card with 10 games left in the season. Who amongst us gave Detroit any chance of being in the playoffs. That indicates how poorly the Twins have played.
  12. Eris
    If they want to really fix the injury issues they will need to address it at youth sports. Today’s MLB players likely focused on playing baseball at least 9 months of the year. More in some regions. This is a very significant change from 40 years ago when most high school athletes played 3 sports. I live in NJ and player doesn’t make the high school baseball team if he doesn’t play club ball and they don’t pitch without have a personal pitching coach before 9th grade. There is a whole industry built around this for most high school sports with the possible exception of bowling.
  13. Eris
    If a team has too many players below average defensively (Miranda, Lewis, Larnach, Wallner, Martin, Castro (CF), Jeffers, not hitting (Kepler, Julian, Farmer, Margot, even Lewis is slumping) hurt (Correa, Buxton, Kirilloff, maybe Kepler) this is somewhat logical outcome. From Lewis point of view, playing 1B or 2B is the least valuable position for maximizing his financial returns during free agency. In a different pre-ACL situation, Lewis would be an above average (maybe even elite) outfielder. But those days are gone and it is 3B, 1B, DH or a disgruntled 2B (which means he won’t be there for long—Boras will make sure of that). One can imagine what a phone call with the front of will be like. “My guy is unhappy at 2B, if you ever want to sign one of my guys again…. “
  14. Eris
    Adding to the article, I think there is a tendency to overuse the most effective RP. It is very rare to have a relief pitcher with greater that 70 appearances for multiple seasons in a a row and maintain effectiveness.
  15. Eris
    Base running and stealing are skills. They can be improved if teams / players work at it.
  16. Eris
    This is an interesting article that well written. Some luck has always been involved in baseball. The Twins have been unlucky with the bases loaded for at least two years. When does this cease to be a discussion about luck and one of hitting approach-a single drives in 2 runs with the bases loaded. Part of this has been mentioned in the article. A significant issue I have with these metrics is that it assumes the batter has no control over where the ball is hit. I refuse to accept this as reasonable. Maybe we should ask Rod Carew or Luis Arraez. Or maybe we can just observe. Some batters will take an outside pitch and hit it to the opposite field. Joe Mauer was very good at that. Other hitters will take that same pitch and try to pull the ball, grounding it weakly to second. A batters hitting skill is more than just hitting the ball as hard as possible with optimal launch angle. I have used this example more than once. Steven Kwan and Trevor Larnach were teammates in college. Trevor Larnach can really mash the ball and he had 2 HR against Sony Gray last night. He was drafted in the first round and has produced 2.4 fWAR during his career to date with 34 HR. Steven Kwan has more nuanced skills, was not a ball masher, was drafted in the 5th round and has 11.7 fWAR with 24 HR during his career so far. It is really a thrill to see Matt Wallner turn on a ball and hit it 440 feet. But this is only one part of hitting.
  17. Eris
    He pitched Thursday (20), Saturday (9) and then Sunday. He was cruising on Saturday. In hindsight, maybe it would have been better to have Alcala pitch the 9th on Saturday and have someone else cover Sunday. I struggle with the 1 inning relief concept. It is done so the RP will be available the next day. However if pitch counts are low it would be less stressful on the arm to pitch 2 innings and have an extra day off (as warming up should also be considered).
  18. Eris
    “It’s tough to pinpoint how the Twins front office feels about the communication issuesfrom Kirilloff. While it’s certainly not unheard of for a young player to hide an injury (see Joe Ryan, 2023), it’s not a good look to struggle for weeks on end and get sent down, only to disclose an injury afterward.” My guess is that this is on his agent, Scott Boras. While on the IL, Kirilloff accumulates MLB service time.
  19. Eris
    Paddock has had 2 TJ, there is probably not of guidance for this and I would expect the Twins to be super cautious.
  20. Eris
    Matthews pitched well and several great plays behind him. About the trends table. Interesting concept. I think it could be enhanced using more natural choices for colors. Example healthy performing = bright green, healthy trending up = dull green. With 8 choices it might be a challenge, a goal would be that readers could understand the table without looking for the key.
  21. Eris
    Article is from the NY Post. He played for the Twins in the early 70s. He was part of the trade with the Rangers involving Bert Blyleven. https://nypost.com/2024/08/12/sports/mike-cubbage-former-mets-player-and-coach-dead-at-74/
  22. Eris
    Interesting choice considering he was not Rule 5 eligible until after the 2025 season.
  23. Eris
    Verlander and Scherzer were traded last year. There are 20-22 teams in contention for a playoff spot. This makes it a sellers market for impact players and most teams were not willing to pay that price. I am not sure if this is the new normal. Snell was the obvious big time impact player. I’m curious to know what prospects were offered and what the sticking points in any potential transactions were.
  24. Eris
    Somewhat surprised the Yankees would move Cortes if they acquire Flaherty. They are in a tough division and currently have a wild card spot (with many games left to play). They did something similar when acquiring Frankie Montas a few years ago by moving Jordan Montgomery. Montgomery pitched very well down the stretch for the Cardinals while Montas mahled and quickly landed on the IL.
  25. Eris
    I’m not sure that using last years payroll is useful as there was about 60 -70 million of unproductive spend (Correa, Buxton, Gallo, Vazquez) This year both Correa and Buxton were/are living up to their expectations. Last year’s season was saved by the 2nd half play of Kepler, Lewis, Wallner and Julien.
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