jimbo92107

Whoa, Buxton really tagged that ball. Career homer number two!

Ever notice after a guy bounces one with the bases loaded, you can see he's thinking about doing it again?

Torii's got a little scrag on his chin. Sexy!

So if Santana's release point is better when he stands on the 1st base side of the slab, wouldn't Cotts do better from the 3rd base side? No matter now. Nice DP ball.

Boyer's parallax needs some calibration.

Carrasco out, and still no outs, runners on 1st and 2nd. Dang, this is a nice little inning.

Too bad Torii Hunter just can't get it done anymore... ;-)

I don't like the designated hitter, a guy that does nothing but hit. Pretty soon you'll have guys that do nothing but pitch!

"Pitch to contact" is easy to understand: If you don't throw the ball over the plate, you can't expect their guys to hit it. Slows down the whole game.

Pseudo-Yogiism of the day: (neoyogism?) I don't know what to do with my hair. Should I grow it shorter or cut it longer?

I took my IQ test pass/fail. Won't say how I done, but mamma thought I was a nice boy.

Reminds me of a chat I had yesterday with my physical therapist. She was wondering if NASA's announcement meant there was life on Mars, and all I could say is at least they have a little better idea of where to look. Why spend all that money, she wondered, which got the conversation into an existential direction about the significance of searching for life on other planets and stuff. We started getting into stellar evolution and shifting Goldilocks zones, but ran out of time. I do wonder tho, if Mars were the same size as Earth, would it still have an atmosphere and life? A molten core would really come in handy out there on the edge of the habitable zone, for heat as well as for that magnetosphere. Speaking of survivability, the Twins need a rock-solid performance from the core of their starting rotation, Kyle Gibson, who must hurl up to a hundred small satellites into very brief, low-Earth orbits with sufficient directional and rotational velocities to fool a good number of Indians. Let us hope that Gibson's satellites do not collide too hard with wooden sticks traveling in the opposite direction.

This is one of those seasons where individual awards seem particularly silly, almost like Torii Hunter's whimsical dance awards. So many different guys have contributed in various ways and at various times, any one of them decided games that could have eliminated the Twins from the late-season contention we're enjoying right now. That said, I like Eddie Rosario for team rookie of the year because he has provided such a steady, high level of competitiveness since the first day he stepped on the field. I see multiple All-Star games in his future. For MVP, I go with Torii Hunter for bringing together a team of such volatility and forming one positive spirit. For pitcher of the year I go with Kyle Gibson. He's been the closest thing to a rock of stability in an ever-changing starting rotation. He's an innings-eating horse, a great fielder, and he's developing into a consistent threat to shut down opponents for 7 innings or more.

Santana, Gibson, Duffey, May, Berrios. That should be your starting five next season. Imagine five starters all capable of going at or close to 200 innings apiece. At that point, you can have your veterans Hughes, Pelfrey, Nolasco and Milone in the bull pen, where they can carefully dole out their remaining bullets while providing spot starts or long relief better than any other pen in the league. As long as the starters are careful to minimize their angular parallax at release, the sky's the limit for next season. That plus maximizing spherical rotational velocity, of course. And post game dance parties.

Angular parallax! By moving to the left side of the pitching rubber, Ervin Santana minimized the hitter's perception of each pitch's visual sweep from Santana's right to his left. His release point is more centered, thus making it harder to perceive the trajectory of the ball relative to the plate, which makes it harder to judge speed and distance. With reduced visual cues, hitters are more easily fooled, as each pitch appears headed down the middle for a longer time. Who knew Neil Allen had such a solid grasp of astronomy? He made Ervin Santana into a star! ;-)

There are various ways of thinking about a player's value to the team, among them money, stats, mechanics, or morale. You can focus on monetary value, the bang-for-buck approach. This values inexpensive players that still manage to perform adequately and maybe are versatile, like Shane Robinson, Eduardo Escobar or Eduardo Nunez. Torii Hunter plays only right field, but he does bat up and down the line-up, and did provide some key at-bats this season, along with over 20 homers. A statistical evaluation may not be overly kind to Hunter, but he did knock in over 70 RBI, and his defense, tho below average, rarely decided a game against the team. Mechanically Hunter is a sterling example of how the game can be played by the book. This is one of the things Molitor admires, I'm sure. Hunter's techniques by themselves are like a coach on the field, and reportedly have gotten rave reviews from all the young guns in the outfield. If you want to get emotional, Hunter is your man. He single-handedly created the spirit of this team, organizing the in-game interactions between outfielders, the post game jump-bump, the after game dance parties. If you think these morale boosting moves don't affect young men whose lives revolve around the narrow world of baseball, you'd be vastly mistaken. Hunter is the emotional leader of a group of young men looking to establish their own identity. Without him, this team might have drifted apart emotionally, devolved into cliques, become divisive, gotten into gratuitous bad habits...who knows? Hunter this kept this team together through the long grind of the baseball season, and he is helping to keep them together right here at the end, when the games still count. What other player in the league provides the center of gravity for a team's identity, plus performs as well as Torii Hunter? The team could get by without him next season, but somebody else would have to become the core of the team's spirit. Who would that be? Hunter provides the one thing that Paul Molitor lacks as a manager: charisma.

Ha, Kepler wants to hit a homer his first at bat. Lesson #1: If you really, really want to hit a fastball, you won't get one.

Buxton hit a fly ball a little farther!

Greenway runs a long interception back for a touchdown. Big flotilla surrounds him, cornerback beside him saying, "Just a little farther buddy, you can make it all the way..." That run back took about 20 seconds. Greenway's top speed: 12mph.

Andrew Sendejo smashed into Rhodes while whiffing on Kennan Allen. Knocked Rhodes out cold. Lucky if Rhodes comes back next week.

Buxton has become the Corn King. Leads the team in cans of corn hit to the outfield.

He back.

If I comment in TD during a Vikings game, does a tree fall down in the woods?

Adrian P-p-peterson!

Who else is watching the Vikings game on a different screen or flipping back and forth?