Cap'n Piranha

I'm not trying to make anyone jump through hoops, I'm saying if you make a far-ranging statement, you are then bound by the principles you established. If I said I could never work for Nike because they utilize sweatshops, but then accepted a job with Nike, there are only two conclusions to be made; 1) Nike stopped utilizing sweatshops 2) I was not serious about my initial statement That's what I'm saying here about the players; if they are truly saying "I can't play because it wouldn't be right to play while things aren't ok", the minute they resume playing, we must either assume that the players who said that now think things are ok, or they didn't actually mean what they said. It's certainly possible they were being grandiose or hyperbolic in their initial statement, but the point remains the same. If you didn't play Thursday because things aren't ok, you certainly can't play Friday, or Saturday, or anytime in the near future, for the simple reason that the swath of people who think things aren't ok right now are unlikely to think things are ok anytime soon.

I'm not sure what you mean by QI, can you define it for me (no sarcasm, I seriously want to know). The case you mentioned about the person of color being told he hadn't been shot "yet" being called racism is troubling, and one of the roots of the issue. What proof do we have that the officer said this out of racial animus? A white person doing something bad to a black person is not an open and shut case of racism, yet that seems to increasingly be the bar being set these days. That being said, if there is supporting evidence of the officer's racism, I obviously withdraw my argument.

The logic is fine; Statement A: If everything is not ok, players choose not to play as scheduled Statement B: The Twins' players chose not play as scheduled Conclusion: Everything is not ok If Statement B is flipped to, The Twins' players chose to play as scheduled, you cannot logically conclude that everything is not ok; the condition in statement A has not been met. If it is not ok to play because things are not ok, then by that statement, you cannot resume playing until things are ok. A more accurate summation of what the players are saying is "I don't feel like I can play today with everything that's going on". That's a far cry from "Things aren't ok so we can't play".

So since the Twins were all set to play today, it means everything became ok overnight? If this truly the reason, that baseball should not be played until the vague and unquantifiable list of demands is met, baseball will never be played again.

Except we're not here talking about the reason they chose to sit, we're talking about the fact that they sat. Thus, The Conversation has not been furthered. This is the problem with the protests over the past few years--the protest itself ends up being the topic, not what is being protested. I would argue it's because the current style of protest, which to some extent involves at some level inconveniencing/aggravating others is not conducive to building bridges. As for the piece around consequences, I think the point that's being made is not that people should suffer or their action is meaningless, it's that when an action costs someone nothing, it's hard to determine to what extent that person truly cares about that action. They might really really care; they might just be going with the flow. So I think the question on some people's mind is if Taylor Rogers would have suggested not playing, and been met with universal agreement, if game checks would be lost, or the playoffs would have been missed, or roster cuts would have been made. Maybe nothing would have changed. Maybe everything would have changed. The point is the lack of sacrifice leaves open the possibility that this is simply a meaningless gesture, done to check a box/keep from looking out of line.

Correct, that is what I meant to say. Rogers rested is death on the opposition--any opposition. Rogers not rested is death on the Twins, particularly against quality opposition.

This is the entire point I'm making; pitching on zero days rest, Taylor Rogers is no longer one of the Twins' best players. Continuing to treat him as such is ignoring statistical data, and is costing the Twins games.

Last year, 4 of his 17 appearances on no rest cam against teams that made the playoffs. He had 1 against Detroit, 2 against KC, 2 against the Angels, 2 against Miami, 1 against the White Sox and 1 against Baltimore. Take those out, and you have 8 appearances--2 against Cleveland, 2 against the Brewers, and 1 each against the Yankees, the Phillies, the Rays, and the BoSox. In those 8 outings, spanning 7.1 IP, he had 4.9 bb/9, 6.1 HR/9, a .308 BAA, a 2.18 WHIP, a 12.27 ERA, and a 10.99 FIP; this would suggest Rogers should absolutely unequivocally not be used against good teams on no rest. This is borne out by the fact that in 11 appearances against those same 6 teams (7 against Cleveland, 1 against everyone else except the Brewers), he pitched 15 innings with 0.6 bb/9, 0.6 HR/9, a .185 BAA, 0.73 WHIP, 0.60 ERA, and 2.01 FIP. He only gave up one run in those 11 appearances, and that was against Cleveland. Now; it's certainly possible this is small sample size--except for the 15 innings he pitched last year on no rest were almost 22% of his total innings--it's like saying if a pitcher is bad for 6 weeks that it's just a small sample. In a normal season, you could maybe make that case. This year, 6 weeks is close to 2/3 of the year. At this point, maybe we follow what the data suggests, which is that Rogers is much less likely to be effective on no rest, and stop trying to increase the sample size to see if the results stick. It's like wondering if you'll get hurt crashing your car at 45 MPH, and deciding the only way to find out is to just go ahead and crash. Maybe you'll be fine, but the downside is not worth it.

I put this loss squarely on Rocco--Rogers has no business pitching on no days of rest; see the breakdown below for his 2019 stats split by whether or not he got rest. Total: 69 IP, 278 Batters Faced, 58 hits, 11 BB, 1.00 WHIP, 11.7 k/9, 1.4 bb/9, 1.0 HR/9, .209 BAA, 2.61 ERA, 2.59 FIP With rest: 54 IP, 201 Batters, 38 hits, 4 BB, 0.78 WHIP, 11.5 k/9, 0.7 bb/9, 0.5 HR/9, .189 BAA, 1.33 ERA, 1.60 FIP With no rest: 15 IP, 77 Batters, 20 hits, 7 BB, 1.80 WHIP, 12.6 k/9, 4.2 bb/9, 3.0 HR/9, .260 BAA, 7.20 ERA, 6.15 FIP With rest, Rogers is basically the best reliever in baseball. Without it, he might not even be a 4A guy. Falvine needs to tell the equipment manager to not issue Taylor a uniform the day after he pitches.

JaCoby Jones turned 28 in May--he's not exactly young. He's had only one season with over a .400 SLG. This year one third of his flyballs have turned into HR, which is not at all sustainable, nor is his .421 babip, given his barely 40% hard hit rate. Cabrera's HR/FB rate is even higher at 42.9%, Schoop is making almost as much soft contact as hard contact (21.4 to 28.6), while Cron is actually making more soft contact than hard (41.2 to 35.3). All of this is of course SSS, but none of it suggests the Tigers all the sudden have a lineup that's going to mash; if anything, they got lucky with multiple hitters running into homers all at the same time. Despite this, the Tigers are still scoring less than 4 runs a game, and are 21st in the league in runs. I'm in no way worried about the Fightin' Gardies.

Covid-19 cannot affect you when seated at a baseball game. Just ask Dr Fauci.

I don't know how many people realize this (I certainly didn't until I looked it up), but going only by offense last year (using wRC+), Mike Trout in his prime season (he spent more of 2019 as a 27 year old than a 28 year old, birthday is 8/7) was only 10% better than Nelson Cruz in his age 38/39 season (almost an even split since his birthday is 7/1). That's almost impossible to put into context, other than to say, Nelson Cruz is really really good at hitting baseballs.

I believe a closer needs to use "Blind" by Korn. The buildup is awesome, and you could exit the bullpen right when Jonathan Davis screams "Are You Ready?" Goosebumps. Chills. All the Feels.

Completely agree with this. Pointing out there are holes in Rosario's game is not hating him, it's acknowledging the reality that the Twins are not the Yankees, and can't throw $10M-$12M at a player who's only kind of performing. I also hope Eddie gets a big payday, and if it happens with the Twins, I'm ok with that. That's because I trust Falvine, so if they're giving Eddie 5 and $100M, it's because he probably OPS'd close to 1.000 while playing much improved defense. I just really doubt Eddie has that in him.

Let's talk about clutch hitting, but use career numbers to get a bigger sample size. I also restricted the PA/RBI number to only RISP situations; using it overall is misleading, as Cave only got 11.8% of his PA's hitting 5th or higher, while Rosario got 99.3% of his hitting 3rd or 4th. Rosario: RISP: .271/.306/.448 .754 OPS -- 239 RBI in 668 PA's, 2.8 PA's per RBI (Also, a 90 wRC+, and only 32.7% hard contact) Cave: RISP: .305/.379/.552 .931 OPS -- 49 RBI in 125 PA's, 2.6 PA's per RBI (wRC+ of 143, and 49.4% hard contact) Clearly, Rosario had a knack for hitting with RISP last year, that is not in keeping with his historical baseline. If you want to argue that Eddie's 173 PA's with RISP in 2019 is sufficient to change the narrative on him, keep in mind 173 is not that much more than 125 (Cave's career PA's with RISP), and Cave for his career has been better with RISP in almost every statistic than Eddie's outlier of 2019.

I expressly stated I didn't include any counting stats--it's literally in the first line of my post. You can't use counting stats to compare two different players with different amounts of playing time; if you could, it would mean Jake Cave is a far superior hitter than Giancarlo Stanton, since Cave had 8 homers, 21 XBH, and 28 RBI compared to Stanton's 3, 6, and 13. Your absolute refusal to see what Eddie Rosario is (a decent player who excels in traditional batting counting stats, but is sub-par in everything else) is mystifying to me. If Eddie does not have a bounce back year in 2020, he may very well not be a Twin in 2021.

Convincingly and thoroughly argued.

Front Offices tend not to give indications players are available--it weakens their bargaining position. The fact he hasn't been extended is a sign that either Rosario wants too much money, or the FO does not have interest in extending him. I don't necessarily think Eddie will be non-tendered, but the idea it can't possible happen is just silly. If there is not a drastic turnaround in Eddie's performance this year, he's far closer to being non-tendered than extended, and if the Twins really like what Larnach/Kiriloff/Rooker/Lewis are doing over at CHS this year, they may just decide to save the money and move forward.

Below are the 2019 stats for 2 Twins players; I excluded counting stats as those are a function of playing time, and one player had only about 40% of the PA's as the other. Based on the below, tell me which player you would prefer. Player A: .258/.351/.455/.806. .343 wOBA, 113 wRC+, 52.3% hard hit, 5.5% soft hit, 31.7% chase rate, 29.5 UZR/150 in LF Player B: .276/.300/.500/.800. .329 wOBA, 103 wRC+, 39% hard hit, 15.4% soft hit, 46.3% chase rate, -7.5 UZR/150 in LF As it turns out, Player A is Jake Cave, in his age 26 season (meaning this year is his peak season) compared to Eddie in his age 27 season (supposedly his peak, although it was worse than either of his two previous seasons in a year that was a much better offensive year across the league). I think Jake Cave, who posted 0.9 WAR in only 228 PA's, already more than fills the shoes of Rosario, who posted 1.2 WAR in 590 PA's. Other than hit homeruns and accumulate RBI's (both of which are functions of playing time), what did Eddie do better than Cave in 2019? Put it another way; would you rather pay $8M to $10M for a little more power, but overall worse offensive production and much worse defense, or $500k for slightly less power, but overall better offense and much better defense PLUS 2-3 more years of team control?

30 homers is still a significant number, but far less so than it used to be. 53 players hit 30 homers last year; in 2009 it was 30, in 1999 it was 42. Just look at 2014-2015 for comparison--less than 20 players hit 30+ homers in each of those years. RBI is also an extremely flawed stat--for his career, Mauer had 2,107 PA's with RISP across 1,314 games--that means Mauer had 26.5% of his total PA's with RISP, in 70.7% of his games, and created 765 RBI, or an RBI to RISP PA ratio of .363 Eddie on those same metrics has had 668 PA's with RISP across 444 games, and produced 239 RBI. So 25.7% of Eddie's PA's have come with RISP, in 69.4% of his games, but his RBI to RISP PA ratio is only .358.

I'm reasonably certain Cruz is the team leader; I'm also reasonably certain Cruz didn't come up through the minors with Eddie. I will also miss Eddie if he goes--I've followed him since he battled Miguel for the Appy League homer crown way back in 2010 or 2011. I'm sure he'd be missed in the clubhouse as well, he does seem to be well liked. But guys who are well liked leave clubhouses every year, it's part of the game. And Eddie's on-field production can probably be largely, if not entirely replaced at only 10-20% of the cost. For a team that needs to figure out how to pay Berrios and Buxton, as well as give significant raises in the next year or two to Garver and Arraez, Eddie is just not a luxury the Twins can afford.

My guess is that if a team is struggling to find 5 competent starters, they'd also struggle to find 2-4 MORE guys who can throw 2-4 innings every 5 days. The Twins probably have the most rotation depth of any MLB team, or at least top 3.

If the Twins are going with 10 "starters", that implies they'll carry 17-18 pitchers to start the season, which is interesting.

So, Eddie is far better than the outfield prospects, yet those prospects are much better trade chips? The only way that's true is if a bunch of other teams are not just not as smart as Falvine, but are actually way dumber. If Eddie can turn it around, display even a modicum of patience, and stay relatively healthy, then I support keeping him. Otherwise, I'd rather use his $8-$10M a year on an extension for Berrios, or keeping Odorizzi.