Cap'n Piranha

And I was making a joke. No forgiveness necessary.

Listening to the Yankees' broadcast, as I like John Sterling. That said, it is sometimes hard to get through, because they have an in-game ad for basically everything. No joke, they read about 3 ads during every half inning.

Who?

And my simple point is that you were enjoying a pitcher deliberately pitching to contact. He absolutely is successful doing it because he has the stuff, but he's still pitching to contact.

Pounding the zone with superior pitches is a subset of pitching to contact. That is, all pitchers who PTZWSP are pitching to contact, but not all pitchers who pitch to contact can PTZWSP.

You're saying you want us to go back to pitch to contact? IS THAT YOU TR?!?!?!

All Yankees lineups are good when they match up against the Twins.

The story that isn't told here that is interesting to me is that, in reality, injuries aren't up that much. If we take the number Tom showed for 2021 of 14,350 days, and divide it by .37 (as we're about 37% of the way through the season), we see that the league is on pace for 38,784 IL days. That is vastly down to 2019 (over 21%), and just 13.7% above 2018. Conversely, the Twins are on pace for 973 IL days, up 55% to 2019, but actually below both 2017 and 2018. This makes me wonder--is part of why the Twins won 101 games in 2019 because they were able to avoid the IL? The Twins reduced their IL days in 2019, at the same time as IL days in the rest of the league exploded. Now that they are back to being league average in IL days, they're back to being non-competitive.

Well that seems pretty open and shut.

Ha! Ninja'd ya!

Listening to the Yankees radio broadcast (as I am wont to do when the Twins play the Yankees; I think John Sterling is great). They had Cory Provus on to do an interview with Suzyn Waldman, and Provus pulled no punches. He essentially said, without explicitly saying it, that the Twins are done, and proceeded to take shots at Colome and Robles. Fascinating to hear one of the voices of the Twins write them off so matter-of-factly.

Numbers 1 and 2 both make me nervous. Polanco's ankle seems to be a body part that will never be fully healthy until he stops playing baseball (maybe not even then). As such, the risk of .800 OPS Polanco vanishing at any moment is an inescapable reality. Add on the fact that both Arraez and Gordon are probably best suited to play second, I think if Polanco keeps this up for another 4-6 weeks, you try and trade him. On Rogers, I may be reading the numbers wrong, but it looks like he is at the bottom of the barrel in fastball spin, Max EV, and barrel rate, while also being solidly below average on hard hit rate. Also to consider--Rogers is essentially throwing two pitches this year, a sinking fastball (and throwing it harder than ever), and a slider (also harder than ever). Unfortunately, his slider grades out as slightly below average, which means Rogers is getting by on one pitch that has some concerns behind it. As he is now over 30, and only has one more year of free agency, I think it behooves the Twins to trade Rogers in July as well.

Ok not statistics then. How about spatial distancing. In a liner system containing 4 objects where none of the 4 is tethered to any of the other 4, and are thus free to move backwards or forwards independently, an object can move closer to the "front" one or two objects while still maintaining equal or greater distance to the "third" object. There is obviously a limit to this, that being if/when the third object moves in front of the second object, but until that moment, the fourth object can continue to reduce the distance between the first and second objects while simultaneously not reducing the distance to third object.

But do they also dodge, dip, and dodge?

Sure, but you didn't say they can't get to 1st place without passing the 3rd place team. You said can't get closer to 1st place without getting closer to 3rd place. That's just not accurate. Your issue is not with me, but with statistics my friend.

This is incorrect. Let's say the Royals take 2 of 3 against the Twins, while the White Sox lose 2 of 3 against the O's, and the Indians take 2 of 3 against Toronto. Then Monday-Wednesday next week, let's say the Twins take all 3 against the O's, the Royals go 2-0 against the Pirates, and the White Sox and Indians split their 4 game series. Compare the top 4 in the AL Central; Today CWS -- CLE 1.5 KC 5.5 MIN 9 After Play June 2 CWS -- CLE 0.5 KC 3.5 MIN 8 As you can see, the Twins are actually further away from third place, but closer to first place.

Definitely 4 things wrong. Had he not done all four of the things wrong, the run would not have scored. Not just going to the base. As a first baseman, going to the base has to be your first priority, ESPECIALLY on a ball coming from the left side of the infield. If the third baseman didn't think there was an out to be had, why would Craig think so? Not aggressively running Baez down. This is a second error; if Craig runs as fast as he can at Baez, knowing that Baez can't just retreat to home, he will either easily tag Baez out, force Baez out of the baseline (resulting in the out), or arrive at home well before the runner from third gets there Not abandoning Baez to run directly at the runner coming from third. I can't for sure say when this became a mistake, as I don't know where precisely the runner coming from third was, but since that runner scored, we can safely assume the runner was not hovering near third base. If Craig abandons chasing Baez, and runs straight towards the other runner, he will force the runner to commit, and he can then throw to the appropriate base. Even if Craig made the first two mistakes, he could fix the situation by running straight at the other runner Nonchalantly flicking the ball to the catcher. A throw with some urgency here probably arrives in time for the catcher to apply the tag at home. Even if Craig still makes all three of the above mistakes, a somewhat forceful throw to home probably prevents the run from scoring. For the Cubs to have scored a run on that play, they needed Craig to make all four of the above mistakes; if he makes only 3 of them, the run probably doesn't score. That's what makes this play so incredibly bad; Craig failed multiple times in the span of about 10 seconds, and may have cost his team the game because of it.

What other conclusion fits? He made the single lowest-effort, least thoughtful play in MLB history; do we generally think of people giving low effort and little thought to a task as invested, or as just going through the motions (or put another way, just there to get paid). Imagine this scenario; you ask a friend to come help you re-paint your bedroom, and let them know you'll take them out for dinner afterwards as a thank you. When they show up, they don't follow your instructions on what color paint to use on the accent wall, haphazardly use the paint roller, spilling paint on your window sill, and then lean up against a wall before it's fully dry. They then ask you where you're planning on bringing them for dinner. Would you infer your friend actually wanted to help you, or that they were simply there for the free meal? I also don't think this is an attack on his character or integrity--as I said in my previous post, if he had only done one thing wrong on that play, no one would care. The fact he did FOUR wrong things, none of them truly physical (that is, he didn't dive to catch a ball and miss it, or drop an easy pop fly. The physical mistakes he made were only made because he was not giving sufficient effort), makes it very clear that, at least on that play, he was uninterested in playing baseball. If he has something distracting him in his personal life, that's perfectly excusable, but only if he surfaces that so his manager can give him the day off. He chose to be on that field, and if he is not willing or capable of providing even desultory effort, then he is by definition only there for the paycheck.

No, the Crimson Tide.

I mean, I wouldn't go quite so far as to suggest that, based on this play alone, he's only there for a paycheck, but when you make the number of fundamental mistakes he makes on this play, it's a little hard to believe Craig is truly giving even cursory effort. 2 outs--run to first before Baez, and the inning is over. He clearly forgot/didn't know there were 2 outs The rundown--run directly at the runner coming from third, not down the first base line. This forces the runner there to make a decision, and you can then react to that Nonchalant jogging--at no point does he force Baez to retreat with alacrity; if Craig does go full speed, he can swipe tag Baez, and still have plenty of time to throw the ball wherever he needs to in order to get the runner coming from third Lackadaisical toss to the catcher--when the runner coming from third breaks for home, you have to get the ball there ASAP, as your catcher will need to perform a 90+ degree turn in order to apply the tag If he only messed up one of those things, it's not great, but it happens. Brain fart, whatever, move on. To do all four of those on one play is pretty inexcusable. It would be like a lineman in football not blocking a rusher, then refusing to dive for the football when the quarterback fumbles on the sack, and then not running at an angle to try and tackle the defender who picks up the ball. No one would have any problem questioning whether that lineman only cares about getting paid, and we shouldn't have any such qualms about stating the same in this situation.

And Derek Shelton, having come from the Rocco Baldelli managerial tree, cares more about analytics than fundamentals.

So he's like Forrest Gump, and just can't stop running?

This is the crux of the issue right here--it's not any better for Rocco, in my opinion, to say "sure, the team is struggling, but it's not Rocco's fault, but rather a breakdown somewhere else". Everything that happens between the two white lines on game day (save the overall quality of the players) ultimately falls on Rocco. If Rocco is indeed doing things right, but not getting results, then he's not incompetent, just ineffectual. Is that really preferable?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't all those coaches report directly to Rocco? Is it not his responsibility to receive reports from those coaches on what they're doing with the players, and course correct as necessary? If the team is clearly struggling with fundamentals, doesn't it fall on Rocco to drive his coaches to be better?

The Twins did indeed have the 2nd fewest errors last year, but they actually had the 6th most in 2019. I don't know that they were fundamentally bad in 2019, but they clearly weren't fundamentally solid. Rocco has now been the manager of this team for 271 games (about 1 and 2/3 seasons), and the Twins are 13th in errors over that span of time (if they had committed only 4 more errors over that timeframe, they'd be 17th). This is not a fundamentally sound team by that metric, so given that we know this is an analytically-driven organization, and Baldelli got the job due to his fluency in analytics, it's not totally unreasonable to suggest that fundamentals are not being emphasized to the appropriate level.