Jump to content
Twins Daily
  • Create Account

Cap'n Piranha

Verified Member
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    4,719

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    7

 Content Type 

Profiles

Minnesota Twins News, Rumors & Analysis

Minnesota Twins Videos

2026 Minnesota Twins Top Prospect Rankings

2022 Minnesota Twins Draft Picks & Signing Bonuses

Minnesota Twins Trade & Free Agent Rumors

Minnesota Twins Fan Guides & Resources

2023 Minnesota Twins Draft Picks & Signing Bonuses

The Minnesota Twins Players Project

2024 Minnesota Twins Draft Picks & Signing Bonuses

2025 Minnesota Twins Draft Picks & Signing Bonuses

2026 Minnesota Twins Draft Picks & Signing Bonuses

Forums

Blogs

Events

Store

Downloads

Gallery

Everything posted by Cap'n Piranha

  1. Cap'n Piranha
    I used to work for Delta, and worked a couple of charter flights. The team is on a coach bus with their equipment and luggage underneath, that rolls right onto the tarmac--no one goes through security (at least not at the airport). I was also speaking exclusively about MLB; whether or not an MiLB season can happen due to a desire to avoid air travel has no bearing on whether or not the MLB season can happen.
  2. Cap'n Piranha
    Your point is exactly the point I'm making; the more teams in the playoffs, the greater the odds of a lesser team advancing, and that includes if the number of teams in the playoffs is 2. If the goal of the playoffs is to crown the "best" team, having any more than 1 team reduces the chance the "best" team wins, and is therefore counterproductive to the point of the playoffs. Logically, it follows that the point of the playoffs (at least from a competition standpoint) is NOT to crown the "best" team, but rather to provide a reduced ecosystem of only the top tier of teams in order to provide a way to adjust for injuries and uneven schedules that might otherwise obscure the identification of the "best" team. As such, expanding the playoffs is completely fine, as long as it doesn't include everyone, which the current proposals do not. You also wouldn't need to shorten the regular season or extend the playoffs into November--simply play 3 game series in the first round, 5 in the second, and 7 for the LCS and WS. That's a maximum of 22 games to win the title, compared to 20 right now.
  3. Cap'n Piranha
    But neither of them can be on first base without their spot in the lineup having first come up in that half inning. You cannot run the bases without first having your lineup spot hit--as such, baserunning is dependent on, and therefore a subset of, hitting. There is not other baseball activity a player needs to perform in order to pitch, field, or hit; that's why those are the only 3 aspects.
  4. Cap'n Piranha
    If the negative part of the playoffs is that it can potentially prevent the "best" team from winning, due to unpredictable hot/cold streaks, shouldn't we just do away with the playoffs all together, and award the trophy to whomever has the best record after the last day of the season?
  5. Cap'n Piranha
    This seems to suggest to me that when you were 10, the internet essentially didn't exist. Does this mean we will never see you post again, in pursuance of your "frozen-at-10" agenda?
  6. Cap'n Piranha
    All MLB teams exclusively fly charters, where the only people on the plane are members of the organization (and the flight crews). This seems like a fairly low-risk proposition; simply require the flight crew to wear masks and remain in designated areas whenever not actively performing necessary duties--with the airlines hurting for revenue, I'm sure they will be more than happy to implement almost any requirement MLB can come up with, assuming it doesn't impact safety or contradict FAA regulations.
  7. Cap'n Piranha
    Baserunning is completely dependent on hitting, as it can only be performed by someone who has come up to hit in the current half-inning, or was subbed in for someone who came up to hit in the current half-inning; therefore I categorize it under the hitting aspect.
  8. Cap'n Piranha
    I've never understood people who oppose the DH because they think it's ridiculous that a pitcher not be required to hit, but don't think it's ridiculous that hitters aren't required to pitch. In fact, if the concept behind baseball is that there are three separate aspects to the game (hitting, pitching, and fielding), shouldn't each spot in the lineup be required to do all 3?
  9. Cap'n Piranha
    I'm not concerned by this at all. The Twins could easily run a team (or two) of players too advanced for Academies, but not ready for the GCL or A ball. They could play games against each other everyday, or work out schedules with the other 8-10 teams that are within a 2 hour drive of Ft Myers. You can argue it would even be better for development--the facilities in Ft Myers have to be much better than Elizabethton, and those players could easily be slotted into Mussels games when needed, giving them better exposure.
  10. Cap'n Piranha
    I assume as long as the Twins have complete control over anything that involves the players, they would not care at all what the Saints do otherwise. As concerns eliminating MiLB teams, I also think part of why teams want to do this is to pivot to more academies in the Caribbean and Central America. You could have A, AA, AAA, and then a short season league designed mostly for new draftees. If the Twins had their short season and A team in Ft Myers, and their AAA team in St Paul, Pensacola is the only affiliate not very much in the MLB team's orbit--much better for aligning and directing player development and support.
  11. Cap'n Piranha
    I can be re-infected, and anyone else who's had it can as well. However, unlike people who have never been infected, our immune systems know precisely how to defeat Covid-19 now, and barring significant mutations, will do so quickly and fairly easily--most people probably wouldn't even know they were reinfected. That is why I spoke of people who are now immune and surrounded exclusively by people who are also immune. The immunity comes not from some imperviousness to any level of infection, down to a single cell, but rather the ability of one's immune system to instantaneously mount the exact right defense against the virus. In reality, what happens in normal life is that the virus is constantly being passed around, but is so easily defeated that no one notices it.
  12. Cap'n Piranha
    The problem with this is we currently have no way of knowing how many people have already contracted and recovered from Coronavirus without even realizing it. In mid-February, I felt fine on a Monday, woke up on Tuesday with an awful sore throat and no energy; I slept all day. On Wednesday I felt somewhat better, and by Thursday I was back in the office. At the time, I thought it was just a normal winter thing--in retrospect, it's entirely possible it was Covid (I live in downtown Seattle, and attended a trade show in Las Vegas in January--plenty of opportunity for exposure). The point being, millions upon millions of people might have already gone through this, and if that number is high enough, its entirely possible there's a large swath of people who are immune and surrounded exclusively by other people who are immune. In that scenario, we could say that people who can't further the spread can go back to work.
  13. Cap'n Piranha
    It's interesting hearing how Minnesota is reacting, as I currently reside in Coronaville, USA (Seattle). Most workplaces that are capable of supporting WFH have instituted it, with some all but mandating it. A number of restaurants have closed, and school has been cancelled until late April, but other than that, it seems pretty normal. It will be interesting to see if Minnesota follows Ohio's lead, and attempts to "overreact" now in hopes of not having to go really hardcore in the future.
  14. Cap'n Piranha
    You may have wanted to go even if it was a cruise--at this point you'd probably be the only one on the ship, and then hey, free boat!
  15. Cap'n Piranha
    Ok, you misunderstood. The .0002% chance is not the chance of dying if you contract the illness, it's the chance of dying from the illness if you live in the United Sates (assuming the rates of infection and deaths are identical to the reported numbers from China). 760 divided by 330M is .0002%. It's the same rate as one person in the entire city of Minneapolis dying. I'm fully in support of people being careful, limiting or eliminating contact with others, self-quarantining when necessary, and forcing the quarantine of people who won't self-quarantine, but to pretend like coronavirus is Ebola or Bubonic Plague, or even the Spanish Flu is hysterical and breeds panic, which is the greater danger in the current climate.
  16. Cap'n Piranha
    I'm confused--you're saying my numbers are false and that I'm downplaying the severity, yet the number I gave (based on actual news reports) is higher than the number you quoted. Therefore, if anything, I'm "upplaying" the severity.
  17. Cap'n Piranha
    Or it could be like China, which is now (if Chinese sources can be trusted, which I'll grant is a big if) in steep decline--only 24 new cases for the entirety of mainland China yesterday. China had to keep things under lock for about 6 weeks to get this result, but it's a good result--80k total cases and 3.2k deaths; the US equivalent would be 19k cases and 760 deaths. That would be a 0.005% chance of a US citizen being infected, or one out of every 17k people, and a mortality chance of 0.0002% (1 out of every 434k people). The coronavirus should certainly be taken seriously, and suspending sporting events is part of that, but from an infection/death standpoint, the coronavirus is likely to be of far less impact than the annual winter flu is every single year.
  18. Cap'n Piranha
    I know the Yankees have all kinds of resources, but I have to wonder if they're really open to handing out another $300M+ contract (which is reportedly what Lindor wants). True, they clear Ellsbury's $26M next year, but that still leaves them in the luxury tax BEFORE they hand out arbitration raises to Judge, Sanchez, Voit, Urshela, Andujar, Torres, German and everyone in their bullpen not named Chapman, Ottavino, or Britton. While they also clear the money from LeMahieu, Tanaka, and Paxton, all of whom are free agents after this year, those are 3 players they need to replace. While a trade for Lindor probably has to include at least a couple of their infielders, thus reducing that hit, the Yankees would still be looking at a $300M+ payroll for sure when you take into account luxury tax, and possibly approaching $400M.
  19. Cap'n Piranha
    Last year Rosario had 285 PA's with men on, 173 of those with men in scoring position, of his 590 total PA's--48.3% of PA's with men on, 29.3% of PA's with RiSP, and produced 109 RBI Sano had 178 PA's with men on, 94 of those with men in scoring position, of his 439 total PA's--40.5% of PA's with men on, 21.4% of PA's with RiSP, and produced 79 RBI. Put it another way, Sano and Rosario produced almost an identical RBI/PA rate, despite Rosario getting a far higher proportion of his PA's with guys on base AND in scoring. The dismissal of Sano's 2019 production baffles me. It really does.
  20. Cap'n Piranha
    If he's injured, they put him on the IL until recovered, and plug in Rooker/Kiriloff/Larnach. Easy. If he underperforms (which seems unlikely for a guy who was a top 20 hitter by wRC+ last year and will be a free agent after his age 30 season--that is, he's in his prime), they can eat some of the money by trading him, and plug in Rooker/Kiriloff/Larnach. Easy.
  21. Cap'n Piranha
    Pretty sure the Twins just gave Sano a 3 year, $30M contract, with an option year. The next tough decision on Sano isn't until the end of 2022, at the earliest.
  22. Cap'n Piranha
    "Quantity has a quality all its own" -Napoleon Bonaparte
  23. Cap'n Piranha
    An amazing "Bad Ball" hitter is likely to still be worse than an average "Good Ball" hitter. The beauty of baseball, distilled to it's simplest level, is that the pitcher has to put the ball where he least wants to put the ball. Therefore, swinging at pitches outside of the strike zone (which is what "bad balls" are), helps the pitcher. There are times where a batter can succeed in hitting a pitch outside of the zone, but over the course of a season, the odds are heavily in the pitcher's favor. In the second half of last year, Eddie Rosario swung at 49.1% of pitches "outside" the zone (3rd highest out of 140 in baseball). As a result, he saw the 10th lowest percentage of pitches "in" the zone. This insistence on chasing led him to post the 35th lowest rate of hard contact and 61st highest rate of soft contact. This directly degrades his power--Eddie had 12 homers in 266 PA's in the second half, compared to 21 from Sano in 271, 18 from Garver in 183, and 15 from Kepler in 231.
  24. Cap'n Piranha
    Maybe someday he will be better, but I find it hard to believe that in 2020 a guy who just completed a season with a 4.28 ERA and 1.35 WHIP in the minors, will outperform Severino's career 3.46 ERA, and 1.15 WHIP in the majors. Sure Garcia strikes a lot of guys out, and was only 20 for most of last year, but he was not particularly effective at AAA. This is a huge blow to the Yankees until such time as they can acquire a replacement--it's far more likely Garcia is trade bait as the deadline approaches than a key part of the Yankee's MLB rotation.
  25. Cap'n Piranha
    I have to concur with the majority of the posters here. In looking at Almora's defensive stats on fangraphs, he was below average last year, albeit slightly above average in 2017 and 2018. As such, I think what you would be adding is a league-average fielder. At the plate, he swings at 40% of pitches outside the zone, and as such, has really bad rates of both soft and hard contact (6th highest soft contact rate out of 241 players with 350+ PA's, 17th lowest hard contact rate). Add in that he's now arbitration eligible, and plays at a position group where the Twins are 5 deep in MLB-quality regulars, and where at least 2 and possibly 4 of our 5 best hitting prospects play, and I have no idea why the Twins would add Almora for free, much less give something up for him. The floor for this Twins team, thanks to a killer lineup, deep bullpen, and broad collection of decent starters, is quite high. Therefore, if the Twins are making a trade, it shouldn't be to try and win a couple more games in the regular season; it should be to win a couple more games in the postseason.
×
×
  • Create New...