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one_eyed_jack

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Everything posted by one_eyed_jack

  1. one_eyed_jack
    I became intrigued by Ken Oberkfell as a possible Gardy replacement after reading this article earlier this year: http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20120205&content_id=26582426&vkey=news_mlb&c_id=mlb Jose Oquendo is another guy I'd consider. I don't want any retreads, and I don't want to promote from within. It feels like a certain staleness has set over this organization, and it's time for some fresh ideas and approaches.
  2. one_eyed_jack
    I'm good with these rules assuming they are enforced reasonably, which I am confident they will be. Sure, a good chunk of comments on this site could be found in violation if one were inclined to enforce every one of these rules to the letter. But they've never operated that way here, and I seriously doubt they're go to start operating that way.
  3. one_eyed_jack
    Oh I'll keep watching, and probably attend in person at least a couple of more times. I'm really interested to see how these guys, youngsters and vets alike, finish out the season. Last year, it was 10-32 in the last quarter. A repeat of that, and heads should start rolling immediately after the last out of the final game. Most of our games left are against division opponents, so there's opportunity to play spoiler and climb out of last place. We've also got the Yankees coming to town. We split in the Bronx in April, so we can win the season series. They may be resting regulars by then, but it would still be a nice little moral victory.
  4. one_eyed_jack
    Too bad. Had Pavano been healthy and had even an average season by his standards, it could have made a big difference. I'm going to refrain from the joining the chorus of critics dumping on the Twins medical staff. I'm not a doctor, and I don't see what they do every day. So I don't feel as though I have the expertise or knowledge of what they do to make a judgment about their performance. I do know that their job is not easy. There's often not a clear best course of action, and players aren't always entirely honest and forthcoming. I'm not trying to defend them, maybe they really are awful at what they do. I just don't know enough about it to play armchair medical expert. Others obviously feel differently, and that's fine. It's a common phenomenon on issues of the day. Like when there's a major US Supreme Court case and suddenly everyone and their grandmother is a constitutional law scholar. Or when we're involved in armed conflict, anyone who has ever served in the military, known anyone who has served in the military, or seen both Platoon and Saving Private Ryan is apparently qualified to appear on TV with the phrase "military expert" next to their name.
  5. one_eyed_jack
    Nah. Pavano had a terrific 2010 - 17-11, 221ip, 109 ERA+, 3.5 WAR. The Twins were a playoff team but pitching was considered a problem with Baker, Blackburn and Slowey all showing significant problems during the season. Most people thought Pavano would get a 3/30m type deal and the Twins would have to make do without him (lots of talk about Gibson at that point). The market never developed and the Nats offered him a 2yr deal. Pavano said he'd come back if Twins made a similar offer. He had a good season for us in 2011, actually threw more innings than in 2010. Nothing wrong with signing him. Agreed. Smith blundered into a lot of moves that were obvious at the time. The Blackburn contract raised a lot of eyebrows. We all knew Nishi was a huge risk. And trading Ramos for Capps was widely ripped as soon as it happened. But bringing back Pavano on a 2-year deal when it was widely believed he'd get 3 does it fall into that category.
  6. one_eyed_jack
    ---Of course not, silly, because Span is not being paid $23 million per year. And that's apparently what should be the primary controlling factor here. When presented with the question of what a guy should do in a particular hitting situation, before you get to questions about things like the count, the score, the runners on base, etc., the first thing you ask is what his salary is. That's right, you can't really discuss what a guy's approach in a particular plate appearance should be until you know how much money he makes. But seriously, good question. I asked the same thing about Morneau earlier. Another thought experiment. Would the people ripping on Mauer for taking a walk there be defending him had he swung and made an out? Would they be praising his uncharacteristic aggressiveness? Or would they point to that as a sign of him getting jittery in the clutch?
  7. one_eyed_jack
    120 down, 42 to go. 50 wins, 70 losses. Worst in the AL. 3 games worse than last year's team at this point. Already more losses than the 2010 squad. Depressing times in Twins Territory. We haven't even hit opening day of the State Fair, and I'm starting to turn my attention to the T-Wolves. (The Wild, sadly, will be locked out, and I don't really want to think about the Vikings.) The 2011 Twins went 10-32 over their final 42. Hopefully we'll see something a lot better than that this year. But perhaps, perversely, it would be better if we didn't. I can't imagine 2 consecutive seasons of sucking that badly in the last 2 months wouldn't result in some pretty significant moves, even for an organization as change-resistant as this one.
  8. one_eyed_jack
    ---Me too, and so would any rational fan. The Milton Bradley routine of daily tantrums gets old pretty quick.
  9. one_eyed_jack
    This seems like a really strange place for Joe C to step out of character and rip Mauer. Has he been listening to too much Barreiro lately? Mauer was looking for a pitch to do something with. He didn't get one. So he took the next best thing, which was a walk to load the bases for Willingham. Not long ago in Fenway, he had a similar situation, took the same, patient approach, and got something to hit, and put it over the Green Monster. Put it this way, suppose Mauer swings at one of those pitches and either misses or makes an out - I doubt Joe C would be defending his plate approach. I could see it maybe if it were someone other than Willingham coming up. Yeah, then maybe you could say Mauer needed to deviate from his norm there. And this whole "well, for $23 million, he needs to try and get a hit there" idea is rube silliness that should be beneath Joe C. What does that have to do with it? What's the salary cut-off for acceptability of what Mauer did there? Would it have been OK for Morneau take a walk there?
  10. one_eyed_jack
    Surprising take from Joe C. He doesn't get that critical very often, this seems like a really odd choice to break the pattern. What Mauer did there struck me as pretty defensible. His plate discipline is what makes him the hitter he is. If the situation had been different, and it were a stone cold Plouffe due up next, then maybe I could see ripping Mauer. But it was our top run producer on deck. It's not like the time he tried to bunt with guys on base, which Laudner called "stupid" in the postgame.
  11. one_eyed_jack
    I just found a story that looks like what you are talking about -- here is the link. This makes me want a different manager. ---Come on folks, don't we know better than to take Jon Heyman seriously? If the guy had done any actual research instead of just fishing for quotes to fit a narrative, he would have found out that the situation described by Hunter never actually happened. Also, Hunter was long gone by the '10 series, which is really the only one that Cuddyer could seriously make the "no talent disparity" claim about. Heyman made the exact "psyched out" claim about the Twins previously, e.g. here in 2010 and here in 2009, and was merely looking to validate it. It's no accident that he went first to a known blabberer in Hunter, then got confirmation from Cuddyer, who is too diplomatic to publicly challenge a former teammate on something like that. It's really an opinion piece masquerading as a report. Lew Ford had a very different take on the whole thing.
  12. one_eyed_jack
    ---Did you get lost on your way to Daily Kos? This is a forum for discussing Twins baseball.
  13. one_eyed_jack
  14. one_eyed_jack
    This is a tough subject. Morneau is my favorite player. I'm still bitter about not having him in the '09 and '10 playoffs. And he's played so little the last few years, I think people tend to forget how good he really was. I feel cheated by how much we've missed out on him, and you wonder what kind of numbers he could have put up had he stayed healthy. He's kinda like the Cam Neely of baseball. I'm torn on what to do with him. His future possibilities range from return-to-MVP-form to bonk-on-melon-career-over. I'd probably lean towards trying to get him to sign a reasonable extension because: 1) He's starting to look like his old self, and if that continues, he'll be worth the money 2) I'm not yet sold on Parmelee as a replacement (not saying he can't be, I just need to see more of him) 3) I don't think his trade value is all that high. But I'm not opposed to moving him if the right deal comes along.
  15. one_eyed_jack
    A lot of this "winning attitude" stuff is just people who either buy into hype created by the national media and their manufactured postseason story lines or think that life imitates sports movies. When a team wins, you hear all about some rah-rah speech before the clinching game. But they don't tend to report the fact that the eventual loser was addressed in the same manner, so a lot of fans jump to the silly conclusion that the pep talk was the difference.
  16. one_eyed_jack
    ---No doubt pitching is the #1 concern. By far. But this discussion is not wholly irrelevant to that. Certainly, pitching can be helped or hurt at lot by how good or bad the defense played behind it is. If you've got to extra outs all the time, it makes the job of the pitcher that much tougher.
  17. one_eyed_jack
    ---This. You know what wins games? Good starting pitching. Guys like Brian Duensing, Boof Bonser and Nick Blackburn may be good enough to get you wins against Kansas City in June. But when that's who you're counting on to beat teams like the Yankees in October, sorry, not happening. All this stuff about the Yankees being in Gardenhire's head is just nonsense. I suppose the Giants won it all in 2010 because of Bruce Bochy's steely nature in the playoffs, not because they had a starting rotation full of aces.
  18. one_eyed_jack
    This. I understand that Dozier hasn't been good. I'm okay with classifying him as a somewhat "bad" baseball player right now. But to say that he's season has been a "disaster" indicates that there was some expectation he was going to be this plus defender with a great bat right out of the gate. In reality, he was a post-hype prospect before he ever got here, and if even his glove had been decent, we'd have called him up last year. I don't think there was any realistic expectation for Dozier to be an MLB starter. This is the problem with Twins fans - they just assume that the next guy in line in AAA is the next Mauer, Morneau, or Kubel....or at least a "prospect" of some kind. That isn't always the case, and the Twins' farm system just hasn't been producing those 22-25 year old guys recently. Plouffe may be the one exception, if he stays productive. And this. No doubt he hasn't been playing well and deserved to be sent down. But his stint up here wasn't a total loss. He made some nice plays in the field, and showed he has some pop in his bat. So the term 'disastrous' strikes me as a bit of an overstatement. Nishioka was disastrous. Dozier is a rookie who struggled in his first stint in the majors, but you at least some glimpses of a competent MLB player.
  19. one_eyed_jack
    I see the argument for trading Wiliingham, and I could be on board with it. It depends a lot on what happens with Morneau. I'd be hesitant to trade both, because we'd be castrating the lineup. Those two have hit 46 of the Twins 105 home runs this year. I'm probably in the minority here, but given the choice, I'd lean towards dealing Willingham. The Twins have gotten a lot of flack the last couple of years for selling low. So let's sell high for once. I know a lot of people would rather get Morneau's salary off the books and keep the cheaper Willingham. But for the same reason, Willingham is a more attractive trade target to a lot of teams.
  20. one_eyed_jack
    I'm not offended, I just disagree.
  21. one_eyed_jack
    This has to be the most absurd thread of the season. I'm struggling to think of one that even comes close. The one about Gardy's decision to take a couple of games off to attend his daughter's college graduation was pretty bad, but it pales in comparison to this.
  22. one_eyed_jack
  23. one_eyed_jack
    I think you hit it on the head with your last point - get good middle-infielders, and the talk about Nishioka stops. There's still so much pining for Hardy, even with his rather significant drop in production this year, because Nishi was a massive failure. You don't hear much whining about Kubel and his .895 OPS, but you probably would if Willingham were having an awful year.
  24. one_eyed_jack
    ---I think this whole 'Latin' thing gets overstated a little, just because 2 guys speak the same native language doesn't mean they are going to work well together. But I am in favor of new blood in this organization. When you have the same people around for too long and always stay loyal to insiders, staleness will eventually set in. If we were to go that route, Pudge would absolutely be worth a phone call, possibly even the first call. So would Jose Oquendo, who has been very popular and well respected as the third-base coach in St. Louis and interviewed for a few managerial jobs that he's been turned down for. Another guy I would call is Ken Oberkfell I became intrigued by him as a possible Gardy replacement after reading this article earlier in the year. http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20120205&content_id=26582426&c_id=mlb
  25. one_eyed_jack
    ---I'll back that up as well. It's not everyone, and it's not always blatant, but there is undoubtedly a racial tinge to some of what's been hurled at him. And it's well beyond the "your kind don't belong here" undertones of the demand that he go back to where he came from. I've seen him referred to as a "Jap", which many consider to be a derogatory term, and a "sh***ty Asian fielder". I never saw any of our Latin players referred to as 'spics', Nor do I recall references to Jeff Gray as a "sh***ty white pitcher" or Rondell White as a "sh****ty black hitter" during their struggles. The gratuitous racial references are apparently reserved for Nishi. The more obvious examples were the calls for him to be sent on a kamikaze mission and the talk of him committing seppuku. If we had a muslim player who had a couple of bad games, would it be OK to call for him to fly a plane into a building? I understand ripping him for his play. I will never understand the need to add a side of bigotry with it.
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