one_eyed_jack
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Everything posted by one_eyed_jack
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---No, certainly not. I think 2006 was the last year you saw it. (Though much to my amusement, the 4-letter network and other associated national media buffoons continued to refer to the Twins as the "team that does the little things right" for years after it ceased to be true.) While there's no doubt TK stressed that kind of play, I can't say I saw it consistently when he was actually managing the team either. So I'm just not sure how much you can attribute what the team did after Gardy took over to TK.
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There's too much hand-wringing over Mauer's contract. Is he worth $23 million? No, put paying him what he's worth was never an option. The Twins had 3 choices: 1) Overpay him - it's a fantasy to think we could have signed him for much less than we did. A player of that caliber hits the open market, someone will give him stupid money. 2) Trade him after '09 (a la Santana) 3) Let him walk after '10 (a la Hunter) 2 and 3 were simply not realistic options given circumstances with Joe's popularity and the pending move to Target Field, so we went with 1, which, ironically, was the exact type of move Twins fans spent years about the team not making. Joe will probably never lead the league in home runs. And while I'm not close enough to the situation to really question his leadership, he does come across as a guy who's a sheep, not a shepherd. But the guy can do some things that very few others can, and has a good chance of ending up in Cooperstown one day. The 'fans' who do nothing but rip on him would be wise to try and enjoy him for what he is instead of always lamenting what he isn't, because he's a special player, and you don't see many like him.
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1) The ridiculous refusal to expand replay, and some of the silly elements against it. (e.g. "I like the human element". Really? I'm glad surgeons and airline pilots don't think this way and resist using the aid of technology in their professions because of some irrational fondness for human error.) 2) Takeout slides and home plate collisions should be forbidden. They create unnecessary risks of injury and add nothing to the game. 3) Agree on "unwritten rules". If it's that bad, then officialize it and write it into the rules. Otherwise, it's legal and no grounds for complaint. 4) Not crazy about the whole closer thing. I don't like the way 'saves' are define, but I grew up watching guys like Goose Gossage enter the game in the seventh inning with guys on base and go the rest of the way. They were called "firemen" for a reason. But starting the 9th with a 3-run lead? Please.
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Article: Royals vs. Twins, 06/29/2012, 7:10pm
one_eyed_jack replied to Brock Beauchamp's topic in Twins Daily Front Page News
Well that rally ended in an awful hurry. After Mauer's double scored Span, cutting the lead to 2, we had 2nd and 3rd with with nobody out. Then Willingham, Morneau and Plouffe went down on a grand total of 4 pitches. Blech. -
---Yeah, Santana/Radke in the early part of the decade was a good 1-2 punch. In those years it always seemed like they were 1 big bat short of being a serious threat. Agree on 2006, that was tough. Not only did Liriano get hurt, but Radke's pitching arm was barely attached to his body by the end of that year. Maybe it's because it was the most recent, but to me 2010 was the most disappointing year. We had home field, time to set up our rotation the way we wanted, had a deep lineup, a great first season in a great new ballpark, it just seemed like it was going to be the year we finally broke through. We even had a 3-0 lead with Frankie cruising in Game 1 before it all went down the crapper.
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---The Twins of the 00's often lacked the most crucial ingredient to postseason success - starting pitching depth. Beyond Santana, they were starting guys like Boof Bonser, Brian Duensing and Nick Blackburn. That's fine for beating Kansas City in August, but beating the Yankees in October is a different story. Injuries played a role as well. Morneau's absence in the last couple of series hurt - tough to win in October with your top run producer out. As far as Gardy goes, I think the impact of the manager is too often overestimated. They get too much credit for wins and too much blame for losses. Look at the Giants in 2010. That was Bruce Bochy's 16th year as a major league manager. He hadn't really been any more successful than Gardy to that point in his career, maybe even a little less so. Yet the Giants won the World Series. Was that because Bochy figured it out after a decade-and-a-half? Or do you think maybe having a pitching staff full of guys who would be aces on a lot of teams may have had something to do with it?
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Well this thread has officially jumped the shark. The impact of the manager on the team's success or failure is often wildly overstated. But now we're linking results to former managers?! Wow.
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McPhail left in 1994. The Twins went from World Champs in '91 to a 6th-place, 71-91 finish in his last full season. So the team actually started falling apart before he left.
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I don't understand why Gardenhire is the sole focus of the discussion here. The article illustrates a rather distrubing organization refusal to adapt to modern methods of player evaluation. Gardy is clearly in the old school baseball camp, but his job, more than any other, you need some of that. Managers are responsible for a lot of things such as handling egos and personalities, keeping the clubhouse together, keeping guys focused making sure guys don't get too high in good times or too low in bad ones, dealing with the media, etc. that simply cannot be informed by spreadsheets. I'm not excusing the stubborn "Stats? We don't need no stinking stats" attitude, that can be problematic as well. But replacing Gardy wouldn't go very far towards solving the problems outlined in the article.
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The Gardenhire quotes are the least troubling aspect of this article. Yes, Gardenhire is an old-school baseball guy (or a dinosaur if you want to be less kind). But at this point he is merely a symptom of a much deeper organizational problem. Replacing him would be putting a band-aid on a cut without curing the disease.
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Brian Dozier Is Not Ready
one_eyed_jack replied to YourHouseIsMyHouse's topic in Minnesota Twins Talk
I'd keep him up and let him develop here. Yeah, his numbers aren't great, but there have definitely been flashes of good with the bad. I'd feel differently if he looked overwhelmed and confused like Nishioka usually did last year. -
---Yeah, he's awesome isn't he? The scary thing is that Diamond is the only Twins pitcher with more wins.
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---Yep. And it's maddening. You don't need much to compete in this utterly lame division (Cleveland is in second place and only 2.5 out despite having one of the worst run differentials in the entire league), and the fact that the Twins didn't have enough to hang in it until July says a lot about how bad they are right now.
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---Agreed on both of these points. I'm with Chief on umpiring not being any worse now at least in terms of accuracy of calls. However, thanks to the arrogance noted by jokin, I think umpires have gotten worse in terms of situational handling of the game. There are just too many of these guys who act like they're God's gift to baseball and believe that the people in the stands spend their paychecks to watch them call games. They are too often thin skinned about getting being questioned about their calls, and needlessly confrontational with players and managers. From Bob Davidson - recently suspended 1 game for "repeated violations of the Office of the Commissioner's standards for situation handling" to the Russell Martin/Laz Diaz feud to guys like Joe West and Angel Hernandez there are too many umpires in professional baseball who do not seem to know how to act like professionals.
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No this wasn't the worst call ever. It's not like it decided the game, and there have been much more egregious misjudgments, such as the one in Colorado mentioned earler where Welkie called the runner out even though you could have driven a Greyhound bus through the gap between where Helton caught the ball and the bag. It wasn't so much the call itself as everything surrounding it. First, that he didn't ask to see the ball is inexplicable, inexcusable and incompetent. Second, the way he ejected Hanrahan was bizarre: Hannahan said the expressing of that opinion, without swearing, was what got him tossed, an account DiMuro pretty much confirmed. "He and I got into a discussion about the play,'' DiMuro said. "He told me to reference the tape replay, and that is why I ejected him.'' So while the call wasn't the worst ever, DiMuro's handling of this whole thing may be one of the worst pieces of umpiring I've seen in a while.
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---Amen to that.
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I'm a Tulo fan as well. I've always thought highly of Jim Thome - before, during and after his time with the Twins. Jose Bautista. Andrew McCutchen. Dustin Pedroia. Ichiro can be fun to watch.
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http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=22614397&topic_id=11493214 I've seen some bad ones, but man oh man, this one is tough to beat for umpire incompetence. How does Dimuro call an out there without asking to see the ball?
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---Well that all would be awesome. But - be honest everyone - raise your hand if, like me, in the unlikely event that all of those wonderful things happened one the same day that the Twins clinched the division, you'd be right here talking about who our game 1 starter should be instead of on CNN reading about how the world's problems were solved.
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Ugh. Too many missed opportunities. We got away with it last night, but you can't get away with it every night. Hopefully we can still find a way to take the series tomorrow.
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---I once got into a friendly "debate" with an avid Vikes fan about which local team was better and breaking the hearts and crushing the spirits of its fan base. Both sides have legit arguments there. Twins fans have spent the last decade watching their team get into the postseason only to get beat up on by the hated Yankees. Same story every year. I think you've at least gotta give the Vikes some style points for always finding new, interesting and creative ways to torture their fans. I mean, taking yourself out of range of a game-winning field goal with a too many men on the field penalty in the waning moments of the NFC championship game? Hollywood couldn't come up with that. And it's not like the others have had it much better. The Wild have been stuck in neutral for seemingly forever. I spend my winters while waiting for baseball season to start following the T-Wolves. If nothing else, that left me a lot more emotionally prepared for the 99-loss season than a lot of other Twins fans. But we've got the Lynx! (And no, I'm not kidding. Those ladies are awesome.)
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No worries! I've got to get back to procastin...I mean working - oh eff another run. I hate the Whities.
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---Hey how did my quote get pulled into this discussion?!? FWIW, I have no argument with anything said here and would not label anyone elitist based on it.
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---Seems like he's got something going on. I've got work to do so I've got one eye on the game and the other on a spreadsheet, but it looked like he was yapping at Ramirez for a while after Ramirez was already walking away.
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Twins chances of making the playoffs this year
one_eyed_jack replied to glunn's topic in Minnesota Twins Talk
1-2% seems about right to me. I just can't see it happening. In any other division, I'd probably put it at zero. But I'm not willing to concede yet because: 1) This division is full of flawed teams, I don't see anybody running away with it 2) It's not rational to think the magic run will happen, but just for sheets and giggles, it can be fun to try and dream up scenarios of ways it could happen 3) I'm kind of a stubborn bastid - there's always that part of me that will refuse to admit defeat until mathematical elimination