d-mac

I'm a bit disappointed it's not McLeod.

LOLOLOL. As the British say, "That's mental." This team is on pace to go 58-104. Last place. By definition we are the farthest away from competing.

I always think of this when someone makes this reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7LH__BPqSY OR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmJKY59NX8o

It was the Cardinals hacking the Astros and stealing their information.

Hopefully new player development personal and major league coaches will do a better job and developing pitching talent.

At this point I don't think it matters much when to fire Molitor. To be perfectly honest I hope it happens sooner rather than later. I think much of the major league coaching staff is detrimental to a lot of the younger players.

You mean like now?

I'm firmly in the trade Dozier and Santana camp too. I don't expect this team to be competitive until 2019-ish.

I think the game is on the cusp of another revolution as important as the statistical revolution- this time it's the bio-mechanical revolution. With pitch f/x, statcast, and all the video available, there is so much data, both quantitative and qualitative to digest. Much like how batting average and RBIs for hitters and wins and ERA for pitchers have gone by the wayside, I think many long held baseball axioms about hitting, pitching, and fielding are going to be proven wrong.

Lol Vikings. They're the reason I don't follow the NFL and stick with college football. The schadenfreude value is quite high. That and the hardcore NFL fans are annoying as hell no matter what team they cheer for. But that sucks for Bridgewater. Possibly career ending freak injury- something that will likely bother him for the rest of his life.

eyeroll.gif http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-new-science-of-hitting/

Square peg, round hole- Twins player development strategy. More evidence of the Twins trying to change the players into something they're not and taking away what makes them successful.

I have done neither, but I'm assuming it's easier to hit in the minors, no? He has 372 PA between MLB and AAA. I think we should wait and see what a full, healthy year would bring with him. Just because signing him and not trading Plouffe were poor decisions I don't think we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater- Park still may end up being a good hitter.

My understanding is that he hurt his wrist in Spring Training and that various wrist/hand injuries have been nagging him all year. Wrist/hand injuries can be extremely detrimental to a hitter, especially when it comes to bat speed.

Baseball is tough. I'd like to see you go and try to hit 95 mph fastball.

I hope we don't see the 2104 version of Hughes, but who knows, maybe he'll be the first cyborg to win the Cy Young.

That's most sports towns- when things go bad fans demand blood. Even more so in places like Boston, New York, Philly. But Minnesota is pretty much ho-hum about everything when things go bad- which is probably part of why when many of us get out our pitch forks, some people's Minnesota sensibilities get offended.

"These are not the posts you are looking for."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDAmPIq29ro Twins' front-office defenders.

Get off my lawn you damn kids with your video baseball!

Lucky for us fangraphs just released their new split tool today! I just filtered for all balls in play to the opposite field and for the full year, Dozier has actually hit the lowest line drive % to the opposite field of his career, but has the highest BABIP. 2016 is actually the median season (of 5 seasons) of both hard-hit and soft-hit %. And since 2013 he has actually lowered his percent of balls in play to the right side every year. Now, you might say "What about in the last three months, when Dozier has set the world on fire?" Let's examine just his batted balls for June, July, and August vs his career numbers. Dozier has a career (for all months) 15.6% LD rate, 13.5 hard-hit%, and a 35.5 soft-hit% with 18.9% of all batted balls hit to the right side. Dozier has actually hit 16.4% of his balls to the right side in Jul, Jun, and Aug, which is below his career average and is the second lowest % of all previous seasons over the same months- hitting more balls to the opposite field seems to be a late season trend in Brian's career. The line drive % is the second lowest (11.6%) and the fly ball % the second highest (76.7%) over the comparative period of previous seasons. However, his hard hit% is the second highest, and soft hit% is the second lowest. We can go even to a more granular level (SSS warning) and filter our set for time period, opposite field, and line drives or fly balls. His 20% hard hit% is tied for the median season. He has hit flyballs to the opposite field with the best authority of his career in these past three months, doubling his median season (for the months of Jun, Jul, and Aug) in hard hit % and the second lowest hard hit %. Certainly Brian has done a better job of driving the ball to the opposite field once he's elevated the ball, and that is reflected on his hard hit % on his fly balls and his increased ISO going the other way. However, he is not hitting line drives the other way, so some of his resurgence may be due for a BABIP correction. Furthermore, all batted ball types have seen the highest hard hit% of his career, regardless of direction, which is not surprising given that this is likely the best three month stretch of his career. And finally, he is definitely not "going the other way" more either for his entire season or over the past three months. Then there is this from an interview with Brian on fangraphs posted on Aug, 5th. Going the other way does not appear to be something Brian has been concerned about, however Dick 'n' Bert would not stop talking about how Brian needed to go the other way over the first two months of the year while he was struggling. As the unofficial official mouthpieces of the organization when Dick 'n' Bert mention something along the lines of "player x needs to do a better job of y" we can be fairly sure that is something the team views needs to be fixed. Of course, we don't know what went on between Brian and Bruno, whether after two months of struggling to go the other way Bruno told him to just do his thing or Brian ignored the instruction and found success despite what the Twins were actively trying to do. Nothing he has done has been materially different than anything in the past- he has not made major changes to his spray chart of batted ball type (lots of fly balls, and mostly pulled), he has simply done a better job of what he has done in the past.

I couldn't disagree with much of this more. Ortiz was never suspended for roids. Also, if he did use, there is now way that explains his most recent seasons. Liriano had two very good seasons in a playoff rotation in Pittsburgh. Perkins and Dozier succeeded in spite of the Twins' meddling- Dozier in particular stands out, they kept telling him to go the other way- he is actually hitting fewer balls to RF this year and having more success. And yes, Molitor is every bit as bad, or worse than Gardy was at throwing young players under the bus publicly. And just because other managers have done it doesn't mean our management should do it too. It's an awful motivational tactic, IMO, it's a great way to kill a young player's confidence and create animosity amongst some of the more rube-ish elements of a fanbase. Just because Morneau, Santana, Mauer were successful doesn't disprove my assertion. Mauer in particular was a Twins-y type hitter, not that hitting line drives to all fields is a bad thing- the best hitters do that- that's just not the strength of every hitter, so we should not want every hitter to take that approach. Morneau, Hunter, Cuddyer etc, also all hit well to all fields. Part of that was I think the Dome rewarded that strategy well (and TF penalizes those types of hitters, IMO) The first true pull hitter I remember the Twins having was Willingham. Plouffe was also a pull hitter when he first came up too- OPS wise, his best season was 2012, when he was still a pull hitter. Dozier was the opposite, he was not a pull hitter when he came up- but he's had a lot of success now that he does in spite of the team's efforts to break him of that habit.

Nice. I just hope they get the right person in place to lead the team. What are some people that we should consider for the job? I'd like to see someone from the Theo Epstein group or from the Pirates, Cardinals, Houston orgs.

Ortiz is obviously the most famous case, but there have been so many instances of the coaching staff trying to fit a player into a one-size-fits-all mold whether that is sacrificing strikeout ability/velocity of a pitcher to lower walks, telling a pull/power hitter to go the other way to raise batting average, or a speedy position player to bunt and hit the ball on the ground. And if the player isn't a good little soldier and doesn't fall in line they become a pariah- the team publicly calls into question their work ethic or mental focus. Ortiz, Liriano, Perkins, Dozier, Hicks, Buxton, Sano, Berrios, etc. These are just the examples I could think off the top of my head of players the Twins tried to make into something other than they were. Success at the highest level of a sport as competitive as baseball is like being on a knife edge. Trying to alter a player's DNA to fit some definition of your ideal pitcher or hitter at a certain position is a guarantee to knock a player off that knife's edge.

Square peg, meet round hole. This is the Twins M.O., they force (young) players to become something they aren't.