d-mac

If they need to twerk, I just hope the players keep it off the field and in the clubhouse.

Dean has a 6.7% swinging strike rate. For comparison Milone has a career swinging strike rate of 8.3%, Kevin Correia has a career swinging strike rate of 7.1%, Scott Diamond has a career swinging strike rate of 6.4%, Cole DeVries had a swinging strike rate of 7.5%, Vance Worley has swinging strike rate of 5.6%, Andrew Albers has a swinging strike rate of 6.5%, and everybody's favorite- Nick Blackburn- had a swinging strike rate of 5.3%. So yeah, Dean is a AAAA pitcher at best in the AL. If he can limit walks and homeruns- he could be a #5 in the NL in a pitchers' park.

I think it's time Jay gets promoted to AA, along with Gonsalves. A bit surprising that Stewart got the call first. His last handful of starts haven't been great and his K% has started to slide back to where he had been previously. Jay and Gonsalves just have better numbers. It's a bit of a bummer with what's happened to Berrios since he was sent down. He's really struggled throwing strikes- that's never been an issue in his career.

If Dozier gets hurt we'd just see some combo of Nunez/Escobar at SS/2b.

What about the pair of WI prep players? Twins in on those two?

Yeah, it only goes away when the flashplayer crashes.

That's what I'm viewing it on and I have the same problem.

TF is geared toward being an "entertainment venue," not a place to go see a baseball game. In other words, the stadium isn't geared toward us, the actual fans. Maybe I'm feeling a bit nostalgic for the Metrodone, but I can't say I've ever been to to game at TF where the folks sitting around me are actually interested in watching the game. It's starting to feel like a Minnesotan version of the Chicago Cubs' stereotype- the fans don't go to Wrigley to watch a baseball game.

Buxton has been really hitting the snot out of the baseballs down in AAA. Plus he's cutting down his K%, while increasing his BB% on a week-to-week basis. Looks from here like he is making the correct adjustments. The problem is that 137 PAs is an awfully short time in AAA- likely too short to become ingrained in his muscle memory. I just hope that bringing him up so quickly isn't going to undo all that he has learned.

Having the same problem. It seems to be related to the video ads. Every time a new video ad loads and starts to play- I get scrolled to the top of the page. It seems to be related to the "Kaiser University" and the "Bare Chicken" ads.

The problem is not whether or not he hits. The problem is how they treat their prospects. The problem is the process, not the result. By rushing contact challenged hitters through the upper minors they are not putting them in a position to succeed.

He's numbers are far worse than Tyler Jay's numbers his junior year. And yeah, the B1G is a worse baseball conference than the ACC, but still. Jay had half as many walks and fewer hits allowed than Dunn in 13 fewer innings so far. Plus a higher strikeout rate.

Dunn has a only handful of starts in his college career. I'd hardly call that a starter. I hate, hate, hate drafting relievers in the early rounds. If they think he can be a starter, they are putting an awful lot of faith in a miniscule sample size.

Another college reliever? Gross. One with middling numbers? Double gross. I still like the idea of cutting an underslot deal with a Will Craig or Matt Thais and use the savings for some upside high schoolers later in the draft.

Ugh. Sounds like a Twins move. Draft a player because of the relationship with his agent.

I'm always wary of fast rising high school pitchers. Not sure I like Manning.

Since MLB statcast has been made public, a number of baseball nerds have taken on the task of incorporating the data into a new framework for a better regression predictor for hitters. One such nerd over at Fangraphs, Andrew Perpetua, has created his own system for predicting and expected BABIP and expected OBA based on how hitters actually hit baseball- a great proxy for measuring the process of hitting- versus looking at what has happened, we are able to now have a rough estimate of what should have happened. http://www.fangraphs.com/fantasy/eight-players-under-performing-their-xoba/ Andrew has posted an article highlighting some 8 of the top underperforming players (xOBA-wOBA) this year. Two of those names featured: Brian Dozier and Trevor Plouffe. Dozier: Expected: .237/.320/.413 To date: .200/.287/.336 Career: .237/.313/.406 Plouffe: Expected: .281/.306/.487 To date: .252/.275/.383 Career: .245/.307/.418 In the article you can also find a link to his data published on a Google doc. You can filter by team and for both hitters and pitchers. Also included are full team stats. As a team the Twins should be expected to have hit: .245/.311/.416 versus the .235/.302/.375 that they did. That's an 18 point swing in wOBA that would bump them from 25th in baseball to 16th. Also interesting is the Joe Mauer has underperformed his xOBA by 82 points! He actually "should" have the 5th highest wOBA in baseball. Of course at this point, Andrew's xOBA doesn't adjust for park factors or shifts. And sadly I think Mauer is heavily penalized by Target Field (going oppo taco is hard) and he is easy to shift against (85% of his line drives and flies go to left or center, 90% of his grounders go to right or center). Byung-ho Park also has underperformed his xOBA by 42 points. Unfortunately, it appears Sano has not underperformed his xOBA this year- he's been right about where it predicts him to be at. Nunez has overperformed by about 20 points, and amazingly, Eddie Rosario outperformed by 33 points! xOBA predicts him to have hit .179/.199/.292! Also of note, all of the Twins pitchers (with at least 20IP) except Milone have a higher BABIP than should be expected. Though that doesn't mean they have been good- Only Abad, Tonkin, O'Rourke, and Nolasco (surprise!) have posted above league average xOBA. Kevin Jepsen, news flash, is not very good- his xOBA+ is 132.8. The Twins are still bad. Their offense may actually be average, but their pitching is still a mess at this point.

http://awesomegifs.com/wp-content/uploads/no.gif

The Twins have no problem airing dirty laundry of a player outside "the circle of trust." You can include Perkins, Neshek, Danny Valencia, Kyle Lohse, etc.

Yeah, I get it. It wasn't meant as a dig towards you. But it seems like every time that Buxton puts together a great game in AAA people begin begging for him to be called up again. Doesn't anybody ever learn their lessons? Part of why it's so annoying to me is because Buxton has the potential to be a star. And if the Twins ever want to win again, they'll need him to become one. He won't do that scuffling through the majors with 5:1 K:BB ratio and hitting in the low .200s. Having to worry about the outfield defense in a lost season at the detriment to the future seems silly to me. Maybe the FO really is on the hot seat, would make more sense as a desperation "Hail Mary" type move.

I can't speak for everybody, but I've been fairly consistent on my thoughts here. Although it was before I had joined TD, I thought signing Hughes was a hell of a deal, he was an extreme flyball pitcher at Yankee stadium with a solid K/BB ratio. A good buy low candidate signed to a team friendly deal. I liked signing Nolasco, again, he had a solid K/BB ratio through his career. Has a history of underperforming his xFIP, but he had just come off a pretty solid 2013 season. I was 100% against the Ervin Santana signing from the start. I thought it was one FA signing too many, I felt it was going to block pitchers like May, Meyer, and Berrios. Plus, I tend to think Santana is a bit overrated, his K/BB ratios are pretty meh, he has a history of being wildly inconsistent from year-to-year, plus I felt he was an injury risk as he had torn his UCL, but not had TJ surgery. The extension of Hughes was dumb, stupid, and uncalled for.

And Baker was turning into a solid #2 until his arm fell off.

One game doesn't even count as a sample. I'd like to see him maintain an OPS of at least .900 with a 8-10% BB rate, while bringing he K% below 18% before I'd even consider calling him up. At least master a 0.50 BB/K rate in AAA. Before last night's game he was at 0.33.

So he can learn the strike zone and develop some semblance of plate discipline. We all saw how lost he was up here. If he doesn't he will not be a productive major league hitter.

I hope not. He still has a 0.40 BB/K in the month of May in AAA. The kid needs a solid 300-400 PA in AAA and prove that he can control the strike zone.