gil4

The biggest surprise on the list is Guardado. I especially didn't think he would be ahead of Aguilera.

I had to see how close Nathan was to the list. He was 36 IP short. 464 IP, 562 SO, 10.9 SO/9 If we add the IP without adding any SO, he still leads by a comfortable margin - 10.12 SO/9. (Hey, if it works for the batting title...)

"No information about what Alex Ochoa is doing this season was readily available." Nothing concrete here, but this article talks about his likely plans for this year, which include working for Scott Boras in S. Florida so he could be near his dad, who is sick. I really like this series. It would make a heck of a book. ttp://www.csnne.com/article/ochoa-leaning-toward-not-returning-boston

Unlike Badsmerf, I am an incurable optimist. (Last year at this time I was predicting a bounce-back season and a Cy Young for Liriano.) But I'm not convinced by your data, either. 1. I thingk your game score chart is a better indicator than the other part of the chart because it takes into account inniings pitched. Giving up 3 runs in 6 innings does not represent a good chance of winning; it represents a slightly below average chance (4.5 runs per gave vs. 4.3 scored.) I'm pretty sure the starters averaged fewer than 6 IP per start. 2. The guys you chose to represent 2012 only started 50 games last year. Based on game score, I'd guess the record in those starts was 15-39. Even if we replaced those 54 games with a couple of guys from a video game who pitched shutouts every time out, that iimproves us to 90 wins (+24). If they are average (which seems like a stretch), that's +12 wins, or 78. 3. We have three guys coming from the NL to AL, which tends to make numbers worse, although Marquis was dealing with bigger issues at the beginning of last year and I think the blank slate [edit - after he left and went to SD] helped as much as the return to the NL. 4. Harden and Pelfrey are coming off major injuries. I have no idea what to expect from Harden if he ever makes it into the rotation, which is a 50-50 proposition. Pelfrey is less than a year removed from TJ surgery. Maybe he has Adrian Peterson's larm and is completely healed and ready to perform at a level above anything he has done before, but I'm guessing he's an ordinary guy who won't get back to within 90% of his old adequate self before next year. 5. Diamond is hurt. He was a great candidate for regression anyway. Despite all of that, I'm going to agree with your overall record prediction just on blind faith and/or wishful thinking. My way is more scientific.

That's the first plausible explanation for the prevalence of bobbleheads I have seen.

My first guesses were Baker or Pavano (the elbow looks either old or injured) but the glove brand didn't match either one. I'm waiting for a double points special so I can get twice as much of the nothing I could normally get.

Nick Blackburn?

I said this once before on a thread that might have been dormant: Frankie Rodriguez deserves serious consideration. Others that come to mind (without looking at stats to verify my memory): Ron Davis, Dave Stevens, Hosken Powell, Willie Norwood,

I guess I see a little Big papi resemblance in the lower picture with Sano, but none in the upper one. He needs to eat a dozen extra cheeseburgers a week for about a year to really get there. (He makes Sano look small, which is pretty scary.)

I did, but I'm not sure exactly how it fit. One of my fovorite headlines of all time was for a little blurb in the old USA Today Baseball Weekly: Player Really To Be Named Later. It was about Arias informing the Twins that he preferred to go by Ortiz after he came to the team from Seattle as the PTBNL in the Dave Hollins trade. At the time I figured it was just a funny story about a guy we would most likely never hear from again.

This topic has been dormant for a week, but Frankie Rodriguez came to mind and deserves a mention.

"What other players should be featured in this series?" It's tough to draw the line between guys who were fringe players brought up to fill out the roster and guys who were expected to do something but bombed. Bret Boone comes to mind, although he might not have been around long enough to do too much damage.

When I clicked on the link, I had no idea who wrote the book, but based on the title I guessed it was Bill Smith.

With a Baaastonian accent, to be precise.

"ERA is the MOST important stat for a pitcher" It is the most important stat for evaluating current performance, but it is not the best indicator for future performance, especially as a player moves up levels. Even at the major league level, K/W is a better indicator of future ERA than current ERA is. I haven't really kept up on the predictive value of the newer metrics, but the rules "there's no such thing as a pitching prospect" and "there's no such thing as a prospect below AA" both apply. They had nice years, but I'm not holding my breath waiting for them (yet.)

60-102 If everyone stays healthy, my off-the-cuff projections are: 1. Diamond will regress some. We'll call his ERA 4.00 (I hope) 2. Hendriks will be good, but with some growing pains. I'd say he's equal to Diamond next year and will be better long-term. 3. It's hard to know how far along Gibson's injury might have set back his development. He wasn't great at AA or AAA before the injury, so my guess is he starts the season in the minors. If he doesn't, it will probably be a bumpy ride. I'll peg his ERA at 5.50, with the upside being what he did in AA in 2010 and the downside being really bad short term, Phil Humber long term 4. I'm glad De Vries got to go to the ball, but the chariot is overdue at the pumpkin patch. 6.00+ 5. Walters is not a kid, was not good, and has given little reason to believe he will be good. 6.00+

His luck actually lasted for two seasons - his 08 and 09 seasons are just about identical. (ERAs within .02, WHIP within .06, So/9 dropped .2, BB/9 was the same, W-L identical - few people have two seasons in a row that are that similar.) The problem is there were warning signs the whole time. The league eventually figures out guys that don't miss bats. Sometimes a young pitcher will start with a low SO/9 and then take a leap forward in the second year (Radke). Blackburn started too low and went (slightly) lower. Even at his peak, he was a #4 type starter, and those are the kind of guys you find after you build the core of the team. They aren't the guys you lock up as the core.

I was kind of ticked last night and I was hoping the Twins would use up their whole bullpen hitting one batter per inning. Then when the benches cleared (and they probably would have) make sure someone went after Oswalt. Maybe that's why Waldrop got called up - so we have enough arms to do it tonight.

If you are a human being [i am] who believes in evolution... [i'm not, but I will limit my comment to areas where I would agree with those who do] Repetition, physical ability and love for the game are not only passed onto the next generation by word of mouth, but also by the ability to reproduce and implant their genetic mark, a mark that contains the imprint of baseball. Acquired characteristics such as baseball skills are not passed along genetically. (However, apparently Lamarckism is making a bit of a comeback, although for now it's tentative/questionable (at best) and limited to starvation situations and certain experiments with single-cell life forms.) I would say that the US has better players than Australia because there are more people who play and there are far more opportunities to play against high-level competition. The coaching is better, or, rather, better coaching is available if you look for it. My son is a much better athlete than I ever was, but I was a better baseball player. When he was nine we moved to Belgium and then to Germany, so he didn't see decent competion until he was a junior in high school. There is no substitute for repetions and good competition.

New Britain to Groton to Cooperstown? Definitely not concerned with a direct route. I'm from that area - a town called Niantic, which is a reasonably short drive from Groton. (My father worked in Groton for about 35 years.) While living there I would never have thought of New Britain to Groton as a short detour - that was an hour each way, and 2 hours to Boston or to New York were the outer edges of the world there. Now that I live in Oklahoma, my perspective has changed a bit. A 2 hour trip to (each way) to OKC is routine, and four hours to Dallas is fairly common. But when I read your route, I fell back into the old, familiar perspective on distance for a minute. There is a NY-P team in Norwich CT - I just checked the schedule and saw they are on their All-Star break. The game is tomorrow "hosted by the Mahoning Valley Scrappers at Eastwood Field in Niles, Ohio." Are you by any chance headed that way? This is the first entry on your trip that I have caught - I'll get caught up on the rest tomorrow. Good stuff. P.S. - If you're out that way again, Mystic Seaport is worth a day.

If I didn't know how the numbers worked, I'd say something like "with the Twins' pitching this year, of course the numbers are up." Don't they normally try to get a 3-year average to normalize the numbers because the park factors tend to fluctuate? (Variations in pitchers faced and interleague play opponents, plus a sample size that's not quite large enough can skew the results over one season.

I didn't see that this was posted here too. I followed the link to the blog in the GameDay's Twins Blogosphere Guide, and there was some discussion there. The way I see it is this: Carroll was legally on the base (7.01). Casilla wasn't on the base, so 7.03 a and b don't apply. Casilla is out for going out of the baseline.

He's hitting for more power than I expected. The .130 average he had earlier wasn't going to hold, but it still remains to be seen if he will hit enough (or defend well enough) to stay in the league. I'm reasonably optimistic, but then I guess I always am (except when I'm unreasonably optimistic.)

"...see if there's a low level prospect the Nationals might be interested in." After the Ramos trade, that scares me. I can picture the answer: "There are a couple of guys way down in Low-A; I think their names are Sano and Rosario..."

I agree with your line-up with a couple of omments: 1. Plouffe has earned a VERY short leash. 2. I prefer Willingham in RF and Revere in LF. When Willingham said he wasn't comfortable out there, I would have told him to bring his recliner because he was going to be there for the next three years and might as well get comfortable.