gil4

I guess the abbreviated name is OK then, but most of us really need an abbreviated abbreviated name for it.

I'd think a couple of them might have some free time for a road trip.

My guess is that even now he has at best a month-to-month lease on the position.

Liriano got the opening-day win for Pittsburg - 6 IP, 3 H, 0 runs, 10 K, 5 BB

The only ways I can think of for Pelfrey to be a bust involve long stays in prison. An ERA over 6 and being released = meeting expectations.

I still don't like the rationale behind the trade, but the result hasn't been as painful as it could have been.

My guess is the son would have been much less of a problem if dad hadn't hit .207 last year.

That was my recollection too. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have advocated for forcing him to legally change his name to Jim f****** Hoey if it was Brendon Harris.

Something doesn't look right. Did I sleep through the Twins winning 94 games last year?

It's fun to come here because no matter how crazy a fan you are there is someone here who is crazier. (Unless you're Seth)

We are definitely post-Mitchell report now. Wasn't part of the criticism of the teams based on the fact that players who were using performance enhancing drugs were not being punished? My sense is the teams are now doing their part and there are just a few players trying to get around it. What do you think the teams should be doing now that they are not already doing?

Unless it's a minor league deal, free is too expensive.

That's a good point about normalizing for league averages, but Radke still won't be in the same league as Silva. That 3.82 SO+BB/9 is unreal. I'm pretty sure Radke beat that just with SO every year. OK, I looked it up. Radke's SO/9 was 3.7 his rookie year (2.3 BB/9). He was 4.6 or higher every other year, and even broke 6 twice.

Note: This was originally going to be a reply to one of the Blogosphere blogs in the sidebar, but I couldn't figure out how to put my table into the comments section. Here is the link to the original: http://twinstrivia.com/2015/12/30/some-historical-twins-pitch-to-contact-pitchers/ Edit: It took some doing, but I finally got the table to work by saving it as a JPG. It wasn't meant to be a serious piece with accurate methodology, but it also produced a list of pitchers who were just bad pitchers rather than pitching to contact. I decided that I would try to come up with a better list. I had the following problems: 1. I needed to statistically define a pitch-to-contact pitcher 2. I needed to compile the information 3. I wanted to avoid buying a subscription to Baseball Reference First, for the definition, I decided to go with BB/9 + SO/9. That should give the number of batters per nine innings that completed plate appearances without making contact. I could have tried to factor in HBP as well, but that was too much work and I doubt it would have made much difference. I also decided to use a minimum IP of 30, because I had to draw a line somewhere and I wanted to be sure to catch relieves who pitched half a season. It ended up with only one pitcher below 50 IP making the list. For compiling the data, I used the Baseball Reference play index (http://www.baseball-reference.com/play-index/season_finder.cgi?type=p) with various combinations of SO9 and BB9 as filters (and various combinations of ascending/descending sorts to get all the entries). Then I dumped the data into an Excel spread sheet, inserted a column to add the SO9 and BB9, sorted by the new column, deleted duplicate entries, and here is the result: Just a couple of surprises, the biggest being no Radke/Blackburn/Pavano/Joe Mays. (Pavano is #21, Mays #23; Those four account for 12 entries from 21 to 56)

Burn it! Burn it! Just kidding. I'd keep it too. But then I also have the program from Dave Goltz' 1-hitter against the Red Sox (complete with my scorekeeping) from the 70's ('76? It was the year he won 20. Twins won 7-0. Jim Rice got the hit in the 6th or 7th).

There are two girls in our Awana club at church that know I'm a Twins fan, and they are pretty proud of the fact that their uncle (or possibly cousin - I can't remember exactly) pitches for the Twins. I might be able to get you that autograph...

I've this before, so I'm just goi copy and When I was about 12 I got to go to a couple of games at Fenway with a friend of mine. We stayed at the same hotel as the visiting teams (my friend's family had some kind of partial season plan and they knew their way around).I bought a 3x5 spiral notebook and we just hung out in the lobby getting autographs. The Orioles were in town for the Sunday game (rained out - got to see Rick Dempsey do his routine on the tarp before they called it) and the Yankees came in for a Monday night game. Reggie came out, and of course he was mobbed. He excused himself after a minute or two (before we got to the front of the mob) and went into a restroom. I turned to my friend, said "I think I have to go' and followed him in. I took care of business, finished washing my hands about the same time as Reggie, then asked him if I could get his autograph. He said, "You don't even let a guy pee in peace, do you?" I don't know if I even answered, but he signed my book. I still have the darned thing, and it's amazing some of the names in it.Palmer, Weaver, D and T Martinez, Oscar Gamble, I think Catfish Hunter...I'm going to have to get that out again, because there were a lot more familiar names. I also got the autograph of some guy who turned out to be one of the trainers for the Orioles, but he looked like somebody and he was with somebody... OK, I dug it out. McGregor, Bumbry, Singleton, Ruppert Jones, Dempsey, and Tommy John were the other significant names. (No Catfish Hunter)

I'm not necessarily ready to concede that yet.

If he retired because of the stuff he read on TD, he needs to retire again. (If he even reads TD, he might want to think about retiring.)

We were definitely spoiled having Santana. If his best years were the standard for a #1, there are many years where no team had one.

Liked by a bunch of lame people who are also checking for updates. (Yeah, I'm on the list.)

Apparently that's just from July 31 to the end of the season (See post #31 on this thread)

I think there are a few of us who would line up to take his money

According to Baseball Reference, it's 130 AB or 45 service days (or 50 IP), and Buxton exceeded the service days. There was also some mention of possible exceptions due to DL time, but since Buxton actually played in 46 games, I'd be surprised if that's the case for him. Maybe Berrios can win it.