Darius

I like the strategy. Now, more than ever, hitters are easier to project into the future. When you’re working with relatively limited resources, you make safe bets. I also think we’re seeing a similar blueprint working wonderfully right now. The Nationals (Scherzer, Corbin, Soto, Rendon), the Astros (Verlander, Grienke, Altuve, Springer, etc.) are prime examples. Develop hitters, then go buy the pitching when the time is right. One obvious reason: You don’t need the volume when it comes to pitching. You need a couple great starters and a handful of good relievers. It’s much easier to go out and get a high-end starter and reliever than multiple high-end offensive pieces. We just saw first hand the kind of organizational depth it takes to have an elite offense. Something also not being considered is the current roster construction. There’s going to be significant turnover on the offensive side in fairly short order. Kepler and Polanco are the only ones you can reasonably count on being around and productive 2-3 years from now. With Lewis, Kirilloff, Larnach, Jeffers, and maybe Rooker, it’s a start. But, more is needed, and I don’t see much behind that handful in terms of being impactful offensively and close to the majors. Or, could it be that just maybe the college hitter was just the best player there in their evaluation? There are an awful lot of great hitters out there that went to college. “College” is carrying this derogatory sentiment when it comes to prospects for some reason. Worked out pretty well for some guys named Josh Donaldson and Mitch Garver. Also, some guys called Rendon, Harper, Goldschmidt, Alonso, Story, Bregman, Chapman, etc.

I’d say Arraez’s perfect rating in contact vs. righties and vision are pretty outstanding.

Terry Ryan’s deficiencies didn’t lie in his ability to identify talent. His inability to keep up with the times in terms of information systems was his downfall. The development side was a disaster for a significant amount of time. Many-a-player have publicly lamented the “Twins Way.” When it comes to player acquisition only, I think Ryan’s team did pretty well. The young-ish “core” of this club are all Ryan-era (including Smith’s short stint) holdovers. Kepler, Polanco, Buxton, Sano, Berrios, Garver, Rosario, Rogers, Duffy, May, etc. You can go back to the 00s as well, as mentioned above. Plucking Johan in the Rule 5. The Liriano trade. Hunter, Mauer, Morneau. Some pretty phenomenal talent acquisition. The game just seemed to pass him by in terms of philosophy. Also, wherever the blame lies (whether Ryan or Pohlad), the reluctance to fortify a roster from the outside in a meaningful way could’ve easily cost him a ring or two.

This article is irresponsible. Everyone, let’s virtue signal and dox everyone around us as possible racists and supporters of the police (anything but that!). Very productive right now. Honestly, from my point of view there are very few people out there who aren’t agreeing on the issues right now. Who is arguing what happened to this man at the hands of a potential sociopath was/is acceptable? It was absolutely horrific, and absolutely needs to be addressed. Who is arguing peaceful demonstrations are unacceptable? Anyone with a shred common human decency agrees (which is 95% of the population). So, what the heck is this? What’s the point of this article? What does he have to say to satisfy you that he’s not a “Nazi“ and be able to move on to phase 2 of the purge, and at what point does he have to say it? Let’s hear your rules. Or, are you doing this to try to convince yourself that you’re better? “A slap in the face to community?” for not Tweeting. Seriously? Think about that for a minute. How did this become normalized? Our society truly has gone off the rails. I’ve never seen anything like this. A human rights issue that everyone fundamentally agrees on. There was about 24 hours where everyone was coming together and agreeing that this was an abomination of justice. Because we can’t have that for long, we immediately moved into this disturbing cannibalization of each other’s character....like it powers you up a level to call someone else out. Perverse Orwellian Pac-Man. And yes, its been politicized. You’re parading around a symbol of support for the police that’s been around for years as some sort of symbols of hatred? It’s a clear political statement. What message do you think you’re sending that’s productive in that sense? Kepler would be totally justified in not uttering more than a “no comment,” to TD for the rest of his career. I know damn well my legal team would be getting ahold of folks about legal implications in terms of how some insinuations in this article damage my career going forward. Tread carefully.

I’ve long been quick to criticize the way this squad operates financially. Signing Donaldson, and now this, has gone a long way in getting me to think the worm really has turned. The team should get plenty of good PR. And, you know, it’s a good thing on a human level. Keeping a lot of families from total ruin. I’m guessing part of it is confidence that they’ll be playing this year. But, whatever it takes. They’re stepping up regardless.

Not the strikeouts again. Its similar to the change in the bunting paradigm years back. Some are reluctant to give it up. But, eventually all will start to come to a consensus that you get a favorable outcome, run production-wise, when you swing hard. Disclaimer: I’m talking in generalizations here, but there are some exceptions. Obviously, Luis Arraez isn’t as effective if he’s trying to hit one into the Bud Deck on every pitch. I’m not concerned about BABIP in this case, either. Sano will carry a higher BABIP by nature. There isn’t necessarily a bubble to burst. He’s basically a three outcome guy. He K’s a significant amount, homering a ton, and striking out a ton. None of those outcomes are a ball in play. He also barrels up the ball extremely well despite that approach. Thus, when the ball is put into play, there’s a higher rate of balls hit extremely hard (aka, hard line drives). Those get caught less.

So if Amazon takes a loss in any given year they should shut it down? Why do people not think about this as cumulative thing? It makes zero sense. They’ve made revenue hand over fist for years, which 99% of players can’t say. So many expenses related to baseball that generate the “net income” you see are non-cash (depreciation, amortization). Those are factored into that income number for any given team. You know what isn’t, the appreciation in value of their assets. I don’t recall the exact numbers, but the Pohlads have netted nearly a billion dollars in the appreciation in value of the club....and were a small to mid market club (imagine that number for the Steinbrenner family). The facts are, the owners aren’t really “losing money.” That’s a ridiculous statement and it’s propaganda. It’s a number on paper that doesn’t match the reality of the cash flow and appreciation in assets. It’s accounting. Why don’t the owners go to the TV companies and say, sorry we need to renegotiate? Why shouldn’t they pull their weight? Ratings for games are going to be off the charts. Why does the bite come from the player’s apple who is making $250k. You don’t think those players rely on that salary to meet obligations they have (mortgages, many players fund families and extended families, etc - real people, real issues - not multi billionaires who could take years of losses without even noticing). Guess what, they’ll “lose money” on paper just the same if baseball isn’t played. They’re still paying for stadium maintenance. They’re still paying some employees. They’re still paying themselves. Their assets are still depreciating. It’s not like the expenses stop if baseball stops. The owners need baseball a hell of a lot more than the players do, IMO. Would you work your job for pennies on the dollar just to prevent the guy who owns your company from taking a loss? I honestly don’t think people actually think this through in real-life terms. There’s some propaganda out there through that crook Manfred’s office with the owner’s sob story....and people buy it hook line and sinker. I love Boras’ take on this, the debt agreements, etc. he’s 100% spot on, despite what you’ll hear from people who don’t truly understand finance and accounting. The owners made their bed by the business decisions they’ve made. They are in fact looking for a “bail out” as Boras puts it. If you can’t pay your employees without losing money, that’s on you in any line of business. You weren’t prepared, and you made bad decisions. Your employees aren’t going to show up for nothing out of the goodness of their hearts or to make users of the product feel warm and fuzzy. You do realize the Pohlads fortune came from foreclosing in people, banking, and borderline predatory practices. They didn’t give anyone a break when things got tough. Why the hell should anyone give those money grubbing parasites a break?

I’ll start this by saying I dislike Manfred about as much as a fan can dislike a commissioner....and beyond. The guy is as crooked, clearly. From attempting to cover for A-Roid with coercion to his imbecilic responses to the juiced ball to attempting to cover up the cheating scandal with blatant faux investigations. Just an awful commissioner and human in general. Worst thing to ever happen to baseball. He set this up by taking his own pay cut. Conveniently, I can find his exact number. I can only find that the league office is taking an “average” of 35%. So, he thought it was a brilliant idea to then say, “the people who actually generate the revenue that is used to pay my office will have to take cuts in excess of 50%.” Meanwhile, the players also have to travel and potentially expose themselves to the virus (I won’t get into personal feelings in the virus).....cut to Manfred and his cronies watching the game in opulence from the safety of an isolated MLB office somewhere. Who could have an issue with that? A real leader would come out and set an example with his pay cut, not try to minimize it and sneak it under the rug. I’d put a wager that Manfred’s salary is just supplemental to outrageous kickbacks anyway (no indication..but knowing Manfred). Also, where are people getting that owners are going to suffer if they have to pay their players a fair ratio of their salary? That’s just false. Since when is ticket revenue the main driver behind anything? Why don’t they publish the unrealized appreciation owners have benefitted from (they can leverage that value in many ways until selling and cashing in a realized gain of a billion freaking dollars). Good for the players. I’d push back too. I’m not playing a game out of charity for some of the richest, sleaziest men in the world. If I’m Mike Trout, you’re giving me my damn money that you agreed to.

Yeah, the Atlanta thing kind of defeats the purpose of limiting travel it seems. It seems to me that it’s an attempt to rig things slightly to benefit the East. They don’t want to set it up in a way that could would guarantee the exclusion of one of the Yankees, Nationals, Red Sox, Phillies, or Braves from the playoffs. If that’s the case....why not keep the same format and limit games to be within AL/NL East, etc.? That would be much less travel. This is just gerrymandering to maximize the odds of the leagues preferred playoff matchups. It has almost nothing to do with minimizing “travel.” If that were the case, you wouldn’t have teams from Texas going to the state of Washington - well over 2,000 miles. Atlanta to Toronto is less than 1,000. Atlanta to NY less than 900. It’s a much shorter distance from Texas to NY, for example, than to Seattle. If you want to minimize travel, make 4 divisions. Part of me just wants to hate this because I hate Manfred. The other part of me hates it because it doesn’t make sense, unless purely from a way to drum up excitement/playoff matchups.

On topic - getting Bauer would make this team significantly better. I still don’t trust this rotation much, and am not sold on Maeda being anything more than average to slightly above (if you honestly believe the Dodgers pulled him from the rotation to save a few million, I’m sorry, you’re wrong). This rotation will still be a massive issue come playoff time (if there is playoff time).

It has to feel good for him to be back in that environment and performing well. I’m still surprised he didn’t carve out a career of some kind in the MLB. I think the ability was there.

Chances are, if Arraez leads the team in OPS at that point, disastrous things have happened. Good player, but very limited in the power department. A .900 OPS would require a batting avg. that is off the charts (.400 neighborhood). With so many big time hitters in this lineup (Cruz, Donaldson, Garver, Sano, Kepler), the OPS bar is set near league MVP level.

Some sort of composite calculation based on W-L record (or some average of a number of years) and player salary. Win-loss record be damned if you’re one of the 5-6 teams with a massive, massive competitive advantage

I hope one of our guys put one up near Judge’s messed up grill, if they’re going to throw at Donaldson. Give them nothing.

Jared Camp for Johan Santana in ‘99. It was a Rule 5 deal, but still a trade. Arguably #1, considering Nathan was merely a closer (great, but no multiple Cy Young winner), Liriano blew out his arm after two months, and Bonser was nothing special. I can’t imagine the Twins were anywhere near as successful in the 00s without arguably the best pitcher in team history. Edit: Hat tip to Lance. Should’ve read all the comments more thoroughly.

Ironically, people in the United States are blaming the government for testing issues. Meanwhile, it’s a side step of regulation that is being portrayed as the difference in Germany (blaming a single politician is asinine in and of itself, but I won’t continue down that road. Trusting bureaucrats with something that requires efficient resource allocation is mistake #1). One thing people also seem to lose track of: There could very well be faulty tests all over the world, including Germany, to this day. Rolling out testing just for the sake of testing may not be a good answer. Way too much hysteria around testing, IMO. There were a number of tests out there offering false positives (which tend to help recovery statistics). Do people really believe we’re bumbling idiots that can’t come up with an effective test, meanwhile there’s a stockpile of highly effective test out there from Germany that we refuse to use? It’s much more likely that their tests aren’t real accurate at this point either (but who will ever admit that, especially news outlets with an agenda). Testing for the sake of testing, without properly analyzing the veracity of the results given - which takes a significant amount of time, is in no way a solution to any problem. Testing isn’t the issue in America. Allowing tens, possibly hundreds of thousands, of people back into this country at a vital time is the problem. Liberal media shooting down preventative travel restriction policies as xenophobic at a critical time is the problem. People not adhering to stay at home orders because of conservative media minimizing the seriousness is the problem. The out of control politics in this country on both sides of the aisle, that has bled into our media infrastructure to such an extent that you can’t trust anything reported anymore, was and still is the problem (yet, we’re becoming increasingly divided on the issue - you’d think there would be a lesson to be learned). Again, won’t hear any of that on CNN, and you’ll hear the extreme the other way on Fox. The media in the country are an embarrassment, and should face massive repercussions once this is over. IMO, arguing the testing point right now doesn’t make any sense. Would it be great to have a better picture of the stats right now? Sure. But, what would that change at this very moment? We’ve already put the measures in place based on worst-case scenario modeling. The real data will come out eventually, and the way the models keep being modified, it’s almost certainly not going to tell us we’re not doing enough right now (can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube from three months ago). The main thing is we keep working to fight this thing with treatment/preventative measures. People need to be wary of doctored numbers coming from different regions of the world. People trusting, even citing, numbers from China are verifiably insane. Hell, even German and American data should probably be taken with a grain of salt to some extent (states competing against other states, political agendas, etc.). Also, what about demographic data and who is being tested? Sample sizes? Severity of cases (there are different “mutations”) in different regions? The people on this website should know better than anyone the danger of investing in faulty statistics and small sample sizes. You’re relying on batting average over the first month to determine MVP at this point. I’ll wait for some more complete metrics before determining winners/losers in this scenario.

Garver is an interesting case. As a catcher, I. could see him falling off a cliff sooner than later. But, he keeps himself in such great shape. He’s displayed superhuman healing ability with the ankle. I’m a little more worried about what being on the shelf for a year does to Cruz at age 40, even Donaldson in his mid-30s (another late bloomer as mentioned in relation to Garver).

I’m kind of torn on whether it would be beneficial for his suspension to be reduced significantly. On paper, sounds great. But, what are his odds of staying healthy? Clearly, he is more likely to be an impactful starter in the playoffs with a lighter workload in the regular season. Of course, managing him in a manner similar to last year is an option as well. But, is pitching a few weeks in between DL stints for maintenance a better option than a shortened season and no DL stints? No clue which would have him feeling better come playoff time.

Maybe so, talent-wise. But, his home stadium is a glorified slow-pitch softball stadium. Specifically for LH hitters, and he happens to be a right handed flyball pitcher. Additionally, how does the change in coaching/scouting staffs affect him? Clearly, the Astros have something unique when it comes to pitching. I’m not saying he’ll be awful, but he will take a step or two backward in New York. No doubt in my mind.

Very interesting. Speaking from my own experience, it sure felt like it helped. I see their point when it comes to a singular AB, but I think the conclusion, and approach to this experiment in general, are extremely faulty - in terms of framing it as a negative. As mentioned above, what about long-term? Sure, the research may show it doesn’t improve swing velocity in the one subsequent AB. But, how does it affect swing velocity over the course of the season? A person warming up with such a bat every day certainly improves wrist/fore-arm/shoulder strength (related to swing mechanics) at minimum. For example, if you participate in this exercise most every day from April to May, I would refuse to believe you would see a detriment to your bat speed in June. This is in relation to what it would have been if never picking up a heavy warm-up mechanism of some kind. It’s just like any other resistance training. Bench pressing 225 at 10 reps isn’t going to allow you to bench more in the following 10 minutes. But, doing it repeatedly, day after day, is certainly going to increase the amount of force you can generate. Overall, if done long enough, you are achieving a net gain. We’re not talking about a universe in which each player takes one at bat in their lifetime.

One of the best teams on paper in the team’s history, arguably in the MLB this year. Our best player and clubhouse heartbeat (Cruz) has one, maybe two, elite seasons left before age finally catches up. The Red Sox are down, the Indians are down, the American League favorites are rocked by a cheating scandal. Everything looks primed for a special season....and a freaking worldwide pandemic shuts down the season. Unreal. Just to be clear, there are obviously much worse things. But, in terms of first world problems, this is a big one for me.

Without actually looking at any advanced stats, I would think it’d partially related to his trajectory/launch angle (obviously). I recall hearing he struggled with launch angle up until last season, and was working on/made adjustments to attempt to correct it. BABIP numbers for a guy driving pitches in an elevated manner vs. low-line drives and ground balls look different. It also appears that a large percentage of his hard hit balls in play are to the pull side. I don’t have any data handy in terms of shifting on Max, but that could explain some of it. As he makes adjustments that should increase BABIP year after year, more shifting could be offsetting that. He also hit more HRs in 2019, which don’t fall into BABIP - not a huge driver, but a consideration. Also, when you’re attempting to hit more HRs, you’re going to hit more fly balls. The ones that don’t leave the park are more likely to end up in an outfielders glove than a screaming line drive. An increase n launch angle doesn’t necessarily mean good things, either. Maybe there’s more fly balls, and the hard hits are still lower to the ground. Maybe he needs to find that sweet spot in his launch angle. Too low results in more outs, too high results in more outs. Maybe he’s flirting with the extremes and needs to dial it down a little now after last year to really breakout offensively (as if last season was somehow insufficient). Love Max. So fun to watch hit. As someone largely of German descent (grandparents in my dads side came from the Hamburg area) who has studied the language and makes routine pilgrimages to Octoberfest (New Years Eve in Berlin is also the most underrated NYE party on earth), he’s far and away my favorite current Twin, and one of my favorite of all time. I’m not concerned about the BABIP. Stick with what’s working.

The only thing better than morning beers is the afternoon nap that inevitably follows.

My wife will buy the Andes mint chips (just the scree from the candy making process, I’m sure) and mix them in the batter. I’ve never had the alcoholic version, but I have to think the effect is similar. They’re also fantastic to eat by the handful. I need to eat all of this stuff now. I’m going to make some mint flavored stuffed peppers boiled in marina tonight.

I’ve done it for years. I mastered it in college. It’s a secret recipe only known by few. After some initiation, it was taught to me by a wise old three fingered white glove with a red nose. For some reason, its best prepared at 2 am after bar close.