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nicksaviking

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Everything posted by nicksaviking

  1. nicksaviking
    Well I highly question their reporting, but aren't defensive metrics still based on an obvservation of range as well? 30 out of 162 is a pretty good representative sample size actually. I question the Twins ability to use advanced metrics, but I guess I don't know why a Twins scout trying to determine range would be any less credible than the John Does who are recording the data for the defensive metrics.
  2. nicksaviking
    And presumably the team wouldn't need a ten second delay for their news conferences.
  3. nicksaviking
    Probably not, but I think that really has more to do with the quality of the available OF than it does with the split among us TD posters. Perhaps Alex Rios would have been the compromise that would have brought us together, I haven't heard too much complaining about him even though everyone would be counting on bounce back offensive and defensive production from him.
  4. nicksaviking
    I don't think I've heard the Twins or Twins pitchers blame the defense, which is noble. Still, if good defenders make the pitchers look better, or good pitchers make defenders look better are the options, I think you win more with the later. Good on both ends is ideal, but I think you fix the pitching first, as it seems more important.
  5. nicksaviking
    I agree, the pitchers themselves likely are not able to change. That doesn't change the fact that the finding plus outfielders (and infielders) because the pitchers put too many balls in play isn't fixing the problem, it's just putting a band aid on it. If the team wants to make the pitchers look better, sure, you can get better fielders, but the team isn't going to contend until the actual pitching problem is fixed. We're basically just arguing if Torii Hunter is an adaquate turniquet. To win, they need to do more than simply try to stop the bleeding.
  6. nicksaviking
    Yeah, which is on par with every other Twins mid-season trade lately.
  7. nicksaviking
    Ha, thanks for the disclaimer Brock.
  8. nicksaviking
    My take on the comment was perhaps the pitchers should find the catcher's glove more often instead of making the outfielders get all of their outs for them.
  9. nicksaviking
    Agreed. This is the best discussion we've had since the trade deadline!
  10. nicksaviking
    I agree with number 3 but only in so far as I'm not sure which direction the club is aiming for here. I wanted to go younger. However, how do we know that they aren't using advanced data? Perhaps they are using information not found on Fangraphs or any other fan accessable baseball site. All things being equal, he's a bad outfielder, but all things are not equal, namely Comerica Park and Target Field are not equal, not even close. Perhaps the Twins are thinking the now accepted defensive measurements don't work when comparing their stadium to stadium X, and perhaps they have forumals that adjust for range needed in TF compared to stadium X. We don't know Hunter's affect on the defense. I know many want to go by the book, but I find it highly unlikely that he's not an upgrade over Willingham and Arcia. And the fact that any data would suggest it, probably is good reason not to trust it. As for #2, I don't know what Law is on, but Hunter hasn't been barely better than a replacement level player since his early days for the Twins. Perhaps he will be in 2015, but he wasn't in 2014 or any time in the previous decade. Also, while it's likely he was the Twins top target, for all we know Rios, or any other OF already told them no, or that they are waiting until February to sign. The pickings were slim, I'm not sure how high you could really aim with this group.
  11. nicksaviking
    True, but the same can usually be said about 39-year-old outfielders. I don't think he'll hit as well as he did protected by that Tigers lineup. On the other hand, I think there's a pretty good chance that he'll hit better than any other free agent bat the Twins could/would bring in. Rios was my choice if they were going to get a free agent OF, but if you have to wait for him, you might get nothing at all.
  12. nicksaviking
    Boy, you know we've been starved for any kind of meaningful Twins news when a one year stop-gap signing brings this many hot-blooded points of view to both sides of the debate! $20 bucks says that in ten years someone's going to say, "Hey, remember that time the Twins brought Torii Hunter back for one season? That was so extremely......uneventful."
  13. nicksaviking
    Yeah, I actually think this is actually a no-trade-clause that indicates a trade is even more likely. Demanding a full-NTC means Hunter wants control of where he goes, and if Hunter insists on the final say of where he goes, that likely means he wants to be playing in the playoffs ten months from now.
  14. nicksaviking
    Sorry I missed that. I'm in the minority I guess, but I like that strategy. I guess I sound too much like Earl Weaver. Hope I don't teach my kids too many naughty words.
  15. nicksaviking
    Yes, his bat should be a plus, it seems well suited to TF. The defense was so bad last year that it seems no one cares about anything else. No one has even broached the positives and negatives about his addition to the lineup.
  16. nicksaviking
    Great stuff Parker. Still, Hunter catches that fly ball in TF. That is unless he started out playing two feet off the warning track. Comreica needs a rangy RF, Target Field has less need of one.
  17. nicksaviking
    Well I'm hoping the new regime is past the days of the players dictating where they play. Willingham should have been in RF, Mauer should have also learned to play corner OF and Delmon Young should have been happy to have a spot anywhere on the field. My money is on Molitor telling players who demand certain positions, "I'll take your suggestion under advisement. Now get out of my office and get back in the batting cage where I told you to be ten minutes ago."
  18. nicksaviking
    That sounds like trying to treat the disease instead of actually curing it. Pharmaceutical companies love that stratagy, but it doesn't mean you're any less sick. People need to stop and consider how silly putting this much weight in defensive metrics are if we are using them in a bubble. Using any common sense should show that Hunter is a better defender than Josh Willingham, Chris Colabello and Oswaldo Arcia, he's clearly a better athlete and he's played the position for decades. It's not a coincidence that his defensive numbers went in the toilet at the same time he moved to Comerica. It was the ballpark and I don't know how this is clear as day. Dislike the move because it departs from the youth movement, the defense was upgraded, even if it wasn't improved to an elite level that some may want. That just wasn't happening without sacraficing offense, and I'm not giving up offense for defense.
  19. nicksaviking
    That's wholly surprising but I see that WAR and ERA+ back that up. I liked Radke but he never seemed more than a really good pitcher to me where as Kaat was a really good pitcher who also seemed to have a handful of elite seasons. Radke's traditional numbers surely were inflated pitching in the steroid ERA which were then nutralized with the more advanced metrics. Still, it just doesn't seem to jive. Eleven of Kaat's 13 seasons with the Twins and 18 of his 25 seasons total his ERA was under 4.00. That just seems like great pitching no matter which era you threw in, though perhaps today's numbers should outweigh history.
  20. nicksaviking
    The marketing team did the math and decided the Hunter jersey would be the biggest seller this year. They then casually mentioned to the Pohlads that if the deal was only for one year, those jerseys would then be obsolete after only one season, just in time for people to buy Buxton and Sano jerseys.
  21. nicksaviking
    No but at least he won't have the wall to deal with. If Arcia doesn't improve, he's going to to be a liability no matter where he plays.
  22. nicksaviking
    Actually I think Winfield was less of a gimmick, the team was pretty good in 1992. Winfield was old but just came off a really nice season with Toronto and the Twins were trying to replace Chili Davis. I would say Molitor and also Terry Steinbach felt like gimmick signings at the time, however, as far as Molitor goes, he really was one of the only reasons to even remember that era of Twins baseball. I loved his chase for 3.000 hits and he played damn well for being in his 40s. Molitor and Steinbach might have been to entice fans to a terrible product, but Twenty years later, I'm still glad they did it. I'm happy to have had those guys in Twins uniforms in what we already knew was going to be a long season.
  23. nicksaviking
    It's a one year deal and Rosario and Buxton probably aren't quite ready, so I'm not upset. There seems to be quite an overreaction to Hunter's poor defense though. IF they put him in RF, his defense is going to be just fine. His awful -18.3 UZR last year was caused entirely by his -18.4 range factor, meaning if it weren't for his decreased range, his defense would have been decent. Clearly his range was going to be magnified in cavernous Comerica Park, if they stick him in RF at Target Field, he'll be moving from one of the parks that demands the most range from it's rightfielder to one of the parks that demands the least. Arcia's problem in RF wasn't his range, but the terrible angles he took and his confusion with the wall. His range factor was only -4.4. That should indicate one of two things; either Hunter's range problems are 4x worse than Arcia's, which sounds completely illogical, or the difference between ball parks has an extremely large impact on the perception of the outfielder. I want a young team, so I wasn't too interested in Hunter, but this is going to be far from the disaster movie it is being made out to be.
  24. nicksaviking
    WTF! Did I blackout again?! I don't remember posting this, in fact I don't even like Jay Bruce and remember saying I wouldn't trade for him, possibly even in this thread. Please tell me there is some kind of IT issue here and I'm not schizophrenic!
  25. nicksaviking
    I'm not sure what the next "Era" will be, but I'm guessing John would be included in the Post 72 ERA that will someday be evaluated with the likes of Steve Garvey, Ted Simmons, Keith Hernandez, Dale Murphy, Lee Smith, Don Mattingly, Alan Trammel and Tim Raines, assuming those last four don't get in on the regular ballot.
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