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nicksaviking

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Everything posted by nicksaviking

  1. nicksaviking
    Fangraphs certainly seems to have an affinity for Arcia. I hope it's a good omen.
  2. nicksaviking
    Plus Aiken throws harder with good command. Just realized that if you invert the W, Walker Buehler is an anagram for Le Mark Buehrle. Surely the Twins are interested in Buehrle's French mirror image, just as they've always had interest in the original. I hope they go another route.
  3. nicksaviking
    That's absolutely true. Still, I don't want to go out and get defensive-minded corner outfielders simply as a band-aid for the terrible pitching. The terrible pitching will have to be fixed regardless of the outfield defense before this club is poised to win again.
  4. nicksaviking
    It's because his defensive decline matches up with his move to Conerica. If we like UZR, it was +14 his final season with the Angels. I don't think he's a good defender, but I don't think he's nearly the worst, there are plenty of less athletic corner OFs out there and they wouldn't have nearly the instincts and experience. Below average? Probably. One of the worst? No.
  5. nicksaviking
    People are really buying into the metrics that say Hunter was worse in the field than all of those players last year? I doubt it. Maybe they'd be more reliable if all the players played in the same stadium and played under the same defensive preferences of the same manager.
  6. nicksaviking
    I've taken my kids to opening day every year since they were born and the best seat I've had for those (hair raising) experiences was in the last row of the section. I didn't have to worry about standing and blocking anyone plus it was easy access to the concourse. If you're daughter is anything like my kids, you'll be lucky if she sits still long enough to enjoy your seat for most of the game, I generally end up walking the concourse anyway. Luckily, you have a view of the field from most spots just walking around.
  7. nicksaviking
    Well not defensive metrics. Everyone seems to forget that he was a pretty reliable bat last year. Last ten years really.
  8. nicksaviking
    As long as it stays in the bullpen, I'm optimistic.
  9. nicksaviking
    Ah the sage advice from the great Deolis Guerra. I assume his changed change up was organizationally approved? Or could that be a contributing factor to the possible friction alluded to by the "clean slate" comment in the article?
  10. nicksaviking
    I'm waiting for the Berardino opinion . But yeah, it's not like Souhan isn't more than comforatable ripping the team. I could really care less if Hunter's leadership skills are the real deal or if he's just a poser, so long as the young players appear to be gaining some benefit from him. It doesn't bother me in the least if the spark that kicks off a new generation of winning attitudes is a placebo.
  11. nicksaviking
    I agree he clearly prefers scouting to stats and I wish that would change, however I really don't fault him for discounting UZR when the measurement says Hunter was worse than Arcia in the field last year. Common sense says something doesn't add up. It's quite possible Ryan checked with Jack Goin who was using other measurements of evaluation. It seems we often assume that a team isn't using advanced statistics if the players they use don't look good on Fangraphs or any other similar site. But why would a team need to hire a statistical analysis team if all they really need is a Fangraphs translator? I find it very likely that Jack Goin and other statisticians are using numbers that are not readily accessible to the general public; likely coming up with analysis of their own design. Perhaps Jack does use the scouts input, which would basically be similar to the other commonly used crowd sourced defensive data, only this would exlusively be using experienced professionals. Why else would a team need these guys?
  12. nicksaviking
    I don't like that he's a given, but his salary makes it so, so no need to gnash our teeth about it. To be honest though, had Nolasco bombed with say Cleveland last year and the Twins picked him up on a buy low deal this off season, we'd probably be pretty excited right now expecting a bounce back from our shiney new lotto ticket we would be penciling into the rotation.
  13. nicksaviking
    I'd agree you probably can't teach guys how to win, I'd guess the idea is to teach guys the work habits and mind sets of winners. Even if it ultimately proved futile, I'm all for the effort, especially for the young guys with talent.
  14. nicksaviking
    Great tie in to the Zaun shennanigans. In the Zaun thread I wanted to comment about how so many young players are thriving today and I wonder if they would have done so in the past if they were constantly being told to know their place and let the vets do the leading. I didn't present that thought specifically because as I was typing, I thought about how A-Rod and Griffey came up and flourished at a young age. It would seem here that A-Rod perhaps thrived despite any negative treatment, and the treatment may have adversely shaped his development going forward.
  15. nicksaviking
    All of whom are Twins Daily readers I guess.
  16. nicksaviking
    Yeah, they also got rid of young players with upside in exchange for Kirk Gibson's preferred "gritty" players. I'm guessing ESPN is taking into consideration the fact that they got rid of those philosophies as a step in the right direciton.
  17. nicksaviking
    I don't think there's all that much luck to it, the Twins have been among the worst at K's for a long time, and it wasn't just under Smith. Johan Santana was a godsend and an anomoly, but this is the same club that was trying to win championships with Radke, Milton, Mays, Redmond and Reed. The philosophy clearly has changed, but they did seem to be amongst the last teams to see the value in the strikeout, which is odd considering how much they seemed to dislike batters who wiffed too much. I will concede that there is the possiblity that the problem wasn't that they didn't look hard enough for strikeout pitchers, but instead just were not able to identify them in the draft or develop them to become effective MLBers. However, if that was/is the issue, this club has even bigger problems and needs to bring in different help.
  18. nicksaviking
    I don't remember hearing much about him losing control of the clubhouse. It just seemed to me that Gardy was more tuned in with the veterans than the young players. It was time to go, but I don't think he lost the team.
  19. nicksaviking
    I didn't know about his story or that he was a local guy, thanks for the write up. The name looked familiar due to a past of obsseively going over Twins rosters when I was young, but I honestly wouldn't have been able to give one fact about him until this article.
  20. nicksaviking
    Maybe this money is spread around differently, but I don't think the Twins are on the receiving end of the revenue sharing. Of course a season averaging 12K fans a game may change that.
  21. nicksaviking
    Well it would seem much easier for us to reclaim our money by becoming scalpels than it would be by becoming an owner of a MLB team as much as it kills my dreams to admit.
  22. nicksaviking
    I really doubt he cheers for any player on a team he doesn't like to get injured. Hate is a pretty abstract word these days. I'm guessing for most people, "hating" a particular team is more inline with hating brocolli than say, hating Adolf Hitler. Plenty of hyperbole gets tossed around when talking about sports, the word 'hate' probably is among the instances. Except for the Packers, who I believe have been charged with numerous war crimes.
  23. nicksaviking
    Yes, trying to get everyone to choose a side in the Red Sox/Yankee rivalry was simply well crafted hype by ESPN in the late 1990's to drum up business seeing as those team's make up their preferred geographical coverage. There were plenty of us who chose to still cheer against both big pocketed teams.
  24. nicksaviking
    If you're leadoff hitter his prone to hitting long balls, isn't the simple solution to make the 8th or maybe even 7th spot the blackhole of the team? I'm expecting regression, but if Suzuki is still putting up a .330 OBP, put him in the 9 hole instead of Hicks, Schaffer or whoever is struggling to put it together. Even with only minor regression, if Santana only ends up with a .320 OBP, there's a decent chance Hicks, Suzuki and Escobar can top that batting at the bottom of the order anyway. Dozier doesn't have to bat #2, if we're only doing it for the sake of his pop.
  25. nicksaviking
    Right, which is what would ensure this type of behavior would continue if outside influence didn't intervene. It's rediculsously stupid and immature stuff and thankfully society as a whole is telling them to grow up, but playing armchair psychiatrist, it seems pretty clear why this stuff is so popular among athletes. These guys go straight from HS or college into their professional careers not knowing how people in actual professional careers carry about their business. If they were never exposed to any kind of behavior outside of what they learned in the HS locker rooms or frat houses, they probably have no clue that there are better opperating models to use. Also, on a sexist note, I would imagine plenty of businesses may devolve into this type of non-sense if they didn't have any female coworkers that would ecourage civilized behavior.
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