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Random musings from a transplanted midwesterner

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Hammond Notes - March 26

Special jetBlue Edition!   We took a break from Hammond Stadium for a day, and visited the Red Sox spring facilities for a game.     Before we went inside, we wandered in their minor league area. I was initially annoyed, because we went in what I thought to be an obvious direction but were stopped by one of the senile highly experienced hard of hearing stadium personnel, and directed toward the other side of the complex. At first I was thinking it looked like a wild goose chase (or snipe hunt)
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Hammond Notes - March 23

Here is a photo of Stephen Wickens warming up this morning. Are you sad to see this? I'm not, and you shouldn't be either:     Why? Because: No One Mourns The Wickens.   Hey, we went to Miami the other night to see Wicked, and I had to get this groaner out of my system once and for all. (Really??? He leads off with THIS?) So. After missing a couple of days of spring training Friday and Saturday, and then Sunday's minor league activities cancelled for a well earned day off, I was back at the fi
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Players Union

Twins union rep

Does anyone here remember who have been the Twins' players union representatives in years prior to Taylor Rogers? Rogers was the team's rep, Garver was the assistant rep.  Both gone via trade.  After the CBA was finished up. I wish I had a history of the past several years, for this role on the team, before drawing conclusions from a Small Sample Size of 2.  OTOH the recent CBA renewal was contentious, and perhaps recent history of the quiet years before the present wouldn't tell us mu
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ashbury in Players Union

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Red Wings at Pawtucket, August 3 2018

[re-posted from the night's minor league summary thread...]   I was in attendance at Pawtucket last night, so let me offer some additional impressions and details.   First, a minor correction: the Red Wings' final run scored on a wild pitch. The bases were not loaded when Motter walked, but when ball-four skittered past Mike Ohlman, Edgar Corcino on third scored anyway. He was there because of another wild pitch on the previous batter.   I don't have a lot to say about Pawtucket's players in thi
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An Unexpected Night At Fenway

My wife phoned to say someone at work was looking to sell a couple of bleacher tickets at Fenway. So, mere hours later (well, 30 is "mere", no?), I was on the Worcester commuter train, getting off at Yawkey Station.   Fun game versus the Marlins. Tied 1-1 for a long while, then the Sox starter Miley tired at around the 100-pitch mark and the score became 3-1 at the seventh inning stretch. But the home team came right back and loaded the bases against Cishek in relief of Haren, with a single, wal
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Spring Training Game Number 11 versus St Louis

I had the pleasure of watching today's game in person at Hammond Stadium, versus the portion of the St Louis Cardinal roster they deemed worth putting on a bus (hint: no stars). This writeup ought to be pretty quick, because it's one of those rare games where the box score plus a little inference pretty much tells you all you need to know.   But first, I'll mention that we didn't have tickets to start with, and didn't want to feed the scalpers - but a little bird had told us that tickets get fre
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Hammond Notes - March 19

A much abbreviated version of my notes today. Arrived after lunch and watched the two games offered. Perkins was the "starter" in the AAA game versus the Bostons, and seemed to do well in his one inning. Here is a photo of him warming up.     Tyler Duffey started in the AA game. Warmup photo alongside pitching coach Stu Cliburn:     I forgot to mention that I caught a glimpse of Gardy when he attended the UW Stout game Tuesday against our younger players - son Toby coaches Stout. So here's a b
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Historical

40 Starts a Season

Recently a side comment came up about why modern pitchers don't start 40 games a season like they used to.  The question intrigued me so I did a little searching.  The results surprised me.  Mostly I used the Stathead tool at baseball-reference.com, and the most useful table I constructed is this: https://stathead.com/tiny/SBDaM Since the modern era, 1901 and forward, it's never been the case that pitchers in general were regularly making 40 starts. For periods of years, the major
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ashbury in Historical

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The Cheapskate goes to a parade

The Red Sox won the World Series on the road, so my tentative plan to be a Cheapskate and lurk the Fenway environs in anticipation of a fourth win proved impractical. Next best thing was to pencil in Wednesday the 31st, when a parade in the team's honor was scheduled.   Large crowds were anticipated for the 11:00 start, so again I relied on public transportation. And again I was concerned that the commuter train might already be full before it pulled into my station, but again it was easy-peasy.
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2022

Arizona Fall League 2022

The Glendale Desert Dogs had several representatives from the Twins' farm system.  Denny Bentley, Francis Peguero, Jon Olsen and Ryan Shreve were the pitchers, and the position players were Alex Isola, Austin Martin and Edouard Julien.  Here's a few photos from my trip in late October.  For two of the three games I was joined by the illustrious USAFChief. Driving there meant going through some dusty desert miles.  Here is one of the denizens of the town of Beatty NV where I quartered for th
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2021

Scorpions Stomp Solar Sox

Thursday afternoon's game in Mesa was marred by an injury to Matt Wallner due to an errant pitch high and inside.  I wrote up what I know here.  I find it disquieting that we have not quickly heard a simple "X-rays proved negative" by mid-evening.  The 11-4 drubbing administered to the home Solar Sox by our Twins' Scottsdale Scorpions pales in comparison to the concern I have for Matt, but here is my game summary from a Twins fan perspective. In attendance along with me at Sloan Park was Tw
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2

Poker night with Terry Ryan

One of the interview questions with Terry Ryan at the Torii Hunter introduction press conference was, "are you surprised it [he?] took a one year contract?". Terry twitched and suppressed a smile and basically used every single one of his facial muscles before replying "no".   http://blogs.twincities.com/twins/2014/12/04/twinsights-terry-ryan-defensive-metrics-twins-ignore/   (Second short video in the sequence.)   My reaction is that, while poker is not my game and I am terrible at it, if by ch
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Hammond Notes - March 18

I meant to write up these notes last night and forgot. No deep insights here, just my jottings from a day under the sun at Hammond Field.   I arrived at 9:10, too late to get free parking on a game day. Cheapskate fans of minor league spring ball, take note!   I was approached by a reporter from a Naples newspaper, who was looking to interview average fans. I had initially mentioned my tenuous "affiliation" with TD (thinking he might be Nick Nelson), and apparently that made me way too official
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Cartoons

The Old Orb Match

Two blog posts in one day.  But I ran across this, and in honor of Opening Day I just have to share: Credit where due, this is apparently the work of Nathan W. Pyle: https://www.facebook.com/nathanwpyle2  
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ashbury in Cartoons

0

Mauer Power

I was thinking about the 2012 Twins' imbalance on offense, between getting on base (acceptable) and power (low). A guy we look to for power is Joe Mauer, so I decided to see where he stands at this early stage of the season. Arbitrarily I picked his 2008 season as a benchmark - an excellent season by any standard, but not as insanely high a bar to set as his 2009 season, and one very much in line with his career numbers. In 2008 he had 633 plate appearances, and so far in 2012 he has 83. If
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2021

Your 2021 Scottsdale Scorpions!

I'm in Scottsdale for 3 days in the late-autumn sun.  Well, no sun tonight, but it was a nice evening for a ballgame despite a sparse crowd of under a thousand, with the always convivial baseball fan Mrs Ash attending with me at Salt River Fields at Talking Stick tonight, where we witnessed the Rafters at home defeat "our" Scottsdale Scorpions 3-2.  Two Twins prospects were in the starting lineup, Andrew Bechtold playing third base and Michael Helman in left field.  Bechtold showed a willin
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Anagram update

http://media.cmgdigital.com/shared/img/photos/2012/01/26/19/ca/original_shcool_photo.jpg Previously I posted anagrams of the 2013 Twins active roster. Here are permutations on some recent additions:   Oswaldo Arcia Iowa Carloads I Also A Coward A Cow Loads Air   Scott Diamond Candid Mottos Misadd Cotton Condom Tit Ads   Pedro Hernandez Preharden Dozen Pardoned Her Zen End Red Porn Haze   Anthony Swarzak What's Zany? Akron! Hawk Annoys Tzar Who Yanks Tarzan?
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Jimmy Rollins being shopped

MLBTR has an item stating that the Phillies would be willing to trade Jimmy Rollins. In the article, it's stated:   "Rollins, 35, struggled at the plate in 2013, batting .252/.318/.348..."   Meanwhile our resident starter pleased some fans with his progress, posting .221/.281/.330.   I don't particularly advocate trading for Rollins, as I assume the Phils want prospects the Twins won't want to part with and the Twins won't want to invest $11M a year in an aging player. I'm just mindful that o
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Oakland game, May 31 2016

Quick report from Oakland: Sano trying to swipe at that one flyball "triple" by Burns in the second inning didn't look any prettier from a seat right behind the fair-foul pole than it must have from the normal camera view.   In fairness, the A's right fielder (I think it was still Coughlan) returned the favor almost identically, in the fifth as a favor to Grossman.   Ragged game.
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Would you have gone 5 years and $80M for Anibal Sanchez?

This is a repeat of a forum post I made in December 2012. I'm blogging it now mostly for my own convenience; I took the time to look up several pitchers and I don't want to have to search again when I try to remember what I learned. The question was, if you were GM would you have matched the 5/$80M deal for Detroit's Anibal Sanchez? The context now is, when if ever would you sign a pitcher to a long term deal, given that there is room in the budget until the rookies start to earn big dough ..
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