Buyer or Seller? All Tampa had to do was exorcise the Devil. Although smarter baseball decisions and being the beneficiaries of a never-ending parade of minor league prospects led to success in St. Petersburg, one cannot help but notice the coincidence of the team becoming winners ever since they changed their team name from “Devil Rays” to simply “Rays.” That success has continued this year in the hellish AL East as they find themselves battling the Boston Red Sox both for the division lead
As the July 31st trade deadline approaches, the Twins are judging which players should be dealt. Denard Span and Francisco Liriano are atop that list, but perhaps the most valuable player Minnesota possesses will likely remain here into August. Josh Willingham, who has been even better than I think anyone expected, is oddly not being shopped around, according to 1500 ESPN. Willingham currently has a .271/.384/.551 triple slash this year, and that doesn’t even include his 2 HR game from T
The Scene Alexi Casilla on 3B, Jamey Carroll on 2B. Denard Span hits a grounder to Eric Hosmer at first base. Hosmer fires home to Salvador Perez, who chases Casilla all the way back to 3B. However, Carroll also advances to 3B, while Span hustles around and makes it to 2B. Casilla, upon seeing the other two baserunners safe, deliberately runs past 3B. Perez gives up chasing Casilla as he's now out of the baseline, and he tags Carroll, hoping for a double play. However, after some hesitation, t
By now, you’ve probably heard about the dominant stretch R.A. Dickey has put together over his last few starts. He’s thrown back-to-back 1 hitters, and here’s his stat line from those two games combined: 18 IP, 1 R (unearned), 2 H, 2 BB, 25 K. In particular, look at that K/BB ratio. From a knuckleballer! Now how about his last 6 starts?: 48.2 IP, 21 H, 2 R (1 ER), 5 BB, 63 K, 3 complete games. As a Twins fan, it may be a bit bittersweet to see this from Dickey, because he was actually a
Coming in to the 2012 season, it seemed like Alex Burnett had no shot of making the roster. A 6.97 ERA and over two baserunners per inning was not indicative of a pitcher worthy of a place in any team's bullpen, but due to the injuries to Joel Zumaya, Scott Baker, Kyle Waldrop, and Jason Marquis' daughter, Burnett found himself in the exact same place as he had been the past two years: on the Twins' Opening Day roster. Now, you can't take away very much from spring training statistics, b
When a team is successful, deciding on roster spots shouldn't be much of a chore. The stars have their spots guaranteed, the role players have already been identified, and there's maybe there's one player that has a chance at sneaking in. Last season, the Twins were anything but successful as they lost 99 games. While the departures of Michael Cuddyer, Jason Kubel, and Joe Nathan were eventually filled by the signings of Josh Willingham, Ryan Doumit, and Joel Zumaya (who is now out with
I’m going to get this out of the way immediately. I think Ryan Braun is still guilty. I also think that he was lucky, and he and his representatives brilliantly found a way to argue that the chain of custody was broken when it came to the handling of his sample. But most of all, I don’t even care. That’s right, I think Braun is guilty, but I also don’t even care. What I care about is the reactions to Braun’s appeal being upheld. There are many people out there that feel that Braun get
The Background I was perusing Twitter earlier today when I saw this tweet from our very own MLB Fan Cave finalist Lindsay Guentzel, complete with a video. I watched said video, even though I've become a bit tired of the "Sh*t (This group of people) Say" meme, and in between a couple of laughs, I noticed a few attractive women in the video (Lindsay in a bathrobe may or may not have been one of them). Thus, I went over to the MLB Fan Cave site to get to know these women a little better.
Since the first season at Target Field in 2010, there’s been a common complaint among hitters: the fences are too far away. We’ve seen and heard of players attempting to pull the ball down the lines because that’s the best way to get the ball out of the park. These pictures of home runs at Target Field confirms this belief (from Hit Tracker Online). http://weareoffthemark.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/target-field-2011.jpg?w=450&h=441 Target Field Home Runs 2011 http://weareo
I really hold back what I would like to say about then payroll arguments here. The fact that people don't accept the amount taken in dictates the amount going out requires one of two things. Extreme financial ignorance or fanatical bias that prevents the acceptance of something some basic. I did not change the argument. It's the same idiocy over and over. Do you really want to be on the side that suggests revenues does not determine spending capacity?
At this point in the pre-season, I’m just so happy to be seeing games again, I don’t care about the Twins record in 2023. I think they’ll win it all, unrealistically speaking 🙂