Other Baseball

MLB network talked about Bonds/Clemens getting into the HOF last night. Always an interesting conversation. If you could (had to?) vote in one of these players, who would it be? (You can't say none of them) 1) Bonds 2) Clemens 3) McGwire 4) Shoeless Joe 5) Rose

Throw the book at him.

Recently came across a link to a video of the Yankees team MD, Chris Ahmad, speaking with Al Leiter on MLB Network about arm injuries, Tommy John surgery and some of the challenges the medical community is facing while trying to reduce the impact of these injuries on players and baseball in general. Thought I'd pass it along for any who might be interested. https://www.mlb.com/video/mlb-tonight-pitcher-injuries/c-2521312683?tid=49502912

MLB announced tonight that a 16-person committee decided that DH Harold Baines and RP Lee Smith are now Hall of Famers. Here is the announcement: Aaron Gleeman makes a good point here. https://twitter.com/AaronGleeman/status/1071940218016546816 Now I'm 100% convinced that Joe Mauer, Johan Santana, TOny Oliva... Joe Nathan... they should all be HOFers.

I really wished the Twins would have not jumped right away and signed Cron. They would have been better served signing either Justin Bour or Matt Adams instead of Cron. At least that way they could have had a lefty/righty combo with Tyler Austin. Now we are stuck with 2 righthanded 1st basemen/DH and they still seem linked to Nelson Cruz. By the way, Bour signed for almost half the money they paid for Cron.

Former big leaguer Luis Valbuena (33) and Jose Castillo (37) died on Thursday in a car accident in Venezuela. Unfortunately, there seems to be 1-3 such instances every offseason in the Dominican and Venezuela. It was two years ago that former Twins prospect Yorman Landa passed away. The same offseason Royals starter Yordano Ventura died as well.

Who do you think the top 5 FA players will go to and why? (let's just the say the top 5 are Harper, Machado, Kimbrel, Corbin & Keuchel) Mine: Harper goes to SF. They are dying for some offense and someone who can supplement Posey. Also, could help Bad Bum re-sign. Who better than Harper to hit souvenirs into McCovey Cove? 8 years/300 million Machado stays in LA. Dodgers promise to keep him at SS and move Seager to 3B. Turner moves to 2nd...but those 3, along with Chris Taylor, can move all over the field. Dodgers all in for Kershaw's last years. He will be young enough to sign one last major deal after this deal is up. 5 years/200 million Kimbrel stays with Bo…

Question A: Has anyone gone to this before? I am intrigued. Be fun to hang out at the same hotel/city for a few days and talk baseball and catch the vibe. Question B: What actually happens at winter meetings, as far as the front offices go? Do they have dinner/drink with one another? Do they like each other? What is difference with winter meetings than calling someone on the old telly?

This thing looks pretty cool: https://www.mlb.com/athletics/oakland-ballpark The way MLBTR sees it, they may not be asking for public funding to build the stadium, only city leader assistance in acquiring the site. I'd guess they'd ask for tax incentives and infrastructure support as well. https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/ If so, good for them and good for the city of Oakland. I know if this pans out my first thoughts would be based on jealousy in that my team's owner was able to gouge the tax payers for his stadium, but I'd be happy if the people of Oakland get a better deal. Frankly, that particular community has had more economic struggles than ours, they could u…

Billy Hamilton of the Reds was released today and looking at his stats I found this out. He never led the league in stolen bases. He was second five times. I would've guessed a lot of money that he was #1 a few times. Can you name the three players who did lead the league in those years?

I knew the story of The Babe playing ball in Sleepy Eye those many years ago is fairly well know. But the fact that there was a surviving spectator, especially one with Babe's autograph on a HR ball wasn't known until a few years ago. At least not well known. Randy Kryzmarzick wrote in the New Ulm Journal about himself and a couple friends driving to Virginia, MN and visiting Mr. Youngman. He said it was a wonderful experience. Enough so that they went several more times, just to chat. His column on the visit was wonderful reading. Regrettably I don't have access to either the column, or the picture that was attached to this article. It didn't copy and paste. Regardless, …

Any reason for the Twins not to get involved in trade talks with Seattle for Jean Segura? Would be a great addition to the team and could slide Polanco over to 2nd base to fill that hole.

Its been quite here lately so i thought Id post about a trade of one of our former prospects we traded to Tampa Bay for Kevin Jepsen was traded to Cleveland to pitch in their pen. Hu was a starter for us in the minors and was mostly up in high A with one successful AAA start. With Tampa they had him start in the minors then moved to the pen in the majors. He is a flyball pitcher who throws 93 mph. https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/h/huch02.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_sour https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2018/11/rays-trade-chih-wei-hu-indians.html

Anyone who is expert in modern statistical methods may want to have a look at this fellow's master's thesis: https://www.retrosheet.org/Research/Calzada/CALZADA-THESIS-2018.pdf I'm pretty versed in certain areas of math, but am relatively weak in stats and this paper on forecasting baseball players is well beyond my pay grade. He comes from a strong computer science program, so I consider this a little better vetted than the average collection of formulas and tables. I am intrigued by the visualizations he provides, although not able to fully absorb what they intend to impart. If I can't understand the pretty pictures, what hope is there for the actual content. …

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2018/11/mariners-accusations-derogatory-racist-remarks-dipoto-servais-mckay-lorena-martin.html or https://www.lookoutlanding.com/2018/11/13/18091764/dr-martins-allegations-demonstrate-fundamental-problems-within-the-mariners-organization-baseball "Dr. Martin alleged racist and sexist comments from Jerry Dipoto (GM), Scott Servais (Manager), and Andy McKay (Director of Player Development)." You can read more at https://www.lookoutlanding.com/2018/11/12/18089760/mariners-terminate-contract-of-dr-lorena-martin-director-of-high-performance-amid-controversy or https://www.thenewstribune.com/sports/mlb/seattle-mariners/article221571265.htm…

http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/25216412/comments-boston-red-sox-adviser-bill-james-draws-ire-mlbpa-players article from ESPN.

Former Twins 1B/DH Kennys Vargas has signed this morning with the Chiba Lotte Marines in Japan. https://twitter.com/SethTweets/status/1059813553052499968 I've seen reports that the deal is worth $1.5 million - $2 million. Could be $1.5 million with incentives that could make it $2 million. I'm not certain.

How about a postseason game thread? Any MLB postseason discussion can just go here.

Joel Sherman reports on the increasing number of wild pitches and passed balls in the major leagues, especially in the current playoffs: https://nypost.com/2018/10/24/its-not-just-gary-inside-the-catching-plague-thats-only-getting-worse/

https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/a-federal-grand-jury-is-investigating-major-league-baseball/ 'News broke this past weekend that Major League Baseball is currently the subject of a federal grand-jury investigation targeting the league’s business practices in Latin America.'

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2800949-mlb-rumors-angels-giving-manager-candidates-2-hour-written-test I'd be intrigued to take it and see how I did, I'm sure I'm not alone. Thoughts?

Been meaning to post this:

He is petitioning to become a free agent. The Braves would only offer him 40% of slot. So roughly $2M of the $5M slot value. Braves will get the #9 overall pick next year in compensation if they do not sign Carter. This would move the Twins pick down 1.

Two divisional tiebreaks tomorrow. All teams will make the playoffs but it needs to be determined who are the divisional winners and who will be the WC. I’ll be cheering on Colorado over LA and Milwaukee over Chicago.

Liam Hendriks starting? I hope it is not double one and doneshttp://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/24871988/oakland-start-liam-hendriks-wild-card-game

MLB.com has a nice graphic on how each of the 10 2018 Playoff Teams were built. https://twitter.com/MLBPipeline Surprising to see that the Dodgers (2) and Yankees (3) has the LEAST amount of Free Agent player on their projected 25 man playoff rosters This does show that successful teams can be built different ways, but are typically built using a combination of methods.

https://www.apnews.com/4b92bebe074f4990893685165108be7d/Whiff-of-offense:-Ks-top-hits,-lowest-average-since-'72 It looks like 2018 will indeed be the first season in which K's outnumber hits. I think MLB needs to take some action. Three true outcomes is ******* boring baseball. I just don't know what needs to be done.

I am sure we arent the only ones that had their season ended abruptly and prematurely. I dont see why this deadline cant be moved up to June 30th or any point just before the All-Star break. This would prevent a lot of these fire sales whether they turn out good or bad for teams. The point being that people have bought tickets in good faith assuming many of the games in August and September would be meaningful. Could there be a way to avoid this practice of deciding we are sellers and gutting the team? I know I dont have all the answers...I only know how disappointed, hurt, and angry I was this year. Does anyone have a solution? Moving the deadline may or not be an answer…

The Kansas City T-Bones pulled with a game of winning the American Association Championship, thanks to two homers by Todd Cunningham in the 7-3 victory over the St. Paul Saints. Read Recap.