Other Baseball

Admittedly, I'm one of the few guys who like AJ but it's things like this that make me like him: http://thebaseballcodes.com/2014/10/16/fall-down-go-boom-playoffs-meet-a-j-pierzynski/

With the completion of the 2014 World Series, 121 MLB players became free agents. Here is that list. Remember also that six-year minor league free agents who have not yet signed also became free agents. The only Twins player listed is Jared Burton.

I didn't spot any mention of this elsewhere on TD, but MLB posted the finalists for the Gold Glove awards last week: http://m.mlb.com/news/article/99380188/gold-glove-awards-finalists-revealed As with last year, the awards are done 75% by a vote from managers / coaches, and 25% using some experimental but SABR-sactioned numbers. The SABR part of it, through games in early September, is published here: http://sabr.org/sdi/2014-09-07 No Twins made the list of finalists, but the SABR list shows several Twins who could be considered average or above, specifically the entire infield. Mauer could have been a finalist by the numbers, but apparently the managers weren't…

Mike Berardino retweeted Baseball Canada ‏@baseballcanada · 3h3 hours ago Great read on Andrew Albers' season in Korea: Albers' Odyssey http://www.thestarphoenix.com/sports/Albers+Odyssey/10340947/story.html Really is an interesting read. I especially took note of how difficult he thought the language barrier must be for the young Latin players.

Oh what could have been. Gordon bearing down on Buster Posey, the poster child for the new home plate rule. Does the lane Posey had to provide give Gordon the opportunity to slide his hand around a tag? It would have been one of the most talked about plays in baseball history! But alas it was not to be. 528.com makes the case that Alex Gordon should have gotten the green light, even if his likelihood of scoring was only 30%. When I saw Perez kick the ball toward the left field corner, I was convinced Gordon was going to run. Instead, Gordon got the stop sign and pulled up to third just as Crawford caught the ball in left center and turned to make what would have been …

I'm really not sure what this means but payroll always comes up when free agent talk starts. This is a list of what AL teams spent, on payroll, last year for every ticket sold. Again I don't know what it means but it is interesting: 1. Cleveland $58.8 2. Yankees $58 3. Toronto $57.8 4. Detroit $56 5. White Sox $54.6 6. Tampa $53.1 7. Boston $52.3 8. Angels $49.9 9. Texas $49.1 10. KC $47.1 11. Seattle $43.7 12. Oakland $41.1 13. Baltimore $43.6 14. Twins $38 15. Houston $28.8 To be in the middle of the pack the Twins would need to spend about $50 per ticket sold. That would equal a payroll of about $112.5 million. Of course, that doesn't equal more wins …

Much beloved quasi baseball site NotGraphs, (www.fangraphs.com/not/) is now officially dead. Fear not, quasi-baseball humor lovers, Banknotes Industries has risen from the ashes of NotGraphs to fill the void in your hearts. (http://www.banknotesindustries.com/) Sadness fills my heart. RIPNotGraphs!

Hats off. Awesome effort.

...so who do you like? I picked KC as my adopted team going into the postseason, so I'll ride that horse and say the Cinderella story has another chapter. KC in six.

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2014/10/joe-maddon-opts-out-of-contract-with-rays.html Interesting. I think this makes a lot of sense for Maddon, who is generally considered a top manager in the game. The Rays are moving backwards and Maddon could probably get a better job (Dodgers?) fairly quickly. The other question would be, would the Twins and Maddon be a fit?

Surprising that there's not already a thread about this news - the guy behind the small market success story in Tampa has taken a new gig in Los Angeles. Now he'll have a much bigger budget to apply his own version of Moneyball. The Rays had some terrible teams that lead to some very high draft standing. They developed a lot of homegrown players and used an analytic approach to evaluating their team and free agents. The were able to rejuvenate many seemingly washed up players by hiding their weaknesses and emphasizing their strengths. Lately the Rays have struggled, and the lack of budget has remained an issue throughout Friedman's tenure in TB. His more recent draft…

Announcing the First Annual Unofficial Twins Daily Forum Over/Under Contest. Below are 2014 MLB over/unders from Bovado. Take a crack...over this total, or under? Post your picks below. The person who picks the most correct will be declared THE WINNER! THE WINNER will recieve a fabulous prize package worth nearly 2 FIGURES!* *Estimated retail value. Tax liability sole responsibility of THE WINNER. Twins Daily site owners, admins, and mods are not responsible for content and cannot be dissed by disgruntled contestents. All rights reserved. Any reposting of this post without the expressed written consent of Chief, the Mods, and Twins Daily is forbidden.. Entries …

The Star Tribune's Page 2 supreme overlord, Michael Rand, has a post about football, technology and Tinder that includes his reasoning as to why baseball is dying: In my day, baseball games were played under two hours and we watched through a hole in the fence and we liked it. Yes, Rand maybe lobbying to take on the curmudgeon columnist spot but he's not wrong: Games are getting longer. Take a look at this fivethirtyeight.com graph from April of this year: http://espnfivethirtyeight.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/bialik-time-of-game-1a.png?w=1024 According to their research, each pitching change adds two minutes to the game's length but are not the biggest culpr…

This is shaping up to be one of the most watched post-seasons in a long time, despite all of the games being hidden behind the paywalls of cable networks. I know that stations like TBS and ESPN are available on most low-end cable subscriptions, and MLB network just a tick or two up from there, but I feel like putting the games on cable isn't good for growing the game here in the US. I know there is a big push in MLB to get baseball back in the inner city, to get more african-americans playing baseball, and to grow it with the youth of today so that the best athletes don't all leave baseball for other sports. I feel like it's hard to do that when the games are accessib…

Giants: Gregor Blanco CF Joe Panik 2B Buster Posey C Pablo Sandoval 3B Hunter Pence RF Brandon Belt 1B Brandon Crawford SS Travis Ishikawa LF Madison Bumgarner SP Cardinals: Matt Carpenter 3B Randall Grichuk RF Matt Holliday LF Jhonny Peralta SS Matt Adams 1B Yadier Molina C John Jay CF Kolten Wong 2B Adam Wainwright SP

Anyone here watching? Exciting from the start.

Maybe Google is broken, but for the last week I have been searching the web trying to find a site that streams radio broadcasts for the AFL games, if anyone knows of anywhere that is streaming please post. Also on the topic of the AFL why isn't it covered on either MLB or MiLB apps?

The Hammer was a 17th round pick in 2000 , struggled to get a foothold (and a regular position) with a major league team, but still ended up with nearly 200 career homers. John Sickels provides a nice write up of the prospect that was Josh Willingham: http://www.minorleagueball.com/2014/10/13/6894429/17th-round-195-homers-the-career-of-josh-willingham-prospect-retrospective

It looks like the Twins can cross one of the names off of their managerial list today. According to USA Today's Bob Nightengale (via twitter), Chip Hale will be named the next manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks. The former Twins infielder/pinch hitter has served in several roles in the big leagues from third base coach to bench coach, which was his current position with the Oakland A's.

Looks like there may be an AJ Pierzynski sighting in the NLCS: http://proxy.espn.go.com/mlb/playoffs/2014/story/_/id/11692043/2014-nlcs-yadier-molina-st-louis-cardinals-leaves-game-strained-oblique

Royals Alcides Escobar SS Nori Aoki RF Lorenzo Cain CF Eric Hosmer 1B Billy Butler DH Alex Gordon LF Salvador Perez C Omar Infante 2B Mike Moustakus 3B Yordano Ventura SP Orioles Nick Markakis RF Alejandro de Aza LF Adam Jones CF Nelson Cruz DH Steve Pearce 1B JJ Hardy SS Ryan Flaherty 3B Caleb Joseph C Jonathan Schoop 2B Bud Norris SP

Here are the lineups for Game 1: Royals Alcides Escobar SS Nori Aoki RF Lorenzo Cain CF Eric Hosmer 1B Billy Butler DH Alex Gordon LF Salvador Perez C Omar Infante 2B Mike Moustakus 3B James Shields SP Orioles Nick Markakis RF Alejandro De Aza LF Adam Jones CF Nelson Cruz DH Steve Pearce 1B JJ Hardy SS John Flaherty 3B Nick Hundley C Jonathan Schoop 2B Chris Tillman SP

We know who will be in the playoffs and we know the matchups. I will probably root for the underdogs. In the World Series, I will want the AL team to win.

Errasing a 29 year play-off drought, the longest in the 4 major professional sports, the Kansas City Royals are playoff bound. It's about damn time. Hopefully it doesn't take the Twins that long to find the post-season again.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/nationals-journal/wp/2014/10/06/matt-lecroy-will-eat-his-superstitious-banana-mayo-sandwich-before-nlds-game-3/

Buck Showalter is not afraid to challenge convention. He let Andrew Miller go 1.2 innings and face a bunch of RH hitters, then intentionally walked the winning run, of course followed by a GDP to win the game. That is confidence in your players. Congratulations to the Orioles, they are in the ALCS, probably against another team rolling sevens, the KC Royals.

18th inning, 1-1 in game 2 currently. Wowsers!

http://deadspin.com/watch-newly-discovered-footage-of-d-c-s-1924-world-seri-1641710800?utm_campaign=socialflow_deadspin_facebook&utm_source=deadspin_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

I never booed Derek Jeter. I had never thought of him as the best player in baseball either. He's been in the majors for a long time and had a lot of success, no matter how it is measured. Upon reaching 3000 hits, it has become certain that he will be elected to the Hall of Fame. The question, to me, is whether he will get the highest percentage of votes or perhaps if he will be elected unanimously. Does Jeter deserve to be in the Hall of Fame? I don't think anyone seriously disputes that. He has over 3400 hits, five rings, five Silver Sluggers, and five Gold Gloves. His durability has resulted in counting numbers that are top of the class. He has been a model ci…

Uff da. So Dayton Moore and the Royals got ripped pretty good for moving a top 5 prospect for Shields and Davis. The A's made a similar trade to get Samardzija and Hammel but Beane wasn't criticized as much (track records give you things like that). But was the trade any better? The two pitchers weren't that great in Oakland - Shark was solid but Hammel wasn't. Addison Russell is hitting pretty well in AA.