LaBombo

Isn't that ability called abstract thought? I was under the impression that not only is it potentially a fairly valuable skill, it's one of the handful of extraordinarily useful traits that makes us human beings as opposed to just large, hairless, appallingly un-cute lemurs. Take, for example, the mental image of an absolutely enormous young man hurtling at maximum velocity, and yet often at least somewhat blindly, across a portion of the baseball field which to him is more or less the surface of alien world, toward either an immovable wall-like object, or a highly movable, crushable, and incredibly valuable other young man. Not only is it awfully easy to imagine an undesirable outcome, it's potentially extraordinarily beneficial to have done so and then avoided having it actually happen. And what's more, the entire mental exercise can take place without any knowledge of (let alone concern for) who Trevor Plouffe is.

He's an enormous man learning a very different position, one at which it's routine to run at maximum speed, and three quarters of the time toward either a wall, another wall, or the 100-pounds-lighter other half of the future of the Twins franchise's offense. Yes, Sano could still get hurt playing third, or DHing for that matter, in much the same way that you can still be injured in a car accident while wearing a seat belt. Don't know about you, but I still wear mine despite its imperfect nature. At any rate, the decision to move Sano to the outfield was an absurdly foolish one of the sort that teams make either when they dread change, when they enforce an arbitrary floor for defensive ability at a given position regardless of offense, or in the Sano vs. Plouffe situation, both.

Me too. Best I could do, and as a bonus, the ratio of a typical 4 door sedan's weight of about 3400 pounds and a smart car's 1800 is almost exactly the same as the Buxton/Sano weight ratio, if you believe Reusse's column.

I was against moving Sano to RF for that recurring nightmare scenario alone.

As long as it doesn't end with a Sano/Buxton collision... http://www.hummerguy.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/smartcarcrashtest.jpg

Just one. He's setting an example for the kids on his minor league team, so Matt's slimming down these days... http://www.pizzaonestop.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/managers-special1.jpg

You remembered to stick a few pins in your Sano bobblevoodoo while typing that, right?

Every time I see JJ Hardy play, I wonder what kind of failsafes the Twins organization has in place to keep Bill Smith from ever being the guy who makes trades again... http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/dangerroom/2010/04/keyturn-660x438.jpg

My construction guy neighbor's D8 is actually a big Esco fan... http://www.87thscale.info/images/CCM_CatD8R.jpg

Michael Tonkin's family does not heart this...

They can show almost anything on basic cable these days... http://reaction.club/r/hqg-2559-520x245.gif

It might not quite be Morpheus sparring with Neo, but it's bound to be a little more exciting than Joe Mauer explaining how the right hand lotion is critical to giving him the proper feel of the bat.

twinsfanstreif, on 04 Apr 2016 - 5:04 PM, said: Man waiting on rain delays sucks....... Sort of lost interest in him after he left The Carpenters. Hangin' around hanging around Nothin' to do but frown. Rain delays and Mondays always get me down.

We're just getting started. If FSN burns through its rain delay library, Dick's taking on Bert in what's sure to be a rousing game of PS4 MLB The Show.

That was my philosophy too, until my first taste of the Gobi... http://foundtheworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Gobi-Desert-3.jpg

At times it's almost seemed as if Twins have treated batter walks like little league walks, a sort of inadvertent, unavoidable delay in the contest that you simply have to put up with when a pitcher can't find the plate. Hands were wrung off at the wrists over Aaron Hicks' excessive passivity at the plate, while Twins staff and media still celebrate Dan Gladden's storied career as a Twins leadoff man who would run into the stands to swing at an outside pitch. Meanwhile, pitcher walks are still regarded as a kind of inappropriate baseball conduct that ought to require the offending pitcher to register with the league as a criminal strike zone offender.

http://thatmomentin.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/connrty-1.jpg "Don't wait for it to happen, don't even want it to happen."

Hey, c'mon, not only was I not making fun of all your postings, I wasn't even making fun of all of your examples of upside alternatives to May. Really it was just your mention of Ervin's zippier fastball on the very day he was getting his block knocked off against the Yanks, and then the Hughes weight loss thing, which fits the mold of the ubiquitous 'best shape of his career' story that has inevitably accompanied at least one athlete in every training camp since the dawn of sports. Reminds me of the panic that year Bartolo or CC or some other fed zeppelin showed up to s.t. 20 lbs. lighter and the team was terrified he'd have no fastball without all his fat. As for the rest, your theories about the correlation between lower home run rate and higher babip and the difference between walk rate and command are interesting, and I'll have to think about them. I just don't understand major league pitching well enough to try to quantify the ways other than walk rate in which May's better-or-isn't-it command may manifest itself. But so far it still looks to me like he's due to allow fewer hits. We'll see. We don't have entirely differing opinions of May or what to do with him. Your first post looked a bit to me like you viewed all the May-to-the-rotation crowd as cut from the same 'get off my lawn', crackpot cloth, but your assessment above seems reasonable. While you seem to see the main difference between us as being how we would expect May to pitch as a starter vs. reliever, the bigger difference to me is how we see the rotation shaping up and how the Twins will use May in the pen. It's fairly easy to construct an argument that the Twins can field a fair to good rotation without May, freeing him to shore up a shaky bullpen. But the fact remains that not a single Twins starter of the current candidates has earned much confidence through a combination of track record and peripherals. Gibson is a given but has one good season, and Ervin pitched well overall, though spectacularly unevenly, while he was available. But beyond that, it's a crapshoot, one that's going to be decided at least in part by contracts and egos. And over in the bullpen, it remains to be seen whether the Twins will regularly use May in high leverage situations. They eventually did toward the end of last season, but mostly out of necessity when it became clear that Perkins wasn't Perkins. But if Glen pitches back to his previous form and Jepsen's deal with the xFIP devil doesn't expire, May could easily find himself in a middle relief role again, even if he doesn't stumble out of the gate. Summary: No, I don't think the Twins are foolish because they're putting May in the current bullpen. No, I don't think May would be either a lock or even a great bet to pitch like a #3 or better starter for a full season. And yes, I still think the Twins will end up wishing they would have penciled May into the rotation, even if it means also ending up wishing they'd tried harder to sign a good reliever. Oh, and you don't have to concede to any of my points about upside to get me to stop making fun of your points. Just stop saying that I called my May speculation 'settled science'. Deal?

Let's start with my use of the phrase "settled science", which was (no, not 'was intended as') a jab at the absurdity of treating May's 30 strong innings of mostly low-leverage relief work as a prophecy of his likely future late-inning bullpen brilliance whilst simultaneously decrying his 83 innings of success in the rotation as a small-sample fluke. I did not claim or even imply that anything about May's future potential as a starter is "settled science", so let's put that argument to bed. While you're at it make room next to it for the straw man argument that May would pitch at the same level in the rotation this year and beyond as he did in his minuscule body of bullpen work last season. Didn't say that, didn't imply it. But since you brought it up, even allowing for a difference using your hypothetical 4.00 xFIP starter/ 3.00 xFIP reliever comparison of relative value, May the reliever would be very hard pressed to even approach, let alone exceed, the value of May the starter. Maybe if Perkins and/or Jepsen are hurt/ineffective most of the year, May is closer or setup man all season, and his FIP substantially outperforms his 2015 xFIP. Maybe. And you're welcome to portray as ridiculous and unicornish the notion of May pitching as a starter in 2016 at a level approximating his 2015 starts. But you'll have to do better than just asserting a high probability of regression despite citing only his walk rate as a likely cause. Most of May's other 2015 peripherals as a starter look sustainable, with the notable exception of BAPIP. He's probably not going to give up hits on 7 out of every 20 balls in play again this year, even if Sano's outfield adventures make Arcia look like Willie Mays. If May's .340 BABIP declines just a small amount, to a still lofty .315, it would almost exactly offset a walk rate increase of an additional BB per 9 IP, and would result in a net improvement in terms of runs allowed. Despite what you think, I'm very aware that May's control has been an issue in the minors. And I'm guessing the Twins were aware too, and yet they traded for him even though they hate pitcher walks the way cats hate baths. That's probably because they know it's more common for power pitchers to develop control than for finesse pitchers to learn how to miss bats. Also, while we're on the subject of ignoring certain aspects of minor league stats, you've made no mention of the fact that May cut his minor league walk rate by about .5BB/9 in both 2013 and 2014. So while his dramatically improved 2015 walk rate obviously wasn't explained entirely by natural progression (which, again, nobody was saying), it also wasn't a bolt of outlier lightning from a clear blue stat sheet. Oh, crap. I've just now seen your post regarding the dozens of Twins pitchers who you feel have higher upside than May. So it appears that either your posts in this thread were a brilliant, Onion-style parody, or else you just hate Trevor May with a passion. Either way, thanks for your kind attention, and I'm sorry if I wasted your time.

So... are you under the impression that the Twins are currently chock full o' starters who were the good kind of above average in those categories last year? Kyle Gibson, the only 2016 rotation candidate who even qualified for a full season last year, also had a worse than average xFIP, one which was a whopping hundredth of a point better than May's starter ERA. Combine that with the fact that May had much better starter K and BB rates, along with the distinct possibility that May wouldn't have a BABIP as a starter in 2016 that would be 50 points above average like it was in 2015, and it's hard to see how May in this year's rotation should be regarded as unlikely to match or exceed the 2016 output of any of the current crop.

Not speaking for anyone else here, but my inclusion of WAR was just to give a rough quantification of May's value beyond what his starter ERA hints at, and to have a convenient way to compare that value to both the other Twins starters and a hypothetical full season of May as a reliever. By no means do I think that WAR or any other stats, either individually or in the aggregate, provide overwhelming evidence that May would be a safe bet to pitch at a #2/3 level in the rotation. Novelty purposes only, your mileage may vary, not for use a personal flotation device, etc. That being said, in May's case WAR seems to be a useful shorthand summary of how much more valuable he was as a starter than his ERA suggests. And with respect to Nolasco, WAR isn't going to convince anybody except his agent that he's been a misunderstood genius on the mound in his time with the Twins. But along with xFIP and other non-ERA stats, Rickie's WAR is a useful cautionary tale about how much a questionable contract, some bad PR, and a general sense of overwhelming disappointment can influence the perception of what a pitcher is actually doing on the mound. He's pitched poorly, but there's reason for hope, however faint.

Once every decade or so, like some sort of celestial portent of statistical doom, the ERA deception comet passes through the Twins solar system, each time named for a different Twins pitcher. In the early 90's it was 1988 ERA champ/lottery winner Allan Anderson. In the last decade Jolted Joe Mays hurtled past us on his way to oblivion. Most recently, Comet Blackburn filled the skies with the terror of moon shots and misplaced faith in ERA. This is both a wildly unfair exaggeration and a needless, gratuitous pop culture reference, but I love both, so here goes: http://screencrush.com/442/files/2013/05/City-Slickers.jpg Terry Ryan: "So you're saying Milone isn't a lock for your rotation because... why?" Paul Molitor: "His peripherals look a little like a guy getting by on good luck and mediocre stuff." Ryan: "But look at that 2015 ERA! He's gonna be solid." Molitor: "ERA just has too many variables unaccounted for, like defense and BABIP." Ryan: "Defense and who? The new Dominican kid we signed?" Jack Goin: "FORGET IT! He's NEVER going to get it! The cows understand the limits of ERA as a stat by now!" Rob Antony: "Whatever. How many RBI do you think Sano will have this year?" Goin: "You're dead!"

By "bullish belief" that May is a good starter, do you mean the belief that's built on his very strong 5+ year minor league track record compiled ENTIRELY as a starter, as well as a half season last year as one of the Twins' two best starting pitchers? Would that be as opposed to the 'settled science' of May's certain future as a brilliant late inning reliever that's based almost entirely on thirty one relief innings last year, fewer than half of which were in high-leverage situations? As for the belief that May is a "better starter than reliever", you may have meant to address an entirely different argument, one that people were actually making, which is that May is more valuable as a starter than as a reliever. Given that... a) in his half season as a starter last year May pitched at a level that was on pace to be more valuable by over a full run above replacement than Aroldis Chapman v.2015 when projected over a full season, b} although he was excellent in relief, May was not Aroldis Effing Chapman, c) the Twins organization has wandered in the starting pitching wilderness so long that last year it practically wet its collective pants in both joy and relief at the emergence of Kyle Gibson as a 2.5 WAR, #3-ish starter even as May pitched himself toward a 3.5+ WAR season as a starter, and d) outside of Gibson, not one of the candidates for the 2016 Twins rotation was as valuable all of last season as May was for half of it as a starter, .... then maybe the argument that May is more valuable as a starter isn't quite as ungettable as you're making it out to be.

It also looks to me like he gets fooled less often on pitch recognition. And even when he does, it's not that awkward, off-balance swing he'd make last year, like the Karate Kid trying not to fall off the bow of the boat.

It was a crazy good play by Truffleman to make it close, but Pluffy wasn't just pulling the plow on that one. He had enough implements hitched up to him to make for nice little farm auction... http://frcoauctions.com/s/cc_images/cache_2978038604.jpg?t=1317914567