ericchri

Just... Wow! Never saw this coming before the season started. Congrats Twins! Sidenote thanks to everyone who's a part of TD... Owners, mods, members. I'd be a Twins fan regardless, but it is so much more fun being a Twins fan with this wonderful place to follow the team.

7 perfect innings, so 97 pitches by 21 batters is ~4.6 pitches per batter. That's amazing to me to average that many pitches and still be perfect. Were they fouling off pitches like mad in the game?

I wanted to sort of re-emphasize this. Some of the posts people generate in the forum comments are huge and could easily be a blog post. I have I think 3 blogs entries from long ago that were started as replies to something in the forums, but when I realized how huge they were becoming I figured turning them into a mostly non-serious blog post was better. I think it's fairly clear most are more interested in the conversations in the forums, but there's a lot of potential for people to just make that forum reply they spent 10 minutes typing up into a blog without much more effort. It's up to the site to figure out how to make that as "rewarding" to the writer as the forum comment, though.

Baby steps are okay, we have a long way to go. A slight improvement is still a slight improvement, especially one that seems primarily geared to helping our pitching staff. Sure a lot of days that 1 or 2 extra strikes may not have a huge influence on the game, but in 162 games (well, I suppose he'd be likely to start 100 or so of those), isn't it possible that it's the difference once or twice between the starter getting shelled and not making it out of the second inning vs. barely squeaking out of a mess and then managing a quality start or the like? There's a lot of tiny benefits that will compound over the course of a season for something like that.

Actually, you are asking to spend someone else's money, if indirectly. Perkins and Hughes for instance are getting paid no matter what, so the outlay on them is the same regardless of whether they actually play. But by arguing to just chuck them aside we then have to bring in somebody else who now gets paid (even a couple rookie minimums is over a million dollars in additional wages). It might be the best thing to do, especially as relates to building a winning team which has indirect benefits in other financial matters, but it is still spending additional money that doesn't technically have to be spent. I'm in favor of doing so, btw, assuming it looks like neither can contribute to the level we need, so I'm not trying to argue against, but people need to acknowledge that a sunk cost doesn't necessitate spending more money just because the sunk cost cannot be recovered. It might be the "right" thing to do, but it is not the "necessary" thing to do. I'm sure most people already acknowledge most of my post without it being stated, but it does get back to the issue of "someone else's money" or arguments about "how much profit is enough" or the like which as a fan and not the owner are really easy to decide. I'd rather the owner make 2 million dollars in profit and build a winning team than make 20 million dollars in profit and field a losing team, but I don't get to decide how he runs his business, I just get to complain about it on the internet.

If you get the right offer for Dozier, problem solved. Otherwise roll with Polanco at short and see if being the regular start has any effect on his defense, positive or negative. I don't think he's really gotten to the point where we know yet what his defense is ultimately going to be, he's been used too inconsistently to make a full decision. I'm intrigued by the notion of moving Dozier to 3rd, but we're already overcrowded at DH/1B and making Sano part of that without 3B as a home just makes it worse.

I look forward to seeing what happens when he connects with a 95+ fastball, personally.

I really want to see Berrios up, but because of the service time issue I'm OK with him pitching in AAA for a while. Take the first month to see which starter falls on their face or goes on the DL and bring in Berrios to replace them. If neither of those happens, then I start getting antsy, but for now I choose to be hopeful that things will work themselves out.

Yeah, I always assume they mean somebody who grew up in an environment to learn what it means to be a professional ballplayer, has a sounding board when things aren't working, etc... Not that they literally have genes that make them more suited to playing baseball.

A question that's been bouncing around in my head. Assume for a minute that Buxton, Rosario, Kepler, and Walker all start matching their theoretical potential (no I'm not predicting that, just musing). Rosario and Buxton are definitely filling two of the OF spots, but which of Kepler or Walker (college 1B, no?) gets the last OF, and which mans 1B?

Hmmm. That's a lot of cash... http://mashable.com/2015/06/17/jurassic-world-cost/

Right now ABW looks like he might be the next Mark Reynolds (except playing LF instead of 3B). I think I'd be OK with that. There's a glimmer of a chance he figures out enough to top that, but that's what he seems like to me right now. He's been pretty consistent as he's moved up, huge K%, huge power. I'd agree, seeing him at AAA might be interesting this year to see if his numbers crater or he keeps on doing the same he's done all along.

I look forward to when he has the first week or so of games out of the way, when everyone is done sticking microphones in his face non-stop, and he can concentrate on playing baseball. I don't really expect him to put up great numbers this year (I'm hopeful, though), but yesterday had to be one of the most glass half-full, half-empty days someone like him could have. 1st big league game, now come talk to the press for hours...

Great story. Nice to see they had plenty of volunteers to help make the kids' day. This line cracked me up, though: Granted you can have a ball hit over your head pretty much anywhere on the field and it wasn't necessarily a drill centered on doing so from CF, but the notion of an infielder and pitcher working on that in CF just made me chuckle. Being from the Twins organization and all...

He scored from 2nd on a groundout? Nice. Video please...