Sssuperdave

I'm going to attempt to make a nuanced comment here... Sano is obviously a gifted hitter and his OPS makes that clear. To argue that he's not valuable is foolish, and the Morrison comparisons are ridiculous. However, it's also foolish to completely ignore his strikeout rates. So far he's at a 36.2 K% for his career, which over a 600PA season would be 217 Ks. Not the most in MLB history (223) but very close. This year his K rate is 48.9%. How can you not be at least a little concerned by that? Strikeouts stink - nothing good happens with a strikeout. When there is a runner on 3rd and less than 2 out a fly out or well placed ground-out can score a run where a strikeout can't. But, just how big a deal is that? I spent some time perusing Baseball reference to try to find out, and stumbled on just the statistic I was looking for... it's called "productive outs", defined as getting out while advancing any runner with none out or driving in a run with one out. According to BRef, Sano has had 114 "opportunities" for a productive out over his career, and has converted 26 times, for a 23% success rate, a good bit lower than the 29% league average "productive out percentage" over that time. On the other extreme, Mauer has a 42% success rate creating productive outs, 256 for 608 over his career. I really have no idea how much to penalize Sano's awesomeness due to his 23% productive out percentage, but it should at least be acknowledged. It doesn't drop him to Morrison-level, but it makes his .846 OPS at least a little less shiny.

I think there are a lot of situations where a Sac fly is better than a walk.

Colon was re-signed by the Rangers yesterday and is expected to start April 2nd against the A's. https://www.mlb.com/cut4/bartolo-colon-reportedly-starting-for-rangers-april-2/c-269751162

I was originally going to post this in response to the "Twins will not make the wild card" thread, but it got long enough that I figured it was worth a new thread. Vegas, as well as various projections and experts, have the Twins finishing 10-15 wins behind Cleveland. How could the Twins outperform these expectations? Well, luck is an obvious possibility - things like lack of injuries, hit sequencing, certain players outperforming, etc. But, what if the Twins have some strengths that aren't adequately accounted for by these projections and experts? Many of these win projections are based on statistical models. I work a lot with statistics in my day job, so I spend a lot of time thinking about where many statistical models break down. A couple of common areas include: Extrapolation. What I mean by extrapolation is predicting outcomes that are outside of, or on the extremes of, the observed sample a model is built from. Most statistical methods will do a great job of fitting data in the middle of a distribution, but not such a great job at the extremes. Consider OBP - these statistical models probably have some sort of formula equating OBP to runs scored. It's probably very accurate and reliable for OBP between .300 and .400, but not so much when Barry Bonds has a .609 OBP in 2004. The models will give you a result, but it's probably not correct as there weren't any .600+ OBP years in the sample the models were built on. The models might over-predict or under-predict runs scored, but they are unlikely to be correct. Interactions. When you look at the influence of variables on an outcome, it's easiest to look at things one variable at a time and potentially miss when variables influence each other. To use an example from insurance, say single people get in car accidents 20% more frequently than married people. If single men get in accidents 30% more frequently than married men, rather than the 20% you would expect based on marital status alone, and single women get in accidents only 10% more frequently than married women, rather than 20%, you have an interaction between gender and marital status.With that in mind, here are two areas where perhaps the statistical methods underappreciate the Twins: Speed. This is potentially an extrapolation issue. According to this, the Twins are the fastest team in the league. Buxton in particular has elite speed. I wouldn't be surprised if the statistical models and methods underestimate the impact of elite speed on wins. Consider this Billy Hamilton example: https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/lets-watch-billy-hamilton-make-a-run-happen/. I certainly don't know this for sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if the models aren't accurately measuring the impact of that kind of speed. Interaction between outfield defense and fly-ball pitching. The Twins have elite outfield defense, and have also put together a starting rotation filled with above-average-to-extreme fly ball tendencies. League average fly ball percentage is 35%, which was exceeded in 2017 by all of the Twins starters except for Gibson:Odorizzi - 47.3%Hughes - 45.5%Santana - 42.5%Berrios - 40.0%Lynn - 36.2%Gibson - 26.1%Last year Santana outperformed his FIP by 1.2 runs based on ERA. Some of that was probably luck, but what if much of it was due to outfield defense combined with all the fly balls? Odorizzi is even more extreme than Santana, so perhaps he stands to benefit even more? That said, Odorizzi already dramatically outperformed his FIP last year (4.14 ERA vs 5.43 FIP), so perhaps the potential additional lift is limited. Could these two things be worth the 10+ expected wins the Twins need to overtake Cleveland? Probably not, but hey - it could happen!

While a .650 OPS is very bad for a starting right fielder, there are several reasons why I think it would be acceptable for Kepler vs LH: Defense - Kepler is better defensively that pretty much anyone I can think of to platoon him with.Roster flexibility- As you lay out yourself, current options (Granite & Grossman) don't fit well as platoon partners, so if you carry someone on the roster to be a Kepler platoon partner, you have to lose someone like Granite or Grossman and what they bring to the table.Consistency - This one is squishier and I don't have any data on it, but it would make sense to me that being part of a platoon might cause deteriorating results from the players strong side if it causes them to get out of rhythm due to having somewhat random days off. I recall reading in Kent Hrbek's book about this as we was given a lot of days off against LH pitching towards the end of his career. If Kepler's OPS against left handers stays in the putrid 400s or 500s I think the drag makes it worth platooning, but I think .650 is worth keeping him in.

AL EAST: NYY - 94.5 Under BOS - 91.5 Over TOR - 81 Over TBR - 77.5 Under BAL - 73 Over AL CENTRAL: CLE - 94.5 Under MIN - 82.5 Over KC- 71.5 Under DET - 68.5 Over CWS - 68 Under AL WEST: HOU - 96.5 Over LAA - 84.5 Over SEA - 81.5 Under TEX - 77.5 Under OAK - 74.5 Under NL EAST: WAS - 92.5 Under NYM - 81 Over PHI - 75.5 Over ATL - 74.5 Over MIA - 64.5 Under NL CENTRAL: CHI - 94.5 Under STL - 85.5 Over MIL - 84.5 Under CIN - 73.5 Over PIT - 73 Under NL WEST: LAD - 96.5 Over ARI - 85.5 Under COL - 82 Under SFG - 81.5 Under SD- 69.5 Over

This, and so many other situations like it, leave me perplexed and downcast. Whenever allegations of the sort Sano faced come out, there are a wide range of reactions. One of the common ones is "don't rush to judgment... wait until all the facts come out." The problem is, in most cases the facts never really come out. In this case, people that suspect he was falsely accused will say "See! He was cleared!", where people that believe the accuser will say "This only shows there wasn't enough evidence to prove wrongdoing," and no one's mind will be changed. This is the case for me. I believed the accuser from the beginning and still do, but of course I don't actually have any clue what really happened, and I don't know any more than I did before this news came out. Perhaps that's okay though, maybe this all is just none of my business.

Yes, I've always felt this way about how rosters and waivers work. Related question - is there are rule that once you waive a player you can't select that same player off of waivers for a certain period of time? Let's say both the Twins and Reds really want Vargas in their organization but don't want him on the 25-man, could they just take turns waiving and claiming him over and over again?

So, Dozier didn't say he doesn't want to be a Twin any more, and only one person is arguing that he should have said anything differently, but I'd like to address something it brings to my mind even though no one is saying it. I think the concept that a player should be loyal to a particular team is just silly. As soon as production drops meaningfully, any MLB team will not hesitate to kick a player to the curb as soon as their contract allows. In fact, fans on this very site would be up in arms if the team did not. Why should there be a double standard? I mean, Dozier himself was heavily shopped for a trade last winter. Why should he be want to remain a Twin when they would have had no qualms about shoving him out the door if the right offer had come along?

Actually the odds are even worse than that. According to Baseball Reference, there were 169 pitchers drafted in the 2nd round from 2000 through 2010, and only 84 of them have pitched in the majors, which is 49.7%. It gets worse from there though. Only 51 have a positive WAR (30%), and only 21 have a WAR >5 (12.4%). Of course, every once in a while you strike gold. Included in those 21 > 5 WAR is Jordan Zimmerman, Yovani Gallardo, Jon Lester, and Dan Haren.

Nice list, fun to think about what it must have been like to watch Walter Johnson in his prime. In response to the first part of your statement, I don't see the Twins themselves ignoring their years as the Senators. It's not a black-and-white thing though, I think the Nationals have sometimes done things that recognize all of the Senators franchises as part of their history, even though those franchises technically weren't. I do see people like Seth and Aaron Gleeman make lists that start with when the Twins moved to MN, and I think the reasoning is pretty obvious. This is a fan site and the vast majority of us live in Minnesota or the surrounding states, and hence we are fans for our home team. Most of us have never lived in DC, so we wouldn't have ever been fans of the Senators, even if those of us less than 56 years old had been alive at the time. It makes perfect sense as a fan of MN sports to only focus on teams that actually played in MN. If I were purely a baseball historian I would completely agree with you, and I like learning and thinking about the Senators, but this a fan site not a pure baseball history site.

I don't fault him for speaking through an attorney, but I absolutely fault him for this statement if he did in fact perpetrate the assault.

Yes we have. "I unequivocally deny the allegation made against me today — it never happened" http://www.tmz.com/2017/12/28/miguel-sano-denies-assaulting-female-photographer/

Another reason in addition to the longer seasons that I don't think we'll see another Bo Jackson style two sport athlete is how valuable the athletes have become as assets. I think any multi-sport stars of the future will be in more of the Herschel Walker mode, where they have a main sport and a side sport, like Track and Field, that has a less lengthy season and a lower risk of injury.

I like it! I like the new divisions, the new teams, and trimming the playoffs by 2 teams. My only quibble is that there wouldn't much of an incentive to win the division - the only advantage for winning the division vs just making the playoffs would be home field advantage in the first round. What I like best about the Wild Card game right now is that it really rewards winning the division as you don't have to play in a single game elimination. Here's an idea people will probably hate. :-) What if you kept everything in your proposal but instead of having 2 wild cards in each league you have 4, with the wild cards going to one-game playoffs to determine who advances to the next round to face the division winners? This would expand the playoffs rather than contract them, which is probably a negative, but would increase the reward for winning the division, which I think is a positive.

Well, I certainly hope the Twins do sign Darvish and make you eat your words, but even if they don't I still respectfully disagree with the premise of your first post.

I don't recall seeing anyone reacting to the Rodney and Duke signings this way. I think w're pretty realistic about what Rodney and Duke are and what they are not, and no one is suggesting they are reasons to get all that excited. This is another place where my memory is different than yours. Under TR I never had the sense that the Twins were in on top free agent pitchers. I never for a moment thought they were going to sign Zach Greinke, for example. TR even had a word for contracts like that - "legacy contracts", and he pretty much flat out said the Twins would never sign a free agent to one of them. I never felt like I was promised a top free agent pitcher before, but I am more optimistic now that the Twins have a real shot at one.

Sano, Buxton, Kepler,and Rosario are under team Control through 2021, with Berrios and Polanco under team control through 2022. All six of those guys are still very young and progressing up the learning curve, which in my mind gives the Twins a 3-year window of opportunity of 2019 - 2021. You've also got Romero, Gonsalves, and Gordon in the minors that could meaningfully contribute during that window. So, I think you start with that group of 6 - 9 and then look at how to build around them to optimize 2019-2021. Darvish would fit the bill perfectly, but if you don't get him then I think you go in to a light sell mode for 2018, where the assets you are selling are assets that won't be in their prime in 2019-2021. I think that includes Dozier and Santana as well as prospects like Royce Lewis and Wander Javier. In return, you need to get a very good pitcher that will be hitting his prime in that window. Perhaps a package with one of Dozier/Santana and one of Lewis/Javier could bring back a top notch young starter? I could actually see combining this light sell with Tom's option 1 of "lower their aim". Cobb and Lynn are young enough that they could be part of the '19-'21 window, so you could sign one of them along with selling some assets I laid out above. You don't want to completely mortgage the farm, but you do need to give up something to get something, and you need to be realistic about who the Twins are. I don't think they are ever going to be perennial contenders over a 8-10 year stretch, so they need to make the most of the windows they have while hopefully avoiding enormous dry spells like we experienced from '11-'16.

On one hand, I think you're being a bit too hard on yourself. The content at TwinsDaily is phenomenal, and I can think of dozens of things written by folks other than Nick, Seth, John, and Parker. In fact, perhaps the most memorable article I've read was a great story by SD Buhr about a guy using a shovel to get out of a hole when a ladder was available (I think that was it), clearly an analogy to Terry Ryan. In addition, the daily game stories that Tom does are phenomenal, and the minor league roundups are great and often written by other contributors. On the other hand, I can certainly understand your concern about the future of TwinsDaily. As you stated, eventually the core writers will need to move on to other things, and if there is no one left to contribute meaningful content the site won't survive. I really don't have any answers for you. On a personal level, I've never written a single blog post, but it has often crossed my mind that I would like to. The main things holding me back are time and standards. I just don't have time to write an article that I would be proud of, and if I did find the time to write one I certainly would never find the time to write them regularly. You are in a difficult situation. I get the sense that there is a "core" to TwinsDaily, made up first of Nick, Seth, John, Parker, and Brock (to do the website), followed up with a sort of inner circle of the moderators and folks that contribute to the handbooks and regular features like the minor league roundups. It would be great for you to expand both of these groups (the core and inner circle). However, you probably can't just take all comers, as you have a certain level of standards to uphold, and you want to make sure that all significant Twins events are covered in a somewhat coordinated way. Good luck!

The quality of content on Twins Daily, including the comments, is incredible, and the moderators are a huge reason why. Thank you moderators!

I don't quite understand where the Baseball America article is getting all of the information for this proposal. I don't see anything on mlb.com other than the article about Portland desiring a baseball team. I'm sure that all of these decisions will be made somewhat independent of each other, where the Baseball America makes it sound like a package deal. In reality I think each topic should be considered on it's own merits: Should Baseball Expand?If it expands, what is the best divisional alignment?Given a new divisional alignment, how best should the playoffs be handled?How many games should teams play in division vs out of division?Should the number of games played change?What should be done with the DH?I love the idea of expanding to 32 teams, but I don't like the idea of getting rid of the AL/NL split, or 4 division winners and 8 wild cards, and I don't see any reason why expanding to 32 teams means you have to get rid of leagues, have 4 divisions, or reduce the number of games.

This is literally the first time I've ever heard the term "Minnesota Nice" used to describe the Twins of the 2000s. The term wasn't thrown around when Puckett and Hrbek were the faces of the franchise, and it's not being thrown around now by anyone but you.

While this play certainly stunk, it mostly gets a "meh" from me for several reasons: None of us have any clue what it's actually like to play in an MLB postseason game. When you are in a situation you've never been in before, sometimes you do things you've never done before. I used to perform a lot as a musician, and more than once I made a mistake on stage mid-solo that I'd never made in practice. Your body just does things differently. When I was practicing my mouth would often have too much moisture in it, but when performing it would be too dry, and that caused weird stuff to happen.As Seth said, I'm certain Granite is not "afraid" of the Yankees. "I was afraid of..." is just a thing we say when explaining why we did or didn't do something. To read anything else into it is to take it way out of context.The whole sliding into first thing to not get hurt is an interesting thought. I'm not an athlete by any stretch, but playing slow pitch softball I've tweaked muscles when I stretch for that last step down the line and land on the bag the slightest bit awkwardly, and that's without a foot to think about stepping on. Granite is obviously in good enough shape that he's not going to pull a muscle landing on the bag, but I think trying to avoid stepping on a foot is totally legit. Granite himself said it was dumb, and I think it probably was, but it's also just not a big deal in my opinion.

That one time, when Buxton (or was it Sano?) did that one thing! Come to think of it... it was Mauer. Yes, that thing for sure.

I also think it's good to separate regular season from post season stats. Post-season stats are fun to look at by themselves. Can you believe... Mariano Rivera had 42 postseason saves? (and pitched in 96 games!!!)Andy Pettite pitched 276 postseason innings? (and has 19 wins!!!)Derek Jeter played in 158 postseason games? (and has 200 hits!!!)