Kobs

Taking a look at this, I have a hard time taking these numbers as something remotely player specific. Mauer has often done very well in numbers that attempt to quantify framing in past years. I get the feeling this is more based on the quality and type of pitching more than anything else. Some guys may be good at this, but I can't take the peaks and valleys of a season's numbers as indicative of anything. I also can't help but check out his comparison of the "best and worst" of the week and see a vastly different set of pitch types. There's a massive difference between a pitch that was supposed to be low dipping below the strike zone and an inside pitch that ends up outside.

He didn't seem to be throwing with a lot of effort. The fact that the Twins have had to do this three times in three years is pretty embarrassing. Here we have a manager who is terrified of the catcher injury/DH loss/pitcher dying in a tragic batting accident scenario, but this is no biggie.

Can someone explain to me why people insist on shooting videos with their phone in portrait?

I'd take a strike sniffing dog over the umpires. Two barks is a strike.

The All-Star game is in Minneapolis, not Minnesota Twins.

If Gandhi can get in, how can you leave out Tim Hudson?

If there's one thing we know, it's that JR is not working the phones "like crazy." He may be having a slow discourse or two with some other GM he is comfortable with about some sort of move they might consider to net the Twins a no hit infielder.

Are we sure that's not a Jeep Cherokee with a kayak on the luggage rack driving down 94? Putting the star in the wrong place is pretty terrible. Americans are bad enough at geography on their own.

I still find paternity leave ridiculous for professional athletes.

Venezuela is definitely one of my favorite Caribbean nations.

The Twins' poor product has everything to do with draft failures, and to say that you should expect to get your best players (the guys the Twins are actually missing) from free agency or trades doesn't jive with anything we've seen in baseball aside from a few organizations with unlimited resources. Let me reiterate this...the Twins aren't missing complementary pieces that should be added from outside. They are missing the foundation pieces that actually make teams viable. The Twins haven't had anything of value to trade since the Garza deal. You know why? ****ty drafting.

Here's the problem. Being marginally better than the Cubs and Astros here has basically no value. The Twins picking up a few extra slightly above replacement level players doesn't get them anywhere. If you can't find a few legitimate gems to carry your team, you've failed, miserably.You can pretty much draw that conclusion in any situation in which you're comparing yourself to the Astros. Would Garza have helped? Obviously. I still think they lose 90 last year.

Sorry pig, but this is bullplop. A team doing moderately well in the draft isn't consistently one of the five worst teams in baseball. The proof is on the field. The Twins haven't called up a real impact player since 2006. They got a good reliever and a poor man's Joe Crede out of five first round picks in one year, and we're supposed to call that good? Decent doesn't mean anything on the field, there isn't a discrete categorization here. A major league team needs to supply itself with good players to be good...middle of the order hitters or top of the rotation starters. They haven't called up a top of the rotation starter for the first time since 2006 and they haven't called up a middle of the lineup hitter since 2004.

I don't understand why people even bother referring to gold gloves.

Those drafts were still OMG TERRIBLE. Some first rounders turned out to be decent. No one turned out to be great. One guy is a good relief pitcher, which isn't that valuable. You don't expect a star out of a 40th round pick. You do expect one out of unlimited rounds over five years. Those drafts = 90+ losses, most likely three years in a row, and counting.

Four baseball games in a week seems like a lot...especially if you want to see opening day, where temps are likely to be less than 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

Changing his approach was a terrible idea. So what if he gets hurt again? He has little value if he's not throwing sliders often. It's like telling a 100 meter guy to slow down when he competes because he is prone to hamstring injuries.

Baseball managers all make the same decisions, just get rid of him, get someone cheaper, spend the money to get guys who are already good at baseball to play the positions.

Pitching to the only good hitter in the opponent's lineup with first base open allows me to reminisce about Gardy letting Frank Thomas hit when his ankle was fused in that series against the A's.

Not really anything of substance to take from this. The only thing that could have been is the amount of influence the regional scout has on the 4th overall pick.

I was thinking Rolen, Glaus, Mulder, Isringhausen, and Beltran.

You need to take a look at who actually plays major league baseball. There are not 29 teams with Joey Votto equivalents.

I don't think the Cardinals are a very good example to be on the opposite side of the Brewers. They've made a lot of big moves over the past dozen or so years to try to put themselves over the top.

If there were a credible measure of "individual run creation," why would we need OPS?

One of these things is true: A) His side of the story is false. The suspension didn't impact his draft position significantly. I have a real hard time believing that major league teams were considering this fella at the top of the draft and didn't bother to find out anything about his suspension, and I have an even harder time believing that they would let a guy fall significantly due to what he described.