Kavan

Hey I went last year. I grabbed tickets on stub hub for the games I wanted to go to, which worked out well. I didn't get the impression that games were sold out, so walk up might work as well, but if you're going to make a long trip it might be worth the piece of mind that you've got tickets before you go.

Bluechipper, my guess was almost exactly what yours was before I looked at the comments. I'm thinking 260/310/410 seems about right. He managed a .260 BA with a .301 BABIP last year, I wouldn't be surprised if BABIP jumps a little.

Having 'too many' SP options is indeed a good problem. The solution to which is maximizing the aggregate value you can extract from your options. I think the point is that May is perhaps the best starting pitcher on the 25 man roster. You could take any of the starting 5 and turn them into a quality RP. Swapping one of Nolasco or Milone for May means more innings for the better pitcher, meanwhile Nolasco or Milone could tack on another 2 or so MPH and be an effective RP.

I'll take the under, someone has to lose games this year right? O's seem as likely as any other team to shoulder that burden.

Right, this exists, and is good. But your point was that the reason ticket prices are where they are is because of profit maximization, and I agree with you on that. All I'm saying is that ticket prices shouldn't be set to maximize profits because the Twins are publically funded.

Except for the fact that taxpayers subsidized the new ballpark, which should compel the organization to think beyond profit maximization. If they fund their business venture without public funds that's one thing, but I don't think an organization should be able to take taxpayer money and then maximize profits without regard to giving back to the community that financially supports their existence.

If you go on Stub Hub right now you can find tons of tickets to Twins games for under $20. $30 can get you some pretty solid seats. But if you're just taking the kids to a game there are plenty of options at $17-18/ticket. That's not a whole lot different from a movie ticket.

I'm not sure I agree with the notion that Eduardo Escobar has transformed from a free swinger to a more patient hitter. The percent of pitches he swings at has not changed from his career averages, in fact in 2014 he swung at more pitches than at any time in his career. He's not swinging and missing at different rates (that actually peaked in 2014 as well). It looks like he just developed some power and started pulling the ball more often. Pulling the ball might have been a change in approach, but the additional power could just be him approaching his mid/late 20s when power tends to develop.

Also Mauer is posting the lowest OBP of his career, by more than 20 points. Putting Sano behind Mauer doesn't make Mauer a better player. Putting Sano in the lineup makes the Twins a better team.

Well written? I couldn't make it past this sentence: Runs batted in are a meaningless number to baseball’s nuevo statistical crowd, but in 1998, they meant something to Molitor. I get so frustrated with this type of sentiment. No one has ever argued that RBIs are not important to winning games. The way you win games is by scoring more runs than your opponent, a good way to do that is to hit a lot of RBIs. RBIs are important. The 'nuevo statistical crowd' simply says that RBIs are not a good measure of a player's individual performance, nor is it a good way to predict a player's future performance. If you want to predict how good a player is going to be during the stretch run, or evaluate a trade candidate's potential future performance, there are better metrics than RBIs simply because RBIs describe what a team is doing, not what an individual is doing. The hitters in front of me partially determine my total RBIs. That doesn't mean RBIs are meaningless, they're just a poor measure of individual performance. If you think people might 'rise to the occasion' with men on base, then look at percent of potential RBIs converted or something (I think people have and I think this stat is not persistent). This is the same argument against 'Wins' for pitchers. It takes a team effort to get the starting pitcher a win, good teams will accumulate wins for their starting pitchers. Wins aren't meaningless, they tell you something about how the team did that day. They just aren't not a great tool to evaluate the pitcher as an individual.

He's striking out fewer than 4 per 9 innings and his ground ball rate is a pedestrian 44%. He's had great results but I'm not optimistic about the sustainability.

This is a guy with 436 MLB games and a career .229/.311/.310..... I just don't see it. I predict: .235/.315/.325

The average ISO for these projections is .233. That would put Arcia in a category with Paul Goldschmidt, Nelson Cruz, and Ryan Braun in terms of power over the past few years. That seems a little optimistic to me. Maybe Arcia will be putting up those numbers at the peak of his career, but I don't see him doing that at age 23/24. I think my projection would be something like: .245/.310/.455

Heads up I think some of those stats are wrong. I.e. Kris Johnson BB's and Alex Meyers hits.

But we were pretty close to mean spenders overall, 3 of 6 categories we overpaid, 3 of six we underpaid. We were only "cheap" in half of them.... which doesn't really translate to cheap overall. Also in every year you posted, we had a top 5 record, out of 14-ish teams... I think thats pretty good. Anything can happen in the playoffs with so few games, including repeatedly getting swept by the Yankees. I think your evaluation of Twins on-field performance is a bit short-sighted.