Hosken Bombo Disco

No, Chief is tracking my thinking quite well. I am not trying to be your adversary, but I did look up Adrianza's range after you suggested I do so, and I posted what I found. Instead of checking RF at Baseball Ref, I checked RZR at Fangraphs, which I thought you might appreciate. Adrianza's RZR was the best of 73 shortstops with 200 innings at shortstop since 2015. I did not type this but posted a JPEG instead, which you might not have seen. Obviously it's too few innings but it should tell us something. So, I am expecting Adrianza to be a very good fielder. I am as curious as anyone about that Giants writer who described Adrianza as learning baseball from an in-flight magazine during his trip to the U. S. (or however he/she put it.) That was a great line and it makes you wonder what kind of entertainment the guy might provide when he's not fielding grounders.

If you mean argue in the sense of presenting data to support my own impression, then sure. None of us know much if anything about Adrianza. According to Fangraphs, RZR "measures a player's range." Sure it's only Fangraphs but I think Fangraphs is reliable. We were evaluating your claim that he is an average defender.

It was good, nothing blows your theory apart. The closest thing would be the Twins announcement that they believe in Sano at third. For the record I do, too. Sano could just as likely get better as get worse. Plouffe was terrible his first season there. First base for Sano would be learning a new position again, and it took Mauer more than a full season to play it adequately. Mauer is very good there at first now. But do the Twins have a plan B at third? Not that I can see. This particular season I think there are more important issues to address than having a plan B at third when they can just plug Polanco or Escobar there.

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Did that. What's the next step in your process?

Adrianza plays mostly shortstop, and apparently plays it very well. I might read those comments as smoke signals about the imminent release of one of the other players who plays those positions. Time shall tell.

It will be funny to hear Joe Buck try to pronounce his name at the All Star game next July.

I would assume Falvey/Levine think so.

Dick lied?

This guy can catch the ball. I like the move. We don't need every player to be a masher at the plate. Small sample but Fangraphs loves his UZR/150.

Concur. When you lost your tackle in the fourth quarter and brought in Compton as backup, I texted a friend and said "watch #76 - he is a kid who grew up in the Twin Cities (Rosemout) and played at South Dakota." It was Compton who looked fresh and made his blocks, while it was the other guys who got Ryan in trouble. Though to New England's credit they were harassing Ryan on and off all night.

Weighted ball training sounds fantastic. I also wonder what is the ideal hand or finger size for throwing certain pitches, like how we read about Berrios tipping his change or maybe certain other pitchers should give up on their split finger.

I would think you were on to something, except for the above poster's quote from 1500. My impression is that Cleveland has carried 13 pitchers more often than other teams, though I don't know how much Falvey had to do with that.

Don't forget his ability to enter a game late and get thrown out attempting to steal D-San is not long for this roster, otherwise if he has another blah spring and does make the roster anyway, I am putting on my tin foil hat and assuming Falvey is testing Molitor to see how he uses him.

Good article. I agree with all of it. The positional redundancies have been frustrating and Park's acquisition last offseason only made things more confusing. D-San doesn't really represent a redundancy as much as just a player not good enough to hang in MLB, so guess not so worried about going to camp with him. Hopefully Molitor has sobered up with regard to his value to the team (starting SS, or not batting him second in the order Opening Day) As someone pointed out, as a deep bench guy Santana has more value than Park.

I feel your pain but nothing about what was described above screams "trick" or "magic" to me.

Belisle will be fine. He's not here to save the season. The Twins have some young arms to play with. Falvey was one of the minds responsible for the Cleveland plan to shut down Toronto in the ALCS, and the pitchers executed very well. Cody Allen was a 20th round pick who raced through the Cleveland system, never optioned back to the minors after his debut, and became closer shortly after. They acquired Andrew Miller, enough said. Again I need to give the new front office and analytics guys the benefit of the doubt in figuring out how to put these bullpen guys in positions to succeed.

Ryan was fired because it was becoming apparent to Pohlad that Ryan was no longer up to the job, and a new set of eyes was needed. It was also becoming clearer to Pohlad that the analytic style and successes of younger GMs was no longer a fluke. To top it off, last season's team, right out of the gate, was almost purposefully assembled to lose 90 games. Trevor May was kept in the bullpen. Sano was put in the outfield (but in hindsight probably had some maturing to do anyway). Nolasco over Duffey, while Duffey finished 2015 pretty impressively. Opening day we went with Buxton and he wasn't ready; disappointing but not unexpected. Perkins was hurt but wouldn't tell anyone. Then you had the disappointing decisions of Molitor in that opening week: using Jepsen in tight spots, using D. Santana as a starting outfielder at the top of the order, not to mention some odd in-game decisions that I don't necessarily recall at the moment. Arcia was a train wreck (I was wrong about him) though in his defense he was never really allowed to settle into a routine. Ryan's big acquisition was JR Murphy who didn't exactly start out hot, and a bunch of other guys had slow starts too. When the team was sitting 8-20 in early May, the release of Casey Fein and demoting a couple other relievers was billed as a major overhaul of the roster, or some such. It obviously wasn't enough. In those following weeks was about the time Pohlad started sending hints to Ryan. Last season's team, simply was bungled to perfection. You don't agree?

Damn, looks fantastic. One of these years.

I'm just looking at his stats, though I'm sure you are watching him in person at least a little bit, so I will defer to you. I have not watched as much as a highlight yet. He was charged with one error last season. (yah, yah, don't go by errors... ) but one error for a full season is a pretty low total for an outfielder. What did the scorers miss? How are his throws? What does Granite do so poorly that he is *at best* average in the field? What does he do well? Thanks!

You put a lot of work into this. Thank you. Seems to me too that Granite should be higher. He just logged a pretty solid season at AA, in fact his best pro season. Revere's better minor league seasons were before AA, though Revere's worst offensive season is still as good as Granite's best season. Is there any reason or measures available to think Granite won't continue to improve, however? I also like how Granite sees himself as a base stealer, whereas a guy like Buxton doesn't see himself as a base stealer, just an incredibly fast guy who might try to steal bases. The rough rule of thumb is to be successful at a 75% rate, and Granite now appears able to do that. We will find out soon how much Falvey & Co. value the stolen base. If they do value steals, maybe we see Granite in MLB for a cup of coffee sooner rather than later?

I agree that Falvey and Levine probably have Dozier valued pretty well, but I think you are really overstating the rest of it. Especially regarding the starting pitchers, I figure they will want at least spring training and several months of the season to get a better handle on those guys.

Can they compete? Sure. Will they compete? Not likely, but take the field and see what happens.