Doomtints

The knee he had surgery on is sore. Move him to the pen when he gets back.

Did you notice how yesterday's game was a bit like the last Twins wild card game? Yeah. There is plenty of time for the Twins to learn how to keep it rolling against playoff teams. Heck, maybe it happens today!

A couple of weeks ago, I saw a clip on CBS Sports where a guy was doing his power rankings and he had the Twins at #1. He said he was "sick of people not giving the Twins respect." I think the Twins are getting respect. ESPN likes to talk about the Yankees, but otherwise they give roughly equal time to everybody else. I live near Wrigley where every game is a sellout and everyone in the stadium is decked out in Cubs gear -- going to a Cubs game is the closest most of us will get to experiencing a cult -- and unless you have seen this you wouldn't know it existed because mass media doesn't talk about it. Wrigley Field is not for watching baseball, it's for watching the Cubs.

This team is starting to look like the 2016 Cubs in terms of dominance.

Unless something changes in the division, the Twins will have the easiest August and September in all of baseball. Before the season started it was all about staying ahead of Cleveland until August. The Twins are doing a lot to make that happen. We're back to the big question now ... can this team win in the playoffs? I don't know yet. This looks like another down year for the AL, which means most of the teams aren't worth a darn ... but the teams that make the playoffs will be a different story. Cleveland learned this a couple of years ago by going on a long winning streak to close out the year only to fall in the playoffs.

As someone who lived in Texas for far too long, I can tell you that many would rather die than ever vote Democratic. Many have been programmed to believe that Democrats are immoral and even satanic. A vote for a Democrat is a vote for rapists, drug users, and baby killers. You probably remember Obama being picked as a forerunner for the 2008 election right after the 2004 election. Republicans said the exact same thing this guy is saying now -- wow if the Democrats actually nominate Obama I would be all for that. He is a smart economically sound guy and I would vote for him! We know how that actually went down.

Mauer was a key piece of a team that did not exist after 2010. It's like when Michael McDonald stuck around all those years on MadTV after everyone interesting left, with similarly horrifying results. This entire thread is as stale as a holiday fruitcake. It just simply does not matter right now how good he was or how good he wasn't, and it's important to note that I don't think anyone here is saying he wasn't good. It's interesting to hypothesize that his contract hurt nothing on a team that was being run by Terry Ryan. Of course it hurt, but that's all ancient history now.

Pundits in conservative states often rail on "activist judges" which don't seem to exist ... all while they make a concerted attempt to stack the courts with what they claim the other side is doing. Same old tricks from the evangelists.

I'm not understanding this thread. To me, Littell looks like the exact same pitcher he was last year. Littell is a better idea than Austin Adams, but that was true before Adams was called up in the first place. If Littell can avoid a disaster he will be an OK bullpen arm with an ERA in the upper fours, maybe better if he sticks around long enough to get better.

Graterol being only 20 years old and already at AA is huge. Him dominating at that level is more huge. And yes I would call what he is doing out of the ordinary to put it mildly. I was unaware FIP existed for the minor leagues, but Graterol's 3.14 FIP seems impressive if FIP is your thing. His low BABIP is an artifact of his dominance of right handed batters who ground out or hit weak pop flies to the infield. Lefties have a completely normal BABIP against him. I read an article some time ago that showed that "aces" are good because they induce more of weak infield outs than other pitchers do.

The only surprise for me is that he didn't break out two years ago, but that's true for everybody on the team.

That seems incredibly uncommon. I imagine that comes out to 0.5% of cases, probably less, not even including the cases they refuse to hear based on precedent.

Facebook claims they deleted 2.2 billion fake accounts over the past quarter. Their total user base is 2.34 billion. Unless Twitter, youtube, the FoxNews comments section, etc., etc., have deleted a similar number of fake accounts be very careful trusting anything on social media for the next few years. Fake accounts might be quiet now, but they will lie dormant until someone needs them....

Losing Molitor helped the team MUCH more than losing Mauer.

The Whizzinator can double as a flask.

If anything, Sano is wondering what Kepler is talking about. Big deal.

Right now, the team OPS+ is 125 and the team ERA+ is 116. Pitching depth is a concern, esp. the bullpen, but right now if you are a front office you let the team keep rolling and don't change anything.

We have already overreacted to a couple of 2-game losing streaks, so yes.

Exactly once.

Or we are using different definitions. I count 10 mediocre games or worse (3+ runs or 5 innings or less). That's 70% -- the reason he was a Cy Young candidate. Are there any other aces you know of other than the best starter in the game for the past 3 years? Seems to me the rest of the league is a big drop off from Scherzer. A drop off to, what, ~60% by this definition maybe?

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ARKyA8CVO2g/Totx8bhmbPI/AAAAAAAAHOU/dChaSLuh4jw/s1600/Addams-Family-the-addams-family-1964-23837387-445-353.jpg

Duffey could've had a 3-inning save today. :/

Probably good since the Twins don't have a closer.

How the heck do you manage against a team like the Twins if you're just a middle of the road baseball club?

The number of home runs this team can hit is insane. It's like they are playing Hardball on the C-64.