Doomtints

Cool stuff. What's interesting about this chart is none of these teams played in the world series, much less won it.

I bought a condo in Chicago and the seller was upside-down. I brought $8,000 to closing. The seller brought $30,000. Remember that housing prices are a negotiation. Yes, the seller initially baked that $30,000 into their asking price. I talked them down. I said that based on market research, no one was ever going to pay them this $30,000 and furthermore no lender would approve it. I was lying, but it worked. Sellers might bake in that 6% somewhere, but the buyer doesn't have to pay it. Plus, I doubt most sellers think this way because there are so many little fees that add up it would be fruitless to count them all. Inspections often show something that the seller must concede to address as well. Regarding inspections, inspections are required by lenders. Unless you are forking out cash, there will be inspections, market research for pricing, etc. Many states also require lawyers.

I bought a house in Leander back in the day and it was very similar to this one. It was by the same builder. It was a good house, the only issues with the house were caused by the previous owner (and even those issues were mild). We bought at the tail end of the housing crisis so we got a good deal. It was interesting... Identical floorplans in Austin were $200k, identical floorplans near Manor were $80k, and in Leander they were $130k. We sold at a huge profit a few years later. Do you have the floorplan that you could share?

Graterol was injured this year. The Twins are more likely to shut him down than call him up.

It might seem like it, but hitting isn't the problem. If the position players want to help win games, the step is to start playing defense competently. The hitting this year will be something we all remember for a very long time for how great it is.

This is a flawed team and we all know it. However, if they can avoid a long losing streak right now, the games after Aug 20th are largely a piece of cake (or the 15th if you believe Texas won't put up a fight). But there's no avoiding the conversation. We can talk about their flaws now or we can talk about them after they're bounced, probably by the Yankees, from the postseason. I think we all know that despite efforts to avoid the conversation, we will end up having the talk at both times. We knew the bullpen was bad, but we didn't know the defense would be quite this bad. When they were playing well, they were playing better defense. To me this suggests they can fix the defense. If this team wants to be dominant like they were at the start of the year, they've got to get back to it. The Twins were playing good defense before Sano returned. They were winning without Sano. This tells us all we need to know -- work on the dang defense. Don't be afraid to give guys days off to field a defense against teams that can hit!

I would be very happy if they had won the past three games, but I'm not surprised they lost them. They'll try again tomorrow.

This is on the Twins. They chose to do a last second deadline deal which meant they could not have done a physical on him. Dyson's last few games before the deadline were perfection so I doubt the Giants knew anything, and Dyson was no doubt not given a chance to tell the Twins before the trade.

I think Buxton has sat out some games without going on the IL after some wall collisions. If I were running the team, knowing I have a guy like Buxton out there, I would upgrade the wall padding during the offseason. It's a sound investment which would help more than him. Other teams don't have to know about it. They would only figure it out after crashing into the wall, if they ever did. Buxton gets hurt, and typically not in a "rub some dirt on it" type of way. Rather than trying to change his behavior, I would try to entice him to put on more weight. This would slow him down, but now that he has been hitting consistently so what?

Schoop is the infielder who can play defense and his bat is adequate. He will have a place on the team going forward. Should he take at bats away from Arraez? Absolutely, just not all of the at bats. Scoring ten runs a night is fun, but sometimes you gotta have a defense out there to win.

You can make the main character rather drab and surround him/her by really nutty characters, or even just have the character have nutty interpretations in his/her mind. In some classics, the main character seems to be in a bit of a fog with a whole bunch of stuff going around him/her. In others, the interactions are more personal. Some are a mix of both. Some really popular books don't necessarily have great characters or even great stories, but they read as snapshots in time that affect the narrator or the character(s) in some way. What I'm getting at is ... just tell your story.

I understand what you are saying, ashbury, and unfortunately this is the way most people see things these days. I don't want to get into a huge discussion or debate, but this is my take on it. Improper and disrespectful speech is improper and disrespectful regardless of the topic. Labeling it "political" should not give someone a free pass. It's no secret that a lot of people live in a sort of dual morality, where they have one set of values for themselves, their friends, and their families, and another set for strangers. This ideal has infected our political discourse but to a bizarre, exaggerated level. Anyway, if the point is that we should be respectful, we should be respectful regardless of the topic. If someone is choosing to ape someone else who is not being respectful, that doesn't mean we have to roll over and allow it. Everyone makes their own choices, even if they are aping somebody else. After all, the world has more followers than leaders. Those who mimic hate speech will not do so if we do not allow it. Followers want to be accepted and will change their behavior if left no other alternative.

With this team hitting as they are, I wouldn't bother with someone like Cave for even a second. Bring up a good defender until Buxton and/or Astudillo come back. Cave is neither a good defender nor a good hitter. Now I will say that Cave is "good enough" to be the emergency fill in guy, particularly if he gets along well with everybody, it's just not the choice I would make. With a dozen guys on the team who can hit, just bring in a good defender who isn't going to be a liability out there.

The Twins used a defense-first infield yesterday and still managed to win without having to score ten runs. Cool.

And yet in 2015-2017 people complained about his defense and he was benched for his defense more than once by Molitor. I agree that he looks like the same defender this year that he looked like last year.

Not saying it's a bad comp, just saying it was unexpected.

I don't know where the Duensing comp comes from, that's an interesting choice. It is unlikely that Smeltzer would start a playoff game for the Twins. I will say this, he has enough stuff to where hitters are still trying to figure him out. He has a nice number of "strikes looking." As a flyball pitcher, if this piece changes he may not fare so well.

It's true that yesterday's game was won with defense. It's nice to see the Twins can play defense once in a while.

Smeltzer doesn't have a 9+ SO9 rate so give it a few weeks and people will be saying he's one of the worst pitchers on the team, regardless of his ERA, ERA+, or any other tangible results. "Smoke and mirrors" they will say, because he breaks the FIP formula.

Take a look anyway. You will be surprised.

Take a gander at the number of errors by the Twins outfield starters v. Twins infield starters. This is a major problem.

The concern is the number of throwing errors in this Twins infield, not Rosario. It's like watching the four stooges out there.

Wow.