Doomtints

Aaron Hicks update: Injured again.

Since the advent of Twitter we have found many people arguing strongly that two spaces is incorrect. Note that these people are not just arguing strongly, but are arguing wrongly. These rules never had anything to do with "typewriters." Back to the topic at hand, TwinsDaily did not always have this spacing issue. I'm betting someone tried to add a filter to filter out multiple spaces, as someone at some point did something "abusive" and filled up a message with a lot of spaces. Adding a filter is fine, but instead of replacing multiple spaces with no spaces, simply replace multiple spaces with one space. Problem solved. (And even better, only replace 3+ spaces with one space, so those of us who prefer to use proper grammar can do so.)

Young team.

There are periods where this site is completely inaccessible for a few minutes to an hour at a time. When this happens, traceroutes are dying at some webhosting provider called privatesystems.net, which is one hop out from TwinsDaily.com. Why not just use godaddy, where you bought your domain anyway? They are reliable and cheap. Anyway, if you moved to this provider in the past couple of weeks/months, they're crap and you should move away from them. If you've been with them forever, give them a call to ask what's going on. If you have been looking at traffic logs lately and are wondering why traffic is down, this is why.

Being a #3 is pedestrian? I guess so....

It really felt like Molitor turned a corner last year with the bullpen. He was on the record stating he wanted pitchers to finish out an inning, but down the stretch he started playing matchups and watching how the pitchers were doing (pulling them in a timely manner) and it worked out very well. Maybe today we just saw a bit of his idealism again and next time he'll be back to reality. There is zero value in wanting to change pitchers only at the start of inning. Even without looking it up, I feel confident saying this was never a winning strategy for anyone. Meltdowns are usually happening BEFORE the runners score.

122 seems about right. And yeah, he's probably in consideration for the MVP if he plays much more than that.

Cleveland both underachieved in the first half and overachieved down the stretch. They played a lot of crappy teams en route to a 22-game winning streak. Take that away and they're a 90-92 win team -- still a playoff team but not a true top seed (as evidenced by them being bounced out by the wild card team).

I would imagine this is simply because he's not calling as many games as he used to.

It's impossible to say this team is primed for the future. Most of the players we know will be gone in one to two years. This is "win now" mode, Twins-style.

This says it all. He was the most valuable player on the team most of last year (based on WAR), and for a long stretch of the year this was just because of his defense.

The two responses to my message are strange. The point is the Twins need to do more than the minimum to get to the playoffs. There's more to the postseason than that! So far this year they are on the right track. Let's see what they do at the trade deadline.

I would rather have them miss the playoffs than make the playoffs and get swept again.

I wouldn't put him anywhere near the top of the lineup until he hits his groove, yes. He's still young. As long as the Twins don't make this mistake again, he should be fine.

Buxton figured things out last year. There should be no concern about him starting slow.

Yes, but we're trying to be positive.

Why are ERAs higher in spring training if the pitchers are better than the hitters? The real issue with spring training statistics is that the bell curve, or the normalization, isn't there yet. Players on both sides of the ball are all over the spectrum. If a rookie isn't good in ST, that's a concern. Beyond that it's hard to know what the numbers mean.

http://akns-images.eonline.com/eol_images/Entire_Site/20151116/rs_500x241-151216094910-facebook_gif_3.gif

:/

Anyone have a scouting report on this guy? It looks like his bat has some pop. Welcome to the Twins, Vargas!

You can ask them this question after they do it.

I read this article at the time and saw it all play out on Facebook. I was alarmed people didn't see it. I'm alarmed people are dismissing it now. You are repeating the GOP narrative that none of this mattered. Read this article from 2015, it will change your mind. (It would have helped if you had FB "news" feeds from the time fresh in your mind, but that ship has sailed). There's a reason this is a big deal in the news, don't fall for the narrative that the GOP had two years to rehearse....

If you have been engaged in the news cycle since Friday, you saw some revelations about Cambridge Analytica. You may have also seen the GOP's narrative that none of it worked, or the professor who stole the data claiming he was duped. You probably saw that Facebook is acting surprised. Don't believe it. Check out this article from over two years ago. Don't let the GOP lie to you! https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/11/senator-ted-cruz-president-campaign-facebook-user-data

Any NPR listeners here? Have you noticed how often they have people on now pushing the GOP narrative? Have you noticed that when a Democrat is on, they ask loaded questions that support the GOP narrative? What the heck happened?

Polanco was still working through some kinks. He may not have been good right out of the gate this year so his absence may not hurt all that much. We'll find out. We were all worried when Morneau went down a few years ago only to have Cuddyer turn into a superhero when it mattered. Now someone else gets that opportunity.