Taildragger8791

Seems like most games have been in that 2:30-2:40 range. The fact that this one was barely over 3 hours with 18 runs scored is a great sign. Unbelievable that they let it get to this point before finally putting their foot down and making batters/pitchers get on with play.

I don't see the relationship between a shift and a 37% K-rate and a bunch of fly balls and pop outs.

Hmmmm…$30 million for one great player or $30 million for 3 bad ones? Such a tough decision.

Buxton is the only one that took a team-friendly deal, and with his injury history it made sense. The other guys were all unproven and under team control for years and thus took moderate deals in exchange for security.

Wait…so in his best stretch he still gave up a 247/.330/.469 (.799) batting line and that’s encouraging? He gives up far too many walks at this point. Kid has talent but I’m always highly skeptical of control-issue guys because it rarely improves significantly going from AAA to MLB.

And you get what you pay for. An inconsistent good-not-great pitcher who hasn’t proven he can handle big games, and a stud talent that needs load management and plays <100 games per year. Sometimes the big contract actually makes sense.

To be fair, with the changes to the ballpark last year it should be less homer-prone and more pitcher friendly. But Bundy was still clearly getting rocked and needed a much shorter leash today.

We saw something like this last year too where pitching looked good through a couple turns while the offense struggled. Eventually the offense improved (albeit still streaky) and the pitching regressed to their true talent level (not great). I worry we’ll see a similar flip this year in the next couple of weeks. Meanwhile team will lose too many games sorting out pitching and hitting before figuring out what (if anything) works.

That would be stunning indeed. Cleveland GM would be declared clinically insane if he traded a starter for 3 mediocre DH’s.

He hasn’t played real baseball in 2 1/2 years and outside of the AFL he hasn’t hit above low A ball. Hopefully he used the downtime to train out some bad habits and train in some good ones. It’s still reasonable to expect a full season to establish himself and make adjustments. Players don’t improve just because time passed and they aged.

That would be a huge win for MLB against players. The few players per year that benefit from this in exchange for teams getting closer to a salary cap and still no floor? Slam dunk for owners.

Berrios also showed a lot more 'stuff'. He just needed to stop tipping his pitches and make some adjustments back and forth. Jax's pedestrian 'stuff' does not give him the same basis for a breakthrough.

Buxton was slow coming back from injury, but has progressively gotten better week by week since then. Over the last 3 weeks he's hitting .273/.341/.584 with a normal BABIP. He's been scorching over the last week or two. Superstar or not, the Twins tend to win a lot more with him than without him and that's all that matters.

Do we know for certain that Dobnak's finger strain won't be a lingering issue? Or is he surgically repairing it? Sounds like something that needs to be properly fixed before it goes away...

Results would indicate it wasn't an unfair label. Some guys come in more advanced on certain tools than others. Clearly he had zero advanced skills/tools and needs to be molded and developed almost from scratch across the board.