Platoon

A lot of people don’t appreciate Mauer as a catcher because he made it look so easy, sort of like sitting in a lawn chair! Unlike some of the catchers who have followed Mauer, a Twins pitcher could actually throw that 1-2 slider down in the dirt off the plate and have confidence that it wasn’t gonna hit the backstop. As for his abilities at first, pretend you are a Twins IF and have the choice of throwing to Mauer, or the likes of Sano, or any of the occupants of that position last year? Was he a traditional bat first IB? Probably not, but for quite a few years he was the gold standard at the catching position!

I just spent the last 6 weeks in a straight leg brace after knee surgery. This required me to slide lengthways into the back seat of my wife’s Jeep, sort of like a St. Bernard. While the sliding causes some compromising situations, the recent cool mornings have made it very easy to tell exactly how far I have been exposed to the elements each time. When the Twins signed Buxton they exposed themselves severely. Apparently because it was summer, no one in the FO seemed to notice their butt was showing!

I won’t argue dollars or cents or availability, but ooooh that’s a bad IF at first, second, and short. And yes, I am aware that ground balls are becoming passé.

So based on this article Hell actually can freeze over?

Aaron Judge couldn’t carry Garlicks athletic supporter! ??

I knew if we would just show some patience our Twins would start hitting. This offense is to good to keep down very long. Woh be it to the rest of the teams on our schedule! What? Already? Well ???

But can he lose favor with the ones who thinks he walks on water? This question is probably moot since Rocco has been shown that such a feat is analytically impossible, thereby removing it from his consciousness.

"For another offseason, injury questions will surround Buxton even though he was tremendous during the 2022 campaign. Minnesota paid Buxton $9.14 million for the 2022 season, and FanGraphs pegs his total value this year at nearly $32 million. Some fans may say he isn’t providing value to the team on his current contract because of how often he is injured. However, he provided enough value this season to cover his contract for this year and next. " Does one also subtract/average out the WAR, any of the other abbreviated analysis computations, and defensive deficiencies of his replacements to find out what we are actually getting from his contract.

Managing a baseball team includes managing the 162 games also. Meaning in game decisions, based on many moving parts. A good baseball man once told me, "every pitch changes a game". I have never doubted that philosophy. If it’s even borderline true, there is no way to manage a team from the FO suite. There are ever fluid situations, and frankly some of them are gut reactions. Pitcher Bob may have a 4.00 ERA, but that’s an average. The managers job is to decide whether this is one of Bob’s 2.00 days, or 6.00 days. At the end of two games like this he will still have a 4.00, your job is to make use of him on the good one, and get him out on the bad one. Otherwise, all you are doing in the dugout is wasting sunflower seeds. One last thing, This team has be horrendously undisciplined all year on fundamentals. The baserunning has been basically high school level FO running the show or not, that’s on the manager to control and correct.

There is a lot of bad luck in injuries. Buxtons do not belong in that category. His history made this predictable. He is what he was. And the Twins got what they paid for!

Repeat after me: RBI’s are analytically insignificant!

Was this a Randball piece?

This play is simply indicative of what has happened to MLB the past 10 years or so. A lot of it is caused by the administrators of the game. But some of what they decree is also caused by us the fans. We are the ones who expect perfection from human beings. We think umpires (or referees as someone posted) should be flawless. We want instant replay for everything with the exception of the players scratching themselves in the dugout. When it takes ten minutes and 14 looks at a play and it STILL can’t be clearly determined, then that’s what the umpire is for. An arbiter. BTW, it’s not easy making your living deciding whether a 92mph slider nipped the lower outside 3/8” of the plate. The two plays shown, here and Pittsburg were similar. Obviously one was called wrong. Which one? Who knows. The rule is so stupid that’s it’s almost impossible to consistently enforce. Frankly I agree that the play was correctly called by the plate ump. The catcher had to be in position to catch the ball, which he was, and he made the tag. Same thing in Pittsburg. But it’s not the call that was bad, it’s the rule that is stupid. . Make it so a slide into a catcher with intent to knock him over to jar the ball loose is an automatic out. It won’t be any more confusing than this, and it allows the catcher to be a catcher. One last thing, enough with the umpires and big wigs in NY hate the Twins. Sheesh! While I am pretty sure most umpires could give a rats behind who wins, I can guarantee the wheels in NY love the Twins. Think about it!

Fortunately nothing else happened in the three plus preceding hours that changed the outcome of the game! ???

Would not pulling the starters even earlier simply cause the bullpen more stress. Years ago Bill Clinton said "it’s the arithmetic". Whatever your SP doesn’t pitch your pen does. In another context if you had a group of starters consistently going deep into games, you would either drop a relief pitcher, or end up with rusty ones at the end of the pen bench!