BrianTrottier

You appear to be counting his year lost to Tommy John surgery in your average. That's not a 0 WAR season. If you look at the past four years where he actually played and produced results that go into the WAR metric, then his average bWAR is 3.8.

Where is this "jump up and down" talk coming from? Who's jumping for joy about the Rodney and Duke signings? There is a lot of distance between jumping for joy and expressing sheer outrage at the signing of a couple cheap veteran bullpen arms. I think most people here are somewhere between the two.

I predict that Byung Ho Park will underperform his projected outputs.

Yes, but some people seem confused by the word "agency." Hence statements arguing that the Twins FO "promised" they will sign Darvish, as well as the apparent assumption that whether a player signs here or not is completely on the FO, rather than the player himself.

I think it's an important distinction in that people probably shouldn't get their hopes up too much. They've declared themselves players in the Darvish sweepstakes, but the decision is ultimately the player's.

Link? I've never read or heard anything from the FO where they said that they are going to make an impact signing. They have said on multiple occasions that they are making signing Darvish a priority, which is far from an assurance that they are actually going to sign him. It would be stupid for them to say that.

Well, you complained about having to watch certain players, so I responded. No disrespect intended.

So don't watch?

Your starting assumption is that average provides zero value. That's debatable. As others have said, below average (according to one metric) can still provide value.

Well yeah, I am concerned about a lot of their young bullpen arms. I guess I was trying to point out that your Chargois' future in the bullpen in comes off as a disingenuous justification of a Dozier-JDL trade that clearly would not have been in the Twins' favor.

Not more enamored with another year of Dozier than what? Having a perennially injured AAA pitcher? That's more enamoring to you? Because from all of the reports and "insider" accounts we heard, that was the alternative to Dozier. You may wish otherwise, but from what we know, that's what the offer was.

FTFY.

Are you suggesting that age discrimination should factor into Falvey's hiring decisions?

I was hoping they would keep him on for next year, but I can't help but feel a little consternation about Mollie being the manager for another three.

Just as a (absurd) hypothetical, suppose defenses started running screens on batters, lining up infielders so that they would obstruct the batter's view of the pitcher. The shortstop, or even the left fielder for a LH pull hitter, could stand roughly where an L screen is placed during batting practice. What would your thoughts be on that as a fan? I guess my take is that other sports have positioning rules (football has illegal formations, hockey has offsides and restrictions on where the goalie can skate before a whistle is blown), so I don't see any particularly compelling reason not to implement some sort of positioning restrictions on the baseball diamond. Leave plenty of flexibility to take advantage of hitters' tendencies, sure, but aren't some of the alignments we actually see defenses take bordering on the absurd? Just a thought..

Two comments: 1) Not sure what you're applying a standard deviation to when you say "the standard deviation of the comparison ranking of the BABIP and Hard Hit Rate." The standard deviation of what? 2) A standard deviation is not a measure of correlation. It's a measure of spread around a point of central tendency (i.e. an average). All a SD tells us is how dispersed a set of observations is around a mean, not how correlated two variables are with each other. If you want to measure a correlation, then produce a correlation coefficient. Your 1.88 figure doesn't tell us anything.

Getting accidentally plunked is a risk the batter takes when stepping into the box. Hence the use of batting helmets. What's unfair is for a pitcher to try and intentionally drill a guy who was standing by third base at the time of the initial play.

Here's Josh Donaldson talking about his approach with quite a bit of detail:

It's hard for me to imagine anyone who can really compete with Nishioka in this contest.

And the same height as Mike Napoli, and two inches taller than Carlos Santana.

"Will this production continue through the summer or is regression inevitable?" I think that we are seeing regression with Mauer. The past couple of years he was performing well below his career averages pretty much across the board, but now he's performing much closer to what's been his norm.

I personally don't care if Sano is a butcher out there. I find it hard to believe that his defense will cost nearly as many runs as his bat will produce. But maybe I'm wrong..

Why are people suddenly comparing Sano to Delmon? How are they remotely similar people?

That's a red herring. The article doesn't inform your assertion that Mauer refuses (can't?) squat more than 55 pounds. I guess he could've gone the route of Arcia up to that point and focused on getting huge rather than on baseball. Maybe he'd be squatting 600 pounds now and hitting .190. Wouldn't that be great? But seriously, up to the point that article was published he was worth 44 wins, won two batting titles when no other American League catcher had ever won one, and had an MVP to his name. So I'm not sure what point you're trying to make in this thread. Are you saying that if Mauer was power lifting he'd still be winning batting titles? That he wouldn't have become concussed? That he'd suddenly become a home run hitter when that's never been his game? It seems like your sole interest in this thread is just to take personal jabs at Joe Mauer without any larger point.

No, I'm saying that the context from a picture and a video from 4 years ago (the offseason before he led the league in OBP, put up an OPS of .861, and was worth over 4 wins) is too limited to draw such sweeping conclusions about Mauer's offseason preparation and his work ethic. You're putting words in my e-mouth by with that last statement.