jimmer

Do you see a lot of SABR people dismiss the strikeout on offense? Most I've talked to don't like Ks. Striking out hurts the OBP. But if a guy grounds out to 3B as opposed to striking out, his OBP is still hurt the same. I think most SABR people just don't scream 'oh the strikeout is horrible' like they used to. Most would agree that, especially with runners on, a ball in play out will often be at least a little helpful by moving runners over (if it's an out placed in the right spot). It could also lead to a double play. And I also don't see a lot of people dismissing the walk on defense. It's still allowing a guy on base, which a defense shouldn't want to do. My point is that an inning leadoff walk allowed on defense isn't any worse than an inning leadoff single (or a double) allowed on defense. I'd also rather walk a good player on a 3-0 count with a man on 2nd than groove a ball in the strike zone to get pounded just to avoid walking a guy. Allowing a walk isn't more damaging than allowing a hit when preventing runs scored. A walk on offense isn't better than a single or double either, but it's still getting on base (as opposed to creating one of 27 outs). It creates opportunities for scoring by having another runner on and extending the inning. So while a single or better would be better, it's still getting on base. Getting on base is important.

wouldn't the beer carbonation cause a problem?

It is unreasonable to expect that our 25 year old supposedly hot shot pitching prospect could beat out those extremely underwhelming 5 spot options?

I will definitely be going to spring training next year. Unfortunately, it will likely be the Cactus league instead of the Grapefruit League, but should still be a blast.

That would be interesting, but it may not come down to one or the other. I doubt Rosario starts the season on the 25 man roster.

As we know, the regression expected of Santana is because of his BABIP over .400. Historically, that's impossible to sustain. But people with his skill set are likely to have a BABIP over league average. ZiPS projects his BABIP this year at .341, which is still very good. Mauer is a fantastic hitter and his career BABIP is about 10 points below that. So it's not like saying he'll regress is such a bad thing, it's just saying a .405 BABIP is through the roof amazing and not sustainable. His .353 OBP was hugely affected by that. As his BABIP drops down, he's going to need to walk more to keep his OBP up. Hall of Famer Rod Carew had a career BABIP a hair under .360. Still 45 points lower than Santana's 2014 BABIP. Yet his career OBP was in the .390s (40 points higher than Santana's).

'Ulitmately the better players will be those that progress more than they regress.It's not rocket science kids' Regression isn't a negative term. It's a mathematical term relative to a mean. If a player, like 2014 Mauer, has an unusually bad season relative to how he normally does (or would be expected to do), he is likely to regress to having a better season. Because regression is to the mean and Mauer's mean is higher than what he did in 2014. Better players have a better mean.

He's exactly the kind of pitcher the Twins have traditionally loved and has moved quickly due to that. We should see him soon.

Why not, that guy is an inner circle HOFer :-)

IMO, we are definitely older than we should be and our youngsters should be getting more MLB playing time. Would we really rather watch Hunter and Rosario? I'd rather Rosario get some time.

I think it's fair to say that since Santana, Vargas and Arcia are relatively new to the majors, we're starting to see some turn around to younger players. I imagine we'll be really young next opening day with likely three more rookie position players playing. Of course one of our pitching rookies will probably be 26, and we'll likely have a 41 year old on the roster so maybe that average age won't drop as much as it should :-)

Danny Santana wRC+ was better than Carew's career wRC+ though :-)

Seemed they were just talking rotation, but according to Fangraphs team FIP was 26th and rotation was FIP was 24th. Our defense was even worse, which is hard to accept and makes this offseason harder to stomach since it not only wasn't improved, it was potentially made worse.

Offensively yeah, very likely, but hopefully not defensively.

With a better defense, our pitching staff wouldn't look the worse. It'd still be bad, but I think it's more accurate to say our defense is worse than our pitching when comparing to other teams' pitching and defense.

Good chemistry and winning culture usually follow winning not the other way around. It's been a long time since we've heard of a really good team having bad chemistry and a losing culture. Seems it's been even longer, if ever, that we've heard of a bad team having good chemistry and winning culture.

Yeah, makes one wonder why people have such issues when a good chunk of scouts say he's more than likely going to end up a reliever and not a hot shot front-line pitcher.

There is zero surprise in this decision.

GASP! Say Whaaaat? :-)-Stewie

No surprise there, even before his last outing.

Twins fans have been brainwashed by the announcers and the team about how evil the walk is, so people freak out about that. Announcers preach about how often the 1st batter of an inning scores if he gets walked, but we don't seem to get the same kind of preaching when we're talking first batter get on base by a single. Same result though, first batter is on base. I guess it's less of an issue since the batter earned his trip on the bases, but batters also have a hand in working a count to get a walk. It's not just the pitchers fault, it's often the work of the batter. Team takes pride in their usually low walk rates while avoiding the discussion about BAA. :-)

I often wonder how much patience the Mariners would have had with his wildness had he been a right-hander.

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm not freaking out about the Randy Johnson comparisons. I'm more laughing about them :-) And, you know, Santana is also being favorably compared to HOF Rod Carew on another thread. It's amazing how many of our players have ceilings/are comparable to HOFers. Quite the farm system we have :-)

Well, he did have 7 more bunt hits than Mauer last year. Or, put another way, about 6% of his hits were bunts. It's nice to think Santana has a HOF ceiling though.

Should Meyer start preparing his HOF speech now? Where are all the comparisons to the pitchers that were wild that crashed, burned and were never heard from again? :-)