131 thoughts on “November 15, 2011: Nick”

    1. I like the look of that...for a minor league club!

      Also, I like how Hardy was expendable, but is now one of the faces of the Baltimore franchise. Walks away from dead horse...

      2. Hardy would have been a big upgrade over what the Twins had last year, but don't kid yourself into believing he would have hit any better last year than he did the year before if he stayed with the Twins. He walked a little less and had the same batting average with the O's than he did with the Twins. The only difference was a 100 point jump in slugging, which happened mainly because of a better hitter's home ballpark in Camden Yards and his hitting coach telling him to swing for the fences on every pitch. Of course, you shouldn't blame the Twins for Hardy showing a big improvement, because that couldn't be predicted. However, not realizing how valuable he was to begin with was the real problem.

        1. don't kid yourself into believing he would have hit any better last year than he did the year before if he stayed with the Twins

          The facts don't remotely support your argument. Hardy hit twice as many home runs on the road in 2011 as he did all season with the Twins in 2010. Last I checked the Orioles played as many road games this year as the Twins did last year.

          Hardy's main problem in 2010 is that he played much of it with an unhealthy wrist. His batted ball data supports this, specifically the change in his GB% and FB% between 2010 and 2011.

          2010: 49.3 GB%, 33.8 FB%
          2011: 40.2 GB%, 43.4 FB%

          Hardy might have had his career year last year, but it had much more to do with finally having a healthy wrist than his home ballpark.

          1. I think SoCal was referring to the fact that the coaches would have goaded him into hitting line drives to the opposite field, rather than putting pulling the ball with power. He has a lot of history to back him up in that argument.

              1. There's also this story on Hardy.

                Hardy said his left wrist bothered him briefly this spring.

                "I got a little nervous going, 'Oh no, here we go again,' " he said. "But the trainers worked on it, got rid of it in about a week, and I haven't dealt with it since."

                Do you doubt the the wrist would have been an issue if he had stayed with the Twins?

                Besides Camden Yards, Hardy gets to play in other AL East hitter-friendly venues such as Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium and Rogers Centre.

                "Really in this league, anyplace you go is better than here [at Target Field] when it comes to driving the ball," Hardy said. "And, other than the White Sox during the summertime, there aren't very many good hitter's ballparks in this [AL Central] division like there is where I'm at now."

              2. Be that as it may, in 2010 16.9% of batted balls Hardy hit were line drives. In 2011, that line drives were 16.4% of his batted balls. In fact, through 3200+ career PA 16.8% of Hardy's batted balls were line drives. This supports my main criticism of what socal said above - that Hardy's power-hitting resurgence has more to do with being healthy than the approach coaches in Minnesota were advocating compared to the suggestions of coaches in Baltimore.

                We can certainly attribute part of his recovered power to the ballparks he plays in by virtue of playing on a team in the AL East compared to the AL Central. However, if you look at the park factors, Target Field in 2010 was more hitter-friendly than Oriole Park was in 2011. Moreover, the pitchers are also better in the AL East than the Central, and the Twins' lineup in 2010 was certainly superior to that of the Orioles in 2011.

                The point being - yes, there are many factors which explain Hardy's increase in power. The numbers, however, tend to support Hardy being able to drive the ball as having more to do with his recovery of a power stroke than any other single factor, which was why I suggested as much above.

                1. Do you really think he would have been healthy with the Twins anyways? As far as batted balls go, he had a career low groundball rate with the O's and his percentage of fly balls that were home runs were a career high as was his IF fly ball rate.

                  1. Is there any reason to think he would have been less healthy with the Twins this year than he was with the O's?

                    re: the wrist issue. Hardy went from a career-high 49.3 pct GB rate in 2010 to a career-low 40.2 pct in 2011, and a career-low 33.8 pct FB rate to a career-high 43.4 pct. Neither seems particularly representative of Hardy's "true" tendencies. There's sufficient evidence there to support the idea that there was something wrong with his swing in 2010. But one could just as easily argue that both sets of results are outliers.

                    1. He said his wrist started bothering him in spring training with the O's, the trainer worked on it a little bit and problem solved.

                    2. I think we consider Hardy older than he actually is because he's been a regular since 2005. 2011 was his age-28 season, which suggests a prime power year should hardly be surprising.

                  2. His IFFB% in 2011 was actually lower than his career high, not higher. In 2006 it was 15.7%, in 2011 it was 14.1%. Coincidentally, that's exactly what it was in 2008 as well. As for the career high FB%, he was within 2% of his next highest mark, 41.7% in 2007. Coincidentally, 2007 was the year he posted his second-highest HR total, his highest number of PA, and remains the only year he ever has played more than 150 games.

                    As for your question about his health had he remained with the Twins, that's a counterfactual. The conversation is about what he actually did, and to what we can attribute it. I'm saying the source of his resurgence is more complicated than you were allowing, and that the health was more important than any other factor.

                    1. His IFFB% in 2011 was actually lower than his career high, not higher.

                      B-Ref has his IF/FB% at 18% in 2011, which is tied with 2008 for a career high. His career average is at 16% and the MLB average is 12 percent.

                      As for the career high FB%, he was within 2% of his next highest mark, 41.7% in 2007. Coincidentally, 2007 was the year he posted his second-highest HR total, his highest number of PA, and remains the only year he ever has played more than 150 games.

                      My point in referring to his flyball rate is that he supposedly changed his approach to hit more home runs and a higher flyball rate would seem to agree with that.

                    3. Welcome to stringer bias! It shows up primarily in line drive rates, while groundball rate is mostly stable and flyball rate a bit less so due to how they split up the line drive hijinks. This is in addition to the differences between how BIS, STATS, and Gameday classify things. It's a big mess.

          2. Weren't Hardy's numbers in 2010 after he returned from his wrist injury pretty good?

            I agree the coaching staff talking him into "taking the ball the other way" probably wouldn't have been done him any favors, but I still think he would've been an upper echelon shortstop.

            1. I completely agree, even with the wrist injury and bad advice, he was posting respectable numbers (both offensively and defensively) - numbers we hadn't seen from the SS position in quite a while.

    3. Also, I'm of the opinion that White caps and white-paneled caps should come back, so I'm glad to see this. I'm not so big on cartoons, though.
      Other than the cap, the changes all seem minor, and I think the fix came last time they were updated, when they got the Maryland-flag sleeve patch and a "Baltimore" script on the road jerseys.

      Is the orange alt new? Orange must be the new red. As a fan of the color (my iPod is orange, I used to have a pair of orange jeans), this is a good move.

      The Royals and the Mets also have new uniform sets coming. Neither should be huge changes. The Mets are ditching the black and going for a blue alt.

  3. It's too bad Daniel Murphy hits left-handed, dampening his appeal somewhat, because apparently the Mets are open to trading him. With an OPS likely in the .750-.800 range and pretty low salary he'd be a really nice super-utility/three starts a week man, even with the shaky glove.

          1. i dunno, i highly doubt that anyone would sign him before the deadline because they know the twins would do just that.

          2. Nope. There's a countdown on MLBTR's site. If I added the time right, then the deadline is at 10 PM CST, November 23.

    2. Ryan said the first thing he was going to do was contact all the Twins' free agents. Capps as a cheap middle reliever is fine, but I could see teams being interested in getting a closer on the cheap hoping to get him to rebound back into "All-Star" form. I just hope the Twins aren't thinking that way (which I doubt they are).

      1. I don't think Capps is anything great, but I also don't think he's as bad as he seemed last year. I agree that, if he doesn't cost a lot, it'd be all right to keep him around as a middle relief guy.

        1. The problems with Capps:

          (1) He made $7.5 million, thereby costing us Jesse Crain;
          (2) He was a "proven closer," meaning that his HRs allowed ended games (and made my daughter cry); and
          (3) Wilson Ramos.

          1. and, just btw, Crain had the best year since 2006 (tRA+ of 126, fWAR of +0.9, rWAR of 2.3, 70:31 K:BB in 65 1/3). If you average across his fWAR and rWAR and call his value about 1.6 WAR, Crain was worth on the order of, what, $7M-$8M?

            Capps' fWARs the last three years: -0.4, +1.2, -0.4. What's your weighting scheme again for projections, ubes? 5-3-2? By that he projects to be "worth" +0.2 fWAR next year. In what universe is he "worth" anything more than replacement-level pay?

              1. We are all responsible. I bet BS saw all those Crainwreck pics and decided that the fan base wouldn't support re-signing him. 😉

                1. I know I kept mentioning that despite a few early-season Crainwrecks (and maybe one or two late in the season), his stats were pretty good and he never actually blew any leads.

                  My uncle was riding him pretty hard on facebook, and I kept stepping to his defense and then Crain actually got a save (I don't remember why Capps or Rauch didn't: blown save or extra-innings), I wrote on his fb wall something like "How about Crain tonight!!??!?" and he deleted that and wrote me a letter saying he was hurt. I guess he took what I saw as a friendly rivalry over whether Crain sucked as an actual serious disagreement. He soon thereafter got off facebook, which was a good thing if that's how you'll react.

                  Message: I rarely doubted Crain.

              1. I just can't seem to commit that to memory. But that weighting would just make Capps look worse.

                1. Start with 5, then subtract one, and then subtract again. Poof! You were close. Or you could tattoo it, not that I know anything about that.

    3. could Glen Perkins be the close next year? or do the Twins have someone in the minors that could fill that role?

    4. We'll need lots of new banners and retirements.
      I'll make a bunch for the middling low-impact relievers that I love.

      Speaking of, Dusty Hughes twitted that he'll be with the Braves next year. He didn't say anything like whether it's a minor-league contract or anything. But, he's not a reporter, he's just a twitterer with 250 followers.

      1. Also, what does it say about me that 18% of the twitterers I follow are current, former, or future* Twins relievers?

        *If things work out right.

  5. Did anyone else see Bob Costas interviewing Jerry Sandusky last night? He denied all of the allegations against him, of course, and I have to admit that I've been as guilty as anyone of finding him guilty without benefit of a trial. It did come to light, though, that Mike McQueary didn't just walk away after witnessing the alleged sexual assault on the young boy in the shower, he intervened and stopped the incident before leaving. That wasn't at all clear in the grand jury report.

    1. Channel 11 didnt air that program because they were airing the Vikings game. But caught a couple of clips on MSNBC during the halftime last night, and yeah, he didnt come off as very innocent. Why he did an interview is beyond me

    1. bored with prague already? anyway, i certainly enjoyed my time there. what sort of info you looking for?

      1. Asia is Plan B in case being non-EU is too big a problem. Just wondering what it's like to live in an Asian culture in general for an obviously white person.

        1. if you're going to do that anywhere, japan is certainly the place to do it. of course, you'll be greeted more wearily in some parts than others.

              1. Part of my interest was a story from my old roommate who says a rugby player on his team who is about my size used to teach & play over there and the guy just dominated because of his size.

                  2. I'm not sure how wise it is to make such a decision on the basis "I want to run people over", but it's definitely got me thinking.

                    I would absolutely dominate at the lineout.

  7. ESPN2 is showing a USA soccer friendly, and wherever they are playing has a thick fog issue...or it could be all the fans are smoking.

    1. They're in Slovenia. It's been foggy as shit here the last week, so I wonder if that's carried southward a bit. Yesterday it was so foggy I couldn't see one side of the river from the other.

    2. Dempsey with a fantastic header off a corner kick, 2-1 USA before half

      the US is wearing their dark red shirts/dark blue shorts. it makes it hard to find the players through the fog sometimes

  8. Saw in JoeC's Strib blog* that the Twins are considering Veritek as a backup C. I say hell no. (The lack of broadcast TV games last season shows how much my vote counts, though.) Might as well get ARod or Jeter for infield and Valverde to shore up the bullpen. Maybe Scioscia as bench coach.

    I've changed my opinion from last night. I now desperately want the Twins to sign Pudge because it will block Cap'n Tek.

    *Do those count against my 20? Is it 20 per calendar month, 20 per month from the first time my computer visited the site? 20 since the last time I removed my cookies? I'm afraid to click any links to the site.

    3. Joe C reporting the Twins have contacted the agent for Ryan Doumit and Josh Willingham. Doumit could fill Kubel's role and Willingham could be a corner outfielder and RH power hitter to fill Cuddyer's main roles.

      2. Willingham certainly seems like a good target. What's the knock on him? He hasn't had a full season below 2.1 fWAR in his entire career. Weighting 5-4-3, he projects to 2.5 fWAR next year, as compared to 2.3 fWAR for Cuddyer. A quick glance at fangraphs is showing me that some have injury concerns for him, but I'm not sure that bothers me a whole lot, especially if it means we can get him on a short-term deal.

  10. In which Dan Wade gets personal with meat:

    If he really shows his age, they have less invested in him than they have invested in Nick Blackburn. They can release him without taking a huge loss; they’re as committed to him as most people are to their printer: As long as it works, great, but if I need to go get another one, it’s not the kind of expenditure that means I’m a de facto vegan until payday.

    1. is it sad I was disappointed that this wasn't about the series of four poor-to-mediocre baseball games on the NES?

        1. I got rid of my dish, so I couldn't even watch it if I wanted to. The funny thing is, I found that I really didn't want to anyway. The other thing I notice, now that it doesn't make me mad, is how embarrassing some of my family members are on Facebook when the Packers and Vikings play. I just can't even imagine equating an entire state with the performance of their football team.

    1. But down the street at the Cantab Lounge, a neighborhood bar, Richard Fitzgerald, the longtime owner, said he had no use for happy hours.

      “I don’t see any sense in selling stuff for half price,” he said.

      Well, it's not a bill for mandatory Happy Hour, so don't get your panties in a bunch.

      1. We'll see if he sees the sense in them when his customers go elsewhere for cheaper booze.

        My understanding is that happy hour specials were initially sexist in some way (man buys drink, woman gets one free or something to that effect) and objections were brought on those grounds, but I hadn't heard of a public safety argument against happy hour.

        1. 2-for-1's for women only is common enough.

          I think East Gate in Moorhead had to shut down their 3-for-1's due to public safety. I'm sure Moorhead State's campus security rode city council on that one.

          2. Coach's was the 3-for-1 college bar around when I turned 21. We went there on my 21st birthday, I got a 3-for-1, proceeded to drink half a drink and play the Golden Axe machine until the bar closed.

  16. Antoine Winfield is out for the season with a broken clavicle...so this is happening

    1500ESPNJudd Judd Zulgad
    Sounds like the Vikings won't waste any time in signing Benny Sapp, provided they like what they see. At this point they need him.

    wow, what a lost season

    2. As the resident Benny Sapp hater, I feel I am qualified to answer this question for the Vikings:

      ..provided they like what they see.

      The answer to this is, and alwasy should be, no.

      1. the Vikings won't waste any time in signing Benny Sapp

        If I was the Vikings, I wouldn't waste any time in signing Benny Sapp, either.

    1. so, why were those claims not part of the Grand Jury report? My understanding (the report is out there, but I haven't read it) is that it does not convey those claims by him.

      1. Yeah, I don't know. But, if he did go to university police, that should be provable, right? We'll see.

  19. If the NBA season is canceled, here is some indication of how the next draft order might look. Note that the team at the top of the list has to give their pick to the Los Angeles Clippers to complete a trade for Marco Jaric.

    I called this years ago. That pick was going to end up #1 overall.

    1. Is there any chance at all that the Wolves could keep that pick in 2012 because of this CBA nonsense? I'd rather they just play the season so the Wolves can play their way out of the lottery!

    2. Then I'm sure that the draft will be serpentine, like a fantasy draft: team picking first in round 1 will pick last in round 2, but first again in the third round!

  20. Are we to the point where discussing college sports versus pro sports is a forbidden topic yet?

    If not:

    Spoiler SelectShow
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