59 thoughts on “February 24, 2012: Another Sick Kid”

  1. Joe Johnson is injured and will be missing all star weekend. His replacement in the 3 point contest? Well, I will leave the reaction to Hollinger.

    !!! RT @ajchawks NBA says Jerry Stackhouse to replace Joe Johnson in All-Star Sat. shooting stars.

    1. Converted to rate, Doumit looks better than Butters.
      Butera costs one run per 109 PAs, Doumit one run per 185 PAs.

      It pains me to see Cap'n Tek on the good list.

      1. Ok, Alternately, runs prevented per 1000 PAs caught

        Butters: -9.2
        Doumit: -5.4
        Holm: -1.9
        Mauer: 2.6
        Ramos: 6.2
        Rivera: 7.6

        Among players with at least 2000 PAs caught, the best and worst:
        Brandon Inge: -10.6
        Jose Molina: 12.8

      1. He's above average at catcher defense (blocking, fielding, getting borderline calls), but not when it comes to improving the pitchers. Other than that, no, he sucks.

  5. Getting back to free's post in yesterday's CoC:

    I'll probably repost this when we get a new pot, but these two tweets came virtually at the same time this morning:

    Phil Mackey‏ @PMac21 - Morneau: "I don't know how I'm going to feel tomorrow and how I'm giong to feel a week from now, but today I feel good. Just go from there."

    Jim Souhan ‏@SouhanStrib -- Morneau just spoke. Looks skinny, sounds worried. Not good signs.

    Okay, so Souhan is a clown, but his bias sure seems to be that he believes players aren't seriously injured when they are. So if he's publicly worried when a player says he's fine (for now?), I'm kind of inclined to embrace my pessimism.

    Also, Morneau's statement by itself is hardly reassuring. It sounds like the sort of thing you might say if you feel good today but didn't a couple weeks ago and haven't felt like you've made any kind of steady progress towards being 100%.

    1. This is essentially the same response I had to it. Souhan is a petty, fear-mongering hack, but in this case, he may be a petty, fear-mongering hack with a point. Morneau's words are not the words of a person who is confident that he'll be playing professional baseball in 2013.

    2. So the fact that he wasn't in camp wasn't a cause for alarm, granted, but when he got there, warning bells started ringing with impugnity.

      1. I've been pretty pessimistic all along, so yeah, I think it was a little silly for the media to pass along the idea that his absence was no sign for concern. I would even go so far as to say that I'll believe Morneau is coming back to full health when I see it. CH's post today had me looking back at how Puckett's career ended, and I had forgotten that he was playing well in Spring Training and then he was suddenly retired.

    3. Morneau says he's symptom-free, so how is that not 100 percent? He says he feels fine now, but he doesn't know how he'll feel in a couple weeks. Who does? Every concussion is different and he's been dealing with his for most of the last 18 months, so of course he's concerned. I read and heard nothing from today that caused me to have any more concern than I had before. It is an unknown. Until he starts feeling symptoms or has problems, why worry about it? Liriano could blow out his arm tomorrow. Mauer could blow out his knee tomorrow. If he didn't think about the possibility of having to retire, Morneau would either be a complete idiot or in denial, but I get tired of everyone focusing on it. He says he's fine, the doctors say he's good to go, then let's go play and stop asking about it every day. This is a problem that gets exacerbated by stress and is partly psychological. Constantly reminding him of it doesn't help any. Both Morneau and Span of expressed that they sometimes feel tired or a little off and they don't know if they're just tired or if it is a symptom returning. Can you imagine living with that and then having someone shove a camera or audio recorder in your face and asking "How are you feeling? Have you had any symptoms? Will you be able to play tomorrow?"

      1. Morneau says he's symptom-free, so how is that not 100 percent?

        The part where he tells the media "I don't know if I'll be at full 100 percent go, but I'm going to go out there and participate in everything."

        Until he starts feeling symptoms or has problems, why worry about it? Liriano could blow out his arm tomorrow. Mauer could blow out his knee tomorrow.

        From Morneau:

        "The only thing right now that I'm worrying about coming back or bothering me as we go along is the concussion stuff," he said. "That's something that's just so unknown. There's people that have the post-concussion [symptoms] and deal with it the rest of their lives. It's one of those things that I don't know. I can't predict the future. All that other stuff -- the foot, the knee, the wrist -- I don't see that limiting me at all going forward.

        Morneau himself is worried about it, and it's clearly a whole different ballgame than something like Liriano's arm or Mauer's knee, just like it's different from Morneau's foot, knee, and wrist.

        And how can any Twins fan not be at least a little worried with Morneau talking like this?

        "I don't think there will be a career if it's something I'm dealing with," Morneau said. "That's the reality of the whole thing. I'm obviously not going to continue to mess around with this if it continues to be a problem. There comes a point where you can only torture yourself for so long. It's something I love to do, but you keep preparing, and you keep being left out. That's something that nobody wants to go through."

        None of the other key Twins players are talking about maybe walking away from the game. This is a big story and you're welcome to ignore it but it's a big story and a lot of other people will undoubtedly be concerned about it.

    4. He's dropped some weight with a change in his diet, reducing the stress on his ankles and knees. Morneau said he feels strong enough to go through all the workouts without limitations.

      So, is he "skinny" or "in the best shape of his life." Morneau is at 222 now and was at 233. Sounds like he was pretty heavy last year. I would think a concussion would cause you to gain weight, not lose it, since you feel fatigued and often have difficulty just getting out of bed or going outside into bright light. Shecky is just from the "sky is falling" school of journalism in the Twin Cities.

      1. You can focus on Souhan if you like, but on the mlb.com story (where optimistic spin is the name of the game), the headline on this story was "Morneau feels good, but concerns linger."

  6. Okay, I'm the only one left here at the office for the rest of the day. It's Friday afternoon Should I Stay or Shout I Go?

    1. What I do in situations like that is cranked up the tunes real loud and look at on-line porn check out amazon.com

  8. Great. Now Souhan, who's been in Fort Myers all of 2 days already misses Cuddy's card tricks:

    Jim Souhan ‏@SouhanStrib Having spent 2 days in Twins' clubhouses can't tell you how much I miss Cuddyer. Quiet, dull, extremely young clubhouse.

      1. For those citizens I am not buddies with on the book.

        httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa9Mwx42Jb4&feature=youtu.be

        I think next I will teach Baby Pek* how to shoot from behind the backboard.

        h/t bS.

  10. So the actual basketball in this rookie/soph game is awful. With that said, Rubio has hit multiple teammates in the chest with a pass that they didn't see coming. This should be a game where he gets to show off all of his skills. Unfortunately his teammates aren't helping.

        1. If I told you one player had the ball dribbled between his legs on defense during this game you could have pretty well guessed it would have been Cousins, right?

  11. turned on the tv and it happened to be on FSN. The Wild are losing 3-0 in Dallas (no shock), but the first thing I heard uttered from the announcers 'Dallas has not been dominating this game'. I want to live in their fantasy world

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