85 thoughts on “April 30, 2012: And Out Like A…”

  1. It appears that I shouldn't have gone to bed after the third quarter last night.

  2. After the first day of the dissecting the recliner, my wife and LaBron still have something in common.* I'm continuing to doubt it fell into the chair, but beats me where else it would have gone.

    *no ring yet

      1. Even we had some April showers one day last week. Ridiculous rainfall all night and up until about 10 in the morning, then flipped off like a switch and hasn't been seen since.

  5. I remember hearing over and over again how the Twins only chance this year relied on Span, Mauer, and Morneau all coming back and playing well. All are playing well. So how come we're not in first place?

    2. Imagine how bad the Twins could be if those three weren't playing well. Too bad none of them can pitch.

        1. Right, because even though Willinghammer has looked like Babe Ruth out there, he doesn't smile as much and give great quotes.

          2. Willingham could win league MVP and the local media will still find a way to spin those transactions negatively.

              1. God he's such a selfish pansy. $23 million to a glorified singles hitter who can't play with the sniffles! Bring back Cuddy! BOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

              2. "Willingham possesses one trait that should make him an excellent Twin: He doesn't whine."

                More of the same, corn.

              3. Also, apparently in Souhan's world, Kubel left because of the fences and not because the D-Backs were offering more money than the Twins were going to offer him.

                1. Has anyone ever offered Top Jimmy more money to change jobs? That might explain his blind spot.

              4. Perhaps I was so impressed with the overall positive tone that I missed the digs?
                Or perhaps we've been so trained by these guys that any references like "whining" are immediately taken as jabs at Mauer?
                Most likely, my mind is so tired of the "pussy" meme that I don't even notice it anymore...sigh.
                Anyway, Consensual Pork has been a highlight of the season - nice to see some positivity in the paper.

            1. That's the joak I set up and meat knocked down. It sorta got lost going on from there, but I'm still happy with the results.

              1. nobody doubts your talent, bhigs

                [ed: aww, cr@p. misplaced reference. Quick, somebody else supply a proper Cuban Dictator paraphrase!]

                  1. Yea, but that was already more-or-less there. I was reaching for a second catch-phrase. Thankfully, I don't recall enough of the Dictatorship to retrieve a second line.

        2. As we all know, the Twins have been terrible since the end of the 2010 season. That was also the last time that [redacted] was with the organization.

          COINCIDENCE????

          2. 2010 is also the last season the ads with Carl, the Smartest Pitcher in Baseball were running. That's my theory on why the Twins fell apart.

            1. I'm so confused about what kind of lawn tractor to buy!
              (I really preferred the "First Carl", "Second Carl" is like Kermit without Jim Henson's voice.)

  6. I just realized that today is not First Monday. Hence, the book post is not late. w00t!

    In lieu of that, which may or may not come later today, I give you this quote from a review of the latest Jason Statham vehicle:

    Forget for a moment that Safe has some of the worst dialogue and cheesiest tough-guy characters this side of the most forgettable straight-to-video action flicks. (In one scene, Yakin sets the hero up for the classic post-kill one-liner, and after dispatching the villain in front of horrified bystanders, Wright fixes them with a steely gaze and quips, "Don't lose sleep... he had it coming." Um, zing?) As, say, Con-Air or the Fast and Furious films have shown, bad writing can be overcome--at least at the box office--with eye-popping set pieces.

    But in that respect, Safe is symptomatic of everything that's gone wrong with American action cinema: visually incoherent combat, an unnecessarily convoluted story, and forgettable characters.

    Discuss. (sorry, spoons)

    1. The most visually incoherent "combat" I can think of in a film was in the incredibly stupid Eastwood vehicle The Gauntlet.

      Spoiler SelectShow

    3. visually incoherent combat

      This. If I'm watching a stupid action movie, then a lot of times I've already given up on the idea of a gripping story (not saying there don't exist action movies with good stories, just saying it's not always a necessity). I can even forgive dumb dialog or flat characters, but if the main point of the movie - flashy, exciting action sequences - is shot and edited in such a way that I can never tell what's going on, then the movie has failed in every conceivable way.

      An action sequence with eight million jump cuts doesn't give the illusion of frenetic action, it just irritates me and causes the viewer to lose track of what's going on and who's doing what to whom.

      1. An action sequence with eight million jump cuts doesn't give the illusion of frenetic action, it just irritates me and causes the viewer to lose track of what's going on and who's doing what to whom.

        +1 kelly wells flick

      2. I've caught a few clips of some of the Transformers movies. As far as I can tell, they're about 90% visually incoherent action. How they haven't been linked to some negative effects in the population (autism, asthma, ED, scioscia, obesity, etc.) is beyond me.

  7. Pitch count roundtable. My reaction here is really that anyone going back to 1905 to make comparisons on this issue has no clue what he's talking about. It wasn't until 1889 that everyone decided there should be four balls to a walk. The game was in a major state of flux. Not even that long before that, hitters were allowed to call for a high strike zone or a low strike zone. The pitchers weren't there to dominate the hitters, the pitchers were there to allow the hitters to hit.

    You hear the old-timers talk about protection and pitching to the score and how they'd pitch different hitters differently depending on the situation, and I'm inclined to believe that's the case. But I think somewhere along the line (as hitters got better) pitchers started throwing all-out, all the time (with a few exceptions like Livan Hernandez), and it's made it harder for them to stay in the game as long. Maybe it's even been a perverse outcome of the five-man rotation--if you only have to be ready once every five days, then you're going to pitch harder on the day you get to play. If baseball mandated a three-man rotation and a three-man bullpen, the first thing you'd probably see is a ton of injuries, and the second thing you'd probably see is pitchers throwing more pitches at a sub-maximal effort level. Offense would go up, but pitchers would be able to physically deal with their workload in such a way that they'd stay healthy.

    Radar guns and the livelier ball don't really help matters, either.

    1. I think the (as hitters got better) is a major factor. For the most part, the days of .220-hitting shortstops and catchers are over. On most teams, the seventh, eighth, and (in the American League) ninth hitters are still fairly good hitters, which means most pitchers will have to go at maximum effort all the time to get them out.

      1. Right. If 2011 can be used as an example it appears the Twins are comfortable with sub .200 hitting shortstops and catchers.

      2. Regarding the bigger picture on max effort pitching, I'm going back to my old stand-by argument: I think the lowering of the mound has to have been a significant factor on pitch counts. The idea is to get outs, not to throw max-effort pitches.

        A flatter mound should make it much harder for the pitcher to get the upper hand on the batter with run-of-the-mill fastballs. That said, there is some research suggesting that higher mounds lead to more shoulder stress, implying that injuries should have declined in the Majors after 1968, when the mound was lowered to its current height.

        Here is an interesting SI piece from spring training 1969, talking about the change. Excerpt:

        Mounds have never been standard in either height or shape even though the rule—1.04 in your Official Baseball Rules—clearly states that the infield shall be graded so that the baselines and home plate are level, with a gradual slope from the baselines up to the pitcher's plate, which shall be 15 inches [now 10] above the baseline level. Few umpires have ever actually measured the height of the mound in any given ball park, though presumably they will be more careful now. Ground crews, though, have always paid attention to the type of pitching staffs various teams have had and then tried to construct mounds to give home pitchers the best area on which to work. In recent years, for example, the Philadelphia Phillies always kept their mound low because their staff was essentially composed of sidearm and three-quarter-motion pitchers. Best proof of this pudding was Jim Bunning, who made excellent use of the low elevation.

        1. Here's another interesting piece relating to this discussion:

          the amount of torque needed to throw in excess of the century mark is greater than the amount of force the ulnar collateral ligament (the elbow ligament Strasburg tore) can withstand before giving out, according to tests Fleisig has done on cadavers. When a pitcher cocks his arm, where it is turned back to the point where the palm is facing toward the sky, there's about 100 Newton-meters of torque on the arm, which subjects the arm to the same amount of stress as if the pitcher had a 60-pound weight hanging from his hand in that position, Fleisig says.

          From that cocked position, the arm snaps forward to its release point in 0.03 seconds, and at its peak speed, an elite pitcher's arm rotates at upward of 8500 degrees per second. If that single instant of speed could be maintained, then a pitcher's arm would spin around 24 times in a second.

          "Shoulder rotation in baseball pitching is the fastest motion of any joint in any athlete," Fleisig says; moving faster than hip joints in sprinters or shoulders in elite tennis players.

    1. I wonder if @PMac21 thinks that the accountability of the MSM is effective in reining in sportswriters in ways that bloggers are not similarly constrained.

      1. I feel a little sorry for Hughes, because it can't be much fun to not know what your status is going to be from one day to the next. Still, that's the life of a marginal major league player, and unfortunately for him, that's all he is.

    1. Can we skip straight to the part where the media assumes Clemens was using PEDs for years and makes him the poster boy for steroid use in baseball? Wait, that already happened and they used Bonds instead of Clemens? Well, I'm sure if Clemens is guilty the media will spend years ripping him. Mmmhmmm.

      1. Well, we know that the media is chock full of idiots. I'm interested to see if the Feds can stitch together a conviction.

    1. I think he's right about the answer. I also think, even though it's as stupid as can be, drunk driving is more accepted than getting into fights. Personally, I think getting into a fight shows a momentary loss of self control, whereas drunk driving shows a much worse failing of personal responsibility. But I don't know that that perception is so widely shared in the public.

    3. Delmon's suspension is about the slur he allegedly used, not about his intoxication. He could have been stone cold sober and they would have suspended him for using a racial/ethnic slur.

      1. while that's true, i think the question is, while using such slurs is obviously wrong and hurtful, why does that warrant a suspension over the possibility of physically ending lives? sure, alcohol is the common denominator, but i think the question is still valid.

        1. I'm not saying that any way is right or wrong or who should get suspended, it's just that Calcaterra seems to be looking at things as though the drunken fight is what got Delmon suspended, whereas I am of the mind that what got him suspended was drunk + fight + slur (which is labelled as a "hate crime" which looks quite bad in print.) Delmon's past (albeit quite a distant past at this point) likely plays a role as well. And we don't know most of the details from that night, which could also play a role.

          I am certainly no fan of DUIs, but I just think this is not a great incident to compare to DUIs. Yes, there was alochol involved, but the hate crime aspect opens up a different can of worms.

          1. i agree with your overall idea. what i'm questioning though is level of severity compared to the infraction. no, we're not comparing apples and apples, but i still think it's valid to compare the two.

            1. Speaking purely pragmatically, MLB isn't really concerned with the severity of the infractions, they are concerned with how those infractions will impact their bottom line. If they expect that "hate crime" will generate more scandal than a DUI, they will suspend accordingly, whether or not one of them is worse in the eyes of the law (or the eyes of any moral authority.)

  14. Rondo suspended for game 2. What a costly mistake on his part. At the time of the incident, Boston had almost no chance left of winning. Now, he's probably put his team in an 0-2 hole.

  16. Twins (race to the bottom?) update: Using a linear regression model, at the beginning of the season I had the Twins in for 71.8 expected wins. After starting 6-15, I have the Twins in for 66.3 expected wins, with their expected winning percentage in the balance of the season at .428. (Which is to say the exceptionally simple model is now treating the Twins essentially as a "true" 69-win team that had a bad month.)

    In terms of strength of schedule, I can't see a whole lot of hope there. If you use the same linear regression to rate the Twins' opponents going into the season, the average expected winning percentage of their opponents has been .517. Above .500, sure, so a harder than average schedule, but it doesn't seem like anything that would require a big adjustment to our expectations.

  17. something different tonight. Toronto is on ESPN Monday baseball. Game is on mute because Rick Sutcliffe is in the booth

    1. Rick Sutcliffe is one of the best reasons to not have cable that I can think of. I don't even have the option of torturing myself.

  18. That big wuss Mauer is sitting out after just 21 straight games played. Probably a good time, since it's against a lefty, although with Hughes no longer on the roster, that means Parmelee is the only logical choice to play in the lineup with Doumit at catcher and Plouffe in RF. It really seems like it would have made more sense to have jettisoned Burroughs instead of Hughes.

    1. I skipped it earlier, but I'm bored so I'll probably check it out at some point. I hate Kahn.

    1. Good for him, especially because I assume his health is failing. (and if so, good for her)

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