61 thoughts on “24 June, 2013: Still Sleeping In”

  1. We all know JMIVGABB, but did you realize he's all ready thrown himself into the conversation of being just on the cusp of the top10 catchers of all time? By averaging the 2 JAWS scores (from fangraphs and b-ref) Mauer is one of just 18 catchers (players who played at least 2/3 of their games at catcher) of at least 35.0 JAWS and Mauer is 11th between hall of famer Gabby Hartnett and Thurman Munson

    Obviously JAWS favors a guy with a high peak and shorter career, but even just raw WAR numbers Mauer is in the top15. Also Ted Simmons is pretty underated

    1 Johnny Bench 61.18 AVGJAWS 80.7% G at Catcher
    2 Gary Carter 58.38 AVGJAWS 89.5% G at Catcher
    3 Ivan Rodriguez 54.38 AVGJAWS 95.4% G at Catcher
    4 Carlton Fisk 53.03 AVGJAWS 89.1% G at Catcher
    5 Mike Piazza 52.83 AVGJAWS 85.3% G at Catcher
    6 Yogi Berra 49.93 AVGJAWS 80.1% G at Catcher
    7 Bill Dickey 45.38 AVGJAWS 95.5% G at Catcher
    8 Mickey Cochrane 44.08 AVGJAWS 97.9% G at Catcher
    9 Ted Simmons 44.05 AVGJAWS 72.1% G at Catcher
    10 Gabby Hartnett 41.83 AVGJAWS 90.1% G at Catcher
    11 Joe Mauer 39.50 AVGJAWS 78.6% G at Catcher
    12 Thurman Munson 39.28 AVGJAWS 89.8% G at Catcher
    13 Bill Freehan 39.08 AVGJAWS 89.1% G at Catcher
    14 Jorge Posada 38.60 AVGJAWS 86.1% G at Catcher
    15 Jason Kendall 35.83 AVGJAWS 97.1% G at Catcher
    16 Lance Parrish 35.28 AVGJAWS 91.4% G at Catcher
    17 Ernie Lombardi 35.15 AVGJAWS 83.3% G at Catcher
    18 Roy Campanella 35.00 AVGJAWS 97.4% G at Catcher

      1. Sorry to step on SBG's toes, I hadn't seen that post. I like that b-ref has started showcasing JAWS scores (and placements all time) on their player pages, but Mauer's even higher when you take out guys like Joe Torre/Gene Tennace who although they played more catcher than anything didn't play catcher nearly as much as the rest of the guys I've listed above.

        I've sort of become obsessed with following Mauer's career WAR numbers steadily climb since the backlash against him in 2011 and its nice to see he's now put some distance between the Darell Porter/Jim Sundberg crew and put him up with Posada/Munson level.

          1. These things must be repeated multiple times until Mauer's place among baseball's elite catchers is conventional wisdom.

              1. I think that NBC list is a little old. It at least pre-dates Mauer's all star appearance last year and probably is closer to his injury riddled 2011. Rick Ferrell seems out of place on that list with a sub 100 OPS+

                1. looking at the career fWAR list for catchers (Joe is 20th currently), what strikes me most is that he gets no love for his defense (-3.7 Fld runs above replacement?). FanGraphs notes that defense for catchers is pretty hard to quantify, and one area where Joe has recently gotten some love (pitch framing) is significantly omitted:

                  ● Since there is no UZR data for catchers, the fielding component for catcher fWAR is calculated using two parts: the Stolen Base Runs Saved (rSB) metric from the Fielding Bible, and Runs saved from Passed Pitches (RPP). This accounts for a large portion of a catcher’s value, although pitch framing is not yet included in WAR.

                  I don't think that Joe is comparable to Pudge Rodriguez defensively, to be sure. But that number puts him in Gene Tenace's neighborhood, which strikes me as...implausible.

                    1. Probably to a limited degree. There would still be problems if the entire staff was bad at it I think.

              2. Looking at that list made me realize how many great catchers the Yankees have had. They are known for great center fielders, but I wonder if they haven't had even better catchers what with Yogi Berra, Bill Dickey, Thurman Munson and Jorge Posada.

      1. I've been debating recently whether its time to move Joey sideburns ahead of Tony O into #4 on my top300 list. He's very close.

        Player YrS AB OPS+ HR AVG fWAR rWAR WARP WS AS
        Tony Oliva 15 1962-1976 6301 11 131 220 .304 40.8 43.1 48.6 245 8
        Joe Mauer 10 2004-2013 4209 8 136 102 .323 42.3 42.4 41.3 222 5

          1. It needs to be CSV, so I added commas, but now the column headers and values don't match up. My bad.

            Edit: I got all but 2 columns sorted out. Let me know what they are and I can update it.

      1. I'm actually suprised how close Gary Carter (and to a certain extent the rest of the top5) is to Bench. I would have thought Bench would have had a 15-20% lead on the field at catcher.

    4. Mauer's career market value (per fangraphs): $177 million. Mauer's career compensation (including all of 2013): $103 million. After 2013, the Twins will still owe Mauer $115 million. For the Twins to break even, careerwise, on Mauer, they need him to average $7.45 million of value a year (5.5 seasons left). In the lost season of 2011, he provided $6.2 million of value.

  2. I slept in today. 8am. So thankful my wife said, "You should take off the day after we get back: you'll be so tired."

      1. Without reading that, I assume it says no-hitters. Lots and lots of no-hitters.

  4. I found out last night from his sister that an acquaintance of mine, who I've admittedly drifted from, had a stroke on Friday due to a heart infection he had. He is a year younger than me, he just turned 30. Once he recovers he has to have a heart surgery. It's a pretty chilling reminder of mortality. Unfortunately those feelings tend to consume me once I am forced to deal with them.

      1. Well the good news is I was able to not focus on my mortality all day today. The bad news is that it was a result of the hard drive in my work computer going kaput in the middle of the day.

        I am leaving for vacation in 8 days. I just want this week to be tolerable.

        1. I just want this week to be tolerable.

          That's a great way to describe what I normally want from my work week. Usually I settle for "only slightly frustrating", instead.

          1. It will begin perpetually playing at my house tonight, believe you me.

            On that note: Spring Breakers can be purchased on iTunes and the Amazon Instant Video store as of today. BUY BUY BUY!

              1. Spring Breakers, the best movie I've seen in years. AMR has the (mis)fortune of seeing all the crap I fire through the internet about it. I am thrilled to be able to watch it again.

                1. So it's like me and "Spirited Away", only I first saw that in a late-run theatre and picked up the DVD at Target the next day.

  5. I saw this woman working in the Gospel Tent at JazzFest and she was mesmerizing. She was bobbing and shaking and spinning and signing. Just pure awesomeness.

  7. You aren't kidding about sleeping in. Last night was Game Night after hours at my store, and I thought it would be poorly attended and it would peter out quickly. However, I promoted it well enough that there were quite a few attendees and I didn't get home until 2 (I ran it, so I couldn't leave early).

  9. Looks like this particular citizen will get to see Gibson's major league debut. We got tickets for that game a few weeks ago because my sister's family will be in town. Little brother's family is going, too. Looking forward to it. Mrs. Twayn and I had been talking about a trip to Cedar Rapids to see Buxton play, but that's a moot point now.

      1. One of the great things for Cedar Rapids is that Max Kepler is now off the DL and playing, so they've still got quite a noteworthy prospect. I wouldn't be surprised if Kepler's return even factored into when Buxton got promoted, as that's the kind of thing that'll help keep an affiliate happy. Kepler fills in for Buxton fills in for Sano.

  10. Anyone here ever cleaned and stained a rough cedar fence? And have horror stories that I can use to convince my wife that it's too much of a pain in the ass (is it)?

    1. I cleaned my cedar deck with weak acid and attempted to stain it four-five years ago- I wouldn't recommend that method.

      Tried sanding it and painting it a couple years ago- slightly better results, but the paint is peeling off most of the places that had any weathering to it.

      I think I'm just going to pressure-wash off the rest of the paint and return it to its natural grey.

      1. I did the deck two years ago and it was a !$:&#@ disaster. Power washed, cleaned, stained... and it lasted about 6 months. So I'm not sure why she's so confident that this will work better.

        1. I do my redwood deck every other year. Random-orbit sander over the whole damned thing, wash, let dry, then semi-transparent stain brushed on. But I would never, ever, go to the effort to paint/stain my (shared) redwood fences. Ugh.

        2. The rougher the wood, the more likely it won't turn out worth a crap, too. Unless you can get all the dust/dirt/loose particles off, the paint or stain isn't going to stick and you're just going to have peeling and the fence will look worse than it does now.

  12. Watching the Stanley Cup tonight, I think I figured out why I can't really get into hockey. I've missed both goals tonight because i was looking down. Unless I'm at a sporting event, i just can't pay that much attention to not miss most of the exciting moments for a game like this.

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