ESPN.COM picks the Wolves 8th in the WC with a 40-42 record. I think that (a) they will have a better record than that and (b) they might move up the standings a little further.
I realize that I'm not accounting for the bad luck that hangs over this club like a dark cloud. Except for that, though, I'm finding it hard to believe that this club is only 9 games better than last year's edition. Basically no K-Love, a still recovering Rubio, no outside shooting, etc. and they still won 31 games. I'm thinking more like 45 wins.
I think it all depends upon which Kevin Love we get. He was injured last year, but he really stunk. If he returns to top offensive power forward in the league form then we've absolutely got more than 40 wins.
I'd be pretty surprised if a team under .500 made it into the WC playoffs, to say nothing of that prediction for the Wolves which seems light.
Mauer's big day yesterday pushes him up to 5.0 WAR on the year according to b-ref which is the 5th season hitting that number. Jonah Keri's Mauer column should be coming soon, hopefully he references all our favorite poultry loving mauer bashing columnist.
Not sure if this was already observed by NTR or anyone else this year, but Mauer passed Tony-O for 5th place in career position player WAR on the 1961-present club leaderboard. Joe Judge is 5th on the franchise leaderboard at 47.0, presently 3.2 WAR ahead of Mauer. Puckett is the next Twin ahead of Mauer, with 7.0 WAR between them.
I've been watching. Trying to determine whether I move Mauer ahead of TonyO this year. I need to see how the last 45 games play out but if Mauer stays around a 140 OPS+ and all the accolades that would come with that type of year (top 10 statistical finishes, MVP votes, silver slugger, gold glove) I'm probably moving him up to #4 on my list this offseason. B-prospectus and Bill James still have Tony O over Mauer in WARP and Win Shares, but both Fangraphs and B-ref have Mauer ahead in WAR.
Player OPS+ HR AVG fWAR rWAR WARP WS AS
Tony Oliva 131 220 .304 40.8 43.1 48.6 245 8
Joe Mauer 135 104 .323 43.3 43.8 42.5 228 6
He's like MLB's The View wrapped up in one player!
He's a quality teammate, for sure.
I'll say this, for someone as media savvy as I've always believed ii to be, touting your teammate's personal struggles during an interview (while trying to defend/explain his down year) doesn't seem to display much foresight.
Especially since it seems – at least from a non-local perspective – as though Fielder's divorce had remained private.
Given his reputation as a thoughtful, unselfish person, I'm sure i-i only hinted a the divorce to the mediots in an effort to help Fielder motivate himself as the story unfolds down the stretch.
there are two i's in tiim.
This is brilliant.
Dido...err, wait! Don't encourage him!
edit - Also, you have mail at the sju acct.
there are two i’s in tiim.
this need to be in a banner.
with him shaking his fist at Morneau(?)! Get'r dun, jobu!
Only if Punto has Xes for eyes and his tongue lolling out as he slumps out of the frame.
The word has gotten out.
Heard my man Prince Fielder's havin' some problems in the wife department. Sure would like to reach out over a cold one, guy to guy.
Anyone have a mechanic in the Twins Cities they trust implicitly? My guy is now 50 miles away and doesn't have a loaner car. I hate taking an entire day off to have a noise looked at.
I trust Clair's on St. Clair and Hamline, not sure if that's close to you. Owner's name is Dale. Nice guy. Legit quotes. Fair prices. Good work.
vaguely related, but is Jimmy's St. Clair Broiler still in business? They used to have a burger on the menu named the Big George, after my buddy's pops, the George of George's Pizza in Spamtown.
(update: still kickin'. The Big George is no longer on the menu, but I wonder what they would do if you asked for one?).
Ah, the Broiler. I've only been a couple times, which isn't really a fair sample size. But the service was terrible and the food was no better than that served at Perkins. Some people swear by it and it's often busy. I should take the fam and give it another chance. If I do, I'll ask about the Big George.
Breakfast was OK - I used to do breakfast interviews over there if needed an East Side locale, and The Egg and I if a Mpls venue.
"Johnson has blown nine saves in 48 chances this season, putting him within striking distance of the record, which Ray Frager of CSNBaltimore.com notes is 14 shared by Rollie Fingers in 1976, Bruce Sutter in 1978, Bob Stanley in 1983, and Ron Davis in 1984."
Well, I DID spoiler it! On the bright side, he co-holds an MLB record with two HOFers!!!111one111!!!
FKB will be delayed until Father knows something best beside sleep.
(And after he fixes the home internet, again.)
Congrats! (If you're saying what I think you're saying.)
Last night I slept 5 hours in a row for the first time in nearly 2 months! Okay, that's probably not very encouraging on the sleep front. Don't mind me. Good luck with the Internet, and I hope to see FKB before 2 months have elapsed.
dido! A presumed welcome to the li'l Hacker!
Congratulations...if what we all presume that enigmatic LTE to mean is what it actually means.
I'll echo the congrats and uncertainty.
(Tentative) Felicitations!
Yes, you are right gal and guys. Born yesterday just before noon. Mom is doing fine, especially considering a ~36 hour labor.
Congrats! I had no idea what the first LTE meant, but that happens to me quite often.
Congrats!
Na Zdorovie!
Congratulations and best wishes to you.
Congratulations! And thanks for telling us. I know how private you are.
So, Mauer needs one more 5-hit game to tie Puckett for the 1961-present club record, and two more to tie Sam Rice for the franchise record. Mauer has made fewer than half of Rice's career PA, and trails Puckett by nearly 2800 PA.
Took my daughter to the game yesterday. Today she asked me, "Daddy what is the name of that baseball player? The one that we saw get all the hits?"
Also, now she really likes the phrase "ducks on the pond."
Throw in a malt cup and it was a highly successful day.
How much of the game did you manage to take in? I crapped out and returned to work after the 9th...something highly unsatisfying/unsettling about leaving a game before the final out. Don't know why, but I'd rather see a loss than not finish the game.
Edit - so long as it's close. Turning it off or leaving a blowout doesn't result in that emotion.
The WHOLE thing. She was a total trooper.
That's amazing! Wish it could have resulted in a win, but a 5-7 day with 4 rbi and a HR by Mauer is a pretty cool thing to see.
Part of the reason I stuck with it was the possibility of a glorious comeback. She was pretty excited about the HR, so a win might have really sealed the deal.
Things learned watching baseball with a 5-year-old: they play A LOT of (as in too much) music at the ballpark, most of it wants you to clap in some sort of rhythm, and swapping in new bases is kind of silly, but singing Take Me Out to the Ballgame is awesome.
Way to go, strat. Now it's time for that Mauer shirsey...
On it!
Shirsey acquired.
Pink. Hat.
At least its only the trim colors.
The malt cup is the key.
My two co-workers bailed on the game after seven innings. I said I would stay the whole game with the prospective Japanese client. I did not expect 12 innings. I told him after 10 and then again under 11 that we could leave whenever he wanted to. I just didn't want him to feel obligated to stay becaue of me. He said, "I will never again see Joe Mauer." So we stayed to the end.
He also didn't know why Mauer wasn't leadoff. "In Japan Baseball, The batter number two is for bunting. Batter number one is for best hitter." I agreed and tried to explain coaching culture and that marginal gains like that need to be balanced against fan expectations, and if the team isn't very good to begin with, people would blame the managing more than the players.
The language barrier on that one was stiff though.
In case you didn't see Latroy Hawkins get hit in the nuts with a batted ball, here it is.
He said it was a "direct hit."
And he wasn't wearing a cup. Who does LaTroy think he is, Adrian Beltre?
Real question is, did he throw the feller out before the wave of pain came thru?
LaTroy Hawkins, Junk Ball pitcher.
I know expanded replay is coming, but they have to do better than this.
challenges?? *forehead smack*
Maybe Gardy could keep the red flag in his hat and throw them both at the same time.
Assuming he still has a job next year. Funny the system he's been asking for might come too late for him to use.
I think he's likely to get a short renewal, if he wants it.
You think otherwise?
I figure he probably gets a two-year deal, but I'm not putting money on it.
I don't know. Not a fan of a challenge system either, but I think people are missing the key point:
All replays will be reviewed by umpires at MLB.com headquarters in New York, with technicians available to provide the necessary video.
A commenter on HBT brought up the system in tennis as awful under the assumption that the line spotting system can work instantly. I don't think it does yet, and one reason why it doesn't exist for the French Open is because it isn't accurate enough, so having to wait five seconds for a call is unacceptable in tennis. Instead, they have a limited number of challenges that don't expire if you're right and there's very little delay after the player challenges.
Anyway, back to my main point. The technology has long been there for replays, but it's not yet there for replacing human judges. By putting the replays in a centralized location, now MLB can slowly add additional plays to review after technology makes it workable ten years previously. I think this will set precedent for an "outside" judge that will eventually replace the umps.
So, the umpire in New York is watching a camera feed, sees a tag for an out, then pushes a button for the 'out' call to be made over a loudspeaker?
I think voice confirmation is the key; I'd love to see the system you're describing get hacked.
Dread.
Just another "science/demographics/racial distribution in communities is cool" link...
If you cleared out all of the trees and clouds, had every person in America stand outside their home holding a colored circle over their head that represented their race, and took a high resolution picture of the country from a satellite, it would look like this.
My first impression - it's amazing how homogenous large parts of this country are...from space, right down to the block-by-block level.
I got a blank white screen. There's probably a joke in there somewhere.
Heh. It took a while to load for me too - here's the page I got the story from. There's a link to the map at the bottom of the story.
Wow, you can really make out the Barrio in Hartford, and the North End.
If you cleared out all of the trees and clouds,and on a day in which a blanket of snow covered the country, had every person in America stand outside their home holding a colored circle over their head...
We have a lot more green people than I realized.
Looking more at my neighborhood:
1. Wow, Hilltop.
2. I wonder who the people are living between me and the river. Miscoded deer?
3. When did the Korean immigrants move out of Cedar-Riverside?
From Shooter:
Latest buzz is that U.S. Bank, which lost out to Target for Twins ballpark naming rights, might have to pay close to $10 million a year to secure naming rights to the Vikings' new stadium. Meanwhile, Target, which also bought corporate rights for the Timberwolves arena, hasn't given up on getting its name on the Vikings' stadium, either.
I don't think I could handle having Target Center, Target Field and Target Stadium in the same region.
C'mon Land o'Lakes!!!!!!!
NO.
I'd love nothing more than the Vikes playing in the LOL.
No. I loved that name for what became Target Field - Land O'Lakes has a pastoral quality to it that's congruent with baseball. I think the Twins missed out on naming the park for something which really said "Minnesota," even as a corporate sponsorship. I loathe the Vikings/NFL so much that I'd hate to see that name plastered on a football entertainment complex. Let it be Target, which is (maybe?) marginally better as an employer than Wal-Mart, or Best Buy, provided every ticket purchase comes with up-selling of gold-plated USB cables or an extended warranty on merch. Both are NFL-quality corporate naming rights sponsors.
Dayton-Hudson Stadium?
Lake Minnetonka Love Boat Memorial Stadium
"up-selling of gold-plated USB cables"
I don't know what's funnier - our practices, or some of the things that people assume to be our practices.
Okay, that one might have been Staples or Circuit City circa 2004. Maybe I should have said HDMI cables?
The upsell-and-pester-the-customer-until-he-walks strategy just isn't taught in our company. I'm sure some salesmen are this way, but I'm the top salesman in my store and it isn't mine. You see that kind of thing in commission-based sales, but we stopped doing that in around 2001 for just that reason. I work with a lot of people who came from Circuit, and they largely agree that the fact that they didn't abandon commission was a big factor in their quick downfall.
Mark's Towing Stadium
if it's an open air stadium and you have to sit in the cold for three hours with a miserable product
Mark's Towing of Eagan Stadium in Minneapolis, it is!
Given the design of the stadium, it's too bad both permanent members of Coil are deceased*.
Coulda been "Amethyst Deceiver Field".
*And wouldn't have had the money or the interest.
Can you be both a permanent member of a band and dead at the same time?
They were members. Then they died. The band is no longer, but other sometimes members of the band survive: Thighpaulsandra, Danny Hyde, Stephen Thrower, etc...
The frequency of Gatorade baths and shaving cream pies in the face is getting ridiculous, but this is still an awesome photo tweeted by the Twins' team photographer.
ESPN.COM picks the Wolves 8th in the WC with a 40-42 record. I think that (a) they will have a better record than that and (b) they might move up the standings a little further.
I think it all depends upon which Kevin Love we get. He was injured last year, but he really stunk. If he returns to top offensive power forward in the league form then we've absolutely got more than 40 wins.
I'd be pretty surprised if a team under .500 made it into the WC playoffs, to say nothing of that prediction for the Wolves which seems light.
Mauer's big day yesterday pushes him up to 5.0 WAR on the year according to b-ref which is the 5th season hitting that number. Jonah Keri's Mauer column should be coming soon, hopefully he references all our favorite poultry loving mauer bashing columnist.
Not sure if this was already observed by NTR or anyone else this year, but Mauer passed Tony-O for 5th place in career position player WAR on the 1961-present club leaderboard. Joe Judge is 5th on the franchise leaderboard at 47.0, presently 3.2 WAR ahead of Mauer. Puckett is the next Twin ahead of Mauer, with 7.0 WAR between them.
I've been watching. Trying to determine whether I move Mauer ahead of TonyO this year. I need to see how the last 45 games play out but if Mauer stays around a 140 OPS+ and all the accolades that would come with that type of year (top 10 statistical finishes, MVP votes, silver slugger, gold glove) I'm probably moving him up to #4 on my list this offseason. B-prospectus and Bill James still have Tony O over Mauer in WARP and Win Shares, but both Fangraphs and B-ref have Mauer ahead in WAR.
Player OPS+ HR AVG fWAR rWAR WARP WS AS
Tony Oliva 131 220 .304 40.8 43.1 48.6 245 8
Joe Mauer 135 104 .323 43.3 43.8 42.5 228 6
man, if TonyO's knees hadn't flamed out...
Torii Hunter, still the classiest man in baseball.
He's like MLB's The View wrapped up in one player!
He's a quality teammate, for sure.
I'll say this, for someone as media savvy as I've always believed ii to be, touting your teammate's personal struggles during an interview (while trying to defend/explain his down year) doesn't seem to display much foresight.
Especially since it seems – at least from a non-local perspective – as though Fielder's divorce had remained private.
Given his reputation as a thoughtful, unselfish person, I'm sure i-i only hinted a the divorce to the mediots in an effort to help Fielder motivate himself as the story unfolds down the stretch.
there are two i's in tiim.
This is brilliant.
Dido...err, wait! Don't encourage him!
edit - Also, you have mail at the sju acct.
there are two i’s in tiim.
this need to be in a banner.
with him shaking his fist at Morneau(?)! Get'r dun, jobu!
Only if Punto has Xes for eyes and his tongue lolling out as he slumps out of the frame.
The word has gotten out.
Anyone have a mechanic in the Twins Cities they trust implicitly? My guy is now 50 miles away and doesn't have a loaner car. I hate taking an entire day off to have a noise looked at.
I trust Clair's on St. Clair and Hamline, not sure if that's close to you. Owner's name is Dale. Nice guy. Legit quotes. Fair prices. Good work.
vaguely related, but is Jimmy's St. Clair Broiler still in business? They used to have a burger on the menu named the Big George, after my buddy's pops, the George of George's Pizza in Spamtown.
(update: still kickin'. The Big George is no longer on the menu, but I wonder what they would do if you asked for one?).
Ah, the Broiler. I've only been a couple times, which isn't really a fair sample size. But the service was terrible and the food was no better than that served at Perkins. Some people swear by it and it's often busy. I should take the fam and give it another chance. If I do, I'll ask about the Big George.
Breakfast was OK - I used to do breakfast interviews over there if needed an East Side locale, and The Egg and I if a Mpls venue.
But Keys trumped both for their farmer omelet.
Oh, Keys. nomnomnom.
It's near my job. Hmmmm
A special link for Rhu_Ru.
FKB will be delayed until Father knows something best beside sleep.
(And after he fixes the home internet, again.)
Congrats! (If you're saying what I think you're saying.)
Last night I slept 5 hours in a row for the first time in nearly 2 months! Okay, that's probably not very encouraging on the sleep front. Don't mind me. Good luck with the Internet, and I hope to see FKB before 2 months have elapsed.
dido! A presumed welcome to the li'l Hacker!
Congratulations...if what we all presume that enigmatic LTE to mean is what it actually means.
I'll echo the congrats and uncertainty.
(Tentative) Felicitations!
Yes, you are right gal and guys. Born yesterday just before noon. Mom is doing fine, especially considering a ~36 hour labor.
Congrats! I had no idea what the first LTE meant, but that happens to me quite often.
Congrats!
Na Zdorovie!
Congratulations and best wishes to you.
Congratulations! And thanks for telling us. I know how private you are.
So, Mauer needs one more 5-hit game to tie Puckett for the 1961-present club record, and two more to tie Sam Rice for the franchise record. Mauer has made fewer than half of Rice's career PA, and trails Puckett by nearly 2800 PA.
Took my daughter to the game yesterday. Today she asked me, "Daddy what is the name of that baseball player? The one that we saw get all the hits?"
Also, now she really likes the phrase "ducks on the pond."
Throw in a malt cup and it was a highly successful day.
How much of the game did you manage to take in? I crapped out and returned to work after the 9th...something highly unsatisfying/unsettling about leaving a game before the final out. Don't know why, but I'd rather see a loss than not finish the game.
Edit - so long as it's close. Turning it off or leaving a blowout doesn't result in that emotion.
The WHOLE thing. She was a total trooper.
That's amazing! Wish it could have resulted in a win, but a 5-7 day with 4 rbi and a HR by Mauer is a pretty cool thing to see.
Part of the reason I stuck with it was the possibility of a glorious comeback. She was pretty excited about the HR, so a win might have really sealed the deal.
Things learned watching baseball with a 5-year-old: they play A LOT of (as in too much) music at the ballpark, most of it wants you to clap in some sort of rhythm, and swapping in new bases is kind of silly, but singing Take Me Out to the Ballgame is awesome.
Way to go, strat. Now it's time for that Mauer shirsey...
On it!
Shirsey acquired.
Pink. Hat.
At least its only the trim colors.
The malt cup is the key.
My two co-workers bailed on the game after seven innings. I said I would stay the whole game with the prospective Japanese client. I did not expect 12 innings. I told him after 10 and then again under 11 that we could leave whenever he wanted to. I just didn't want him to feel obligated to stay becaue of me. He said, "I will never again see Joe Mauer." So we stayed to the end.
He also didn't know why Mauer wasn't leadoff. "In Japan Baseball, The batter number two is for bunting. Batter number one is for best hitter." I agreed and tried to explain coaching culture and that marginal gains like that need to be balanced against fan expectations, and if the team isn't very good to begin with, people would blame the managing more than the players.
The language barrier on that one was stiff though.
In case you didn't see Latroy Hawkins get hit in the nuts with a batted ball, here it is.
He said it was a "direct hit."
And he wasn't wearing a cup. Who does LaTroy think he is, Adrian Beltre?
Real question is, did he throw the feller out before the wave of pain came thru?
LaTroy Hawkins, Junk Ball pitcher.
I know expanded replay is coming, but they have to do better than this.
challenges?? *forehead smack*
Maybe Gardy could keep the red flag in his hat and throw them both at the same time.
Assuming he still has a job next year. Funny the system he's been asking for might come too late for him to use.
I think he's likely to get a short renewal, if he wants it.
You think otherwise?
I figure he probably gets a two-year deal, but I'm not putting money on it.
I don't know. Not a fan of a challenge system either, but I think people are missing the key point:
A commenter on HBT brought up the system in tennis as awful under the assumption that the line spotting system can work instantly. I don't think it does yet, and one reason why it doesn't exist for the French Open is because it isn't accurate enough, so having to wait five seconds for a call is unacceptable in tennis. Instead, they have a limited number of challenges that don't expire if you're right and there's very little delay after the player challenges.
Anyway, back to my main point. The technology has long been there for replays, but it's not yet there for replacing human judges. By putting the replays in a centralized location, now MLB can slowly add additional plays to review after technology makes it workable ten years previously. I think this will set precedent for an "outside" judge that will eventually replace the umps.
So, the umpire in New York is watching a camera feed, sees a tag for an out, then pushes a button for the 'out' call to be made over a loudspeaker?
I think voice confirmation is the key; I'd love to see the system you're describing get hacked.
Dread.
Just another "science/demographics/racial distribution in communities is cool" link...
If you cleared out all of the trees and clouds, had every person in America stand outside their home holding a colored circle over their head that represented their race, and took a high resolution picture of the country from a satellite, it would look like this.
My first impression - it's amazing how homogenous large parts of this country are...from space, right down to the block-by-block level.
I got a blank white screen. There's probably a joke in there somewhere.
Heh. It took a while to load for me too - here's the page I got the story from. There's a link to the map at the bottom of the story.
Wow, you can really make out the Barrio in Hartford, and the North End.
If you cleared out all of the trees and clouds, and on a day in which a blanket of snow covered the country, had every person in America stand outside their home holding a colored circle over their head...
We have a lot more green people than I realized.
Looking more at my neighborhood:
1. Wow, Hilltop.
2. I wonder who the people are living between me and the river. Miscoded deer?
3. When did the Korean immigrants move out of Cedar-Riverside?
From Shooter:
I don't think I could handle having Target Center, Target Field and Target Stadium in the same region.
C'mon Land o'Lakes!!!!!!!
NO.
I'd love nothing more than the Vikes playing in the LOL.
No. I loved that name for what became Target Field - Land O'Lakes has a pastoral quality to it that's congruent with baseball. I think the Twins missed out on naming the park for something which really said "Minnesota," even as a corporate sponsorship. I loathe the Vikings/NFL so much that I'd hate to see that name plastered on a football entertainment complex. Let it be Target, which is (maybe?) marginally better as an employer than Wal-Mart, or Best Buy, provided every ticket purchase comes with up-selling of gold-plated USB cables or an extended warranty on merch. Both are NFL-quality corporate naming rights sponsors.
Dayton-Hudson Stadium?
Lake Minnetonka Love Boat Memorial Stadium
"up-selling of gold-plated USB cables"
I don't know what's funnier - our practices, or some of the things that people assume to be our practices.
Okay, that one might have been Staples or Circuit City circa 2004. Maybe I should have said HDMI cables?
The upsell-and-pester-the-customer-until-he-walks strategy just isn't taught in our company. I'm sure some salesmen are this way, but I'm the top salesman in my store and it isn't mine. You see that kind of thing in commission-based sales, but we stopped doing that in around 2001 for just that reason. I work with a lot of people who came from Circuit, and they largely agree that the fact that they didn't abandon commission was a big factor in their quick downfall.
Mark's Towing Stadium
if it's an open air stadium and you have to sit in the cold for three hours with a miserable product
Mark's Towing of Eagan Stadium in Minneapolis, it is!
Given the design of the stadium, it's too bad both permanent members of Coil are deceased*.
Coulda been "Amethyst Deceiver Field".
*And wouldn't have had the money or the interest.
Can you be both a permanent member of a band and dead at the same time?
They were members. Then they died. The band is no longer, but other sometimes members of the band survive: Thighpaulsandra, Danny Hyde, Stephen Thrower, etc...
The frequency of Gatorade baths and shaving cream pies in the face is getting ridiculous, but this is still an awesome photo tweeted by the Twins' team photographer.