Wow. That's about as solid as a farm system gets, and that list is missing Arcia, who has obviously graduated.
Not to pick nits, but shouldn't Pinto's ETA be either "2013," "now," or "arrived"?
I think 2014 would be the right time frame. He was a September call-up in a lost season, so I think Sickels viewed that as an early spring training.
Fair point.
Let's also not forget Hicks missing from that list.
...perhaps he is no longer considered a 'prospect' as Sickels expects him to be with the big club again next year à la Arcia?
Right, that's my point. Arcia is off the list because he's graduated, same thing for Hicks. Hicks had an atrocious start to last year, but that doesn't erase him previously being a top prospect.
...good point then! 🙂
I'm hoping to see Hicks in mid-2014. Let him beat up Triple A for a month or two before bringing him up again.
I'm hoping to see Hicks in mid-2014. Let him beat up Triple A for a month or two before bringing him up again.
As is Gibson.
Sano has made a lot of progress with the glove and a move to first base is not automatic.
Love that.
Yup. Seems like Sano's biggest hurdle as a third baseman will be the major league coaching staff, though.
Bobby Bonilla was mostly a bad third baseman, but having him there probably helped his teams because they could stick someone else at first. Same with Jim Thome and Harmon Killebrew, at least to a point.
I agree. What I worry about is whether the Twins figure that out.
He only has to be better than Plouffe's -11 UZR/150.
No, he doesn't even have to be better than that.
If he's Miggy-Lite-without-the-rap-sheet, we will all be thrilled.
But then the Twins won't have a redemption story line.
A lot of 2014 ETAs in there. He judges Pinto, Tonkin, and Meyer as just 2014. The "late 2014" category adds Buxton, Sano, Rosario (that's four out of the top five in 2014), May, and Danny Santana.
Noted in the miscellaneous C+ prospects: Miguel Sulbaran. That was a great trade.
getting anything in return for Butera makes it a great trade. Getting a prospect makes it gold.
Makes you wonder what the Dodgers were thinking.
If they can beat the Cards three out of four?
It was an insurance policy in case their regular catcher got broken.
The other side of the coin with the hot minor leagues prospects is that their respective baseball cards are pricey. Sano and Buxton autographed cards are way out of my price range, and even trying to snag a Polanco, Meyer, Gibson, et. al. autographed card within my limited price range is a trick.
Twins fans have been through difficult rebuilding phases before, dating back to the Calvin Griffith years, but the upside with this current group is huge, comparable to the Kent Hrbek/Gary Gaetti/Tom Brunansky/Frank Viola/Kirby Puckett wave that helped win two World Series.
As terrible as this 2011-13 stretch has been, I'm looking forward to some really good years in the near future.
Also: if you read the Buxton and Sano writeups, it might have dawned on you that when people argue about who's better - Trout or Cabrera, the Twins in the near future might have reasonable facsimiles of both.
I liked the lede: Well holy shit.
I look forward to the potential space-time continuum disruption that having the stat-nerd/trouble-with-the-curve argument on the same team will bring.
I'm sure Top Jimmy and the local clowns will find a way to get Justin Morneau Chris Parmelee the AL MVP despite two clearly more qualified teammates.
That seems ridiculous. My money is on Brian Dozier.
I like that both Felix Jorge and Stephen Gonsalves could both be much higher on this list a year from now. Of course, if there are a number of graduations, you would expect that. However, Jorge's numbers have been getting better and better even as the competition has improved and his workload has increased. Gonsalves was a first-round pick until he got suspended for his involvement in a pot incident with his teammates. He says he didn't smoke it, but whatever.
A 2017 rotation of Meyer, Berrios, Gibson, Stewart and one of Jorge or Gonsalves could be a lot of fun to watch. Ryan Eades is a wild card in there. The scouts love him but didn't ever really dominate in college. If Trevor May ever figures out the strike zone, he could be in there as well. Liam Hendriks has potential as well, although he's running out of chances.
For those of you still listening, this week's Gleeman & the Geek was halfway decent. After the first hour or so Gleeman and Bonnes got into a pretty interesting, thoughtful (for the most part) conversation about sports journalism, newspapers, and blogs. It helps that the guest for that segment was David Brauer, on hiatus from the MinnPost. In discussing journalist archetypes, Brauer even mentioned I.F. Stone. (There were crickets on the other end, so I guess the hosts had no idea who Stone was. A shame; serious bloggers should know that kind of stuff about the history of alternative media/journalism.)
Brauer's made two appearances on the podcast, and each of those appearances have to be in the Top 10 segments for the podcast's entire history. Worth the listen.
They also weren't drinking, which makes it noticeably better. Brauer is good, that's for sure. My favorite part of the podcast was when Gleeman started talking, Brauer talked over him and then he said, "I'm sorry for talking over you, Aaron." And John said, "That's okay, we all do it." Yes you do.
Also, Aaron is actually dating one or more women. This has resulted in him (a) having a life and (b) not talking about how pathetic his life is. A nice side benefit is that Aaron comes off about a million times better when he's not poor mouthing himself. I will say this about John: I think he's helped Aaron to crawl out of his considerable shell. He may bug me on the podcast sometimes, but I think that's okay if he's helped this guy get himself a life.
I hadn't considered that Bonnes had helped Gleeman in that way, but what you're saying makes sense. If Aaron's personal life has improved, that's great, and the side benefit is a bit less bro-ish stuff sent downstream to readers and listeners.
You know how, sometimes, you can tell an album has some serious potential to be great about one track in? That's how I'm feeling about Mulatu Astatke's Sketches of Ethiopia right now.
I'm hoping this is the case with Lightning Bolt (released yesterday).
i don't know about great, but yesterday i thought this album was gonna be pretty darn good after the first track. the rest of the album didn't disappoint.
He was right, of course, and I have to think that the whole thing in Indy worked out about as well as it could have for everyone involved (including another former Stanford QB named John Elway).
I hate the idea of rooting for a team from LA because I did not like LA when I visited a couple summers ago, but I find myself enjoying this Dodgers team even though Brian Wilson is on it. If they can get past the new Guardians of the Unwritten and Puid can go all MVP in the WS, I will be endlessly entertained.
I loved LA and am eagerly anticipating going back next summer, but I still had some trepidation in cheering for them since they're basically like Yankees west. With that said, I have a hard time disliking a lot of the players on the team and actively like Puig, Gonzalez, Kershaw, and Greinke a ton so I'm absolutely pulling for them in the NL. A Dodgers/Red Sox World Series would be kind of ho hum since it's teams with giant payrolls who are frequently contenders, but I don't really hate either team and they would be a heck of a good match up. I really hope it happens.
And they weren't the ones to beat the Pirates, so they also have that going for them.
I do fear the potential awfulness that a Red Sox title could bring, though. We've been down that road before and it only leads to pink.
kind of ho hum sicne it's teams with giant payrolls who are frequently contenders
That's every potential match now.
The Dodgers haven't been frequent contenders for a long time. I think they will now be frequent contenders, but to this point that hasn't been the case.
Yeah, it's been a while. They were in the NLCS fairly recently though. '09?
The school are being total buttholes in this case.
But, my guess is that they (or the Mass. High School League) have a strict policy about being caught at the scene of a party, sober or drunk.
Quite possibly the worst thing I've ever been forced to read in my life.
while I agree that it suh-hucked, if that is the worst thing you've ever been forced to read, you haven't been forced to read that much didn't really go to law school.
I realize that I am completely weird, but I find reading random cases interesting. The best part about my current job is that we get exposed to so much variety, that it all interests me. Of course, that all changes in January when we get sent to a small and awful subset of the law.
LIW is already representing for WI - they wanted to spread the wealth.
Poor Wash.
At first I read "book set" as the noun phrase, as in a series.
Now I see it means the physical location where the story is to have taken place.
As for South Dakota, not Giants in the Earth??
Nothing against Tom Brokaw, but yeah... I gotta think that Giants in the Earth wouldn't look so out of place compared to the rest of the list.
5.0 games. There have been only 50 WS games in the last 10 post-seasons.
I think there are too many postseason games now. The teams are tapped out by the time they get to the World Series. When a tired team gets down in a series, it's real hard to fight back, which is what you usually need to go 6 or 7 games. I remember a number of Series that the losing team was swept and had a very hard time scoring runs at all. Both Tigers Series, for sure.
I see it didn't take you long to find the other spoiler button.
This is what the original one looks like now. I tweaked the new spoiler button so it is not as redundant. It should say just "Actual Spoiler" now.
Yes, but before that it was 6, 7, and 7 in 2000-02 so there's some nice SSS bias in that.
I just chose ten years without regard to what happened previously.
Just heard that Wesley Johnson is going to be the starting three for the Lakers.
L.O.L.
USA losing early to Panama. If that result holds and Costa Rica can get ahead of Mexico, Mexico will be missing out on the World Cup. That would be hilarious.
Costa Rica had the lead, but Mexico equalized just four minutes later.
I was explaining The Hex to my uncle earlier and I realized doing the math that I would actually be OK with the US losing in order to better screw Mexico.
Does anyone know the tiebreakers? If Mexico lose by a goal, and Panama win by a goal, they'd be tied on points, wins and GD. If the next tie-breaker is goals for, Panama has the edge and move into 4th.
I read somewhere, that Mexico would have the tiebreaker in that scenario, but I have no idea why.
Mexico won 2-1 over Panama at the Azteca, and it was a 0-0 draw in Panama. I guess on head-to-head points Mexico has a 4-1 lead. That would make sense to me.
That does make sense.
I'm fine with Mexico being embarassed by the All Whites* and missing out on Brazil anyway.
*Only team to go undefeated at WC 2010
Ugh, US ties right when Costa Rica pulls ahead.
Forget politics, soccer makes for strange bedfellows.
It's goals scored in all competition. Head-to-head is no longer part of the tiebreak (new this year) according to wikipedia.
So if Panama and Costa Rica win, Panama is in the playoff, Mexico is out (assuming they don't lose 5-6 or something).
I guess I was right the first time. C'MON PANAMA! then
They just announced the Panama goal at CR and the crowd and announcers are going insane. And I don't even understand spanish
I caught "¡ATTENCIÓN!" at least. Good to know 4 years of Spanish weren't for naught.
GOD DAMNIT GRAHAM. This is why we can't have nice things.
Unbelievable.
Soccer is boring.
Totally bananas.
I don't think I've ever been as crushed by the US scoring two late goals to take 3 points.
We can still blame Bornstein for everything that goes wrong, right?
Works for me.
By the way, it was Bornstein four years ago in the exact same situation who saved the US's bacon. Still, screw Bornstein!
I completely confused Bornstein and Feilhaber. Either way.
Also, I've got to love Johannsson's ho-hum response to his goal. The Cardinals would have been proud of him.
This is awesome
The Costa Rica-Mexico game is a blast and Costa Rica just went ahead on a beautiful header. About 25 minutes remain.
¡Aye, Dios Mio! Beautiful ball movement down the left flank from CR. Oh how I wish that had gone in.
Im guessing the soccer was on BeIn or some other far distant outpost because I didnt come across it tonight.
Yup, away games are on BeIN Sport. The Mexico game was en Español on Telemundo.
The Replacements were nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame you guys. Up against Kiss, Nirvana, and Yes (among others).
one would think Nirvana is a lock.
I wonder if Ronstadt gets in this year because she has Parkinson's and had to stop singing.
Looking at the others listed,
NWA is my shoe-in.
Throbbing Gristle still shunned.
At rollingstone.com you can vote for 5 nominees. The top 5 vote getters are submitted as the public ballot. I voted Replacements, Nirvana, NWA, Kiss, and The Zombies.
Nice to see Yes (finally); sad to see Eno snubbed, though.
HA!
U.S. SoccerVerified account @ussoccer
Mexico spared through no real effort of their own. Now a chance to snag some frequent flier miles before the holidays with a trip to NZL!
John Sickels has his Top 20 Twins prospects up. I was surprised by #3. I'm pretty excited for the future of the team. It helps wash the stink of the last three years off.
Wow. That's about as solid as a farm system gets, and that list is missing Arcia, who has obviously graduated.
Not to pick nits, but shouldn't Pinto's ETA be either "2013," "now," or "arrived"?
I think 2014 would be the right time frame. He was a September call-up in a lost season, so I think Sickels viewed that as an early spring training.
Fair point.
Let's also not forget Hicks missing from that list.
...perhaps he is no longer considered a 'prospect' as Sickels expects him to be with the big club again next year à la Arcia?
Right, that's my point. Arcia is off the list because he's graduated, same thing for Hicks. Hicks had an atrocious start to last year, but that doesn't erase him previously being a top prospect.
...good point then! 🙂
I'm hoping to see Hicks in mid-2014. Let him beat up Triple A for a month or two before bringing him up again.
I'm hoping to see Hicks
in mid-2014. Let himbeat up Triple Afor a month or twobefore bringing him up again.As is Gibson.
Love that.
Yup. Seems like Sano's biggest hurdle as a third baseman will be the major league coaching staff, though.
Bobby Bonilla was mostly a bad third baseman, but having him there probably helped his teams because they could stick someone else at first. Same with Jim Thome and Harmon Killebrew, at least to a point.
I agree. What I worry about is whether the Twins figure that out.
He only has to be better than Plouffe's -11 UZR/150.
No, he doesn't even have to be better than that.
If he's Miggy-Lite-without-the-rap-sheet, we will all be thrilled.
But then the Twins won't have a redemption story line.
A lot of 2014 ETAs in there. He judges Pinto, Tonkin, and Meyer as just 2014. The "late 2014" category adds Buxton, Sano, Rosario (that's four out of the top five in 2014), May, and Danny Santana.
Noted in the miscellaneous C+ prospects: Miguel Sulbaran. That was a great trade.
getting anything in return for Butera makes it a great trade. Getting a prospect makes it gold.
Makes you wonder what the Dodgers were thinking.
If they can beat the Cards three out of four?
It was an insurance policy in case their regular catcher got broken.
The other side of the coin with the hot minor leagues prospects is that their respective baseball cards are pricey. Sano and Buxton autographed cards are way out of my price range, and even trying to snag a Polanco, Meyer, Gibson, et. al. autographed card within my limited price range is a trick.
As terrible as this 2011-13 stretch has been, I'm looking forward to some really good years in the near future.
Also: if you read the Buxton and Sano writeups, it might have dawned on you that when people argue about who's better - Trout or Cabrera, the Twins in the near future might have reasonable facsimiles of both.
I liked the lede: Well holy shit.
I look forward to the potential space-time continuum disruption that having the stat-nerd/trouble-with-the-curve argument on the same team will bring.
I'm sure Top Jimmy and the local clowns will find a way to get
Justin MorneauChris Parmelee the AL MVP despite two clearly more qualified teammates.That seems ridiculous. My money is on Brian Dozier.
I like that both Felix Jorge and Stephen Gonsalves could both be much higher on this list a year from now. Of course, if there are a number of graduations, you would expect that. However, Jorge's numbers have been getting better and better even as the competition has improved and his workload has increased. Gonsalves was a first-round pick until he got suspended for his involvement in a pot incident with his teammates. He says he didn't smoke it, but whatever.
A 2017 rotation of Meyer, Berrios, Gibson, Stewart and one of Jorge or Gonsalves could be a lot of fun to watch. Ryan Eades is a wild card in there. The scouts love him but didn't ever really dominate in college. If Trevor May ever figures out the strike zone, he could be in there as well. Liam Hendriks has potential as well, although he's running out of chances.
For those of you still listening, this week's Gleeman & the Geek was halfway decent. After the first hour or so Gleeman and Bonnes got into a pretty interesting, thoughtful (for the most part) conversation about sports journalism, newspapers, and blogs. It helps that the guest for that segment was David Brauer, on hiatus from the MinnPost. In discussing journalist archetypes, Brauer even mentioned I.F. Stone. (There were crickets on the other end, so I guess the hosts had no idea who Stone was. A shame; serious bloggers should know that kind of stuff about the history of alternative media/journalism.)
Brauer's made two appearances on the podcast, and each of those appearances have to be in the Top 10 segments for the podcast's entire history. Worth the listen.
They also weren't drinking, which makes it noticeably better. Brauer is good, that's for sure. My favorite part of the podcast was when Gleeman started talking, Brauer talked over him and then he said, "I'm sorry for talking over you, Aaron." And John said, "That's okay, we all do it." Yes you do.
Also, Aaron is actually dating one or more women. This has resulted in him (a) having a life and (b) not talking about how pathetic his life is. A nice side benefit is that Aaron comes off about a million times better when he's not poor mouthing himself. I will say this about John: I think he's helped Aaron to crawl out of his considerable shell. He may bug me on the podcast sometimes, but I think that's okay if he's helped this guy get himself a life.
I hadn't considered that Bonnes had helped Gleeman in that way, but what you're saying makes sense. If Aaron's personal life has improved, that's great, and the side benefit is a bit less bro-ish stuff sent downstream to readers and listeners.
You know how, sometimes, you can tell an album has some serious potential to be great about one track in? That's how I'm feeling about Mulatu Astatke's Sketches of Ethiopia right now.
I'm hoping this is the case with Lightning Bolt (released yesterday).
I love that feeling. It recently happened to me with Riitiir by Enslaved.
i don't know about great, but yesterday i thought this album was gonna be pretty darn good after the first track. the rest of the album didn't disappoint.
The Ballad of the Fake Dodgers Bear Mascot
it even made Dustin Hoffman smile
So, Peyton Manning apparently told the Colts that they'd be crazy not to draft Luck.
He was right, of course, and I have to think that the whole thing in Indy worked out about as well as it could have for everyone involved (including another former Stanford QB named John Elway).
Apparently, even Adrian Gonzalez wasn't above criticism for "antics."
Brian McCann is cheering for the Cardinals.
I hate the idea of rooting for a team from LA because I did not like LA when I visited a couple summers ago, but I find myself enjoying this Dodgers team even though Brian Wilson is on it. If they can get past the new Guardians of the Unwritten and Puid can go all MVP in the WS, I will be endlessly entertained.
I loved LA and am eagerly anticipating going back next summer, but I still had some trepidation in cheering for them since they're basically like Yankees west. With that said, I have a hard time disliking a lot of the players on the team and actively like Puig, Gonzalez, Kershaw, and Greinke a ton so I'm absolutely pulling for them in the NL. A Dodgers/Red Sox World Series would be kind of ho hum since it's teams with giant payrolls who are frequently contenders, but I don't really hate either team and they would be a heck of a good match up. I really hope it happens.
And they weren't the ones to beat the Pirates, so they also have that going for them.
I do fear the potential awfulness that a Red Sox title could bring, though. We've been down that road before and it only leads to pink.
kind of ho hum sicne it's teams with giant payrolls who are frequently contenders
That's every potential match now.
The Dodgers haven't been frequent contenders for a long time. I think they will now be frequent contenders, but to this point that hasn't been the case.
Yeah, it's been a while. They were in the NLCS fairly recently though. '09?
Friends don't let friends drive drunk.
The school are being total buttholes in this case.
But, my guess is that they (or the Mass. High School League) have a strict policy about being caught at the scene of a party, sober or drunk.
zero tolerance is zero sense.
for the readers in the Nation, Business Insider (whaa?) maps the most famous book set in each of the 50 states.
Ok, so Main Street is a major classic. But I don't know how you trump On the Banks of Plum Creek. As for South Dakota, not Giants in the Earth??
Not Fargo Rock City for ND? I am disappointed.
Not half as disappointed as I am. SBGville, represent!
Main Street would have been my guess, too, but have to think Lake Wobegon Days is more famous at this point.
I've read 10 of those books. That list is one more reason why I'm glad to not be a Masshole.
A what?
Check definition #3
Not a fan of Walden?
Quite possibly the worst thing I've ever been forced to read in my life.
while I agree that it suh-hucked, if that is the worst thing you've ever been forced to read, you
haven't been forced to read that muchdidn't really go to law school.I realize that I am completely weird, but I find reading random cases interesting. The best part about my current job is that we get exposed to so much variety, that it all interests me. Of course, that all changes in January when we get sent to a small and awful subset of the law.
LIW is already representing for WI - they wanted to spread the wealth.
Poor Wash.
At first I read "book set" as the noun phrase, as in a series.
Now I see it means the physical location where the story is to have taken place.
Nothing against Tom Brokaw, but yeah... I gotta think that Giants in the Earth wouldn't look so out of place compared to the rest of the list.
Homestar! (no relation)
I read that earlier. Great writeup.
...no relation to what?
He's one of the "other" Runners.
Oh, I see what you did there. I thought there was another Homestar running around somewhere, which would be much less likely.
What do you think the average length of the World Series has been over the last 10 years?
I think there are too many postseason games now. The teams are tapped out by the time they get to the World Series. When a tired team gets down in a series, it's real hard to fight back, which is what you usually need to go 6 or 7 games. I remember a number of Series that the losing team was swept and had a very hard time scoring runs at all. Both Tigers Series, for sure.
I see it didn't take you long to find the other spoiler button.
Yes, but before that it was 6, 7, and 7 in 2000-02 so there's some nice SSS bias in that.
I just chose ten years without regard to what happened previously.
Just heard that Wesley Johnson is going to be the starting three for the Lakers.
L.O.L.
USA losing early to Panama. If that result holds and Costa Rica can get ahead of Mexico, Mexico will be missing out on the World Cup. That would be hilarious.
Costa Rica had the lead, but Mexico equalized just four minutes later.
I was explaining The Hex to my uncle earlier and I realized doing the math that I would actually be OK with the US losing in order to better screw Mexico.
Does anyone know the tiebreakers? If Mexico lose by a goal, and Panama win by a goal, they'd be tied on points, wins and GD. If the next tie-breaker is goals for, Panama has the edge and move into 4th.
I read somewhere, that Mexico would have the tiebreaker in that scenario, but I have no idea why.
Mexico won 2-1 over Panama at the Azteca, and it was a 0-0 draw in Panama. I guess on head-to-head points Mexico has a 4-1 lead. That would make sense to me.
That does make sense.
I'm fine with Mexico being embarassed by the All Whites* and missing out on Brazil anyway.
*Only team to go undefeated at WC 2010
Ugh, US ties right when Costa Rica pulls ahead.
Forget politics, soccer makes for strange bedfellows.
It's goals scored in all competition. Head-to-head is no longer part of the tiebreak (new this year) according to wikipedia.
So if Panama and Costa Rica win, Panama is in the playoff, Mexico is out (assuming they don't lose 5-6 or something).
I guess I was right the first time. C'MON PANAMA! then
They just announced the Panama goal at CR and the crowd and announcers are going insane. And I don't even understand spanish
I caught "¡ATTENCIÓN!" at least. Good to know 4 years of Spanish weren't for naught.
GOD DAMNIT GRAHAM. This is why we can't have nice things.
Unbelievable.
Soccer is boring.
Totally bananas.
I don't think I've ever been as crushed by the US scoring two late goals to take 3 points.
We can still blame Bornstein for everything that goes wrong, right?
Works for me.
By the way, it was Bornstein four years ago in the exact same situation who saved the US's bacon. Still, screw Bornstein!
I completely confused Bornstein and Feilhaber. Either way.
Also, I've got to love Johannsson's ho-hum response to his goal. The Cardinals would have been proud of him.
This is awesome
The Costa Rica-Mexico game is a blast and Costa Rica just went ahead on a beautiful header. About 25 minutes remain.
¡Aye, Dios Mio! Beautiful ball movement down the left flank from CR. Oh how I wish that had gone in.
Im guessing the soccer was on BeIn or some other far distant outpost because I didnt come across it tonight.
Yup, away games are on BeIN Sport. The Mexico game was en Español on Telemundo.
The Replacements were nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame you guys. Up against Kiss, Nirvana, and Yes (among others).
http://www.nj.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2013/10/nirvana_kiss_ronstadt_yes_among_rock_and_roll_hall_of_fame_nominees.html
one would think Nirvana is a lock.
I wonder if Ronstadt gets in this year because she has Parkinson's and had to stop singing.
Looking at the others listed,
NWA is my shoe-in.
Throbbing Gristle still shunned.
At rollingstone.com you can vote for 5 nominees. The top 5 vote getters are submitted as the public ballot. I voted Replacements, Nirvana, NWA, Kiss, and The Zombies.
Nice to see Yes (finally); sad to see Eno snubbed, though.
HA!