102 thoughts on “May 27, 2014: MS 150”

    3. I was there about 8:15-20 or so. I saw a few people that might have been you but didn't have the shoulder-bag.
      All I know is that you're shorter than most men but taller than Phil. I also assume you're between the ages of 25 and 44.
      So that doesn't narrow things down much.

  2. Checking in from Nags Head, NC. We've been having a great trip so far. Passing through Cincinnati we checked out the William Howard Taft National Historic Site & the American Sign Museum, and sampled some Camp Washington Chili. Visited the USS Wisconsin in Norfolk for several hours, which was incredible. Yesterday we hit the Cape Hatteras Light (incredible view at the top), a small meters for British sailors, and checked out the 1862 shipwreck of the Oriental. Today is kayaking on the Alligator River.

    1. Today is kayaking on the Alligator River.

      Don't worry, it's just a name.

      'Spoiler' SelectShow

          1. We didn't see any gators on the excursion. I'm trying to decide whether that's a bad thing or not.

  3. Mackey and Derek Wetmore criticizing Twins' roster decisions.

    From Mackey's post:


    Guerrier > backup centerfielder.

    1. everyone knows that shortstops are the best athletes on teams. They can be plugged in anywhere.

    2. Mackey:

      When the starting centerfielder has never solidified himself above Double-A, should additional centerfielders be exposed to waivers to make room for guys like Jason Bartlett and Matt Guerrier?

      Is Terry Ryan at all involved in these decisions, or is he too busy fighting cancer? That's a whole 'nother issue and I wish Terry nothing but the best. I have to believe his input has been minimal because I think he'd not allow this fiasco to happen.

      If that's the case, who is in charge? Is it Antony? Is it Gardenhire? I suspect that the latter has had a good bit of input.

      The roster construction has been terrible. Cut some relievers off the 40 man and get some outfielders. This cannot continue.

      1. That's what I've been wondering. There's no way to know, of course, unless one of them says, and that's probably not going to happen. But stuff like this keeps being said as if the roster construction is something that just sort of happened somehow. It didn't just happen. People made decisions that made it happen. Someone needs to take responsibility for those decisions.

        1. Never fear, Padre:

          3. Chris Herrmann will play some center field at Triple-A Rochester, Twins assistant Rob Antony said Monday.

          Demoted alongside Chris Colabello to make room for Arcia and Willingham, Herrmann's primary value is his positional flexibility.

          This may not be a case of the Twins trotting out another playing and hoping he can play center field. It's not a perfect scenario, but several progressive baseball teams are finding value in players who can play multiple positions well. Herrmann has a lot left to prove to show he can hit enough to stick in the big leagues, but adding another position to his resume can't hurt.

          "He runs plenty good. He's got good instincts out there," Antony said. "He's played it before, in the minor leagues and college. It's not who you draw up or whatever, but for him to have that role, to be a bench/utility type guy, to have the ability to play center is obviously a plus for him."

          We are going to get the Praise Band back together!

          1. Herrmann's primary value is his positional flexibility

            I've got a dachshund whose primary value is flexibility. I can use him as a bird dog and enter him in greyhound races! Now, he's never pointed at a bird, or fetched one, and he always comes in last in the races, but he sure runs around out there good.

            1. Padre's recap the other day was simply brilliant for having his finger right on the pulse of this club. Seeing Antony talk about Herrmann playing CF is just depressing.

    3. Meanwhile, Eric Farris is batting .298 while playing CF every day in Rochester. Was originally a 2B, but manager Gene Glynn has described him as a sparkplug. Offensively, appears to be a right-handed Ben Revere.

      2. He's 28 and his career line in AAA (2002 PA) is .273/.317/.357. He excites me about as much as Herrmann in CF. At this point, any improvement in his AAA numbers is more likely to be something that won't translate to MLB than anything else. Not necessarily a bad guy to have on the AAA team, but not someone I'd really want on the 40-man roster, either.

        1. speaking of guys in AAA who might be interesting for someone, check out Alden Carrithers.
          In seven minor league seasons, he's got a slash line of 299/405/367, including a AAA line of 305/399/388.

          You'd think someone would have been willing to give the guy a cup of coffee. A career OBP of .405 should be worth something, right?

          with the River Cats this year, he's at 313/417/373. Plays infield, so he's an obvious CF candidate for the Twins. (he's actually had 18 appearances in CF in his career).

          1. I think the general assumption is that without any power, the walks will dry up in the majors. No reason to walk a guy with no power. And just generally, he might have trouble getting ahead in the count, which could cut into his average. I can't think of a good prototype of this kind of hitter now--Jason Tyner will have to do in a pinch.

            Tyner was .298/.363/.350 in the minors. Not as walk-y, but an 8.4% BB/PA rate. Then, in the majors, that went down to 4.6%, and his average dipped from .298 to .275, for an overall line of .275/.314/.323.

            Now I remember my Twins-related example for this type of slash line--Luis Castillo. Castillo was a .302/.403/.351 hitter in the minors, then hit .290/.368/.351 in the majors. But Castillo was really young in the minors, basically graduated at age 22, whereas Carrithers started at age 23. Also, Castillo won 3 GGs, so we can at least assume that he was perceived as having plus defensive value, which may have made it worth the risk on his bat.

            It's a safe bet that Carrithers is a lot more like Tyner than Castillo.

            1. I was surprised at how much (it seemed to me) that Punto walked despite his lack of power.
              10.0% Walk rate with the Twins, 12.9% in the minors (with a few rehab stints tossed in).
              Not sure what my point was, but wanted to compare to someone whose on-base-ish-ness I have a feel for.

  4. I had a chance to visit my sister yesterday. She is doing better than could be expected. She recently had some restrictions lifted as well, so we were able to bring Nietzsche in and she got to hold her new nephew. It was a very exciting moment for me.

    She still needs a lung transplant, and without it eventually things will start trending worse, so we're not anywhere near out of scary territory, but those prayers seem to be paying off.

  5. Monday Starting Pitching Report (one day late):

    If you look at the top three pitchers on the list below, you will see FIPs that are significantly better than xFIPs. That's because all three guys have an extremely low HR/FB rate. Is this sustainable? Is it a feature of pitching at Target Field? Not in the long term and no, I don't believe so. Correia's career average is 10.6%, with a lot of years pitching in San Diego and Minneapolis. Last year, his HR/FB rate was 11.7%. It would be reasonable to expect his number to go up. He's also got a pretty low LOB%, which suggests that he's been a little unlucky there. He's not a guy that you'd expect to have a 6.34 ERA for the season. He should settle down at around 5. I would also expect Hughes' HR numbers to go up, but even so, he's striking dudes out and not walking dudes. So, he might actually continue to perform at a pretty good level. If he's a 5 win pitcher, which is what he projects to be through this season, well, hallelujah!, he's justified his whole contract and not just the first year.

    Nolasco is having his worst full season in the majors, but this week's clunker nothwithstanding, I'd expect him to continue getting better results than he was at the disastrous beginning of the season. Gibson thinks that the refs robbed Indiana last night (he tweeted as much, what game was he watching?), but more depressingly, he looks like a 5th starter at best. I'd rather have him long term instead of Deduno, but this year and next, I'll take Sam.

    # Name W L SV G GS IP K/9 BB/9 HR/9 BABIP LOB% GB% HR/FB ERA FIP xFIP WAR
    1 Phil Hughes 5 1 0 9 9 54.1 7.79 0.99 0.66 .329 76.2 % 33.1 % 5.2 % 3.15 2.67 3.55 1.6
    2 Kevin Correia 2 6 0 10 10 55.1 5.04 2.11 0.81 .330 54.6 % 42.2 % 6.0 % 6.34 3.87 4.66 0.7
    3 Kyle Gibson 4 4 0 9 9 50.0 4.50 3.60 0.54 .281 67.4 % 52.3 % 5.5 % 4.68 4.03 4.68 0.6
    4 Ricky Nolasco 2 5 0 10 10 60.1 5.97 2.39 1.49 .345 66.7 % 41.7 % 12.7 % 6.12 4.68 4.22 0.3
    5 Samuel Deduno 1 2 0 4 4 22.2 5.96 3.18 0.79 .235 66.1 % 60.0 % 10.0 % 3.97 4.07 4.07 0.2
    6 Kris Johnson 0 0 0 1 1 4.1 10.38 12.46 0.00 .364 100.0 % 60.0 % 0.0 % 0.00 4.90 5.20 0.0
    7 Mike Pelfrey 0 3 0 5 5 23.2 3.80 6.85 1.90 .286 61.9 % 43.7 % 15.2 % 7.99 7.49 6.55 -0.5

    2. Gibson supposedly made a mechanical adjustment two starts ago. Prior to that, his K/BB ratio was 17/18, which is not close to his career minor numbers of 8/2.5. In his last two starts, it was 8/2. He'll never be a dominant starter, but even as he's struggled with his control, his has been better than average at getting ground balls, so he just needs to get back to having good control like he had in the minors and he could be a 3-4 starter.

      1. If you look at his overall MLB numbers, Gibson's walk rate isn't that much higher than his minor league walk rate (3.6 vs. 2.7), so I'm not sure how much I'd expect that to improve (given that major league hitters are just generally better at being able to work a pitcher for a walk, as a group), but his strikeout numbers are way down from the minors (4.8 vs. 8.0). I'd expect more strikeouts before I'd expect much of a decline in the walks, I guess.

  6. Paul George on last night's game:

    "I thought we outplayed them," George said. "They won this game at the free throw line. They really just were able to get to the line more than we were, but I thought we outplayed them. I mean, you can't tell me we don't attack the basket as much as they attack the basket. You can't tell me we're not aggressive. Maybe we're too aggressive."

    I watched that game in its entirety. Miami absolutely kicked their asses. I cannot believe that George is coming with this. That is loser talk.

      1. I can forgive players for living in a fantasy world (in this sense) a lot more easily than coaches. Part of the value-added from having a coach is that he should have a better perspective on the big picture than the guys on the court.

        1. Sure. It just sounds like George is defeated when he says that after his team got blown out.

          1. Then again, I think they are toast. The final score doesn't really tell the story. Miami let off the gas; LeBron only played 36 minutes. In close playoff games with the added timeouts and the rest, stars play 40 to 44 minutes. So, if George needs to cling to the refs screwed us, that's fine, but they're done.

  7. Had to do some fancy trimming to hide the name...

    ID the AU -- who is the Twins player (current or former) whose signature looks like this?
    AU

    'Hint' SelectShow
    Answer SelectShow

  8. The college president during my days at MSU, and a really great man, passed away on Memorial Day -- Roland Dille.

    He always played the part of Santa Claus (begrudgingly) when asked. A friend of mine and a few others who ended up on a 5-year path once went to his office and jokingly blamed him for their not graduating in four years. He bought them ice cream!

  9. Rather than continue in this thread, I thought I'd bring the discussion over here. I don't mean to beat a dead horse, but I just had to chime in.

    My wife did nearly the same thing last week, though it was the lid to a travel mug that fell to the bottom of the dishwasher. Cleaned out all the burnt plastic, ran the thing three times and hand washed everything before the toxic, burnt plastic smell subsided. Thanked her for the help, but asked that she just leave the dishes/dishwasher to me.

    Regarding the hiring out discussion, I'm inclined to do most anything myself, whether or not I have any previous experience with whatever it is. Between my naval training, proclivities and personal inclinations (and probably that Midwest sentiment bS mentioned), I usually attempt to "do it myself" no matter the task. However, I've recently begun being more realistic assessing both my abilities and how long a project will actually take me. Unless it's something I really want to do, beyond about 24-36 hours of 'Corn-time,' (2 weekends) I've been getting estimates from professionals. In most cases, something that would take me that long can be done by a professional in 6-8 hours.

    Of course, if I can't afford the professional for 8 hours labor + parts, then I still end up doing it myself...

    1. Living in an apartment, I have the good fortune of being able to pass a lot of these things off. We've had both a dishwasher and garbage disposal replaced in our time here, and I didn't have to do squat. I grew up with a father who is extremely handy, so it was something I was always exposed to. Still, Philosofette always seems a little stunned when I manager to actual do some mechanical labor. I'm not bad at the stuff, but it's very much a calculated "how much time will this really take?" question. That's why I've largely started hiring out my car repairs - it just takes me too darn long.

      1. I didn't learn much growing up. Partially it's because my dad wasn't very good at fixing things, and partly because he didn't have the patience to teach me. I have learned some things as an adult through experimentation (or working with my dad), but I have never harbored a desire to be a handyman. I tend to focus on other ways to save money so I can hire stuff out (and I've been fortunate to have that ability).

      2. That's why I've largely started hiring out my car repairs - it just takes me too darn long.

        This. I used to change my own oil and do my own tune-ups (having learned back in the day when there were points, distributor caps, etc.). For years, I disdained taking my car to a shop for a tune-up, given that they were gonna charge me an arm and a leg to change the friggin' spark plugs. But I've learned to love the Bomb.

        1. I've had pretty good experiences with the shop I bring my car into. The routine maintenance is not cheap--I'm sure I could get a lower price--but they seem pretty thorough and my hope is that eventually it will pay off by preventing something major from happening in the future, or at least to help keep my car running well for a long, long time. Also, living in an apartment, I don't really have a place to learn how to work on it anyway.

    2. I always, always try to do it myself initially because, like SBG, I'm in a single income household so the cost of hiring out is rarely in the cards. Of course, especially with my car, it often results in slightly higher parts costs as I need to replace something I damaged in the process (the belt tensioner comes to mind), but its still cheaper than taking it to a shop. Around the house, it will all be done by me, which will include the basement (ok, one exception will be wiring) and a deck. But, I'm stubborn that way.

        1. I try to know my limitations on the car stuff, like having the steering rack replaced. (In terms of complexity, I think I could have handled it. In terms of trying to do it in my garage on jack stands, better to take it to a shop.) I can and do all the regular maintenance stuff like oil changes, tire rotations, brakes, spark plugs, belts, etc. I also figured out how to replace the door windows while replacing a broken window regulator clip, should the window ever break. I'm pretty proud of that one.

          But yeah, for the most part I generally agree. Finding a good mechanic and developing a good relationship is more important than finding a good handyman.

          1. I'll fix my truck in the driveway, but our Subaru goes to the local independent foreign car guy. That's partially a decision to support guys like Pa, and partly because we need one car that we can count on to work every time. Given the other options are a 47 year old pickup and a Volvo with 300,000 miles on it, the Subaru wins by default even before complexity becomes a consideration.

            I'm not looking forward to dropping the transmission out of the truck in the driveway, though.

    3. I'm disappointed that this was not the video for today:

      httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKbADFJOCkU

  10. I'm still impressed by anyone who can fix their own car without having had professional certification.
    That said, my homeowner credibility/confidence continues to grow. I've successfully (more or less) managed to repair lawnmower, (replace) washing machine motor, and actual plumbing in the past couple years.
    There's also the cost calculation on actually having something completed professionally such that you don't have to see your "flaws" every time you pass by a project.

    1. There's also the cost calculation on actually having something completed professionally such that you don't have to see your "flaws" every time you pass by a project.

      This is a great point. Of course, you can also learn to see past the flaws* and be happy with knowing & seeing what you accomplished.

      *something I'm still working on...

      2. I'm doing pretty good on the flaws thing. I hate working with wood, so when I build something that doesn't fall over and is functional, I don't care if it isn't perfectly level. The person who needs to work on seeing past these flaws, however, is my wife. Its very frustrating, to be honest.

        1. I am working on this part. When I forgive my wife for things like getting the dishwasher in the predicament it was in, I also mention that, hey, a little understanding for me goes a long ways, too.

          1. ahh, marital communication.

            I've gotten better over the years at extracting myself so that I can go howl at the moon over something she's done that I perceive as stoopid or otherwise pissing me off. So many of our arguments involve me trying to get her to stop doing something that bugs the crap out of me (Because Stupid) and her getting mad at me.

            Hey, I know I'm a know-it-all. But sometimes I'm actually right. More than 50 pct of the time, in fact.*

            Marriage. That bwessed awangement.
            httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2m6sHROA3U

        2. It doesn't help that we've hired a couple jobs out to friends/neighbors that do these kinds of construction/contracting jobs professionally and we still end up with imperfections I can't help but notice (every single time I walk across that loose floorboard) - because we paid so as to avoid that kind of thing. "Picky" is generally not my style.
          This puts me at somewhat of an impasse and gives me much reason to put things off, generally.

          1. I agree- I find the flaws are much more noticeable if I have an "expert" to do a job than if I do it myself.

            And I also like to procrastinate on those types of jobs. I have a (mostly) finished basement that my wife has been nagging me to finish the base trim on for almost 8 years.

  11. It will be interesting to see what happens in tonight's game. I find it difficult to believe that OKC can win this series, but with a win tonight, it seems plausible that they can extend to 7 games. OKC is a better team than Indiana*. If they take the Spurs to the limit, it might change the calculus on the finals. We'll see.

    *with Ibaka

      1. Until the K-lub situation is settled, it will be hard to attract a high-profile coach. But I'm not so sure how much the coach's profile matters anyway. Without better (and healthy!) players around Love, he still isn't going to take the Wolves anywhere.

      2. I was fairly invested because it sounded so much like a done deal and turned so suddenly. That said, I think I agree a lot with Britt Robson that just about everybody comes across really badly in this.

        Also, I am not excited for the ueber-Wolvsy Sam Mitchell hire.

  12. Hi everyone! I'm slowly getting back to the land of the living. I can't remember the last time I was as sick as I got yesterday (fever, projective vomiting, etc.) which made the car ride from Omerha back home tons of fun.

    2. (This is the reason why some environmentalists suggest projects like painting all the roofs in New York City white. If you increase the amount of light reflected from the roof of a building, that means that more of the light headed out toward space remains in the visible region of the spectrum, and passes back through the atmosphere without contributing to heating things up. It’s unfortunately all too easy to make this sound silly, but it’s actually pretty solid, scientifically. And if we paid thousands of unemployed people to paint roofs white, we’d stimulate the economy at the same time, but that’s just crazy talk…)

      What's next, solar roadways?

      1. heh heh. with pizo-electric components to generate current from traffic!!!!111one111!!!

  14. You know, even with the recent 4-game skid, the Twins are still very much in the thick of the AL Central. Over the past 10 games, no one else has more than 5 wins: Twins, Clevelanders and White Sox are all 5-5, KC 4-6 & Tigers 3-7.

    In addition, although they're 2 games under.500, they're only 5.5 games in back of Detroit, half-a-game behind Chicago and tied with Kansas City. Unfortunately, other than Houston at the end of next week, their next 6 opponents all have winning records.

      2. The moral (to me, anyway) is that considering how many times they'll see these teams over the next 4 months, I'm still feeling alright about their chances to hang within a few games of .500 this year ... especially if they can sneak a few wins here and there from 'good' teams.

    2. I thought the Tigers were going to run away and hide, but they suddenly look very vulnerable. All teams go through bad stretches, but it's how badly they've lost lately that should be concerning for Tigers fans. They have lost 7 of 8 games and have allowed at least 9 runs in 5 of those losses. Their run differential is now down to just +19.

      1. Interestingly (to me, anyway), none of the AL East teams yet have a winning record against the AL Central. (of course, the Yankmes have only played 4 games against AL Central opponents so far....)

  16. Yu Darvish scratched with a stiff neck. Scott Baker to start instead. Normally, I'd be thrilled that Darvish isn't starting against the Twins and Baker is back in the major leagues, but I get a feeling this will be another case of a former Twin haunting his old team. Still, I have to think it's a better option over Darvish.

    1. His OCD was cured! He became obsessed with Johnny Cash!

      Was he really cured?

  18. Gravity's Rainbow finally finished.

    No rest for the endurance reader: at pg. 9 of James Joyce' Ulysses.

    4. I think we have found our author for this coming First Monday. Whaddya say, NBB?

Comments are closed.