36 thoughts on “August 6, 2015: A Step Up”

        1. The president of the fan club is just a good dude too. At the time, he used to try to go to 100 baseball games a season, 81 home games and then road trips following the Twins. Crazy.

    2. That last link in number ten is fantastic. I have a buddy who used to get his haircut at the same barbershop as Hawk, and he said that LaTroy would hang out and just chat with whomever walked in for hours. I also remember him letting Cristian Guzman live with him for a couple seasons to help him acclimate to the US.

  2. Glad to hear Skim's school experience is going better this year. A good teacher can make a tremendous difference.

  4. From the "Perspective" article I linked to in Padre's recap.

    Minnesota has one above-average hitter (Brian Dozier), one prospect who looks like the real deal (Miguel Sano), one beloved veteran hitting for power and not much else (Torii Hunter) and … other humans in its lineup. (If you want to say "Trevor Plouffe!" you can, but that desperation is yours.)

    I don't know that I've seen Plouffe! written as such anywhere else but here, so it caught my eye. Now, I realize that the usage is likely just normal punctuation, but still...

    1. Plouffe has been only half of a win worse than Dozier, according to B-Ref and might finish ahead of Dozier if Dozier fades in the second half like he did last year.

      1. It's true. It's terrible. I'm hoping it's just taking him a long time to click after his concussion a la Morneau and that maybe next year he'll be back most of the way. But I'm scared he's just done.

          2. Playing every day is one thing, sure. But his timing, coordination, etc. could still be impacted by lingering effects of his brain injuries. Morneau was able to play regularly but he was still off for a couple years after being able to get on the field.

    4. Sano is 20 pct or so of the way to a full season at the plate (112 PA) and still has an OPS+ over 150.

      Can we have nice things?

      1. If he maintained that over the season, he would have the same OPS+ at the same age as Miguel Cabrera, who was in his third season at the time.

    5. Plouffe! (or Plouffe!!!) was the name of his now-deleted MLBlog, with a URL something like mntwinsprospect.mlblogs.com.
      In it, he had a wonderful mspaint drawing of his time fishing with Delmon.

  5. On Saturday evening, YouthLink, a local nonprofit that is trying to eradicate teenage homelessness is having a fundraiser at Canturbury. There will be food trucks and horseracing, and 100% of the proceeds from the food trucks are going to YouthLink. I'll be there, and it should be a fun time. Doors open at 5:30.

    1. I really don't understand why, a few weeks ago, they decided they'd rather have Fryer as the backup than Herrmann, and now they decided to DFA Fryer so they can bring Herrmann back. I mean, it doesn't bother me to lose Fryer, other than that he's a human being and I'm sure it's tough on him and his family. But it just seems so inconsistent. I like it when teams make moves, even minor moves, for actual reasons, rather than just making them at random.

        1. In seven games (21PA's): Fryer hit .167/.286/.222 with 3 BB and 11* K's. His minor league stats: .269/.359/.396

          In 25 games (72 PA's): Herrmann hit .156/.239/.281 with 6 BB to 21 K's. His minor league stats: .263/.352/.384

          My take: Herrmann's two years younger and has nearly 100 more games (and more recent experience) as an outfielder...that's about the long and short of it.

          *K's in 11 of his last 13 plate appearances

          1. I agree with Herrmann over Fryer, although I don't think either one of them is any good. But Herrmann was two years younger a few weeks ago, too, and had more experience as an outfielder a few weeks ago, and at that time they wanted Fryer over Herrmann. Again, I really don't think it makes any difference. The moves just seem random to me, and I don't like that.

            1. We're definitely not in disagreement here, but a few weeks ago, they hadn't given Fryer a shot with the big club. Though I'd argue (right alongside you probably) that 21 PA's isn't really much of a shot, perhaps they felt Fryer was more of a known quantity. With Chris hitting .304/.373/.505 in 60 games with Rochester last year, perhaps they though he could get a kick-start with a few weeks in AAA?

              I guess I'm just hoping to convince myself (and you) that it's not "random."

              1. Actually, Fryer had been up before. He was in 6 games in 2013 and 28 games in 2014. He'd also had cups of coffee with Pittsburgh in 2011 and 2012. But Fryer had hit nearly .300 in AAA this year. Only 187 at-bats, and not really a reason to think he could hit, but maybe they thought they owed it to him to bring him up for a few weeks before they sent him on his way. Who knows?

                1. I'll tell you who knows - someone. Someone, somewhere knows what the plan is.

                  You're correct about Fryer. I meant a shot with the big club this year since, as you pointed out, he was hitting nearly .300 (.299/.385/.354) in Rochester while Herrmann was doing nothing up here.

                  I'm trying to frame my thinking in terms of, "What are they doing (or attempting to do) to help this club next year?" because it seems fairly obvious the moves behind Suzuki aren't meant to improve the catcher position. They don't have an heir apparent for Kurt, but still need someone behind him on the bench this year. Bigger picture, they have a spotty bullpen and their starters are middling, so opening up a spot on the 40-man for a pitcher that could potentially help down the road makes sense.

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