So our refrigerator died last night. Who knew that coffee-making refrigerators were even a thing?
89 thoughts on “There Goes the Fridge”
*raises hand*
Dido. Saw a Keurig one two weeks ago at an appliance store.
I like to think I'm fairly "with it" in terms of keeping up with the times, but stuff like this puts me firmly into old man GOML territory. Why, oh why, do I need a fridge that makes coffee? To me, that's just one more thing on the fridge that can break. And don't get me started on smart fridges and the inherent risks of what is assuredly a very weak batch (ifany) of security software. I don't need some kid in Estonia hacking my fridge.
I would like to have the lawn next to yours so I can further tell people to get off of it.
I'll move into this neighborhood.
Any Mid-Century Modern or Prairie School homes available in this neighborhood?
I am in favor of coffee-making fridges. After all, I am a devotee of "cold brew". 😉
We bought a new one from BB. Their prices were very competitive, it was on sale & no interest with payments for 18 months with their credit card.
We have been very happy with it, though the ice maker takes forever to dispense and I'll echo Algonad's comment from October (responding to cheaptoy & SBG) - I would prefer being able to access the pantry door without opening the fridge.
Heh, totally the same situation, down to the vague burning smell followed by warm food. A bonus of being vegetarian is that less $$ will be lost due to bad food! (Dairy and eggs are in a cooler with ice right now, so they should survive. And the veggies and fruit from the fridge should be fine too.)
Assuming the repair guy can't fix it this afternoon, we'll be shopping tonight. I don't need anything fancy, but I'd love to not have a side-by-side model because the left-hand side is blocked from fully opening by cabinets, and that's just annoying. I would prefer not to have a water/ice dispenser either--one less* thing to deal with (and keep clean).
*fewer (?)
*It's quantitative so fewer would be correct, but fewer people than ever seem to be familiar with Strunk & White so less is probably the more common usage.
Joe Mauer as a leadoff hitter: 167/259/167 in 27 PA.
His Ks are up, too.
He's slumped all month and the leadoff thing is just part of that.
Oh pshaw. That's not how baseball works. Closers are only good in the 9th inning. Leadoff hitters are born, not made. Etc.
Happy Syttende Mai everybody!
Day Two of being at home on Dad Vacation with the Poissonier. (Mrs. Hayes went back to work yesterday.) The Poissonier & I hit up the grocery store yesterday for the weekly shop, which went off without a hitch despite the store being under construction. When I got home I made some Cook's Illustrated enchiladas, offering an olfactory greeting to Mrs. Hayes in the evening. Today we are washing diapers and making curry meatballs. Obviously hands will be washed in between those tasks!
Are you cloth diapering?
Some people are dedicated to washing everything.
I know, right? Hands?
Stupid Raccoons.
We are. It's been going well, but we'll see how it stands up once she starts daycare in a couple of weeks.
Daycare is a challenge we didn't have to worry about.
If you keep at it did the long run and are interested, we'll hopefully be having a supply of larger diapers available by the end of the summer.
We had a healthy supply that I'm not sure has been sold off yet. Maybe could cut you a deal. Only the finest bamboo fiber inserts or whatever the hell they were...
I posted the link elsewhere, but if you thought Jose Berrios was worthy of being brought up in the first place, why would you send him back down after four starts? We're not competing for anything but a high draft pick. Why are the team's future stars not getting some seasoning?
Ryan's job has to be forfeit after this season, right?
Needs to work on fielding bunts.
I left my wallet in my other pants, otherwise I'd give you a WGOM buck.
I got you covered.
I don't get this progression either. Can they really not give guys experience at the major league level and work on things with them? Is AAA the exclusive spot for seasoning? Learning on the job ist verboten? I guess, in this case, it depends on who really gets the slot, but judging by the Buxton move, we're going to waste the time and experience on not-the-future.
I assume this to be the banner I still haven't gotten.
Found four more nice morels yesterday.
Reminds me, I should follow-up offsite with the Dread Pirate.
Given the way this season is going, I'd be hunting for something more psychoactive than morels.
Here's what's nuts - the whole experiment of Sano in Right Field is predicated on the premise of him Learning On The Job!
From what I read, superstar prospect Taylor Rogers will take his place.
Guys, I think Jeff's head just exploded.
There's probably going to be nothing here that I haven't said before, so please feel free to ignore it if you like.
Of course it's not always wrong to send someone, even a top prospect, back to the minors. But it's not always right, either. I'd feel a lot better about this if I could see that the Twins were making individual decisions based on individual cases. But their decision always seems to be to send a guy back down.
There are things you can learn in AAA, of course, but only so many. At some point, the only way to learn how to do something is to do it. I learned some things in law school, but the only way I could learn to be a lawyer was to be one. I learned some things in seminary, but the only way I could learn to be a pastor was to be one. I had to actually jump in, and struggle sometimes, and make some mistakes, and learn from them. It's the same in baseball. You can learn some things in the minors, but the only way you can learn to get big league hitters out is to face big league hitters. The only way you can learn to hit big league pitching is to face big league pitching. You have to jump in, and struggle sometimes, and make some mistakes, and learn from them.
The Twins seem to think that players should come to them as fully-formed major league players, with nothing more to learn. That's why we always hear, "We want to see him dominate at AAA before we bring him up." Very few players dominate at AAA. Lots of good major league players, and in fact some very good major league players, did not dominate at AAA. A lot of good players struggled in the majors initially, too. Check out Frank Viola's first couple of years. Check out the first few months of Gary Gaetti's career. Torii Hunter is another one. The Twins are holding players to an unreasonable and unrealistic standard.
And what's even more frustrating is that this is the perfect year to let some young players learn in the majors. The team is going nowhere. Even if we assume that they're going to play better, it would be a comeback for the ages if they were to make the playoffs. Now is the time to let these guys get better in the major leagues. And in fact, maybe they would progress faster if they didn't have to worry about being sent back to Rochester the first time they hit a rough patch.
And another thing, as has been mentioned before, is that it's another example of the inability of the Twins to make a plan and stick with it. We were told that the reasons for the Aaron Hicks trade were to open up center field for Byron Buxton and upgrade at catcher. Buxton got three weeks (part of which he was hurt) and was sent down; Murphy got sporadic playing time and was sent down. Duffey was told that they wanted him to work on some things and not worry about his spring training stats. Then he was sent back to Rochester because he had bad spring training stats. Trevor May was told to prepare himself to compete for a starting job. He got three spring training starts and was sent to the bullpen. We were told that when they brought Berrios up it would be to stay. He got four starts and was shipped out. And these are just examples I can think of off the top of my head.
It is what it is, and obviously I could rant all day and it's not going to change anything. But I continue to have no confidence in the management of this team, I see no reason to think things will get better (they may have a good year again sometime, but I'm talking long-term) as long as this management group is in place, and I see no reason to think this management group will not be in place as long as the Pohlads own the team.
Preach it Brother Jeff!
I remember feeling like Cuddyer also got jerked around a lot before establishing himself on the Twins.
In addition to sending down prospects quickly after a slow start, they also tend to stick with guys who have a hot start for too long. This is especially annoying when the player's minor league track record is spotty, at best, like Santana and Rosario.
Yeah, Cuddyer really was ruined by that, wasn't he?
No. But does that mean it helped him?
Considering the plan for this year - as implemented in the offseason - has resulted in a dumpster fire, I can certainly see some reason in Seth's suggestions.
I think Spycake pokes a significant hole in that idea, though. A lot of the guys we would want traded aren't going to get you much of a return and are probably going to require packages in order to convince another team to take on the salary, and I don't think any team in sports would simply cut five or six veterans on August 1st to get their youngsters playing time.
I don't see what Mastroianni gives the team that Buxton doesn't, and after two minutes of struggles for Buxton, he's back to raking in AAA again. I'm not saying he doesn't have anything to prove in AAA, but maybe he doesn't need to prove any more than he already has in order to be given the chance that the number one prospect in baseball should be given.
Holy crap, Spycake is still around? How many other people from the DTFC days are still active?
Gonzalez just got the ax in Atlanta. I suppose that Molitor's got about 3.75 losing seasons left in him. Not sure how that projects for the FO.
Molitor will lose his job before TR does. Of course, Ryan could decide to retire again.
Since when did it become such a bad thing for a guy to be sent down to the minors when he's having zero success in the majors. I mean, Berrios' ERA is over 10 and he's walking batters by the armful. The Twins aren't giving up on him. They're giving him a chance to regain his confidence and form in a less pressured environment before he comes back up. The same goes for Buxton. He was striking out in half of his at-bats. It wasn't just that these guys were not succeeding it was how they struggled. Both looked completely overmatched. All players learn from that is that they can't play at that level. Plus while smart fans will know there's a process and even talented young players will struggle at times, there's still fans already thinking that Buxton is a bust, so you know it wouldn't take long for the same fans to think the same thing of Berrios and start to express their displeasure with him. Hopefully, both will find their mojo quickly in AAA and be back up before too long.
Berrios was walking too many guys, but saying a guy that has 20 strikeouts in 15 innings is "completly overmatched" is ridiculous.
The frustration comes from the constant ups-and-downs instead of just sticking with a guy through his struggles.
You can't stick with a guy when he can't make it out of the first inning. He needs to work things out -- send him down. He knows what he needs to do now.
He didn't make it out of the first inning in one outing. You make it sound like he never had.
That was enough for me
I think including the strikeouts in the picture is a fair point. His xFIP is 4.82 and that's including the huge walk rate. It's a tough call how long you keep a guy around in this situation--you don't want him developing a case of the Ankiels--but he does have some room for improvement on his AAA walk rate, and that many walks can demoralize a team, so I think it's a tough call.
It would be an easier move to accept if the Twins didn't at least seem to be sending guys up and down a lot. Like with Buxton, is this just Hicks all over again where Hicks never spent a full season with the team? Is the Twins' major league coaching staff unable to coach players to make adjustments when they get to the majors?
K rate tells you how good his stuff is. An ERA over 10 and a FIP of 7.36 says overmatched to me as far as his ability to locate his stuff. I don't think he's that far off but let him go down, give himself a chance to catch his breath, enjoy some success and come back up with a better idea of what he needs to do to succeed. Sending him back to the mound against the Blue Jays in his next start after being shellshocked from the last one would be cruel and unusual punishment. Now sending him down and not calling him back up again this year would also be stupid, but no one has said that is what's happening.
Garza didn't make it out of the 3rd in his MLB debut. I remember that being a painful experience. But they sent him out for his next start and he went 5 innings. And then the start after that he went 6 innings. Then the start after that he went 7.2 innings.
Berrios isn't a 13-year-old kid. Yes, everyone has an ego and getting rocked is going to hurt that ego, but cruel and unusual punishment? I doubt he's that fragile, but at some point if you treat someone like they are fragile, they will be fragile. Half the point of baseball for me is learning the lesson that sometimes you get knocked on your ass but you get up and give it another shot anyway. What are they going to do if he struggles in his first playoff start some year? Sit him on the bench so his feelings can recover?
Why bring him up for four starts? I didn't see overmatched. I saw a kid with extreme potential and a lot of nerves. He's not going to learn to settle those down in AAA.
One part that frustrates me is that the quick hooks shown to Berrios and Buxton (and JR Murphy, I guess) is that the guys with more experience are given an awful lot of slack. Suzuki, Santana, and Rosario have also been terrible and Ricky Nolasco is still Ricky Nolasco.
Is Rogers going to start or relieve? Maybe Gibson is coming back before Berrios' next start and they wanted another bullpen arm in the meantime?
Also, all of these debuts have the feeling of "hey! look! we're bringing up a new player! it's the future, you guys are excited about the future, right?" then cutting to two weeks later, when the kid struggles a bit and going "nothing to see here! he needs more seasoning. he'll be back soon." It all feels like a carney shouting at passersby.
By sending all these prospects down, Billy Smith is just trying to goose up attendance in Rochester.
That one ^ is at 1:25,000 scale. This one's a bit zoomed out at 1:100,000
The Russkies were crazy: Red lines for elevation and brown for built-up areas?
My location is just barely on the Minneapolis 1 map.
How in the blazes are you going to read the contours at night with your red-lens flashlight?
Perhaps the Russkies used teal lenses?
If you like maps (my dad used to order paper maps directly from the USGS for his hunting areas, and got me one of New Ulm), you can get multi-layer PDF maps for free.
You can toggle the underlying aerial photos, ground cover, relief-shading, anything!
Before I go to a new area, I print out multiple maps with the exact same window with different options. (Zoom, Print-screen, paste to a word Doc, Crop.)
It gives a lot better information than MN state park maps.
Unfortunately, Alaska is under-served by these modern maps, and most all the site has is scans of old paper maps, some with crease lines, water marks, or handwriting.
Also, MN has this site. Elevation increments to 2 feet!
Huh. I somehow missed the fact that we have Hughes until after 2019.
I will admit that I was ok with the Hughes extension. His numbers were great that year and there was some logic to saying his bad numbers in NY were partially due to thehome park.
I was never ok with the Suzuki extension. Career best BABIP screamed unsustainable.
Oh, I have no problem with the Hughes extension either. I just missed it somehow.
I still think he can turn it around and be a decent middle of the rotation pitcher.
I really liked the initial decision to sign Hughes - take a guy who gives up too many HR and put him in a bigger park. But I don't understand tying a guy up after a big-time outlier of a season only 1 year into a 3-year deal, especially if the player gets a big raise in addition to more guaranteed years. If year 2 had gone similarly to year 1, then I would have understood making the move before Hughes could get close to becoming a free agent.
The Dozier deal was similarly confusing to me, how important is saving a couple million dollars in arbitration to guarantee money without gaining any team control?
This is where I don't understand why Baseball Prospectus hired Gleeman. That column is essentially something that Reusse could have written, except for maybe the one sentence about Garza being the only prospect to have 10+ WAR since 2003*. There's ERA and batting average all over the place. I think the overall argument--that Terry Ryan should go--is totally reasonable, but let's not let the conclusion dictate the argument.
I think his position on the Santana trade is utter hogwash. By the numbers, Martinez was not a strong prospect at the time of the trade (in 2007, the kid hit .265/.331/.376 in the minors), and Aaron's still holding it against the Twins that they didn't get him in the trade after Martinez turned out to be a total bust. Comparing to the Red Sox and Yankees rumors is ridiculous, there's no telling what was actually being offered. It's super hilarious to look back and see Aaron backing Humber as the best player of the deal in 2012, totally giving up on Gomez at 26, in the same column where Aaron accuses the Twins of giving up on Gomez too early.
If we look at the players actually involved in the trade, from 2008-2013 (the course of Santana's Mets contract):
Santana -- 13.7 WAR, $133M
Gomez -- 16.7 WAR, $9.7M
Gomez ('08-'09) + Hardy ('10-'13) -- 15.9 WAR, $25.7M
Humber -- 2.6 WAR, $3M?
It would be one thing to go back to the projections at the time and say that Santana should have been the better value (which I don't think was true at the time, given how big his contract was), but if you're in the present day and looking back at it, the Twins won that trade. They did a ton of other shit wrong, for sure, including a complete inability to put together a pitching staff in nearly forever, but the Santana trade was perfectly reasonable. Even the follow-on Gomez for Hardy trade was reasonable. (Getting rid of Hardy was stupid.)
*This strikes me as bad, but also arbitrary and not put into any context. How well have other teams done on this in that time period? Why 2003, because it leaves out Span from 2002? What was their draft position? I suspect the Twins do not grade out well on this, but at this point, that period is mainly going to be dominated by college draft picks and phenoms. Look at Hicks for instance--if you figure he's roughly comparable to Torii Hunter, had Torii Hunter been drafted in 2008 like Hicks, he would only be at 5.3 rWAR by the end of 2016 (which was the end of 2001 for Hunter.) I still think that Aaron's main point is correct, but the one place he draws in anything like an advanced statistic, he does so with no context and essentially with cherry-picked endpoints. I suppose he could have cherry-picked worse, but I'm just not impressed.
And while we're speaking of the draft, can we go back to the dozens and dozens of times that the Twins were ripped for drafting Revere? At this point he has 6.7 WAR and he's been better than plenty of players picked after him. At this point, he's been about the 10th most valuable player from the first round of that draft.
Discounting Plouffe based on his slash line and position also seems stupid to me--just molding the data to fit the narrative. If we look back to the 2004 draft, then Plouffe was the 10th most valuable player in the first round of that draft, just behind the 9th most valuable player in that round, Glen Perkins.
The Twins have not drafted well in terms of pitching for a while, but overall it is hard for me to complain about their drafting, and as Aaron himself points out, the farm system is well regarded today. Where the Twins have totally failed is in their major league roster construction, in getting the most out of the decent picks that they did make and transitioning them into useful roles with the major league team. I think there are a lot of factors there, but ultimately Terry Ryan is responsible for that as GM.
I disagree with him on Santana trade, but Reusse?! I didn't see a single reference to town ball.
Haha, fair enough. I actually like Reusse at times. When he's not playing the cynical old man, you can tell he enjoys baseball.
Yes, but in some ways it makes it even more frustrating when he just mails it in.
I have to assume that Gleeman's BP feature – evaluating TR's recent tenure through ERA & batting average (at BP?!) – is some kind of attempt at absurdist humor. It's pretty cool that he got writing gig there, but if using stats that were dated back when he was in college is the best he can do, then the question I'm left with is, "What has he been doing to push himself professionally over the last five years?" Because that question is essentially what is the root of Gleeman's argument about Terry Ryan: the field has passed a talented man by because he stopped learning his craft. The methods that made Terry Ryan successful sixteen years ago won't make him successful today. Does Gleeman think that principle applies only to general managers?
Gleeman's writing style certainly hasn't become more compelling, and if anything his voice is less singular than it was when he was establishing himself. I'm not sure what Baseball Prospectus thought they were getting by adding him to the roster, but this column wouldn't have made their cut back at the time Aaron was doing his best work.
He is also the answer to the trivia question - "Who is the only Twin player to swim at the pool across from my house?"
The highlight was the little boy that ran away saying, "Mom, I just got Joe Mauer's autograph! "
We're minutes away from the Timberwolves annual version of the playoffs. I got goosebumps.
And for the millionth consecutive year, the Wolves do not move up in the draft.
You can't say you didn't see it coming.
For sure. And to be fair, with the current place the Wolves are in young talent-wise, I had very little concern over where they ultimately ended up. It was nice.
A week or so late, but I did have the IPA to celebrate Thibs' hiring.
D-Licious!
Awesome, glad to hear you liked it. I have none of those left, but I do still have about half a keg of its non-single-hopped cousin.
Nobody moved up this year. Every pick is in reverse order of record.
*raises hand*
Dido. Saw a Keurig one two weeks ago at an appliance store.
I like to think I'm fairly "with it" in terms of keeping up with the times, but stuff like this puts me firmly into old man GOML territory. Why, oh why, do I need a fridge that makes coffee? To me, that's just one more thing on the fridge that can break. And don't get me started on smart fridges and the inherent risks of what is assuredly a very weak batch (ifany) of security software. I don't need some kid in Estonia hacking my fridge.
I would like to have the lawn next to yours so I can further tell people to get off of it.
I'll move into this neighborhood.
Any Mid-Century Modern or Prairie School homes available in this neighborhood?
I am in favor of coffee-making fridges. After all, I am a devotee of "cold brew". 😉
Gotta love the basement - it's déjà vu all over again.
We bought a new one from BB. Their prices were very competitive, it was on sale & no interest with payments for 18 months with their credit card.
We have been very happy with it, though the ice maker takes forever to dispense and I'll echo Algonad's comment from October (responding to cheaptoy & SBG) - I would prefer being able to access the pantry door without opening the fridge.
Heh, totally the same situation, down to the vague burning smell followed by warm food. A bonus of being vegetarian is that less $$ will be lost due to bad food! (Dairy and eggs are in a cooler with ice right now, so they should survive. And the veggies and fruit from the fridge should be fine too.)
Assuming the repair guy can't fix it this afternoon, we'll be shopping tonight. I don't need anything fancy, but I'd love to not have a side-by-side model because the left-hand side is blocked from fully opening by cabinets, and that's just annoying. I would prefer not to have a water/ice dispenser either--one less* thing to deal with (and keep clean).
*fewer (?)
*It's quantitative so fewer would be correct, but fewer people than ever seem to be familiar with Strunk & White so less is probably the more common usage.
Joe Mauer as a leadoff hitter: 167/259/167 in 27 PA.
His Ks are up, too.
He's slumped all month and the leadoff thing is just part of that.
Oh pshaw. That's not how baseball works. Closers are only good in the 9th inning. Leadoff hitters are born, not made. Etc.
Happy Syttende Mai everybody!
Day Two of being at home on Dad Vacation with the Poissonier. (Mrs. Hayes went back to work yesterday.) The Poissonier & I hit up the grocery store yesterday for the weekly shop, which went off without a hitch despite the store being under construction. When I got home I made some Cook's Illustrated enchiladas, offering an olfactory greeting to Mrs. Hayes in the evening. Today we are washing diapers and making curry meatballs. Obviously hands will be washed in between those tasks!
Are you cloth diapering?
Some people are dedicated to washing everything.
I know, right? Hands?
Stupid Raccoons.
We are. It's been going well, but we'll see how it stands up once she starts daycare in a couple of weeks.
Daycare is a challenge we didn't have to worry about.
If you keep at it did the long run and are interested, we'll hopefully be having a supply of larger diapers available by the end of the summer.
We had a healthy supply that I'm not sure has been sold off yet. Maybe could cut you a deal. Only the finest bamboo fiber inserts or whatever the hell they were...
I posted the link elsewhere, but if you thought Jose Berrios was worthy of being brought up in the first place, why would you send him back down after four starts? We're not competing for anything but a high draft pick. Why are the team's future stars not getting some seasoning?
Ryan's job has to be forfeit after this season, right?
Needs to work on fielding bunts.
I left my wallet in my other pants, otherwise I'd give you a WGOM buck.
I got you covered.
I don't get this progression either. Can they really not give guys experience at the major league level and work on things with them? Is AAA the exclusive spot for seasoning? Learning on the job ist verboten? I guess, in this case, it depends on who really gets the slot, but judging by the Buxton move, we're going to waste the time and experience on not-the-future.
I assume this to be the banner I still haven't gotten.
Found four more nice morels yesterday.
Reminds me, I should follow-up offsite with the Dread Pirate.
Given the way this season is going, I'd be hunting for something more psychoactive than morels.
And hey! Recent studies show they're good for battling depression. Perfect for Twins fans!
Here's what's nuts - the whole experiment of Sano in Right Field is predicated on the premise of him Learning On The Job!
From what I read, superstar prospect Taylor Rogers will take his place.
Guys, I think Jeff's head just exploded.
There's probably going to be nothing here that I haven't said before, so please feel free to ignore it if you like.
Of course it's not always wrong to send someone, even a top prospect, back to the minors. But it's not always right, either. I'd feel a lot better about this if I could see that the Twins were making individual decisions based on individual cases. But their decision always seems to be to send a guy back down.
There are things you can learn in AAA, of course, but only so many. At some point, the only way to learn how to do something is to do it. I learned some things in law school, but the only way I could learn to be a lawyer was to be one. I learned some things in seminary, but the only way I could learn to be a pastor was to be one. I had to actually jump in, and struggle sometimes, and make some mistakes, and learn from them. It's the same in baseball. You can learn some things in the minors, but the only way you can learn to get big league hitters out is to face big league hitters. The only way you can learn to hit big league pitching is to face big league pitching. You have to jump in, and struggle sometimes, and make some mistakes, and learn from them.
The Twins seem to think that players should come to them as fully-formed major league players, with nothing more to learn. That's why we always hear, "We want to see him dominate at AAA before we bring him up." Very few players dominate at AAA. Lots of good major league players, and in fact some very good major league players, did not dominate at AAA. A lot of good players struggled in the majors initially, too. Check out Frank Viola's first couple of years. Check out the first few months of Gary Gaetti's career. Torii Hunter is another one. The Twins are holding players to an unreasonable and unrealistic standard.
And what's even more frustrating is that this is the perfect year to let some young players learn in the majors. The team is going nowhere. Even if we assume that they're going to play better, it would be a comeback for the ages if they were to make the playoffs. Now is the time to let these guys get better in the major leagues. And in fact, maybe they would progress faster if they didn't have to worry about being sent back to Rochester the first time they hit a rough patch.
And another thing, as has been mentioned before, is that it's another example of the inability of the Twins to make a plan and stick with it. We were told that the reasons for the Aaron Hicks trade were to open up center field for Byron Buxton and upgrade at catcher. Buxton got three weeks (part of which he was hurt) and was sent down; Murphy got sporadic playing time and was sent down. Duffey was told that they wanted him to work on some things and not worry about his spring training stats. Then he was sent back to Rochester because he had bad spring training stats. Trevor May was told to prepare himself to compete for a starting job. He got three spring training starts and was sent to the bullpen. We were told that when they brought Berrios up it would be to stay. He got four starts and was shipped out. And these are just examples I can think of off the top of my head.
It is what it is, and obviously I could rant all day and it's not going to change anything. But I continue to have no confidence in the management of this team, I see no reason to think things will get better (they may have a good year again sometime, but I'm talking long-term) as long as this management group is in place, and I see no reason to think this management group will not be in place as long as the Pohlads own the team.
Preach it Brother Jeff!
I remember feeling like Cuddyer also got jerked around a lot before establishing himself on the Twins.
In addition to sending down prospects quickly after a slow start, they also tend to stick with guys who have a hot start for too long. This is especially annoying when the player's minor league track record is spotty, at best, like Santana and Rosario.
Yeah, Cuddyer really was ruined by that, wasn't he?
No. But does that mean it helped him?
Considering the plan for this year - as implemented in the offseason - has resulted in a dumpster fire, I can certainly see some reason in Seth's suggestions.
I think Spycake pokes a significant hole in that idea, though. A lot of the guys we would want traded aren't going to get you much of a return and are probably going to require packages in order to convince another team to take on the salary, and I don't think any team in sports would simply cut five or six veterans on August 1st to get their youngsters playing time.
I don't see what Mastroianni gives the team that Buxton doesn't, and after two minutes of struggles for Buxton, he's back to raking in AAA again. I'm not saying he doesn't have anything to prove in AAA, but maybe he doesn't need to prove any more than he already has in order to be given the chance that the number one prospect in baseball should be given.
Holy crap, Spycake is still around? How many other people from the DTFC days are still active?
Gonzalez just got the ax in Atlanta. I suppose that Molitor's got about 3.75 losing seasons left in him. Not sure how that projects for the FO.
Molitor will lose his job before TR does. Of course, Ryan could decide to retire again.
Since when did it become such a bad thing for a guy to be sent down to the minors when he's having zero success in the majors. I mean, Berrios' ERA is over 10 and he's walking batters by the armful. The Twins aren't giving up on him. They're giving him a chance to regain his confidence and form in a less pressured environment before he comes back up. The same goes for Buxton. He was striking out in half of his at-bats. It wasn't just that these guys were not succeeding it was how they struggled. Both looked completely overmatched. All players learn from that is that they can't play at that level. Plus while smart fans will know there's a process and even talented young players will struggle at times, there's still fans already thinking that Buxton is a bust, so you know it wouldn't take long for the same fans to think the same thing of Berrios and start to express their displeasure with him. Hopefully, both will find their mojo quickly in AAA and be back up before too long.
Berrios was walking too many guys, but saying a guy that has 20 strikeouts in 15 innings is "completly overmatched" is ridiculous.
The frustration comes from the constant ups-and-downs instead of just sticking with a guy through his struggles.
You can't stick with a guy when he can't make it out of the first inning. He needs to work things out -- send him down. He knows what he needs to do now.
He didn't make it out of the first inning in one outing. You make it sound like he never had.
That was enough for me
I think including the strikeouts in the picture is a fair point. His xFIP is 4.82 and that's including the huge walk rate. It's a tough call how long you keep a guy around in this situation--you don't want him developing a case of the Ankiels--but he does have some room for improvement on his AAA walk rate, and that many walks can demoralize a team, so I think it's a tough call.
It would be an easier move to accept if the Twins didn't at least seem to be sending guys up and down a lot. Like with Buxton, is this just Hicks all over again where Hicks never spent a full season with the team? Is the Twins' major league coaching staff unable to coach players to make adjustments when they get to the majors?
K rate tells you how good his stuff is. An ERA over 10 and a FIP of 7.36 says overmatched to me as far as his ability to locate his stuff. I don't think he's that far off but let him go down, give himself a chance to catch his breath, enjoy some success and come back up with a better idea of what he needs to do to succeed. Sending him back to the mound against the Blue Jays in his next start after being shellshocked from the last one would be cruel and unusual punishment. Now sending him down and not calling him back up again this year would also be stupid, but no one has said that is what's happening.
Garza didn't make it out of the 3rd in his MLB debut. I remember that being a painful experience. But they sent him out for his next start and he went 5 innings. And then the start after that he went 6 innings. Then the start after that he went 7.2 innings.
Berrios isn't a 13-year-old kid. Yes, everyone has an ego and getting rocked is going to hurt that ego, but cruel and unusual punishment? I doubt he's that fragile, but at some point if you treat someone like they are fragile, they will be fragile. Half the point of baseball for me is learning the lesson that sometimes you get knocked on your ass but you get up and give it another shot anyway. What are they going to do if he struggles in his first playoff start some year? Sit him on the bench so his feelings can recover?
Why bring him up for four starts? I didn't see overmatched. I saw a kid with extreme potential and a lot of nerves. He's not going to learn to settle those down in AAA.
One part that frustrates me is that the quick hooks shown to Berrios and Buxton (and JR Murphy, I guess) is that the guys with more experience are given an awful lot of slack. Suzuki, Santana, and Rosario have also been terrible and Ricky Nolasco is still Ricky Nolasco.
Is Rogers going to start or relieve? Maybe Gibson is coming back before Berrios' next start and they wanted another bullpen arm in the meantime?
Also, all of these debuts have the feeling of "hey! look! we're bringing up a new player! it's the future, you guys are excited about the future, right?" then cutting to two weeks later, when the kid struggles a bit and going "nothing to see here! he needs more seasoning. he'll be back soon." It all feels like a carney shouting at passersby.
By sending all these prospects down, Billy Smith is just trying to goose up attendance in Rochester.
Guy Clark Dead at 74
Dublin Blues
Dammit.
2016, man...
We're going to see Jerry Jeff Walker at the zoo in August. I would hope there will be some Guy Clark songs performed there.
Paging CH and other map and/or Soviet history enthusiasts - Inside the Secret World of Russia’s Cold War Mapmakers
I found one of the maps of Minneapolis. I want to order the accompanying St. Paul one
That one ^ is at 1:25,000 scale. This one's a bit zoomed out at 1:100,000
The Russkies were crazy: Red lines for elevation and brown for built-up areas?
My location is just barely on the Minneapolis 1 map.
How in the blazes are you going to read the contours at night with your red-lens flashlight?
Perhaps the Russkies used teal lenses?
If you like maps (my dad used to order paper maps directly from the USGS for his hunting areas, and got me one of New Ulm), you can get multi-layer PDF maps for free.
You can toggle the underlying aerial photos, ground cover, relief-shading, anything!
Before I go to a new area, I print out multiple maps with the exact same window with different options. (Zoom, Print-screen, paste to a word Doc, Crop.)
It gives a lot better information than MN state park maps.
Unfortunately, Alaska is under-served by these modern maps, and most all the site has is scans of old paper maps, some with crease lines, water marks, or handwriting.
Also, MN has this site. Elevation increments to 2 feet!
Gleeman writes about the Twins. http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=29211
I doubt he gets a press pass anytime soon.
Huh. I somehow missed the fact that we have Hughes until after 2019.
I will admit that I was ok with the Hughes extension. His numbers were great that year and there was some logic to saying his bad numbers in NY were partially due to thehome park.
I was never ok with the Suzuki extension. Career best BABIP screamed unsustainable.
Oh, I have no problem with the Hughes extension either. I just missed it somehow.
I still think he can turn it around and be a decent middle of the rotation pitcher.
I really liked the initial decision to sign Hughes - take a guy who gives up too many HR and put him in a bigger park. But I don't understand tying a guy up after a big-time outlier of a season only 1 year into a 3-year deal, especially if the player gets a big raise in addition to more guaranteed years. If year 2 had gone similarly to year 1, then I would have understood making the move before Hughes could get close to becoming a free agent.
The Dozier deal was similarly confusing to me, how important is saving a couple million dollars in arbitration to guarantee money without gaining any team control?
This is where I don't understand why Baseball Prospectus hired Gleeman. That column is essentially something that Reusse could have written, except for maybe the one sentence about Garza being the only prospect to have 10+ WAR since 2003*. There's ERA and batting average all over the place. I think the overall argument--that Terry Ryan should go--is totally reasonable, but let's not let the conclusion dictate the argument.
I think his position on the Santana trade is utter hogwash. By the numbers, Martinez was not a strong prospect at the time of the trade (in 2007, the kid hit .265/.331/.376 in the minors), and Aaron's still holding it against the Twins that they didn't get him in the trade after Martinez turned out to be a total bust. Comparing to the Red Sox and Yankees rumors is ridiculous, there's no telling what was actually being offered. It's super hilarious to look back and see Aaron backing Humber as the best player of the deal in 2012, totally giving up on Gomez at 26, in the same column where Aaron accuses the Twins of giving up on Gomez too early.
If we look at the players actually involved in the trade, from 2008-2013 (the course of Santana's Mets contract):
Santana -- 13.7 WAR, $133M
Gomez -- 16.7 WAR, $9.7M
Gomez ('08-'09) + Hardy ('10-'13) -- 15.9 WAR, $25.7M
Humber -- 2.6 WAR, $3M?
It would be one thing to go back to the projections at the time and say that Santana should have been the better value (which I don't think was true at the time, given how big his contract was), but if you're in the present day and looking back at it, the Twins won that trade. They did a ton of other shit wrong, for sure, including a complete inability to put together a pitching staff in nearly forever, but the Santana trade was perfectly reasonable. Even the follow-on Gomez for Hardy trade was reasonable. (Getting rid of Hardy was stupid.)
*This strikes me as bad, but also arbitrary and not put into any context. How well have other teams done on this in that time period? Why 2003, because it leaves out Span from 2002? What was their draft position? I suspect the Twins do not grade out well on this, but at this point, that period is mainly going to be dominated by college draft picks and phenoms. Look at Hicks for instance--if you figure he's roughly comparable to Torii Hunter, had Torii Hunter been drafted in 2008 like Hicks, he would only be at 5.3 rWAR by the end of 2016 (which was the end of 2001 for Hunter.) I still think that Aaron's main point is correct, but the one place he draws in anything like an advanced statistic, he does so with no context and essentially with cherry-picked endpoints. I suppose he could have cherry-picked worse, but I'm just not impressed.
And while we're speaking of the draft, can we go back to the dozens and dozens of times that the Twins were ripped for drafting Revere? At this point he has 6.7 WAR and he's been better than plenty of players picked after him. At this point, he's been about the 10th most valuable player from the first round of that draft.
Discounting Plouffe based on his slash line and position also seems stupid to me--just molding the data to fit the narrative. If we look back to the 2004 draft, then Plouffe was the 10th most valuable player in the first round of that draft, just behind the 9th most valuable player in that round, Glen Perkins.
The Twins have not drafted well in terms of pitching for a while, but overall it is hard for me to complain about their drafting, and as Aaron himself points out, the farm system is well regarded today. Where the Twins have totally failed is in their major league roster construction, in getting the most out of the decent picks that they did make and transitioning them into useful roles with the major league team. I think there are a lot of factors there, but ultimately Terry Ryan is responsible for that as GM.
I disagree with him on Santana trade, but Reusse?! I didn't see a single reference to town ball.
Haha, fair enough. I actually like Reusse at times. When he's not playing the cynical old man, you can tell he enjoys baseball.
Yes, but in some ways it makes it even more frustrating when he just mails it in.
I have to assume that Gleeman's BP feature – evaluating TR's recent tenure through ERA & batting average (at BP?!) – is some kind of attempt at absurdist humor. It's pretty cool that he got writing gig there, but if using stats that were dated back when he was in college is the best he can do, then the question I'm left with is, "What has he been doing to push himself professionally over the last five years?" Because that question is essentially what is the root of Gleeman's argument about Terry Ryan: the field has passed a talented man by because he stopped learning his craft. The methods that made Terry Ryan successful sixteen years ago won't make him successful today. Does Gleeman think that principle applies only to general managers?
Gleeman's writing style certainly hasn't become more compelling, and if anything his voice is less singular than it was when he was establishing himself. I'm not sure what Baseball Prospectus thought they were getting by adding him to the roster, but this column wouldn't have made their cut back at the time Aaron was doing his best work.
Ex-Twins news: The Cubs sign Joe Nathan.
He is also the answer to the trivia question - "Who is the only Twin player to swim at the pool across from my house?"
The highlight was the little boy that ran away saying, "Mom, I just got Joe Mauer's autograph! "
We're minutes away from the Timberwolves annual version of the playoffs. I got goosebumps.
And for the millionth consecutive year, the Wolves do not move up in the draft.
You can't say you didn't see it coming.
For sure. And to be fair, with the current place the Wolves are in young talent-wise, I had very little concern over where they ultimately ended up. It was nice.
A week or so late, but I did have the IPA to celebrate Thibs' hiring.
D-Licious!
Awesome, glad to hear you liked it. I have none of those left, but I do still have about half a keg of its non-single-hopped cousin.
Nobody moved up this year. Every pick is in reverse order of record.