30 thoughts on “June 23, 2017: Jimmy Buckets”

  2. If you're a pitcher in the Twins minors or a fringe veteran biding your time in someone else's system, you gotta like your chances of getting a sip of coffee this year.

    1. Some interesting names on the 2017/2018 free agent pitchers list, too. I wonder where Captain Cheeseburger will end up next year, and how much he'll sign for ($24 million current).

  3. For Father's Day I was given one of those Red Copper pans you see advertised in the infomercials (the first time I ever saw one I watched the infomercial for at least 15 minutes, then told my wife "I know it's after midnight, and I've been drinking, but I need this."). It has been every bit as awesome as advertised so far. I made a sausage/tomato pasta on Monday, we've used it multiple times for eggs, I've both fried and steamed vegetables, tonight I'm making stuffed french toast, it cleans beautifully, and our frustrating electric burners have been transformed into a much more even cooking surface. Hearty recommend.

    1. sounds interesting. my cast irons are still going strong though. plus there's the added bonus of being able to beat a home intruder to a pulp with them.

      1. ditto. I will be interested to see Phyllo's assessment in a few months to know more about durability.

        I have cheapo non-stick pans that get a lot of use for frying eggs, frying potatoes, and sauteeing vegetables, an uncoated aluminum fry pan that I got years ago at a restaurant supply store (super-durable, oven-safe, etc., but not exactly non-stick), and a trusty cast iron for cooking meats at very high temps.

        and I'm now looking at this CR recommendation for a $35 frying pan.

        1. It's still a pretty hefty pan, and comes with a lifetime warranty, so I suspect durability won't be too much of an issue, but we shall see. Tonight will be the first trip into the oven, and we'll see if that handles as well as the stove-top.

          1. I just discovered a miracle cleanser for my expensive grey-coated German ceramic pan.

            NaHCO3 + H+ → Na+ + CO2 + H2O, or as they say in the parlance of our times, baking powder.

            Make a paste with a little water, add a nylon scrubbie, and elbow grease. Got most of the burnt-in debris. Still have more work to do tho.

            1. Wait, Baking Powder is just Baking Soda (the NaHCO3) plus [something]? How am I just learning this now?

              P.S. I put the subscripts and superscripts in for you.
              HTML:
              "<sub>subscript</sub>" comes out like "subscript"
              "<sup>superscript</sup>" comes out like "superscript"

  4. for the second time in three weeks, I'm taking a vacation day. w00t! Heading to Tahoe again (north shore this time, to spend the weekend with friends at their place in Incline Village). I will be so sad to escape the 105F heat for a couple days....

  5. there's hot takes, and there's spit takes. Seems like a lot of the instant grades being issued by so-called "experts" don't understand that grades should be relative to expectations that go with draft position, rather than some sort of "absolute" value. And then there's this stupidity:

    The Celtics got the player they wanted at No. 3, and we expect Tatum to develop into a solid offensive player in Boston. However, we're docking Danny Ainge a letter grade or two here for the Wolves' acquisition of Jimmy Butler. According to reports, the Celtics were unwilling to include the No. 3 pick in a trade for Butler.

    and this weird claim:

    Of course, the other half of this draft for the Nets was trading Brook Lopez and the 27th pick for D'Angelo Russell and Timofey Mozgov, which bumps our grade up from a B+ to a well-earned A.

    and this idiotic hyperbole:

    The Bulls sold the No. 38 pick to the Warriors, who picked Oregon's Bell to add another ridiculously versatile athlete to Kevin Durant, Steph Curry and the rest of their already-stacked roster.

    Bell will destroy people's souls in Golden State's defensive scheme, and if he develops a 3-pointer, the NBA might as well cancel the Association forever.

    I mean, seriously? The dude is a mid-2nd rounder, and he's going to "destroy people's souls"???

  6. Dick move?

    Her team extracted exosomes from human foreskin cells and modified them so that they would contain certain kinds of RNA that can turn off specific genes. They engineered the exosomes to target a gene called KRAS, which is commonly linked to pancreatic cancer. When mutated, the KRAS gene acts like an on-off switch that gets stuck in the “on” position, causing cancer cells to divide and grow.

    Researchers loaded the RNA into exosomes, which they then injected into mice with pancreatic cancer. The engineered exosomes were taken up by pancreatic cells with mutated KRAS. Once inside the cancer cells, the exosomes were able to switch off the gene in mice, stopping tumor growth and extending the animals’ life spans.

    1. All kinds of interesting cancer research.

      My dad's neighbor just got diagnosed with the same type of cancer that my mom had. Could be a coincidence but seems odd since it isn't that common. Maybe I should call Erin Brokovich.

    1. I can see Wimmers (probably pass through waivers and be back in Rochester), but isn't Melotakis an up-and-comer?

      1. Just looking at his minor league numbers, I wouldn't rate Melotakis very highly. The main strike against him is that he was mostly a reliever in the minors, so he probably doesn't have a very good secondary offering. The one season he was a starter, his SO/9 plummeted from about 12 to about 7. And while his numbers the last couple years would be really intriguing if he was a starter, for a reliever I'm not super impressed and at 26, he's not really young any more.

        1. I agree that Melotakis doesn't exactly look like a star in the making, but I can find players on the forty-man roster that I'd have gotten rid of first.

        2. The Twins' own website has Melotakis ranked as their 20th best prospect. Randy Rosario, who is still on the 40-man, is 27th. Hildenberger is 18th. Scouting report on Melotakis:

          While the Twins have a fair share of hard-throwing right-handed relievers in their system -- just look up and down this list for proof -- they're not afraid of left-handed power arms, either. Melotakis, drafted back in 2012 as a college reliever but initially developed as a starter, was settling back into a bullpen role when he needed Tommy John surgery and missed all of 2015. He had an encouraging first year back, capped off by a very strong showing in the Arizona Fall League.

          The key is that Melotakis made it through 2016 healthy, save for one DL stint due to fatigue, as his workload was carefully monitored. The stuff came back, with a fastball that topped out at 96-97 mph and sat at 94 mph to go along with a power curve in the mid-80s. He does have a changeup he worked on when he was starting, but he didn't throw it much last year. His command is a work in progress, but that should improve the further removed from the surgery he gets.

          The kid gloves will come off now, with Melotakis getting the chance to show how he responds to things like pitching on consecutive nights or multiple innings in one outing. How his stuff holds up then might determine how quickly he gets his first callup to the big leagues.

          I'll be shocked if Melotakis clears waivers. He's averaging more than a K an inning, has plenty of velocity, has 3 times as many Ks as walks and has a WHIP less than 1. He has a good case for being the guy called up right now and they just DFA him? Why not DFA Turley or Rosario or even J.R. Murphy? Why sign Dillon Gee to begin with? When they lose Melotakis (and they will), the Twins will have traded a power lefty nearly ready for the majors for a washed-up Gee who was on nobody's roster.

          1. The Twins' website hardly reflects the inner workings of how the FO views player evaluation. Rosario is younger than Melotakis and up until last season was primarily starting. It does not surprise me that the FO views Rosario as being more valuable than Melotakis.

            He's averaging more than a K an inning, has plenty of velocity, has 3 times as many Ks as walks and has a WHIP less than 1. He has a good case for being the guy called up right now and they just DFA him?

            Those stats are not necessarily that great for a minor league reliever. His K/BB ratio looks good if you're focused solely on the ratio, but if you're looking to project him, starting with a 3.1 BB/9 rate in AA (which is where he's mostly pitched this year) is unimpressive. MLB hitters have way better plate discipline and if he's getting the strikeouts by getting AA hitters to chase pitches that MLB hitters aren't going to chase, then he could easily wind up as a guy with such a bad walk rate that he can't possible throw enough strikeouts to pitch his way out of it. I'd have more faith in it translating if he was a starter, where he might have a good secondary pitch but is struggling with a third pitch that he could ditch as a reliever. There's always a chance one of these guys pans out, but his ceiling is probably mediocre reliever and I doubt he's there today.

      1. I wonder if they see Gee more as a reliever or a starter. He's been pretty middling as a starter, but if they moved him to the bullpen, he might be ok.

        Kind of makes sense to swap Hildenberger and Melotakis, at least from a statistical standpoint, since Hildenberger's been doing at least as well this year but one level higher. But he's still been a career reliever in the minors, so I have low expectations.

        1. My guess is that Gee will start at least until Santiago comes back. Then it'll probably depend on how he, Mejia, and Gibson are doing. But that's really just a guess.

    1. That Spruce Grouse is something special. The Waxwing, though, it missing its namesake. But it's not juvenile plumage, either.

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