Cup of Coffee

July 25, 2017: Little Electric Chair

65 Comments

So, apparently in the early 70s, Alice Cooper bought a print from his buddy Andy Warhol and promptly forgot all about it until a similar one recently sold quite well at auction. How did he forget? Because early 70s.

65 thoughts on “July 25, 2017: Little Electric Chair”

    1. The three earned runs were his fewest since May 30th, and the five innngs the deepest he's pitched since May 25th. More importantly, he got a bunt down; Dick must've put in a word.

    2. I thought Breslow was DFA'd to make room for Garcia. So is there room on the 40 man roster?

    3. So we think Colon has a better chance to help going forward than Gibson does. Okay....

      1. Or it was a tossup. They can keep Gibson by sending him down. If Colon falters or someone gets hurt, they can call him back up. Colon would have to be DFA-ed essentially.

        1. I was going to add this, too. If they are both interchangeable 5/6 starters, might as well put Gibson at AAA.

            2. But Santiago nearing a return means they'll have to make a decision on Colon soon anyway. Which means they've decided, for the short term, that Colon has a better chance to help than Gibson.

              1. Or like a lot of Twins fans, they're just tired of watching Gibson pitch. It could also be that when convincing Colon to sign with them, they indicated that they would give him a minimum number of starts, which I'm sure was more than two.

                1. I hope the front office has better reasons for their decisions than "We're tired of watching Gibson pitch".

          1. I don't know. xFIP is 3.92 first time through the order and 4.42 second time. K rate is higher first time through and could be even higher if he was just focused on an inning or two.

            Lots of bad starters have been decent relievers. We know what he can do as a starter at this point.

            1. His splits are almost even, so he won't get much help there from having more of a platoon advantage. For the MLB starting pitchers, the league has an OPS against of .736 the first time through the order and .781 the second time, so I don't see Gibson as being an extreme case. For him, it's .807 and .867.

              1. But, that's the entire point of making him a reliever. Converting him to a reliever is intended to improve the overall numbers, not to leverage his splits. Leveraging his splits would mean converting him to a ROOGY.

                As documented, his OPS-against are below average for a starter. He'll eventually be a failed starter. What happens to failed starters? You convert them to relievers in hopes they get the relieving bonus. If he fails there too, then you either become a handed-specialist or if your splits remain even, you're out of MLB.

                1. Your splits aren't going to get better because you become a reliever. You become a reliever because you have good splits so it can be taken advantage of. A manager can choose when to put a reliever in, such as when mostly right-handed batters are due up or even in a long-relief role, you can put in a right-handed reliever in after a left-handed starter to face a lineup that's designed for the lefty.

                  I get that pitchers should get a boost from relieving because they don't have to save stuff for late in the game and batters generally only get one look at them. I just don't see Gibson as one to get a better benefit from it than most.

                  1. Handedness is not really the most important part of the starting-to-relief transition, IMO. I think it has more to do with how many plus pitches you have. As a reliever, you can get by with one really good pitch. As a starter, you need more. That's the first consideration, and then you worry about platoon splits second.

    4. The Bartolo Colon Experience has also cost the Twins Justin Haley, as they have returned him to Boston rather than make a spot for him. Of course, you may or may not consider that a loss.

      1. That's assuming Haley would have been called up to the team if Colon wasn't signed. I'm not so sure about that. I think if Colon wasn't signed, Gibson would have stayed in the rotation after the Garcia trade, so there still wouldn't be a spot on the 25-man for Haley.

  3. Two songs running through my head this morning: "Not the Kid" and "As Good As I Once Was."

    Took the family to the pool last night. Went off the diving board a few times, and actually tried a dive, thinking to myself "I used to do this all day, every summer. Just like riding a bike, right?" Wrong. I'm sure my form was not up to snuff and my right shoulder gave as it hit the water. Not "gave" gave, like, it was still usable no problem, just that it sort of buckled. Anyway my sinuses were a wreck all night long, and today my upper right half feels exactly like you'd expect.

    It's probably a good thing I didn't try to recreate my old backflips...

    1. I've never been able to "dive" off a diving board. I just can't get the rhythm to use the board for a bounce.

      I did try out the 1 meter and 3 meter diving platforms at SDSU fifteen years ago- I can't imagine jumping off a 5 meter board, much less a 10 meter one.

      1. I dove off (dived off of? (nothing sounds right here)) a 3 meter springboard, and jumped off of (but most certainly did not dive from) the 5 meter platform at SJU back when I was in college. I didn't have the guts to dive off of the 3 meter last night... maybe someday I'll try that again, and confirm my mortality.

    1. To be fair, that wasn't exactly a random selection. All of the donated brains were suspected of having CTE. That said, it's still pretty damning.

      1. The sample is obviously biased, but:

        About 1,300 former players have died since the B.U. group began examining brains. So even if every one of the other 1,200 players had tested negative — which even the heartiest skeptics would agree could not possibly be the case — the minimum C.T.E. prevalence would be close to 9 percent, vastly higher than in the general population.

        1. I'm with folks on the "Football" = "Bad For Your Brain",
          But the statistical skeptic in me thinks:
          1. Bias of being dead, not just suspected of CTE
          I'm thinking of my great-uncle-in-law, who's still kicking and seems to have all of his faculties. He talks kindof funny, but so does his brother who played pro basketball (in Europe), so I think it's just the central MN old-timer's accent. ("You Betcha" etc.) Not that I know anything about his brain condition.

          2. How carefully have they looked for this in general population brains?

      1. Levi Michael? He's still in the organization, playing with Chattanooga. Nothing particularly stands out about him, though, and he's a twenty-six-year-old playing in AA. He seems to have gone backward since 2015, when he had a good year at AA. You never know, but it's not looking good for him.

      2. Stuck in AA. Did well in 2014 across A+ and AA and then better in 2015 in AA. His 2016 however was his worst season yet and now his AA line is almost identical to his A+ line, each at 900+ PAs.

    3. One of the neater aspects of this list is that 3 of the top 5 play SS.* I don't remember the Twins ever really having a SS prospect.

      * I suppose we can count Gordon as a 2B, since I think that's where he projects out. Still...

      1. Plouffe was the Twins' selection in the first round of the '04 draft and played the majority of his innings at short until 2012... Dozier was primarily a shortstop until 2013, playing over 80% of his total minor league innings there.

        Looking further back, Knoblauch was drafted (1st round, 1989) as a shortstop, but moved to second base when he started AA ball. The Twins weren't the first team to sign Guzmán, of course, but he played a full season at New Britain before joining the Twins.

          1. This.

            I take CH's point on Plouffe, but I'm guessing he wasn't ever too high on Top 100 Prospects lists, if he ever appeared. That the Twins have 2 listed in the top 50... it is exciting to me.

        2. Sano was a shortstop when he was signed. Of course, everyone knew he wasn't going to stay there for long, but still, when he plays first base with Dozier at second Polanco/Adrianza at short and Escobar at third, that gives the Twins 4 players that were originally shortstops playing their infield.

      2. #9.

        Edit: Now reading this as "why isn't he with the Twins" rather than his ranking. I defer to Rhu_Ru on that one.

      4. He got off to a poor start, then went on the disabled list for about six weeks. His season numbers aren't all that impressive, but he's pitched pretty well in five starts since coming back from the DL. He doesn't strike out a lot of guys, though.

        1. From the writeup on Stewart:

          In some ways, Stewart is still learning how to pitch. The Twins feel he is buying more into being a complete pitcher, with this being a very big year for him developmentally. He might be a touch below a top-shelf starter, but he still has plenty of ceiling.

          This might have been written before the season. It has his MLB ETA at 2017, which I don't see happening except maybe in September.

  7. CC to mags: I'm at the porterhouse covent garden, and the oyster is good, but missing a je ne sais quoi.

    1. Je ne sais quoi or not ... I'm still jealous.
      After stumbling upon a bottle of that at the local dram shop some years ago, I have not seen it since. Alas, Marooned on Hog Island is also a thing of the past.

    2. Totes jelly that you're a) having an oyster stout and b) in London.

      What does that pint run in her Majesty's currency?

  8. Going to share this again, because it's awesome enough that I don't want it to get missed (and because I put it in an older thread, which wasn't a great idea on my part):

  9. 14th round pick Derek Molina is making his GCL debut today. 3 shutout innings thus far with 5 Ks, 0 BBs and 2 hits. He's 19 years old out of Merced CC in California.

    1. That was his final line. He was replaced in the fourth inning. I'm assuming it's because he's on a limited pitch count. The box doesn't give pitch counts.

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