If anything is left on your summer to-do list, now would be the time to get it done.
87 thoughts on “September 21, 2017: Last Chance”
Dr. Chop just found out she has skin cancer. According to her Dermatologist its the "best" kind of cancer to have. Years of living in the elevated desert and a fair northern european complexion created an excellent environment to breed this kind of cancer. Wear your sunscreen, citizens.
Sorry to hear that.
She is in our prayers.
My best to her and to you, meat. May treatment bring total remission quickly.
Best wishes, dude.
Mrs. Runner has had 2-3 different Mohs surgery for skin cancer on her chin over the years. Don't just wear sunscreen, do periodic visual inspections.
I'm so sorry. Sending good wishes to you and Dr. Chop.
My dad has had it before as well; a professor at school comforted me greatly by letting me know he'd had it before as well, and it was "the little c, not the big C." I know it's hard for that to be enough in the moment, but hopefully it dulls the pain a little, like it did for me. Dad, and the professor, both made full recoveries and twenty years later have had no relapses.
Hang in there, man.
Thanks for the well wishes, everyone. Dr. Chop is obviously upset about this, but the prognosis is great and minor surgery is scheduled. The derm did say, "this is the start of a long relationship between us", which I thought was funny.
Once you're down that road, it's like the dentist -- schedule the yearly checkups. Like it's been said, it's scary but it's not unmanageable.
Good to hear - pulling for her!
Best of luck to you & Dr. Chop. Mrs. Rows just went through thyroid cancer surgery and radiation, so we can relate.
I've had countless chunks of skin removed for this same reason...and due to being a pale girl who grew up in the Chihuahua desert.
Good luck to you both. Here's hoping for skill physicians, effective treatment, good healing, and painless insurance interactions!
Yeah, NBBW has some skin thing that she is getting checked, as her sister had some skin cancer. Pale-skinned Norwegians.
Here's your American League Tragic Numbers for Thursday morning. You known MN Twins, these numbers would go down faster if you actually won a game or three.
Oak -- 2
Tor -- 4
Bal -- 5
TB -- 7
Sea - - 7
KC -- 8
Tex -- 9
LAAAA -- 10
You know, Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim California, these numbers would stop going down if you actually won a game or three.
Over each team's past ten games, all seven of the teams with a 1% or greater chance at the AL's second Wild Card have a 4-6 record. Except the Ms, who were 3-7.
The Os started their last ten in the mix, but going 2-8 all-but-ended that.
Rays-Orioles, Royals-Blue Jays, Rangers-Mariners all play each other so there will be some movement tonight regardless of what Twins do.
“Now I know how they hit,” he said. “They like to bunt a lot.
Heh.
Molitor playing the long con.
I can't believe I'm saying this, but some in Minnesota should listen to Girardi's take,
"...A great hitter in Joe Mauer put up a tough at-bat on him.”
I bought Sling.TV and I have the Twins on Fox Sports North for the first time in probably a decade. Right before the Yankees series. Smart of me.
Anyway, earlier in the year I caught a game [somewhere] in which Gimenez was missing balls left and right (and up the middle). Like balls right at his mitt going to the backstop. So it was no fun to see his Yankees effort this week. I realize there were some cross-up pitches and there was some generally bad pitching going on. But, man, he missed ball after ball. Some to the backstop. Some dribbling away to the side leading to no damage. His failures were directly leading to runs in a close game. It was just really unusual.
Has this been his M.O. all year or did I just catch him at too weird times? If Garver is worse at catching than what I saw, lord help the Twins.
Are you sure you weren't watching a clip of HPR's adventures behind the dish at little league?
That must have been game 131. He's not a great catcher but he can actually catch the ball most of the time.
My impression of Gimenez (based solely on watching him this year) is that he will have the occasional off game, but that he's a generally fair-to-decent receiver. I don't quite know what to attribute the lapses to; the game with all the passed balls was a game where Santana's stuff didn't look particularly filthy, and I couldn't detect anything unusual in the weather conditions. Perhaps there was some glare the TV cameras weren't positioned to pick up, or perhaps he'd taken a knock that had him a little rattled. He owned the performance, but (as a good catcher does) didn't elaborate on the underlying problem. By Fangraphs' defensive value he's having a markedly better season behind the dish this year – the best he's had since 2012, and the first time he's had positive value since 2013. It's a three-to-five run swing over those years, from a low of -3.1 (and a -2.9 performance last year) to 1.3 this season.
Beyond passed balls & "wild" pitches, lately it seems like teams are running more on Castro than they are on Gimenez, but they're within a point of one another on CS%, both over their careers and this year. Perhaps teams are picking up on something specific with certain pitchers, because it seems like teams are more successful in running on the Twins recently – particularly when Castro's catching. That's anecdotal; I haven't looked at the numbers for recent games.
Your second paragraph in spades ... seemed like the Yankees were running free all over the place.
At first I thought that observation might just be Brett Gardner, but I realized that other Yankmes had been nearly as aggressive. I'm not accustomed to thinking of the Yankmes as a particularly good baserunning team, but perhaps that's changed. On the other hand, it seemed like the Royals were also being more aggressive on the basepaths in the most recent meeting.
Going back to Aug 1, runners have stolen 9 bases w/ Castro behind the plate (27 games), and he has thrown out 4.
His season total is 40 SB, 14 CS - career average is 26% CS.
In 22 games he's caught, runners have swiped 9 bases with Gimenez receiving, while only 3 have been caught stealing.
Season total is 29 SB, 12 CS - career average is 25% CS.
I'm sure he's better that what he showed in that game. Sure looked like he forgot a contact lens or something.
Replying to most of the comments by saying, yeah, it almost makes you a bit nervous to see a catcher with a couple performances like that. In any case, good to hear I just happened to catch (!) him on two bad days.
Falvey & Levine's housecleaning continues – they have fired the international scouting director who signed Morneau & Kepler (on the good side of his ledger) and Park ByungHo & Nishioka Tsuyoshi . I thought this sentence was interesting:
Norsetter later became international scouting coordinator, focusing on everywhere other than Latin America.
It's not the worst idea in the world if you are a budget shopper--trying to find talent in untapped markets--but sometimes markets are untapped for a reason.
Might be because there's so much talent in Latin America that each country/region has its own director. I know the Twins have facilities in some of the countries.
Rangers released new illustrations of their new park. I think this is all of them. The team didn't make them easily accessible in digital format. The field has a retractable roof. You get a nice view of roof supports and the sky.
The concourse looks nice, but those huge windows seem like it will be very hot when the sun is out. Second, all of the concourses have a view of the field and that's good, but wow are the stands so high.
I wonder if they're planning to equip the park with A/C. I believe Arizona has it, but I'm not sure about Houston. Milwaukee doesn't, and when it gets rainy or humid and the roof is closed, you get swamp ass just from sitting in your seat. I can't stand that place; it's a truly miserable place to catch a game in any less-than-ideal summer weather.
It looks like they're getting rid of most of the incoherent architectural mish-mash of their current ballpark, but I can't say the architecture of the new one suggests anything particularly Texan to me other than its size. It's bland, but with blandness in overabundance. Maybe that's DFW's thing?
What I've found comparing old Busch to the new one is that open concourses means air flow. Not as good as A/C, but it's still a big deal.
The roof looks open on the sides but everything else appears fully enclosed. I don't know if it has the same bowl effect Arizona has to keep the cool air in the building but it might. Seems like they could. But, does it rain that much in Arlington? I didn't think it did so what's the point of the roof if not to protect against the heat. I know the Rangers have a lot of night games because of that. I'm inclined to think AC will be installed.
AZ does have it. I've been in there with the roof open and air conditioning on. The cold air sits down in the park and it was delightful on a 95 degree night.
Seeing these drawings and what I've heard about the Atlanta stadium (I won't call it a ballpark) I say a little prayer that Target Field turned out as nice as it did. Eight years in and it still runs laps around all but a few (Pittsburgh, San Diego, Camden) newer ballparks.
The Twins got everything right about the LOL except for the team they put in it when it opened.
Hold on a minute, that 2010 team won 94 games and had Ji
Jim Thome.
It was the team that followed it that sucked.
I remember JI
JIM THOME fondly. What I don't remember nearly as fondly was _elm_n having the third-highest OPS+ (fourth if you count a third of a season for Morneau), O Hud, and a rotation featuring Pavano, Blackburn, & Slowey.
Pavano? You mean the guy with a 109 ERA+ that went 17-11 in 221 innings? Yeah, he was a real drag.
Yes, I'm unimpressed by a #2 starter with a 109 ERA+. That roatation was pretty weak for a 94 win team. Pavano's WHIP was good and his FIP was serviceable, but that's not a guy who I'm excited to see start a playoff game. He wasn't exactly the most enjoyable to watch at work, period.
He didn't have great stuff but he worked quickly. The slightly less effective righty Buehrle.
Also, O-Dog was worth 2.8 rWAR, which isn't small potatoes. Dozier has been 3.1 thus far this season. In '09, Alexi Casilla was the Twins' primary second baseman and was worth -1.5 rWAR.
I largely remember OHud as having an i-i like knack for running his mouth to the media at the expense of his teammates.
This one reminds me a bit of the stadium that was planned in the 90s that was on the river here. Anyone have illustrations of that? Brick instead of steel now.
This is the best I could find. Not quite the same, but still a baseball field in a football footprint.
That's the one; I'm so glad they didn't build it. The architecture would've been dated very quickly, and there's nothing unique about it. Even though the riverfront location was nice, it would've faced away from the skyline.
I've not seen this rendering before, but it looks just as industrial and awful as Miller Park only with riverfront property. So I agree, glad that was not the winner.
Not surprised. It's always the same architecture firm and Miller Park broke ground in 1996. This illustration is from 1997. I would argue Miller Park is an improvement in footprint, but it's missing the open air part of this stadium.
Actually looking at the firm and it's not the usual Populous (née HOK Sports). It's HKS which partnered with NBBJ. HKS is doing the new Rangers stadium (and the current one) and did Miller Park. NBBJ did Safeco, which broke ground in 1997. I'm not sure which firm had the Twins illustration but you can see the same structure in all of them. Safeco is the best of the group so I think HKS really likes this style and that's too bad.
I keep getting sent to Seattle. Gonna have to check out Safeco one of these days.
Safeco's a treat with the roof open. I've never been there with it closed.
I thought the 1997 proposal was crafted by Ellerbe Becket (the BOB, the TED). Maybe NBBJ consulted on the roof?
Can't find anything to prove that just yet. They did do Hammond Stadium in Fort Myers in 1992 however, so the relationship existed with the team. They also designed Chase Field. Chase Field doesn't have much resemblance to the proposal, but firms collaborated a lot so it's hard to say only by visual appearance.
Edit: Nothing definitive, but found a book about Target Field's history that credits those images to Ellerbe Becket, so I'm considering that good enough.
This is as close as I've found. The credits for the images of the renderings of this design appear to be given to Ellerbe Becket.
Should have put it on the other side of the river. Get riverfront location and the skyline close by. But, you'd have to be okay with righthanders being southpaws.
The Guthrie Theater is where the roof is in that picture and Gold Medal Park is the rest of the stadium.
I don't know if they planned it that way or lucked into it but when they built TF, they nailed that skyline view.
I hadn't seen that before. Looks like they would have had to level the hill the Guthrie is now on and destroy the rest of the Mill Ruins.
One unforseeable bonus of it's "away from the skyline" views... wouldn't have to see that new Vikings monstrosity.
Seeing the Texas park... so glad Target Field has no roof.
We've been hearing about/seeing these youngsters for so long, that I forget how truly young many of the core group of starters are. Address the bullpen, add a decent starter (or two?), and there is a chance this could be a very competitive team over the next 3-4 (6+?) years.
One unfortunate aspect of living in Omaha is dealing with the year-round obsession with Nebraska Football. However with the recent loss to NIU and today's firing of AD Shawn Eichorst it is starting to turn into a full fledged Clown Show. And I'm enjoying every minute of it.
It's all Bill Callahan's fault
Bring Back Frankie.
(or Turner Gill, more plausibly)
I was reading a bit about the NBA and wow do I think they are focused on the symptoms and not the causes. For one thing, as a commenter pointed out--apparently resting a star players for big games is a huge problem, but teams taking a dump all over their home fans to get a better draft pick is totally cool.
The root problem is that home fans would be buying a ticket because they are more interested in the visiting team's star players than they are interested in watching their own team. The issues aren't even unrelated in that if your team is tanking, your fans are more likely to be interested in the visitors than the home team. Is the end goal to emulate the Harlem Globetrotters' business model? Further, could you imagine baseball to mandate that catchers can't rest for a day game after a night game? If you are trying to legislate player rest, you need to examine deeper issues.
ubelmann's NBA commish fixes:
1) Draft order set by how long it has been since you made the playoffs. You keep getting a shot at good draft picks until you make the playoffs, so the worst teams have an incentive to at least get marginally better.
2) No max contracts. I don't see how max contracts have remotely helped parity.
3) A hard cap, with two exceptions--each team can pay one player off the cap, and each year you can buy out one contract off the cap. This would force star players to find different teams or give up tens of millions of dollars. If the league is all about the stars, you spread the stars around.
4) Give players a revenue-sharing bonus. At the end of the season, if players haven't gotten X% of the NBA revenues, then everyone gets a pro-rated bonus to make up the difference. This way the players don't have to be as worried about the specifics of how the cap is structured, since they will get their money in the end one way or the other.
You're welcome, NBA.
Re #4, that's what the NHL does. As I recall, player contracts are in a sort of floating value that will change. They get paid during the year 80-90% of the stated value and the rest is made up at the end of the year once total revenue is calculated and what the player pool size actually is. The salary for that year is based on a pre-season projection of the pool size and the final pool size then adjusts that up or down. If the league made more money than projected, then the players all make a tiny bit more in salary. The reverse is true too.
I do recall Tangotiger writing about how players were annoyed about this situation. But, now I remember I can't differentiate what his solution for it was from the actual method and I may have stated his proposal instead of what actually happens. But, the rough outline is true. Their final salary for the year varies based on league revenue.
I wouldn't want a system that took money back from the players. Psychologically, it's different giving someone something and taking it back, versus giving them a smaller bonus at the end of the year.
I think the hardest thing would be establishing the trust that the books were being kept accurately. I could also potentially see some annoyance that the bonus means their pay is delayed somewhat, but it's not uncommon in other industries to have annual bonuses.
these are great points ubes.
Re: #2, I don't think the players association cares about parity.
Sure. Personally I think they'll get paid better if there is more parity, but they might not believe that.
Francisco Lindor just hit a three-run homer to give Cleveland a 4-1 lead over the Angels in the fifth.
Hooray!
4-1 is the final. Twins Magic Number drops by 1.
Classic Connecticut:
I'm leafing through this magazine we get (not sure why, I never signed up for it, can't imagine NBBW doing that either) called CONNECTICUT Magazine. A jumble of articles on where to eat, where to shop, who are the best facelift doctors, etc. Feels eerily similar to what you get on airlines.
At any rate, there's an article on the Reps and Dems jostling to replace Gov. Daniel Malloy, who said he doesn't plan to run for a third term.
One of the write-ups is on Joe Ganim, current mayor of Bridgeport after serving a 7-yr prison sentence for corruption in the same city. There is a glitch, however - the State Elections Enforcement Commission has unanimously ruled to deny him any public funding, as he is a felon.
Three pages later in the same magazine is an advert for Ganim, Ganim & Ganim PC (personal injury attorneys) Keep Calm, Call Tom. Yeah, same family.
Two pages later is an article about a writer who just wrote Larger than Life about notables in CT, one of which is Joe Gamin, who was asked by Trump "to be my eyes and ears in Connecticut" regarding competing casino schemes in Bridgeport - "Only in Bridgeport", only later to end up in the hoosegow.
America. What a country.
It's like the very worst novel I have read. In which the situation are so utterly unbelievable that I slam the book down and say "yeah... like that would really happen". That is the world (and country) we live in folks.
You should come to Louisiana sometime.
Did I miss the memo? MLB Tonight reporting that Sano is out for the season.
Twins third baseman Miguel Sano continues to rehab his left shin in Minnesota, but manager Paul Molitor said it's becoming more and more unlikely he'll be ready to return before the end of the regular season on Oct. 1.
-
"We haven't talked about a shutdown date," Molitor said. "I think the right thing to do is just stay at the course. He needs to just keep doing his work every day and see when something might change. But obviously with 10 games to go, there's a very uncertain chance we'll see him before that last game against the Tigers. He's just got to keep working like he's got a chance."
Dr. Chop just found out she has skin cancer. According to her Dermatologist its the "best" kind of cancer to have. Years of living in the elevated desert and a fair northern european complexion created an excellent environment to breed this kind of cancer. Wear your sunscreen, citizens.
Sorry to hear that.
She is in our prayers.
My best to her and to you, meat. May treatment bring total remission quickly.
Best wishes, dude.
Mrs. Runner has had 2-3 different Mohs surgery for skin cancer on her chin over the years. Don't just wear sunscreen, do periodic visual inspections.
I'm so sorry. Sending good wishes to you and Dr. Chop.
My dad has had it before as well; a professor at school comforted me greatly by letting me know he'd had it before as well, and it was "the little c, not the big C." I know it's hard for that to be enough in the moment, but hopefully it dulls the pain a little, like it did for me. Dad, and the professor, both made full recoveries and twenty years later have had no relapses.
Hang in there, man.
Thanks for the well wishes, everyone. Dr. Chop is obviously upset about this, but the prognosis is great and minor surgery is scheduled. The derm did say, "this is the start of a long relationship between us", which I thought was funny.
Once you're down that road, it's like the dentist -- schedule the yearly checkups. Like it's been said, it's scary but it's not unmanageable.
Good to hear - pulling for her!
Best of luck to you & Dr. Chop. Mrs. Rows just went through thyroid cancer surgery and radiation, so we can relate.
I've had countless chunks of skin removed for this same reason...and due to being a pale girl who grew up in the Chihuahua desert.
Good luck to you both. Here's hoping for skill physicians, effective treatment, good healing, and painless insurance interactions!
Yeah, NBBW has some skin thing that she is getting checked, as her sister had some skin cancer. Pale-skinned Norwegians.
Here's your American League Tragic Numbers for Thursday morning. You known MN Twins, these numbers would go down faster if you actually won a game or three.
Oak -- 2
Tor -- 4
Bal -- 5
TB -- 7
Sea - - 7
KC -- 8
Tex -- 9
LAAAA -- 10
You know, Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim California, these numbers would stop going down if you actually won a game or three.
Over each team's past ten games, all seven of the teams with a 1% or greater chance at the AL's second Wild Card have a 4-6 record. Except the Ms, who were 3-7.
The Os started their last ten in the mix, but going 2-8 all-but-ended that.
Rays-Orioles, Royals-Blue Jays, Rangers-Mariners all play each other so there will be some movement tonight regardless of what Twins do.
Poetry class:
Dang it, everyone. The Yankees know about our secret weapon now.
Heh.
Molitor playing the long con.
I can't believe I'm saying this, but some in Minnesota should listen to Girardi's take,
I bought Sling.TV and I have the Twins on Fox Sports North for the first time in probably a decade. Right before the Yankees series. Smart of me.
Anyway, earlier in the year I caught a game [somewhere] in which Gimenez was missing balls left and right (and up the middle). Like balls right at his mitt going to the backstop. So it was no fun to see his Yankees effort this week. I realize there were some cross-up pitches and there was some generally bad pitching going on. But, man, he missed ball after ball. Some to the backstop. Some dribbling away to the side leading to no damage. His failures were directly leading to runs in a close game. It was just really unusual.
Has this been his M.O. all year or did I just catch him at too weird times? If Garver is worse at catching than what I saw, lord help the Twins.
Are you sure you weren't watching a clip of HPR's adventures behind the dish at little league?
That must have been game 131. He's not a great catcher but he can actually catch the ball most of the time.
My impression of Gimenez (based solely on watching him this year) is that he will have the occasional off game, but that he's a generally fair-to-decent receiver. I don't quite know what to attribute the lapses to; the game with all the passed balls was a game where Santana's stuff didn't look particularly filthy, and I couldn't detect anything unusual in the weather conditions. Perhaps there was some glare the TV cameras weren't positioned to pick up, or perhaps he'd taken a knock that had him a little rattled. He owned the performance, but (as a good catcher does) didn't elaborate on the underlying problem. By Fangraphs' defensive value he's having a markedly better season behind the dish this year – the best he's had since 2012, and the first time he's had positive value since 2013. It's a three-to-five run swing over those years, from a low of -3.1 (and a -2.9 performance last year) to 1.3 this season.
Beyond passed balls & "wild" pitches, lately it seems like teams are running more on Castro than they are on Gimenez, but they're within a point of one another on CS%, both over their careers and this year. Perhaps teams are picking up on something specific with certain pitchers, because it seems like teams are more successful in running on the Twins recently – particularly when Castro's catching. That's anecdotal; I haven't looked at the numbers for recent games.
Your second paragraph in spades ... seemed like the Yankees were running free all over the place.
At first I thought that observation might just be Brett Gardner, but I realized that other Yankmes had been nearly as aggressive. I'm not accustomed to thinking of the Yankmes as a particularly good baserunning team, but perhaps that's changed. On the other hand, it seemed like the Royals were also being more aggressive on the basepaths in the most recent meeting.
Going back to Aug 1, runners have stolen 9 bases w/ Castro behind the plate (27 games), and he has thrown out 4.
His season total is 40 SB, 14 CS - career average is 26% CS.
In 22 games he's caught, runners have swiped 9 bases with Gimenez receiving, while only 3 have been caught stealing.
Season total is 29 SB, 12 CS - career average is 25% CS.
I'm sure he's better that what he showed in that game. Sure looked like he forgot a contact lens or something.
Replying to most of the comments by saying, yeah, it almost makes you a bit nervous to see a catcher with a couple performances like that. In any case, good to hear I just happened to catch (!) him on two bad days.
Falvey & Levine's housecleaning continues – they have fired the international scouting director who signed Morneau & Kepler (on the good side of his ledger) and Park ByungHo & Nishioka Tsuyoshi . I thought this sentence was interesting:
It's not the worst idea in the world if you are a budget shopper--trying to find talent in untapped markets--but sometimes markets are untapped for a reason.
Might be because there's so much talent in Latin America that each country/region has its own director. I know the Twins have facilities in some of the countries.
Rangers released new illustrations of their new park. I think this is all of them. The team didn't make them easily accessible in digital format. The field has a retractable roof. You get a nice view of roof supports and the sky.
Plus this cutaway of the park:
The concourse looks nice, but those huge windows seem like it will be very hot when the sun is out. Second, all of the concourses have a view of the field and that's good, but wow are the stands so high.
I wonder if they're planning to equip the park with A/C. I believe Arizona has it, but I'm not sure about Houston. Milwaukee doesn't, and when it gets rainy or humid and the roof is closed, you get swamp ass just from sitting in your seat. I can't stand that place; it's a truly miserable place to catch a game in any less-than-ideal summer weather.
It looks like they're getting rid of most of the incoherent architectural mish-mash of their current ballpark, but I can't say the architecture of the new one suggests anything particularly Texan to me other than its size. It's bland, but with blandness in overabundance. Maybe that's DFW's thing?
What I've found comparing old Busch to the new one is that open concourses means air flow. Not as good as A/C, but it's still a big deal.
The roof looks open on the sides but everything else appears fully enclosed. I don't know if it has the same bowl effect Arizona has to keep the cool air in the building but it might. Seems like they could. But, does it rain that much in Arlington? I didn't think it did so what's the point of the roof if not to protect against the heat. I know the Rangers have a lot of night games because of that. I'm inclined to think AC will be installed.
AZ does have it. I've been in there with the roof open and air conditioning on. The cold air sits down in the park and it was delightful on a 95 degree night.
Seeing these drawings and what I've heard about the Atlanta stadium (I won't call it a ballpark) I say a little prayer that Target Field turned out as nice as it did. Eight years in and it still runs laps around all but a few (Pittsburgh, San Diego, Camden) newer ballparks.
The Twins got everything right about the LOL except for the team they put in it when it opened.
Hold on a minute, that 2010 team won 94 games and had Ji
Jim Thome.
It was the team that followed it that sucked.
I remember JI
JIM THOME fondly. What I don't remember nearly as fondly was _elm_n having the third-highest OPS+ (fourth if you count a third of a season for Morneau), O Hud, and a rotation featuring Pavano, Blackburn, & Slowey.
Pavano? You mean the guy with a 109 ERA+ that went 17-11 in 221 innings? Yeah, he was a real drag.
Yes, I'm unimpressed by a #2 starter with a 109 ERA+. That roatation was pretty weak for a 94 win team. Pavano's WHIP was good and his FIP was serviceable, but that's not a guy who I'm excited to see start a playoff game. He wasn't exactly the most enjoyable to watch at work, period.
He didn't have great stuff but he worked quickly. The slightly less effective righty Buehrle.
Also, O-Dog was worth 2.8 rWAR, which isn't small potatoes. Dozier has been 3.1 thus far this season. In '09, Alexi Casilla was the Twins' primary second baseman and was worth -1.5 rWAR.
I largely remember OHud as having an i-i like knack for running his mouth to the media at the expense of his teammates.
This one reminds me a bit of the stadium that was planned in the 90s that was on the river here. Anyone have illustrations of that? Brick instead of steel now.
This is the best I could find. Not quite the same, but still a baseball field in a football footprint.
That's the one; I'm so glad they didn't build it. The architecture would've been dated very quickly, and there's nothing unique about it. Even though the riverfront location was nice, it would've faced away from the skyline.
I've not seen this rendering before, but it looks just as industrial and awful as Miller Park only with riverfront property. So I agree, glad that was not the winner.
Not surprised. It's always the same architecture firm and Miller Park broke ground in 1996. This illustration is from 1997. I would argue Miller Park is an improvement in footprint, but it's missing the open air part of this stadium.
Actually looking at the firm and it's not the usual Populous (née HOK Sports). It's HKS which partnered with NBBJ. HKS is doing the new Rangers stadium (and the current one) and did Miller Park. NBBJ did Safeco, which broke ground in 1997. I'm not sure which firm had the Twins illustration but you can see the same structure in all of them. Safeco is the best of the group so I think HKS really likes this style and that's too bad.
I keep getting sent to Seattle. Gonna have to check out Safeco one of these days.
Safeco's a treat with the roof open. I've never been there with it closed.
I thought the 1997 proposal was crafted by Ellerbe Becket (the BOB, the TED). Maybe NBBJ consulted on the roof?
Can't find anything to prove that just yet. They did do Hammond Stadium in Fort Myers in 1992 however, so the relationship existed with the team. They also designed Chase Field. Chase Field doesn't have much resemblance to the proposal, but firms collaborated a lot so it's hard to say only by visual appearance.
Edit: Nothing definitive, but found a book about Target Field's history that credits those images to Ellerbe Becket, so I'm considering that good enough.
This is as close as I've found. The credits for the images of the renderings of this design appear to be given to Ellerbe Becket.
Yep, that's what I saw too.
Here's a rendering with the roof closed.
Great place to catch a train.
No big trains, but maybe the Light Rail.
Should have put it on the other side of the river. Get riverfront location and the skyline close by. But, you'd have to be okay with righthanders being southpaws.
The Guthrie Theater is where the roof is in that picture and Gold Medal Park is the rest of the stadium.
I don't know if they planned it that way or lucked into it but when they built TF, they nailed that skyline view.
I hadn't seen that before. Looks like they would have had to level the hill the Guthrie is now on and destroy the rest of the Mill Ruins.
One unforseeable bonus of it's "away from the skyline" views... wouldn't have to see that new Vikings monstrosity.
Seeing the Texas park... so glad Target Field has no roof.
FiveThirtyEight's take on the Twins' surprising season.
thanks for the link joe.
We've been hearing about/seeing these youngsters for so long, that I forget how truly young many of the core group of starters are. Address the bullpen, add a decent starter (or two?), and there is a chance this could be a very competitive team over the next 3-4 (6+?) years.
One unfortunate aspect of living in Omaha is dealing with the year-round obsession with Nebraska Football. However with the recent loss to NIU and today's firing of AD Shawn Eichorst it is starting to turn into a full fledged Clown Show. And I'm enjoying every minute of it.
It's all Bill Callahan's fault
Bring Back Frankie.
(or Turner Gill, more plausibly)
I was reading a bit about the NBA and wow do I think they are focused on the symptoms and not the causes. For one thing, as a commenter pointed out--apparently resting a star players for big games is a huge problem, but teams taking a dump all over their home fans to get a better draft pick is totally cool.
The root problem is that home fans would be buying a ticket because they are more interested in the visiting team's star players than they are interested in watching their own team. The issues aren't even unrelated in that if your team is tanking, your fans are more likely to be interested in the visitors than the home team. Is the end goal to emulate the Harlem Globetrotters' business model? Further, could you imagine baseball to mandate that catchers can't rest for a day game after a night game? If you are trying to legislate player rest, you need to examine deeper issues.
ubelmann's NBA commish fixes:
1) Draft order set by how long it has been since you made the playoffs. You keep getting a shot at good draft picks until you make the playoffs, so the worst teams have an incentive to at least get marginally better.
2) No max contracts. I don't see how max contracts have remotely helped parity.
3) A hard cap, with two exceptions--each team can pay one player off the cap, and each year you can buy out one contract off the cap. This would force star players to find different teams or give up tens of millions of dollars. If the league is all about the stars, you spread the stars around.
4) Give players a revenue-sharing bonus. At the end of the season, if players haven't gotten X% of the NBA revenues, then everyone gets a pro-rated bonus to make up the difference. This way the players don't have to be as worried about the specifics of how the cap is structured, since they will get their money in the end one way or the other.
You're welcome, NBA.
Re #4, that's what the NHL does. As I recall, player contracts are in a sort of floating value that will change. They get paid during the year 80-90% of the stated value and the rest is made up at the end of the year once total revenue is calculated and what the player pool size actually is. The salary for that year is based on a pre-season projection of the pool size and the final pool size then adjusts that up or down. If the league made more money than projected, then the players all make a tiny bit more in salary. The reverse is true too.
I do recall Tangotiger writing about how players were annoyed about this situation. But, now I remember I can't differentiate what his solution for it was from the actual method and I may have stated his proposal instead of what actually happens. But, the rough outline is true. Their final salary for the year varies based on league revenue.
I wouldn't want a system that took money back from the players. Psychologically, it's different giving someone something and taking it back, versus giving them a smaller bonus at the end of the year.
I think the hardest thing would be establishing the trust that the books were being kept accurately. I could also potentially see some annoyance that the bonus means their pay is delayed somewhat, but it's not uncommon in other industries to have annual bonuses.
these are great points ubes.
Re: #2, I don't think the players association cares about parity.
Sure. Personally I think they'll get paid better if there is more parity, but they might not believe that.
Francisco Lindor just hit a three-run homer to give Cleveland a 4-1 lead over the Angels in the fifth.
Hooray!
4-1 is the final. Twins Magic Number drops by 1.
Classic Connecticut:
I'm leafing through this magazine we get (not sure why, I never signed up for it, can't imagine NBBW doing that either) called CONNECTICUT Magazine. A jumble of articles on where to eat, where to shop, who are the best facelift doctors, etc. Feels eerily similar to what you get on airlines.
At any rate, there's an article on the Reps and Dems jostling to replace Gov. Daniel Malloy, who said he doesn't plan to run for a third term.
One of the write-ups is on Joe Ganim, current mayor of Bridgeport after serving a 7-yr prison sentence for corruption in the same city. There is a glitch, however - the State Elections Enforcement Commission has unanimously ruled to deny him any public funding, as he is a felon.
Three pages later in the same magazine is an advert for Ganim, Ganim & Ganim PC (personal injury attorneys) Keep Calm, Call Tom. Yeah, same family.
Two pages later is an article about a writer who just wrote Larger than Life about notables in CT, one of which is Joe Gamin, who was asked by Trump "to be my eyes and ears in Connecticut" regarding competing casino schemes in Bridgeport - "Only in Bridgeport", only later to end up in the hoosegow.
America. What a country.
It's like the very worst novel I have read. In which the situation are so utterly unbelievable that I slam the book down and say "yeah... like that would really happen". That is the world (and country) we live in folks.
You should come to Louisiana sometime.
Did I miss the memo? MLB Tonight reporting that Sano is out for the season.
I"ve never heard of a stress reaction.
Not officially, but getting there: