52 thoughts on “28 September 2017: Bad Milk”

  1. 11 am (noon Cleveland time) start , what kind of lineup is Molitor going to throw out there? Buddy Boshers playing LF?

    1. Buxton said it was about a year and a half ago that Twins officials approached him with Statcast data to illustrate how he might better take advantage of his athletic gifts to save runs.

      I certainly like this.

    1. Yes, I did once there was a Twins writer.

      If you're only doing it for the Twins, you might want to wait. While I don't have any complaints about what Warne has written, I do take issue with the amount. I see he has a new article this morning but the previous one was September 22 and the one before that was September 19. Meanwhile, Michael Russo writes nearly every day. He had two yesterday, one each on Monday and Tuesday, three more on Saturday, et cetera. Plus there are other NHL writers filling in. I see something by Brian Hall about Matt Dumba yesterday. a season preview of the Wild by Dom Luszczyszyn from Monday, something from Derek Peterson on Sunday, and another piece by Hall about Parise on Friday.

      It might be that Warne is working only part-time, making it an unfair comparison. Furthermore, this is the preseason for the NHL so there's going to be a lot of hockey excitement for the upcoming season. But, if the Twins are the only draw for someone then it's hard to recommend it. I don't really regret subscribing because this is a venture I believe in, but at the moment I might not renew next year. Or I may end up becoming a Wild fan from the inundation of articles about them.

      Note, I did opt into having the Wild in my feed so it's only Twins and Wild for me. The Wolves should join in once they have a writer because I think I included them. I excluded the Vikings. I may end up adding other baseball teams.

      1. They do have a nice mobile app. It's small and looks a bit like this site's front page on a phone. Each article has a feature image and so you scroll through an infinite list of that. Interspersed with that are the games in the appropriate times. I wouldn't follow the games using what they have, but it's nice to have little notes about what happened and the box score they have is simple and effective. Hm, now that I look into it more, it's very lacking for the pitching summary. All of the pitchers are hidden behind a "See all players" option. Plus the batters are sorted strangely; I think by ABs instead of in the batting order. So it's nice but some weird choices.

        1. Thanks, sean; both of these comments are very helpful. I might hold off for a while if the Twins content (during a wild card chase, no less) has been sparse. I wonder why Warne wouldn't be brought on full-time if he's the only Twins writer and they're trying to get folks in the market interested in their content. If he's limited by other obligations, I would've thought it'd be better to have two part-timers.

    1. There was some consternation when Bruno was let go as batting coach, and understandably so, but it's hard to argue with Rowson's results. Maybe the firing of Doug Mientkiewicz will have similar results down the road.

  6. I appreciate the image, but, man, that's really gonna be a bummer to look at all day.

    ::ducks, as it gets changed to something even worse::

    2. We've been drinking raw milk for a while now, but it never gets THAT bad. We always have to shake it up before we drink it.

        1. My mom used to go buy milk (in a large jar) and cream (in a smaller jar) from one of the farmers in the area. Muy bien for taste.

          1. I never cared much for the raw milk we drank on grandpa's farm, I wasn't used to that much richness, but the fresh butter was so good I put it on everything.

  7. This feels like a very odd combination:
    Twins lose
    White Sox win
    Twins celebrate with champagne

  9. My favorite thing about this time of year in retail is that the company often reacts to the yearly lull, to which one can set his clock, with a desperate and pointless attempt to figure out "what's wrong." This year, they've decided that every single day, every single sales employee gets a sheet with their numbers on it and the expectation is that we log every sale on it, no matter how small, and then turn it in at the end of the day.

    But - BUT! - our names are attached to all sales digitally in the first place, and for years now, there's been an easy-to-find space in our employee dashboard which gives us that exact information. Someone's big idea this year was to waste buckets of ink on reams of paper every day so we can look at the same information in two places. Except in the new case, we've effectively introduced human error. Woooooo

    1. You've always got to have the human factor involved. Just ask the people who'd rather have games decided by bad calls rather than use replay to get them right.

      1. That's always been a favorite of mine - guys who complain incessantly about bad calls in a game who immediately downvote any suggestion that a robot might do better.

      1. Sounds like what's wrong is that too much money is being spent on corporate-level "leadership" management shareholder appeasment.

      2. We're actually nowhere near as bloated at that level as we used to be. Their habits remain the same, though. It could be worse, though, if I worked for much of the competition. Not gonna call places out, but we have employees formerly of other big boxes and to put it mildly, it's stunning what goes on.

    3. I think our middle management doesn't understand their role.

      When upper management makes a ridiculous suggestion, middle management should agree and then forget the conversation ever happened.

        1. Can't it be both?

          Right now I'm a faculty member and department co-chair, so it's like I get to do twice as much forgetting!

  11. Today's Las Vegas line has the Twins as 20:1 long-shots to win the World Series. Indians and Astros are favorites at 3:1.

    2. Boston has both Boyer and Fernando Abad! But Boston somehow turn Boyer into a somewhat strikeout throwing dude (7.6 k/9 this year. He was 4.6 with the Twins)

  14. Matt Cain announced he is retiring. sad to see him go out. but he's been Not Good for about four seasons now.

    1. $21 million player option for next year, with a $7.5 million buyout. Painful that once his expensive years kicked in, he stopped being good at all.

        1. through age-28, Cain had averaged 191 IP (273 appearances in 9 seasons, including a 46-inning cuppa at age 20), 3.56 RA9, 119 ERA+, 3.68 FIP, 3.6 rWAR per year (32.3 cumulative). He'll end with just over 30 rWAR, thanks to 4 straight negative seasons. His most similar by age list was full of John Schmoltz's (ages 25, 26, 28). In other words, he was on track for a HOF or borderline HOF career.

          [edited: I said "fWAR" but should have said "rWAR". doh!]

          1. I think Cain might've been slightly better than a borderline case if he'd managed to stay healthy past his age-27 season. To that point he had accumulated 31.9 rWAR. Here's are the Expansion Era pitchers with 30-35 rWAR through the same age:

            Tanana (35.6), Eckersley, Appier, Carlton, Sabathia, G. Maddux, D. Chance, Dierker, Cain, F. Valenzuela, Zambrano, J. Maloney, Sale, Johan (30.5).

            The last one makes me as sad as I'm sure Cain's retirement makes Gigantes fans.

            Clayton Kershaw is second on the overall list, by the way, with 47.2 rWAR by his age-27 season. The top pitcher in that cadre is head & shoulders above him, though, with 54.8 rWAR by his age-27 season. His last name is Blyleven, and he likes to fart.

            2. even if he had stayed healthy, he would have struggled with the counting stats. Through that age-28 season, he had a career W-L of only 93-88. For comparison, Johan through age-28 was 93-44.

              *sheds more tears for Johan*

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