probably needs to be a little spoilery, so be forewarned.
Twins game on FSN this afternoon.
My college buddy Knute and I braved the snowstorm last night and drove to St. Cloud for the hockey game. We got to see the #1 ranked Huskies clinch the NCHC championship against the defending NCHC and NCAA national champions. It was a really well-played game, both teams are fast, handle and control the puck well, and play good defense. On the way to the game we stopped at the Lupulin Brewery in Big Lake. The bartender heard us talking about Belgian ales and treated us to samples of the new Belgian tripel they're releasing for Big Beer Week (March 5-11). We already have a growler run on the calendar.
I know it's still spring training, but apparently the Twins are still in love with the idea of playing infielders in the outfield.
He's also an infielder that did play the outfield.
Well, that’s stretching it a bit, as he’s really only spent significant time at one position in each area. He’s a 1b/LF who hasn’t played in left field since 2015.
More in response to Jeff's LTE above mine. I originally had "can", replaced it with "could", and settled for "did".
I like this move quite a bit.
I don't know. If he hits like he did last year, then it's obviously a good move. But last year was far above anything he'd done previously, and he's thirty. I guess we'll see if last year is who he is now or if it was an aberration.
Even if he returns to his previous levels he's probably a better regular DH option than the others we got, right?
He’s a platoon DH, I think, under optimal circumstances. Grossman’s almost certainly playing in the outfield instead of Kepler against most lefties, and he’s got a much better OBP and a moderately better SLG than Morrison against LHP. Morrison’s also worse than Mauer against same-handed hurlers, though the SLG is closer.
I still think Vargas could hit if he got regular playing time, but it's been clear for some time that the Twins don't agree with me.
The projections on Fangraphs aren't exactly promising for Vargas either, although they have him around league average, but for a slow DH type, you'd want more than that. The projections like Morrison better and he's more of a known commodity and less of a risk then hoping Vargas clicks. Is Vargas out of options? If not, then it's more organizational depth, which is not a bad thing.
I'm pretty sure Vargas is out of options. But if the Twins aren't going to play him, it's to his advantage to give him a chance to find a team that will.
yeah, i won't speculate on if he's a good player or not, but vargas has definitely gotten the shaft from the twins over the years.
what's the vesting option?
It’s for $8 million ($1 million buyout), but I haven’t seen what factors trip the vesting, yet. It does make me wonder what this means for Mauer in 2019.
Update: the option automatically vests if Morrison reaches 600 PA this season. Morrison has reached that threshold exactly once in his career — last season — and then just barely (601).
Adding a guy with some power is nice, although I’d be (pleasantly) surprised if Morrison broke 30 HR again. What this doesn’t help address at all is the Twins’ weakness against southpaws. I’ve beaten this horse enough, but losing Sanó is going to make this lineup even more lopsided.
Batter
OBP vs LHP
SLG vs LHP
Aybar
.304
.371
Castro
.261
.307
Grossman
.359
.395
Kepler
.242
.279
Mauer
.360
.380
Morrison
.324
.373
Rosario
.301
.403
First thing I checked was which side of the plate he batted from.
Though looking at his splits, his career Average and OBP are pretty close to even facing both arms, it's just slugging that he loses against LHP.
Sounds right in theory, but hitting vs. lefties wasn't really that much of a problem last year. The Twins were exactly league average by OPS+ vs. lefties and were actually slightly better versus left-handed starting pitchers. If anything, this will add to the depth so that Molly will more often have one of Grossman, Kepler, Morrison or Mauer to pinch hit in late-game situations. Morrison might have developed a different approach to get his career year because his walk rate and K rate were career highs along with his IsoP, so he may have been more patiently looking for pitches to drive and hit for power. Also, his BABIP last year was below his career average, so his results weren't because of more balls falling in. He also had a dramatic drop in the number of ground balls he hit, so could also be a change in launch angle helped him. He went from being right at MLB average to pretty extreme in his ground ball to fly ball ratio. If there was any luck involved, it would be from the percentage of fly balls that were home runs.
It sounds like he changed his swing and launch angle. Hopefully he can maintain the power.
The Twins were exactly league average against southpaws with Sanó posting a .992 OPS against them in roughly a quarter of his PA. We have absolutely no idea how long he’s going to be out (suspended, not ready by Opening Day, or due to in-season injuries), to the point that counting on him for a substantial contribution seems foolish.
On the subject of depth, other than Sanó, here’s a list of Twins with an OPS vs LHP above .750 over at least 75 PA in 2017:
1. Dozier
2. Buxton
3. Mauer
That’s it.* Grossman is an okay bench bat assuming they have a roster spot for him, but I don’t think you can argue that having him, Kepler, Mauer, or Morrison on the bench in a late-game situation says much that’s meaningful about depth if the other team has a LOOGY or elite lefty reliever available.
* Morrison would be a fourth if he can replicate his success against lefties last season, which was pretty far out of step with his career split.
Sounds like Odorizzi helped recruit/recommend LoMo. There's also a mention of Odorizzi trying to recruit Alex Cobb, who could be another guy looking to do a one-year deal to reestablish himself since last year was his first full season following TJ surgery.
If Falvey & Levine actually sign a Cobb to a one-year pillow deal and forfeit that draft pick, then I don’t know what they got rid of TR for.
A one-year pillow deal? You're assuming the MyPillow guy is going to have him give endorsements?
Gotta show this one some love.
The draft picks have to be the hold up on Cobb and Lynn, right? I think you need some really favorable team-options to offset the draft pick for either player. If they pan out, great, the team gets the choice to renew them for a year or two. But the players aren't going to want that, as it completely offsets the value of a short-term deal. I'm struggling to see all 3 of Lynn, Cobb, and Arrietta signed before whatever the deadline is (the draft? midseason?) on losing the pick.
the strongest opinion i have about this signing is that lo-mo is kind of a d-bag.
if he's replacing Sano that might be an improvement
For whatever it's worth, Eduardo Perez was on MLB Network radio this morning and was pretty much gushing over what a great move this was for the Twins. Whether it works out that way or not, it's just nice to hear national broadcasters talking about the Twins in such a positive way.
Sweet god The Hold Steady's entitlement crew is such a hollow rendition of what the band once was. Tacate take offs, tequilla landings. blarf.
Tech Talk question:
If one were to create an emergency boot disk with a USB thumb drive, and that thumb drive happened to be a 256 GB USB 3.0 drive (Because Costco), and your Windoze 10 machine were to say that the drive needs to be formatted (and only recognized 32 GB), and one were to go into Disk Management to format, what is the best approach to formatting?
Disk Management sees a 32 GB partition (RAW) and an unformatted partition. Should one format the 32 GB partition as FAT 32 and install there, and then format the other partition NTFS? Is that even kosher to format different partitions with different file systems?
or, uh, I could just burn a system repair disc on my new LG slimline external DVD drive.....
Either file system should work for a Windows emergency boot disk. With that much drive space you could use the big partition to store your backups as well.
Well, I am something of a numbnutz. I managed to delete the primary partition on it. Had to open up a utility in a command prompt (err, DOS window) to reformat the drive.
Now I have a single NTFS partition..... 😒
And, uh, it is showing only 231 gb. (248,435,961,856 bytes).
Supposed to be a 256 gb drive. Have I managed to eff it up so that I can't access the 32 gb primary partition whose volume I deleted?
Don't let people like me loose without supervision.
Hmm. Googling around, that probably is the useable, formatted capacity.
Depending on who you ask, drive manufacturers are either lying or being actually precise with the amount of storage.
For many, many years manufacturers have used base-10 (e.g. SI units) for the sizes. 256 GB means 256 billion (G = 109) bytes. If you checked the raw capacity, you'd find it only a little bit over 256,000,000,000 bytes. The problem is many utilities and OSes (not Macs anymore) uses a base-2/binary system where 256 GB means 274,877,906,944 bytes (G = 230 or 1,073,741,824 bytes in this case). This has been renamed to be "GiB" in some areas. What happens then is you bring in a 256 GB drive in a G(i)B environment is you "lose" capacity and get a reported 238.4 G(i)B. Formatting takes away a bit more and you get your 231 GiB.
thanks, sean. I sort of knew this, but it helps to have it spelled out.
Any thoughts about utilities for re-partitioning a 256 GB thumb drive?
Windows should be able to do it using its own utilities. I can't really comment on what since I don't use Windows except for work and then it's only for Minesweeper. Searching around and here's how I'd do it.
If you can help it, never use FAT32. It's terrible. I would have stayed in the 80s where it belonged but there is no other file system compatible across all OSes, except FAT. For Windows, stick with NTFS.
I don't know why it would have been split like that. Normally it would be formatted completely with FAT32.
I presume it was partitioned for some stupid backwards compatibility reasons?
anyhoo. Now I have a single NTFS partition. I would like to repartition so that I could use one for an emergency system recovery disk for my laptop and the other for backup sets.
and really, we live in the best of times. 256 GB on a USB 3.0 thumb drive for under $40? That's ridiculous.
Actually saving it for tomorrow night, so that I can defat the sauce a bit. Baked potatoes and sauteed broccoli for tonight.
I’ll be watching the Cup for your review.
There's a pork version!? My mind has exploded.
it's pretty much identical to the chicken version, except, you know, with pork.
I had about a 4-5 lb boneless butt, cut into chunks. I trimmed pretty much all visible fat off beforehand. I defatted the sauce before blending. Very much looking forward to dinner tonight.
My only changes from the recipe: I used all pasillas [err, poblanos], and I added maybe a tbsp of dried oregano.
I suppose substituting pork for chicken should have seemed obvious to me. Pork >>>>>> chicken, and all.
I made a BBQ pork roast tonight, but just used a plain old oven. It was amazing, and only took about an hour.
(I'm not entirely sure if I mean that last sentence to be defensive snark against all the instant pot love (IPL), or if it's just the same type of thing I would have said even before all the IPL. Maybe both?)
If those rocks are actual size, that's about my coffee intake for a day.
You Can’t Sue People for Being Mean to You, Bob..
probably needs to be a little spoilery, so be forewarned.
Twins game on FSN this afternoon.
My college buddy Knute and I braved the snowstorm last night and drove to St. Cloud for the hockey game. We got to see the #1 ranked Huskies clinch the NCHC championship against the defending NCHC and NCAA national champions. It was a really well-played game, both teams are fast, handle and control the puck well, and play good defense. On the way to the game we stopped at the Lupulin Brewery in Big Lake. The bartender heard us talking about Belgian ales and treated us to samples of the new Belgian tripel they're releasing for Big Beer Week (March 5-11). We already have a growler run on the calendar.
I know it's still spring training, but apparently the Twins are still in love with the idea of playing infielders in the outfield.
Logan Morrison signs with the Twins. One year for $6.5 million but could max out to two years and $16.5 million.
He's also an infielder that did play the outfield.
Well, that’s stretching it a bit, as he’s really only spent significant time at one position in each area. He’s a 1b/LF who hasn’t played in left field since 2015.
More in response to Jeff's LTE above mine. I originally had "can", replaced it with "could", and settled for "did".
I like this move quite a bit.
I don't know. If he hits like he did last year, then it's obviously a good move. But last year was far above anything he'd done previously, and he's thirty. I guess we'll see if last year is who he is now or if it was an aberration.
Even if he returns to his previous levels he's probably a better regular DH option than the others we got, right?
He’s a platoon DH, I think, under optimal circumstances. Grossman’s almost certainly playing in the outfield instead of Kepler against most lefties, and he’s got a much better OBP and a moderately better SLG than Morrison against LHP. Morrison’s also worse than Mauer against same-handed hurlers, though the SLG is closer.
I still think Vargas could hit if he got regular playing time, but it's been clear for some time that the Twins don't agree with me.
The projections on Fangraphs aren't exactly promising for Vargas either, although they have him around league average, but for a slow DH type, you'd want more than that. The projections like Morrison better and he's more of a known commodity and less of a risk then hoping Vargas clicks. Is Vargas out of options? If not, then it's more organizational depth, which is not a bad thing.
I'm pretty sure Vargas is out of options. But if the Twins aren't going to play him, it's to his advantage to give him a chance to find a team that will.
yeah, i won't speculate on if he's a good player or not, but vargas has definitely gotten the shaft from the twins over the years.
what's the vesting option?
It’s for $8 million ($1 million buyout), but I haven’t seen what factors trip the vesting, yet. It does make me wonder what this means for Mauer in 2019.
Update: the option automatically vests if Morrison reaches 600 PA this season. Morrison has reached that threshold exactly once in his career — last season — and then just barely (601).
Adding a guy with some power is nice, although I’d be (pleasantly) surprised if Morrison broke 30 HR again. What this doesn’t help address at all is the Twins’ weakness against southpaws. I’ve beaten this horse enough, but losing Sanó is going to make this lineup even more lopsided.
First thing I checked was which side of the plate he batted from.
Though looking at his splits, his career Average and OBP are pretty close to even facing both arms, it's just slugging that he loses against LHP.
Sounds right in theory, but hitting vs. lefties wasn't really that much of a problem last year. The Twins were exactly league average by OPS+ vs. lefties and were actually slightly better versus left-handed starting pitchers. If anything, this will add to the depth so that Molly will more often have one of Grossman, Kepler, Morrison or Mauer to pinch hit in late-game situations. Morrison might have developed a different approach to get his career year because his walk rate and K rate were career highs along with his IsoP, so he may have been more patiently looking for pitches to drive and hit for power. Also, his BABIP last year was below his career average, so his results weren't because of more balls falling in. He also had a dramatic drop in the number of ground balls he hit, so could also be a change in launch angle helped him. He went from being right at MLB average to pretty extreme in his ground ball to fly ball ratio. If there was any luck involved, it would be from the percentage of fly balls that were home runs.
It sounds like he changed his swing and launch angle. Hopefully he can maintain the power.
The Twins were exactly league average against southpaws with Sanó posting a .992 OPS against them in roughly a quarter of his PA. We have absolutely no idea how long he’s going to be out (suspended, not ready by Opening Day, or due to in-season injuries), to the point that counting on him for a substantial contribution seems foolish.
On the subject of depth, other than Sanó, here’s a list of Twins with an OPS vs LHP above .750 over at least 75 PA in 2017:
1. Dozier
2. Buxton
3. Mauer
That’s it.* Grossman is an okay bench bat assuming they have a roster spot for him, but I don’t think you can argue that having him, Kepler, Mauer, or Morrison on the bench in a late-game situation says much that’s meaningful about depth if the other team has a LOOGY or elite lefty reliever available.
* Morrison would be a fourth if he can replicate his success against lefties last season, which was pretty far out of step with his career split.
Sounds like Odorizzi helped recruit/recommend LoMo. There's also a mention of Odorizzi trying to recruit Alex Cobb, who could be another guy looking to do a one-year deal to reestablish himself since last year was his first full season following TJ surgery.
If Falvey & Levine actually sign a Cobb to a one-year pillow deal and forfeit that draft pick, then I don’t know what they got rid of TR for.
A one-year pillow deal? You're assuming the MyPillow guy is going to have him give endorsements?
Gotta show this one some love.
The draft picks have to be the hold up on Cobb and Lynn, right? I think you need some really favorable team-options to offset the draft pick for either player. If they pan out, great, the team gets the choice to renew them for a year or two. But the players aren't going to want that, as it completely offsets the value of a short-term deal. I'm struggling to see all 3 of Lynn, Cobb, and Arrietta signed before whatever the deadline is (the draft? midseason?) on losing the pick.
the strongest opinion i have about this signing is that lo-mo is kind of a d-bag.
if he's replacing Sano that might be an improvement
For whatever it's worth, Eduardo Perez was on MLB Network radio this morning and was pretty much gushing over what a great move this was for the Twins. Whether it works out that way or not, it's just nice to hear national broadcasters talking about the Twins in such a positive way.
Sweet god The Hold Steady's entitlement crew is such a hollow rendition of what the band once was. Tacate take offs, tequilla landings. blarf.
Tech Talk question:
If one were to create an emergency boot disk with a USB thumb drive, and that thumb drive happened to be a 256 GB USB 3.0 drive (Because Costco), and your Windoze 10 machine were to say that the drive needs to be formatted (and only recognized 32 GB), and one were to go into Disk Management to format, what is the best approach to formatting?
Disk Management sees a 32 GB partition (RAW) and an unformatted partition. Should one format the 32 GB partition as FAT 32 and install there, and then format the other partition NTFS? Is that even kosher to format different partitions with different file systems?
or, uh, I could just burn a system repair disc on my new LG slimline external DVD drive.....
Either file system should work for a Windows emergency boot disk. With that much drive space you could use the big partition to store your backups as well.
Well, I am something of a numbnutz. I managed to delete the primary partition on it. Had to open up a utility in a command prompt (err, DOS window) to reformat the drive.
Now I have a single NTFS partition..... 😒
And, uh, it is showing only 231 gb. (248,435,961,856 bytes).
Supposed to be a 256 gb drive. Have I managed to eff it up so that I can't access the 32 gb primary partition whose volume I deleted?
Don't let people like me loose without supervision.
Hmm. Googling around, that probably is the useable, formatted capacity.
Depending on who you ask, drive manufacturers are either lying or being actually precise with the amount of storage.
For many, many years manufacturers have used base-10 (e.g. SI units) for the sizes. 256 GB means 256 billion (G = 109) bytes. If you checked the raw capacity, you'd find it only a little bit over 256,000,000,000 bytes. The problem is many utilities and OSes (not Macs anymore) uses a base-2/binary system where 256 GB means 274,877,906,944 bytes (G = 230 or 1,073,741,824 bytes in this case). This has been renamed to be "GiB" in some areas. What happens then is you bring in a 256 GB drive in a G(i)B environment is you "lose" capacity and get a reported 238.4 G(i)B. Formatting takes away a bit more and you get your 231 GiB.
thanks, sean. I sort of knew this, but it helps to have it spelled out.
Any thoughts about utilities for re-partitioning a 256 GB thumb drive?
Windows should be able to do it using its own utilities. I can't really comment on what since I don't use Windows except for work and then it's only for Minesweeper. Searching around and here's how I'd do it.
If you can help it, never use FAT32. It's terrible. I would have stayed in the 80s where it belonged but there is no other file system compatible across all OSes, except FAT. For Windows, stick with NTFS.
I don't know why it would have been split like that. Normally it would be formatted completely with FAT32.
I presume it was partitioned for some stupid backwards compatibility reasons?
anyhoo. Now I have a single NTFS partition. I would like to repartition so that I could use one for an emergency system recovery disk for my laptop and the other for backup sets.
and really, we live in the best of times. 256 GB on a USB 3.0 thumb drive for under $40? That's ridiculous.
In the Instant Pot tonight.
Actually saving it for tomorrow night, so that I can defat the sauce a bit. Baked potatoes and sauteed broccoli for tonight.
I’ll be watching the Cup for your review.
There's a pork version!? My mind has exploded.
it's pretty much identical to the chicken version, except, you know, with pork.
I had about a 4-5 lb boneless butt, cut into chunks. I trimmed pretty much all visible fat off beforehand. I defatted the sauce before blending. Very much looking forward to dinner tonight.
My only changes from the recipe: I used all pasillas [err, poblanos], and I added maybe a tbsp of dried oregano.
I suppose substituting pork for chicken should have seemed obvious to me. Pork >>>>>> chicken, and all.
I made a BBQ pork roast tonight, but just used a plain old oven. It was amazing, and only took about an hour.
(I'm not entirely sure if I mean that last sentence to be defensive snark against all the instant pot love (IPL), or if it's just the same type of thing I would have said even before all the IPL. Maybe both?)