67 thoughts on “March 16, 2018: Kissing Cousins”

  1. In the 2016/17 seasons the number of Minnesota men's sports teams making the playoffs was 1. The Wild were bounced in the first round rather quickly.

    In the 2017/18 seasons we're looking at all 4 teams making the playoffs.

    1. I found a weird, almost all-black White-throated Sparrow. I think it got dirty somehow, but it could be hypermelanistic (the opposite of albino).

    1. I can’t even figure out what those two were salty about. Miss a dunk bigly and fall down; get up and smack a dude for inbounding the rock!?!

  2. NEWS!

    1. Just realized some people may have Reusse blocked

      @1500ESPN_Reusse
      Twins have DFA'd Kennys Vargas and acquired OFer Jake Cave in a minor trade with Yankees. Cave goes on big-league roster.

      1. I guess Kennys was never going to get a real shot. May he gone on to be Big Papi II.

          1. Hey, maybe his new team will have a good nutritionist who can recommend some fine supplements. (How much this actually helped Ortiz, I don’t know. How it’s somehow been forgotten, I also don’t know.)

            If Vargas can have Paul Sorrento’s career, that’d be a pretty good run.

          2. fwiw, through age-26:

            Year Tm G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS OPS+ TB GDP HBP SH SF IBB
            1997-2002 MIN 455 1693 1477 215 393 108 3 58 238 4 2 186 339 .266 .348 .461 .809 108 681 35 9 1 20 13
            2014-2017 MIN 236 859 783 104 197 38 1 35 116 0 0 65 251 .252 .311 .437 .748 102 342 24 5 0 6 4
        1. The Twins signing Logan Morrison sealed Vargas' fate.

          I don't know, I guess Im not to bugged about this. Vargas had chances didn't really fully grab it, then the Twins really started to screw around with his career last year with the Rochester to MInnesota express every 10 days.

        2. that would be nice, and Ortiz when injured and struggling was always significanty better than Vargas in the minors and majors

      2. I suppose this fits some sort of organizational need, but Cave's been bouncing between AA and AAA for three years now and his career MiLB numbers aren't the most impressive (.285/.344/.423/.767) for a 25-year old outfielder. Be interesting to see where he starts the season, Rochester or Chattanooga.

      3. I'm sad to see Vargas go, but it's been obvious for some time that the Twins weren't going to give him a real chance. I hope he gets to a team that does. The Twins acquired Cave for Luis Gil, a nineteen-year-old right-hander who had a good year in the Dominican Summer League last year. That's better than having a bad year, I guess, but I have no idea whether he'll become a star or he'll top out at high-A or if he be somewhere in-between. It's true, as Twayn says, that Cave has bounced between AA and AAA for the last few years, but last year, as a twenty-four-year-old, he hit .324/.367/.554 in AAA in about three hundred plate appearances. It's possible that he figured something out. We'll see, I guess.

    2. I'm a little sad. I always liked Vargas and didn't like how they treated him. But as everyone else says, the writing was on the wall.

    1. Carnage so far on my brackef: Buffalo over Ariz, Loyola-C. over Miami, Bama over WVa, Marshall over Wichita St., and Seton H. over NC State.

      1. Except for Bama over Virginia Tech, I managed to get every single one of those upsets you mention. I also made some absurd picks going forward, so we'll see how it pans out in the next rounds.

        I've never had a perfect region first round before. I see Spooky pulled it off already. Looks like it'll come down to Missouri vs. Florida St. for me (after missing it when Creighton lost... I had a shot in two of my regions.) I don't remember the last time I've had this much fun watching brackets.

        1. I've only missed 4 games. I have Virginia winning it all. The NCAA tournament is stupid.

              1. My old roomie's sister went there. He liked to remind her, "U Made a Bad Choice."

  3. I did not know the Twins had a pitcher named Casey Crosby. Apparently, the Twins see something in him that's not revealed in his minor league stats.

  4. SCSU and UND heading to overtime, 2-2 in regulation. Also, I could drink Castle Danger Cream Ale until the cows come home.

  5. MLB: OK we got the BOS-MIN on the big screen. But what is it, 3-1 or 3-2? Lamo.

  6. I picked a #16 seed to win for the first time in my life. Looks like I may have just picked the wrong one.

          1. Trying to think of other sports outcomes that would be equivalent to the 16 winning by this much. Not sure it's analogous to anything in a pro sport, at least.

              1. UVa has basically had the best defense in the country over the past four years. UMBC dropped 51 in the second half despite slowing things down and passing up open layups repeatedly.

              2. Right, that was a dominant player at the peak of his dominance (which I agree is amazing). This to me is maybe more like if the 150th ranked tennis player beats Federer (not peak prime Fed, but still solidly world #1 Fed) comfortably in straight sets. (There are examples of Fed or Nadal or the other top players losing to much lower ranked players in major tournaments, but not sure if there's any examples that would be this lowly ranked or by this big a margin)

            1. Miracle on Ice, maybe?

              This is one of the unique things about the Tourney. Nowhere else does the 64th best team (give or take) get a shot at the 1st best team (give or take) when it really matters. That's just fun.

              1. That's the other thing, though. The 16th seeds are not actually close to being the 64th best. UMBC is more like something in the 180s.

            2. Not a sports outcome, but it makes me think of Susan Boyle's first appearance on Britain's Got Talent.

                1. See, now I know I'm onto something. If Beau agrees or Spooky insults me in a not-really-offensive manner, those are the boxes I look to see if I'm checking.

            3. Yeah, I feel like there should be something that comes to mind, but nothing is there. Best-of-sevens normally weed out the dregs in the NBA, and even in the case of upsets, nobody is coming in at such an obvious disadvantage. That Maura guy is smaller than I am! (Yes, he is also sports-talented whereas I could shoot and do nothing else, but seriously, this kid is 5'8" and cutting through the nation's best defense with aplomb).

              Leicester City winning the Premier League two years ago, maybe? Obviously they aren't the 64th or 180th best in the twenty-team league, but their odds had to be the same and they came out on top of a 38-game season. That's as close as I can get.

    1. If ther was going to be a #1 go down, it would be Virginia. Underdog plays hard and makes their shots and the Cavs dont have the offense to keep up .

  7. Spamtowners blew all of a 20+ point lead, but eeked out a win over Northfield to head back to State.

    Is this the year they finally break DeLaSalle's stranglehold? Let's hope. Would be fun to see an Austin-East tilt for the title. What does the bracket look like, Boots?

    1. According to Boots, Austin is the two seed and East the three. Expect a matchup in the semis for the right to face DeLaSalle.

    1. My condolences. It reads like he had a wonderful life. I had a hearing once with his brother a couple of years ago.

      1. Thanks. We were never really close, although I knew him fairly well. Our families attended the same church, so we went to sunday school together. And lots of common friends. I don't think I'd seen him since college years, but we'd reconnected on the Bookface a few years ago.

        One of my best friends from h.s. called me with the news. He and I had a good chat.

        Blair was a gay icon of sorts in NYC. I was never really in tune with that (i.e., pretty oblivious) in h.s. I just knew he was super talented and had a huge personality.

        Interestingly (to me, anyway), several other of my friends/acquaintances from my h.s. class have come out over the years. All of those seem, from afar, to be well adjusted, happy people. That's a credit to much of the social progress we have made in this country. Whatever your personal perspective on sexual orientation, nobody deserves to suffer for who they are.

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