Congrats to the Raptors on a great series and a great win.
Also, should the Wolves jump on the train and change their slogan to "We The More North"?
62 thoughts on “June 14, 2019: Champs”
Big Boy makes its way to God's Country in the next few weeks -- well worth checking out
How to end a dynasty: have two of your three best players go out with (respectively) a torn Achilles and a torn ACL in consecutive games. And both are free agents to be.
Sigh. It was great while it lasted.
The NBA season is too long.
That strike shortened season was pretty close to the prefect length. They should do that every year.
and then add all 30 teams to the playoffs!!!111one111!!!
Sucks for both those guys, but to be fair, only one of them was maybe coming back.
It sucks more for Klay because I believe KD had a player option that he'll almost certainly use now.
Oh, yea. I didn't realize that. $31.5M player option to sit and recuperate.
538 seems to think that GS will try to re-sign both this offseason, despite the injuries.
At the very least, they'd better pay Klay's medical bills if they don't sign him.
I believe that the team is liable for his medical bills and for worker's comp for him.
I'm surprised they didn't coat Steph in bubble wrap before the 2nd half.
I was hoping the Raptors would win it (I had a raptors hat back in the day when they came into the league and I think a VC jersey.) but after the whole cheering the injury thing, and Drake in general, I wanted it to happen in Oakland.
Oh hey, speaking of champs, how bout them Blues! What a run they had.
Seen on the same site: Tolkien-like maps of our world.
They definitely look like a good start created by computers that needs some human (or AI) editing to push them over the top.
Weird things on the US Map:
The words "Great Plains" are directly above where the Black Hills would be.
The eastern Rockies (e.g., Front Range) and Sierra Nevada are pathetically rendered such that they looked like less than the Appalachians or Sierras Madre.
Wabash bigger than Ohio River, Brazos bigger than Rio Grande.
"Coastal Plain", "Basin and Range", "Pacific Mountain Ranges", and "Canadian Shield" show up too many times.
"Pacific Mountain Ranges" appear to extend into the Pacific Ocean (south of Baja).
"Canadian Shield" seems to be the name of both Lake Huron and James Bay.
Weird things on the South and East Asia Map:
"Himalaya" looks like a forest through which the Brahmaputra flows, and not the greatest mountain range on earth.
Lake Baikal is doubled.
Salween River appears to stop before the ocean.
About the Alaska map:
Great Bear Lake looks beautiful.
The Pacific coastline is too detailed; doesn't at all look like a hand-drawn map.
I did print them out, though. They make me wonder on what the scale of the Tolkien maps of Middle-Earth were. Like is the Sea of Rhûn similar in size to GBL? (No: about the size of MN's Red Lake(s), according to this site.)
Related: I've always thought that the Thompson Reservoir south of Duluth looks like it was copied from an old hand-drawn map.
We The Northest?
We Mo' North!
I dunno. "We the North" seems kind of braggy for Canadians.
New reliever?
Sources: Cuban RHP Yennier Cano has signed contract with Minnesota @Twins. He received 750K of bonus. I interviewed Cano on March 25 at UM after a showcase (more than 30 scouts) where he threw 97 mph fastballs and 86 mph slider. It could be a perfect fill in Twins bullpen. pic.twitter.com/QPCgqHcERE
After Kimbrel signed, I’d assumed acquiring any reliever would require surrendering some prospects. If Cano (Canó?) is capable of pitching for the Twins for the rest of this season, the cost-benefit is excellent.
Twins are back to being best team in baseball, and while they don't have the most wins, they do have the fewest losses.
Some mostly surprising (to me) stats: Twins in a 4-way tie for most HBP (36), 3-way tie for 2nd fewest IBB (4; who would you rather face?), 4-way tie for 4th in QS (33), fewest triples allowed (5), only team with a run support > 6
only team with a run support > 6
Chicks and starters dig the long ball.
Bowden floats Bumgarner and Smith for Graterol and Gordon. Both are free agents after the season. I think I would be fine with this? I'm not sure if the Giants would be.
Not a Bumgarner fan. Also, not really a guns-for-hire fan; I'd like to think this season isn't all-or-nothing.
I know some folks around here have issues with his personality. But with his performance??
this season, he's a little down on some aspects (109 ERA+), but 3.89 FIP (3.28 career FIP), 1.16 WHIP (1.11), 1.3 HR/9 (0.9), 8.7/1.8 K/BB per nine (8.7/2.1).
At age-29, he looks like he has a lot left in the tank. Like with any other trade consideration, I'd say it all comes down to price.
if you don't like our opinions on his personality, you can go pick them up out of the ocean.
adding here, this depends a lot on what you think Gordon's ceiling is and what it would cost to re-sign Schoop. Gordon's minor league performance does not suggest he is a future star. Schoop's major league performance suggests he's about a league-average hitter at 2B, albeit with high strike outs. I think Gordon has a good shot to be maybe that good overall, albeit without the power (and still the high K rate). He'll certainly be cheaper.
I'd be willing to deal Gordon. Arreaz looks to be a much better hitter than Gordon will ever be, possibly as rangey a defender, and he's a year younger.
I agree with all of this. Gordon is definitely a future major leaguer (we're not looking at Levi Michael, part 2, I don't think), but his upside seems limited.
Graterol, on the other hand, is maybe a bit harder for me to part with.
really? I mean, he's super young and doing well at Pensacola. Do you see him as a right-handed F-Bomb?
Given the potential rotation upheaval after this season, I'd prefer to get a starter with another year of control, minimum, before I'd trade Graterol.
I honestly don’t think Schoop’s likely to be retained. With Arraez, Gonzalez, Adrianza, & Astudillo, you have the ability to make Marwin your “starting” second baseman next year and still maintain flexibility & depth on the bench. After that, Royce Lewis should be imminent, and Polanco can shift over to second.
I agree. Extra dollars should go to pitching.
Just like all those extra dollars last season should have gone to relief pitching.
(I will never give this up)
You mean all that Mauer money that was holding the team back didn't go back into player salaries?! I'm shocked.
Graterol strikes me as too good for a rental, given previous trades like this. The Pirates definitely overbid to acquire Chris Archer, sending Austin Meadows (CF, MLB #6–9, PIT #1–2) and Tyler Glasnow (SP, MLB #8–23, PIT #1–3) to the Rays. To acquire Gerrit Cole, who had three years left before free agency, the Astros did not surrender any of their top three prospects. They gave up two guys likely to pitch out of their bullpen — Joe Musgrove & Michael Feliz — plus Colin Moran (3b, roughly Houston’s #10 prospect) and Jason Martin (OF, HOU #27). For Yu Darvish, the Dodgers sent A.J. Alexy (P, 2016 11th round pick), Willie Calhoun (2b/OF, LA #4–5, fringe MLB Top 50), and Brendon Davis (SS-3b, LA #29). The Astros surrendered Franklin Perez (P, HOU #4–6), Daz Cameron (CF, HOU Top 10), and Jake Rogers (C, HOU #22) to acquire Justin Verlander. In the earliest deal I looked at, the Cubs gave up Eloy Jiménez (corner OF, #13–14 MLB, CHC #1), Matt Rose (corner IF, the Cubs’ 2015 11th round pick), Dylan Cease (P, MLB #77–97, CHC #4), and Bryant Flete (IF, unranked & undrafted) for José Quintana.
ETA: Chris Archer to the Pirates at last year’s deadline.
we may be bidding against the Dodgers, fwiw
True, but other teams had bid for the players above, too. There’s a degree of variability here, but I think the Twins are under less pressure to mortgage the future for the present than are the Dodgers.
I'll agree with that, but that won't stop the torches and pitchforks when the chattel starts flying
I trust Falvey & Levine to make the right choice. But the only way I'd be super comfortable with them moving one of their top 3 prospects would be for Syndergaard or maybe Scherzer/Strasburg. Strasburg's two opt outs concern me, and Scherzer is a little older, but all three would be around for a while. Not sure if they'd be available even, but hey. That's why you ask.
And I have zero trust in the Twins front office. I don't trust the ownership to give Falvey and Levine the money to make the right decision even if they are able to negotiate what would help make this team an actual threat in October.
Thanks again to eschapp for the ballgame ticket and conversation yesterday. Perfect weather, meeting another longtime citizen, and a Twins win is a hat trick in my book.
Thanks, ditto for sure. It was super fun. Even being an hour late, I watched a full three hrs!
Seriously a perfect day game.
tickets purchased for July 3 in Oakland, everyone's favorite stadium.
Romero down, Littell up.
Going to my first game at Target Field in a very long time tomorrow evening. This will be my fifth game in attendance there, and the third time they've played the Royals. I'm excited.
All the winning is turning out good crowds. Expect long lines at the concession stands.
I'm trying to gameplan to get in and have time to check out what's changed and get good concessions. I'm going alone so I splurged on my ticket and I'll be in the SKY 360 club or whatever, so I'm hoping those lines aren't quite as bad, too.
Mauer night. Should be fun.
You can enter directly into that level through the walkway from Ramp A. From ground level, just go up stairs on the first base side near the team store.
Another reason the Win is a garbage stat:
Forty-five years ago tonight, Nolan Ryan threw 235 pitches, striking out 19 batters across 13 innings; the Express didn’t get the win. (The 15-inning game was played in 4 hours, two minutes, equivalent to roughly one inning of a modern Yankmes-Red Sox tilt.) MLB.com has the story.
Rosario gets his 20th tonight
If you say so. My money is on Kepler.
Give me liberty, or give me Eddie to HR tonight!
You are doing it wrong. You should have flagged Rosario today.
Ill take Sano to hit a home run tonight and Blake Parker to come in the late innings and piss me off.
Big Boy makes its way to God's Country in the next few weeks -- well worth checking out
How to end a dynasty: have two of your three best players go out with (respectively) a torn Achilles and a torn ACL in consecutive games. And both are free agents to be.
Sigh. It was great while it lasted.
The NBA season is too long.
That strike shortened season was pretty close to the prefect length. They should do that every year.
and then add all 30 teams to the playoffs!!!111one111!!!
Sucks for both those guys, but to be fair, only one of them was maybe coming back.
It sucks more for Klay because I believe KD had a player option that he'll almost certainly use now.
Oh, yea. I didn't realize that. $31.5M player option to sit and recuperate.
538 seems to think that GS will try to re-sign both this offseason, despite the injuries.
At the very least, they'd better pay Klay's medical bills if they don't sign him.
I believe that the team is liable for his medical bills and for worker's comp for him.
I'm surprised they didn't coat Steph in bubble wrap before the 2nd half.
I was hoping the Raptors would win it (I had a raptors hat back in the day when they came into the league and I think a VC jersey.) but after the whole cheering the injury thing, and Drake in general, I wanted it to happen in Oakland.
Oh hey, speaking of champs, how bout them Blues! What a run they had.
Magoo: get your GIS shit together. Mapping a better route from the Shire to Mount Doom.
Seen on the same site: Tolkien-like maps of our world.
They definitely look like a good start created by computers that needs some human (or AI) editing to push them over the top.
Weird things on the US Map:
The words "Great Plains" are directly above where the Black Hills would be.
The eastern Rockies (e.g., Front Range) and Sierra Nevada are pathetically rendered such that they looked like less than the Appalachians or Sierras Madre.
Wabash bigger than Ohio River, Brazos bigger than Rio Grande.
"Coastal Plain", "Basin and Range", "Pacific Mountain Ranges", and "Canadian Shield" show up too many times.
"Pacific Mountain Ranges" appear to extend into the Pacific Ocean (south of Baja).
"Canadian Shield" seems to be the name of both Lake Huron and James Bay.
Weird things on the South and East Asia Map:
"Himalaya" looks like a forest through which the Brahmaputra flows, and not the greatest mountain range on earth.
Lake Baikal is doubled.
Salween River appears to stop before the ocean.
About the Alaska map:
Great Bear Lake looks beautiful.
The Pacific coastline is too detailed; doesn't at all look like a hand-drawn map.
I did print them out, though. They make me wonder on what the scale of the Tolkien maps of Middle-Earth were. Like is the Sea of Rhûn similar in size to GBL? (No: about the size of MN's Red Lake(s), according to this site.)
Related: I've always thought that the Thompson Reservoir south of Duluth looks like it was copied from an old hand-drawn map.
We The Northest?
We Mo' North!
I dunno. "We the North" seems kind of braggy for Canadians.
New reliever?
This was unexpected.
Pleasantly so.
After Kimbrel signed, I’d assumed acquiring any reliever would require surrendering some prospects. If Cano (Canó?) is capable of pitching for the Twins for the rest of this season, the cost-benefit is excellent.
Twins are back to being best team in baseball, and while they don't have the most wins, they do have the fewest losses.
Some mostly surprising (to me) stats: Twins in a 4-way tie for most HBP (36), 3-way tie for 2nd fewest IBB (4; who would you rather face?), 4-way tie for 4th in QS (33), fewest triples allowed (5), only team with a run support > 6
Chicks and starters dig the long ball.
Bowden floats Bumgarner and Smith for Graterol and Gordon. Both are free agents after the season. I think I would be fine with this? I'm not sure if the Giants would be.
Not a Bumgarner fan. Also, not really a guns-for-hire fan; I'd like to think this season isn't all-or-nothing.
I know some folks around here have issues with his personality. But with his performance??
this season, he's a little down on some aspects (109 ERA+), but 3.89 FIP (3.28 career FIP), 1.16 WHIP (1.11), 1.3 HR/9 (0.9), 8.7/1.8 K/BB per nine (8.7/2.1).
At age-29, he looks like he has a lot left in the tank. Like with any other trade consideration, I'd say it all comes down to price.
if you don't like our opinions on his personality, you can go pick them up out of the ocean.
adding here, this depends a lot on what you think Gordon's ceiling is and what it would cost to re-sign Schoop. Gordon's minor league performance does not suggest he is a future star. Schoop's major league performance suggests he's about a league-average hitter at 2B, albeit with high strike outs. I think Gordon has a good shot to be maybe that good overall, albeit without the power (and still the high K rate). He'll certainly be cheaper.
I'd be willing to deal Gordon. Arreaz looks to be a much better hitter than Gordon will ever be, possibly as rangey a defender, and he's a year younger.
I agree with all of this. Gordon is definitely a future major leaguer (we're not looking at Levi Michael, part 2, I don't think), but his upside seems limited.
Graterol, on the other hand, is maybe a bit harder for me to part with.
really? I mean, he's super young and doing well at Pensacola. Do you see him as a right-handed F-Bomb?
Given the potential rotation upheaval after this season, I'd prefer to get a starter with another year of control, minimum, before I'd trade Graterol.
I honestly don’t think Schoop’s likely to be retained. With Arraez, Gonzalez, Adrianza, & Astudillo, you have the ability to make Marwin your “starting” second baseman next year and still maintain flexibility & depth on the bench. After that, Royce Lewis should be imminent, and Polanco can shift over to second.
I agree. Extra dollars should go to pitching.
Just like all those extra dollars last season should have gone to relief pitching.
(I will never give this up)
You mean all that Mauer money that was holding the team back didn't go back into player salaries?! I'm shocked.
Graterol strikes me as too good for a rental, given previous trades like this. The Pirates definitely overbid to acquire Chris Archer, sending Austin Meadows (CF, MLB #6–9, PIT #1–2) and Tyler Glasnow (SP, MLB #8–23, PIT #1–3) to the Rays. To acquire Gerrit Cole, who had three years left before free agency, the Astros did not surrender any of their top three prospects. They gave up two guys likely to pitch out of their bullpen — Joe Musgrove & Michael Feliz — plus Colin Moran (3b, roughly Houston’s #10 prospect) and Jason Martin (OF, HOU #27). For Yu Darvish, the Dodgers sent A.J. Alexy (P, 2016 11th round pick), Willie Calhoun (2b/OF, LA #4–5, fringe MLB Top 50), and Brendon Davis (SS-3b, LA #29). The Astros surrendered Franklin Perez (P, HOU #4–6), Daz Cameron (CF, HOU Top 10), and Jake Rogers (C, HOU #22) to acquire Justin Verlander. In the earliest deal I looked at, the Cubs gave up Eloy Jiménez (corner OF, #13–14 MLB, CHC #1), Matt Rose (corner IF, the Cubs’ 2015 11th round pick), Dylan Cease (P, MLB #77–97, CHC #4), and Bryant Flete (IF, unranked & undrafted) for José Quintana.
ETA: Chris Archer to the Pirates at last year’s deadline.
we may be bidding against the Dodgers, fwiw
True, but other teams had bid for the players above, too. There’s a degree of variability here, but I think the Twins are under less pressure to mortgage the future for the present than are the Dodgers.
I'll agree with that, but that won't stop the torches and pitchforks when the chattel starts flying
I trust Falvey & Levine to make the right choice. But the only way I'd be super comfortable with them moving one of their top 3 prospects would be for Syndergaard or maybe Scherzer/Strasburg. Strasburg's two opt outs concern me, and Scherzer is a little older, but all three would be around for a while. Not sure if they'd be available even, but hey. That's why you ask.
And I have zero trust in the Twins front office. I don't trust the ownership to give Falvey and Levine the money to make the right decision even if they are able to negotiate what would help make this team an actual threat in October.
Thanks again to eschapp for the ballgame ticket and conversation yesterday. Perfect weather, meeting another longtime citizen, and a Twins win is a hat trick in my book.
Thanks, ditto for sure. It was super fun. Even being an hour late, I watched a full three hrs!
Seriously a perfect day game.
tickets purchased for July 3 in Oakland, everyone's favorite stadium.
Romero down, Littell up.
Going to my first game at Target Field in a very long time tomorrow evening. This will be my fifth game in attendance there, and the third time they've played the Royals. I'm excited.
All the winning is turning out good crowds. Expect long lines at the concession stands.
I'm trying to gameplan to get in and have time to check out what's changed and get good concessions. I'm going alone so I splurged on my ticket and I'll be in the SKY 360 club or whatever, so I'm hoping those lines aren't quite as bad, too.
Mauer night. Should be fun.
You can enter directly into that level through the walkway from Ramp A. From ground level, just go up stairs on the first base side near the team store.
Another reason the Win is a garbage stat:
Forty-five years ago tonight, Nolan Ryan threw 235 pitches, striking out 19 batters across 13 innings; the Express didn’t get the win. (The 15-inning game was played in 4 hours, two minutes, equivalent to roughly one inning of a modern Yankmes-Red Sox tilt.) MLB.com has the story.
Rosario gets his 20th tonight
If you say so. My money is on Kepler.
Give me liberty, or give me Eddie to HR tonight!
You are doing it wrong. You should have flagged Rosario today.
Ill take Sano to hit a home run tonight and Blake Parker to come in the late innings and piss me off.
4Bux
I'm gonna try Polanco again.