65 thoughts on “June 19, 2019: Good Morning!”

    1. I'm an idiot. For a second I thought you meant they had a double header scheduled for today....

  2. Failed opportunity for both MLB.com and WGOM to have some title about taking last night's game "to the Max"

      1. I gotta say I was shocked to see so many LTEs already this morning. Some mornings by the time I check in from the West Coast, the cuppa is almost cold from lack of attention.

        1. I left after the ninth inning with around 65 letters. Citizens bombarded the editor with another 220 in the next game.

    3. I had to leave after the 13th yesterday. I hate leaving early, but I had to drive to St. Cloud this morning and didn't want to be a hazard on the road. I still stayed up and watched at home until the Garver error.

  4. There will be no recap or Minor Details tomorrow, as I am leaving to celebrate my mom's 94th birthday this morning.

  5. I've been feeling like we could use some new banners. Unfortunately, I apparently lack the talent and/or computer programs to make something that fits the specifications and looks worthwhile. But we should do something this season, right?

        1. then let's hop to it, fellow content creator. i think you must have the 2nd most banners running.

          (you're right that we could use a little pruning though)

      2. Well, I mean, when you put it that way...

        Mostly I figured since they were good again, it'd be nice to have some celebrating the goodness.

  6. I remember the 2006 season and stressing out about every decision and mistake coming down the stretch of that fun second half run. I am a lot older now, and I find myself just wanting to sit back and enjoy the ride this time around. I know everyone is freaked out about the bullpen, but if you look at the stats for the main 6-7 relievers we are not really that bad. We have had a lot of short stint auditions who really skew the numbers. I would love to see the regime pull in a couple more established arms to shore it up a bit. More importantly guys and gal, we have the best record in baseball after 70 some games. None of us predicted this, so why not enjoy the the wonderful aspects of this team?

    1. this argument has been playing out online recently. i can kind of see both sides, or at least that decades of futility in minnesota sports (lynx excluded, naturally) has made the fanbase a little irritable and desperate.

      i'm more in line with your thinking though. that and that the twins should have spent an extra $10-15m on relief pitching in the off-season.

      1. I think Minnesota sports fans generally have been conditioned to wait for the other shoe to drop. There have been so many disappointments that every time the team loses a couple of games, everyone thinks, "Here we go. We knew it had to be too good to last."

      2. In hindsight, I don't mind that the FO didn't pick up arms offseason. With almost half a season in, we now have good insight into which arms are worth going after, and which aren't. If we didn't have the best record in baseball and the bullpen had cost us, then I would be pissed.

        Let's see if we can't try maintain that .667 record for a while and let the FO do their job. Lately as we've all seen, the bullpen hasn't been problem anyway.

        1. It’s not even hindsight. AG was banging the drum all winter wondering why the Twins, with Mauer’s salary off the books, weren’t going after decent, moderately priced relief arms. I think he even had a list of like 20 names that all ended up signing fairly team friendly contracts elsewhere. I certainly didn’t want them to blow the bank on an all-star closer, but they willingly chose to pocket that money. Now we’re going to have to dig into our system to shore up the bullpen. That’s what annoys me.

        2. I think the bullpen is one of those "everybody likes the results" sort of situations.

          So far, the reliever corps has put up a 260/337/418 slash line (102 sOPS+, so slightly below average for bullpens) with 9.6:3.8 K:BB per nine, 1.23 HR/9 and a .320 BABIP. The strikeouts are good, the walks less good. The OBP allowed, not good. Some of that BABIP surely is bad luck, but the flip side of luck is the 4.56 ERA could be a lot worse.

          And in June, the bullpen has been bad. 282/355/498 (119 sOPS+), 9.3:4.0 K:BB per nine, 1.67 HR/9, .331 BABIP.

          So I think the concerns being expressed are legit, if sometimes a bit over the top.

          1. Rogers is awesome. The rest is below average. I don't care all that much about relievers 4+ but you need 3 good ones for the playoffs.

            They'll need to make a trade or pull some guys up from the minors.

            1. I would disagree that the rest are below average. Morin and Harper have been very solid. Duffey appears to be figuring it out and his numbers are pretty darn close to Rogers. May is probably at league average and has potential to be more. I agree that we need a couple more well above average arms in the bullpen, but I think it is a stretch to say it is only Rogers right now. What sucks is the minor leagues have not really provided any help to the bullpen, even though I thought there was promise. I believe we will pick up a couple strong relievers by the deadline and all will be fine.

              1. I agree. Duffey has an ERA+ of 218 and leads the entire staff with a 13.3 K/9. Parker has been fine, minus the HR problem, and May minus the BB problem. All we need is someone to replace Magill, or an SP that will put Perez or Pineda in the pen.

    2. I am having an absolute blast following this team, however, I think the stressing out about the few small things going wrong is both emblematic of what Jeff notes regarding MN fandom and symptomatic of the fixable nature of the problems. That is, the fixes don't seem all that hard in the abstract. Quality relievers are a dime a dozen, right? So why don't we have another one? A little more patience at the plate is teachable, so why does Eddie always swing at the first pitch, no matter where it's located? What's wrong with Sano can be dissected by any hack who thinks he knows the game, so why aren't the professional coaches fixing it?

      That type of thing. The problems are actually very little, which paradoxically leads to more stress. This team could be historic, and no one expected that, so while it is a blast to ride along, lots of us also want to grasp at that history. We're probably wrong to do so, but the temptation to tinker is just too great.

    3. Unfortunately my dad has become a grumpy old man and it is literally a chore watching a game with him. He complains about everyone, every at-bat that isn't a home run, every pitch that isn't a strike. Sunday was the worst. Basically went GOSO after the game. I don't even know why he watches, he obviously gets little joy out of watching, even in a season like this one.

  7. A week or so ago there was talk re: coaching strategies for youth. Zoom, I think you specifically mentioned that the evidence all points to need for reps, encouraging all players, etc.

    I'm wondering if anyone can point me in the direction of some easily accessible evidence that I could share more broadly with members of our community? Zoom, others, anything specific you'd recommend? It seems like I maybe should be trying to win over some converts here, to help make our town a better place, rather than just complaining about it.

    2. Positive Coaching Alliance is a very solid organization with some great material on coaching and parenting youth. Our local hockey youth program contracted them to help us educate and train coaches and parents.

      The USA Hockey ADM program is built upon extensive research on developing athletes. It has some great material, but you may have to surf a little bit.

      My philosophy on develop changed quite a bit when reading Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers. It is a fascination book on how greatness is often achieved. It is a bit controversial, as not all coaches buy in to his theories. But it delves deep into repetition and science behind development.

    3. I will say this on the topic of change in a youth sports organization. If the current powers that be are not receptive to new concepts, you will go nowhere. I was fortunate in the fact that when I joined our youth hockey board of directors, I instantly bonded with the Director of Hockey who is also very involved in MN Hockey and USA Hockey. He exposed me to a lot of material like that listed above. The following year, when I became President of the Board, we then had a 2 headed monster of common sense. With the Board of Directors supporting training the right way, and the Coaches Committee supporting training the right way, we all transformed our group. Number of participants doubled in the 6 years I was involved, and if you follow high school hockey at all, you may have noticed that the end result was quality depth in our program which put us on the map as one of the best out state programs in the state.

      I used a lot of this material when coaching youth baseball. I did not get involved with the leadership of the organization, but I was on my bully pulpit the entire time, helping to breakthrough old school concepts by developing some fine teams and players.

      I guess what I am saying is don't count on the material alone to sway judgement. You need to find some like minded individuals as parents and coaches to buy in and get involved.

      1. Part of why I'm asking is that it sounds like there are certainly some other parents who buy in. Coaches might be a different story, but we can hopefully get there with some effort.

  9. The Ricky! Era in Utah is over. Conley to the Jazz for Korver, Crowder, Grayson Allen and two first-round picks.

    2. Great - GREAT - move for the Jazz. They now have to decide what to do with Favors and his $16.5 Mil contract. The ideal final move would be Tobias Harris but the cap room probably doesn't exist for that - even if they waive or move Favors. Mirotic would be an excellent second and affordable option with what the Jazz have.

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