115 thoughts on “August 21, 2012: What Comes First?”

  1. I voted "Goes on the DL". I'm thinking this happens on day 14, though, so it's almost a push.

  2. they seemed to have dumped me in the especially beautiful part of montreal. i got turned around last night and ended up wandering around by the city hall and notre dame chapel. just beautiful.

    and speaking of, they're some gorgeous women wandering around. however, i think their value is artificially inflated with all the français (i'm a sucker for the french tongue).

        1. a couple weeks ago, my boss asked me what i thought about moving to montreal. i gave him a non-committal answer, but i'm not exactly sure how serious he was...

            1. at a convenience store near my hotel, i noticed they were offering about 7 different unibroue brews at 2/$10. the big bottles.

      1. My studio-mate and his wife honeymooned in Montreal two years ago. Said I would love it. It's on my realistic bucket list.

  4. This appears to be only happening to me, but every time I try to make a vote, it says "Please pick a valid poll answer." I laughed.

    2. I've read almost the whole excerpt. To me it appears that Pos, without the time to get full facts and with his desire not to judge, didn't write a biography for the last year, but reported on it. Was it Algonad or Phil that said that just the pure facts were damning.

  6. I got the yips while shaving this morning. Pulled down on the razor and my hand jerked sideways, leaving two fairly deep bloody furrows on my chin. And of course with the meds I'm on it bled way too long for such a minor cut. I guess I'm going to have to be more careful, or switch to an electric razor.

    1. Yikes. Steve Blade, err, Blass disease, or just a one-time event? Don't let it get to your head, Twayn. Come back strong.

    2. Did the same two days ago. Razor nick on the nostril. Bled like a ... bled a lot.

    3. i have a small mole just under the left side of my nose that i manage to cut about 1 out of every 4 times shaving. i've thought of getting it removed for that reason alone.

  8. An open apology to AMR this morning. I torpedoed his beer taste yesterday. Oops.

    *shakes fist at free*

    1. Apology accepted. "Aspirin-flavored" Summit was shortly after I turned 21 and up to that point, the most flavorful beers I'd had were Primo, Red Dog, and IceHouse.

      1. whereas my palate had been supremely trained by that point by exposure to Blatz, Wisco Premium, Pfeiffers, Schmidt, and Dog Style.

    2. I'm standing by my Torpedo review btw. To to be honest, I've tried a bunch of different beers this summer and still think Summit EPA is the best. By far.

      1. I think this was really my fault. When you mentioned your thoughts on the beer, I chimed in with a "not sure if serious" post because I was honestly unsure if you were stating you true thoughts or a sarcastically contrarian viewpoint, considering all the praise it gets around here.

    1. Do you also wish you were a baller?

      Regarding Swisher, let's project his '12 fWAR to about 3.4, figuring the season is roughly 80% over. That gives him fWAR of 4.1, 3.8, and 3.4 the last three years. Using a 5-3-1 weighting, that'd put him at about 3.6 fWAR next year. If he declines by 0.5 fWAR/year, that'd put him at 14.7 fWAR over the next 7 years. If he declines by 1 fWAR/year, that'd put him at about 8.4 fWAR over the next four years, then out of the league. At -0.75 fWAR/year, he'd be at 10.5 fWAR over the next five years, then out of the league. I think Swisher has an outside shot at a mini Torii Hunter deal, say 5 years/$70M, just from the auction nature of free agency.

      I wasn't a big fan of the Werth deal mentioned in the article, but he had three consecutive years of 5+ fWAR right before he signed it. I think the Nats overpaid, but have also been pretty unlucky w/r/t his performance.

    1. Again, I'm not predicting how he'll do, but it annoys me when people look at Hendriks' brief major-league career and conclude that he's a bum and he'd better show something now or else. I know "he's only 23" became a running joke around here with Delmon Young, but Liam Hendriks is only twenty-three. Lots of pitchers, including some pitchers who turned out to be pretty good, don't even make it to the majors at his age. He may or may not turn out to be anything, but I'd like to see him given a fair shot before we decide he's no good.

        1. hopefully we can set the bar a little higher than that. He is replacing the worst starter in the bigs this year.

          1. hopefully we can set the bar a little higher than that. He is replacing the worst starter in the bigs this year.

            Over the last three years, actually, but baby steps.

      2. Diamond was 1-5 with a 5.08 ERA last year and he was probably lucky since his HR/9 last year was lower than it is this year. Last year, Diamond's BB/9 and K/9 were both worse than what Hendricks has done in the majors this year.

      3. When Delmon was 23, he'd had 1800+ major league PA, and it was pretty clear what his shortcomings were, and some people were still projecting him to be some kind of perennial MVP. With Hendriks, it's not so much that he's 23 and his age gives him a bunch of room for improvement, it's more that he's only had 62 innings and his ERA is way higher than his xFIP. It looks like he's just been unlucky on home runs, although being rookie-ish, it's possible that he needs to make some standard rookie adjustments and his HR/FB rate will be fine again.

        Anyway, I agree with your main point that it's frustrating to see such impatience with some of the prospects when so much patience seems to be given to guys like Blackburn who have been trending down for a long time now. FWIW, I doubt the Twins are too terribly impatient with him, they probably just figured they could take it slow with him since the last two seasons have basically been lost seasons.

    2. I was going to make a little joke off of this LTE that involved a picture of Christina Hendricks so I went to Google to find the right image. That was about an hour ago.

    2. Back in 2010, two short years ago, I don't think too many people were expecting they'd see Punto taking over third base from Danny Valencia in Boston. Now if you'd told me that would happen in Minnesota, I would have completely believed you.

        1. I like that she put some rolled-up scroll at the bottom to match the top, even though it wasn't there in the original.

    2. At first, I thought this was a post about the Twins' medical staff. Hippocratic oath and all that, you know.

    1. "I was pitching through pain and discomfort for so long, and it was driving me crazy, and this was all it took? It's irritating. It's no one's fault. I'll take the blame, but I don't understand why."

    2. "I was a little surprised," Twins assistant General Manager Rob Antony said of the diagnosis. "He was going to pitch today then go see the doctor but when we could get him in sooner, he went and Altchek saw him. That's the thing all along, our doctors and Altchek have conferred on everything. To me, I'm not sure how many more medical opinions you can get on this guy, or more tests done, than we did."

    1. Maybe what the presidential election needs is a series of skills tests. First off, a beer brewing competition. Then maybe a pie-making contest. Some kind of food preservation challenge, like pickling, would be good, too. They should definitely be forced to manage a best-of-seven exhibition baseball series--gather up 50 players, let them scrimmage for a couple of days so the presidents can evaluate them, then choose sides school-yard style. This should probably take place in Omaha.

      I suppose you could throw in some debates, but that doesn't seem like a very popular sport these days.

        1. I like it! There should probably be some kind of board game in there, too. Chess seems too obvious, but it could work.

            2. Hmmm...on the one hand, Go comes from Asia, which makes it decidedly un-American. On the other hand, Asia is an important part of the world these days. Tough call.

              1. On a more serious note, I've been itching to learn/play some Go. I love that computers aren't good at it yet.

          3. 20 years ago, I think "Axis & Allies" would have been ideal. Now, I think it would be "Monopoly."

        1. Pffft, in my experience, if you're making a honey ale, you're probably not trying very hard.

  15. Today is game 9. Span's not in the lineup. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that the Twins playing with an extra short bench for 9+ games hurt more than having 5 extra games without Span if he's ready tomorrow.

    1. I should have added the 'one game and then DL' option, but it would have won in a landslide. I'm guessing that's where Beau's vote went.

      1. Heh, to be honest, that's what I thought I was voting for when I picked "miss 15 games".

  16. heh

    Rhett Bollinger ‏@RhettBollinger
    Span was scheduled to get an MRI on his right clavicle today but couldn't get through it because he's claustrophobic.

    2. Try spending an hour or two being strapped down in a metal tube making deafening noise and trying not to move.

  18. From longtime friend (and occasional lurker here) Chris Jaffe:

    The old Senators franchise moved to Minnestoa in 1961.

    Franchise record from Opening Day 1961 through yesterday: 4,123-4,121.

    Will they make unwanted franchise history in the next few days?

    1. The franchise was 90 games under .500 before Gardy was manager, so it's not like this is unknown territory for it.

      1. they were 20 games under in their first season, 20 over in their second to draw even. In 1969, they surpassed 100 games over .500.

        1. model franchise, other than the 1970s, when they were consistently mediocre?

          They cycle up, cycle down, cycle up, cycle down in long sweeps. You'd like to see the down cycles a bit shorter, I suppose.

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