Moorad cut Towers with a year to go on his contract, which, in the GM circles, is a little like releasing Roy Halladay when you can just keep running him out there for another year.
According to Joe C, the Twins have decided what to do with Jesse Crain.
http://blogs2.startribune.com/blogs/christensen/2009/06/16/tuesday-lineups-cr... Apparently the expectation that he may have been pitching through an injury were incorrect, as rather than put him on the DL, the Twins have optioned him to AAA. I'm posting from my non-multitasking iPhone, so I can't check if he still had options or if he had to pass through waivers, but I expect that we'd have heard about it if we'd put him on waivers. While this comes as a welcome move given his awful performance lately -- coming to a head, of course, on Sunday in Chicago when there were 20000 Twins fans in the stadium who knew we'd lost a few minutes before it actually happened -- the fact that he was replaced by Perkins is interesting. It leaves Gardy one bullpen arm short of where he normally likes to be, and may open the door for one of the starters to move into a bullpen role. Swarzak can't come back up until 10 days after he was sent down, unless someone else goes onto the DL. Them's the rules. So my guess is that one of the following two things will happen: 1) Liriano's next start will be his last chance to stay in the rotation. If he doesn't pitch well, he goes to the pen and Span goes on the DL to make room for Swarzak. 2) If Liriano pitches well, Swarzak stays in the minors and we bring up a right handed reliever when we send down Morales (note that he hasn't played yet). Hopefully this is Slama rather than Humber or Morillo. Also, Duensing is a possibilty if they don't care about having an extra lefty (they shouldn't). The most likely scenario, naturally, is that I'm totally wrong here and the plan is something completely different. The second most likely scenario is that the plan is meaningless because everything will change between now and when it matters. But this is just my reaction to this excellent news. Now we get to be relieved of wailing when Crain comes into games, and Cuellar and the Cliburns get to try to work their magic on his busted mechanics. What are your thoughts?I don't know whether having a foosball table at a bar is a great idea, or I just think that because I keep winning.
Either way, I'm loving it.
I'm at the airport* right now, blogging from the iPhone. I imagine, therefore, that this post won't be a long one.
* By the way, I'll be at the dome on Saturday sporting my Free Jason Kubel t-shirt -- courtesy of those crazy guys over at some blog called Fire Gardy -- so if you see me feel free to run up and leave a comment. Or, as I understand it is commonly called in the non-blog world, say hello. Anyway, I was just reading FanGraphs, and they're looking at the players who tend to get called out on strikes. The guys they looked for strike out in over 20% of their plate appearances ... And who do you think is right up there among the leaders of "percentage of strikeouts that are NOT of the swinging variety?" http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/frozen-at-the-plate/ If you guessed Carlos Gomez (somehow) you'd be right! I was pretty surprised to see this, given how often it seems like Gomez is flailing wildly at the ball. It just feels like he records a swinging strikeout a couple times per game. But remember that talk in spring training about how Gomez was changing his approach at the plate, and that his newfound plate discipline would lead to more walks? Well, the walks haven't come, but it's certainly had an effect. I don't have copy-paste on my iPhone, and for the first time since I've had it this annoys me... because I can't quote the article. So I encourage you to click through and actually read the thing.* * Where you can also note that Gomez is the only guy in the top five that doesn't really hit any home runs. I wonder what that means. But if I remember the gist of it, Gomez has indeed changed his approach. He's swinging at fewer pitches, and has actually cut down on the number of pitches outside the strike zone that he swings at. He's also laying off more inside the zone, though. So he's cut way down on his forward facing K's, with a smaller increase in backward facing ones. (I doubt this phone has that character.) Unfortunately, the new "discipline" is not accompanied by any new knowledge of the strike zone, or vision, which would help with his walks. Still, I though this was pretty interesting. Every once in a while some statistic stands up and points out that one of your assumptions is incorrect. That happened to me this afternoon, and this it's time for me to adjust the insults I hurl at Gomez while he's "hitting." Who said stats aren't useful?
I just read an article on some guy's blog about using Solaris and ZFS as a home file server.
Frankly, it looks awesome. I've been wishing for some ZFS goodness for a while, and could probably come up with some ways to use up a few terabytes of space.
My only question is ... how do I justify spending $1300 on something that I have to invent a use for?
Matt Casey over at the NBC Circling the Bases blog has a post up right now describing a couple of the ways in which the Red Sox have gotten lucky over the last several years. He opens his comparison with:
And while there's no question that the Red Sox have made many brilliant moves in scouting, the draft, free agency, marketing, etc, you also have to marvel at how extremely lucky they've been recently. Like, crazy lucky.
So in case you've had your head in the sand for the last five years and haven't heard ESPN and MLBN and NBC and MLB every other media outlet with any connection to baseball tell you that the Boston Red Sox are sooooo dreamy ... well, NBC's telling you again that they're just great. But they just might have, you know, maybe, been a little lucky ... please listen before you beat me! Or fire me!
How exactly did they get lucky?
Casey's article only mentioned the first five of these. But the last two are pretty valid too. Casey ended thusly:
Again, before Sox fans overreact, it should be repeated: Boston has made plenty of tremendous personnel decisions, and more franchises should model themselves after the Sox. Maybe they're finally the recipients of good karma after so many years of bad things happening. But enjoy the good luck while it lasts.
Jesus F'ing Christ. Are Red Sox fans really so fragile that writers have to be afraid to criticize the team in even the lightest possible fashion? I mean, nobody has said a bad thing about the Red Sox since 2004, and the first time someone comes out and says "you know, they've also caught some breaks," he has to tread so lightly that he virtually neuters his entire point.
Boston fans need to get over themselves, and realize that these good times won't roll forever. (Given that, you know, all the other good times enjoyed by anyone else in history have, at some point, stopped rolling.) And national media outlets have to get back to being unbiased sources of news and analysis, rather than a cadre of beat writers and homers openly rooting for one team over all others.
This is exactly why real baseball fans hate the Red Sox. They used to root for the Sox, but ESPN and Bostonians (both real and fraudulent) blew it with their ludicrous and over-the-top behavior since 2004. Fortunately, all this will end soon.
Good weather on a Sunday afternoon, Twins game is on ... Sounds to me like a good excuse to fire up the grill.
There's some tasty-looking chicken on the grill.
What is it about Thursdays that bring out the best in my grill?
Relishing obscurity.
I'm a software guy -- I make backend services and am increasingly excited by mobile apps.
I also suffer through being a fan of the Twins and Vikings.
