• Well now. That was disappointing. I guess we all figured Game 1 was ours. Now we need someone else to step up. Like Boof.
• Nick Punto should be fined for sliding into first base. That's my latest determination.
• I hear that there other playoff games going on outside of Minneapolis.
What'll you have?
This entry was posted by SBG on Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006 at 6:35 pm and is filed under Open Bar. It is one of 2393 entries by the author. We are no longer accepting Letters to the Editor on this post. Why?
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Just another game at Target Center tonight.
Respond: 23 LTEs
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"My job is to get the team to the playoffs. Everything else after that is f@!$#ing luck."
B. Beane.
Watching playoff baseball is a love/hate affair. As awesome as it is to have the twins in the postseason, it's really hard to see them lose. And it's even harder to think that in a few days the season might be over.
The Twins has been so resilant this year it's hard to imagine they won't bounce back - but there is always the chance that their string of good luck will end.
I'm now hoping it does go at least 5 games and that we don't have to go to Oakland down 2-0.
at least five games? Are you hoping for six?
Sure I'll take six
What I meant was I hope we end up having a dramatic 5 game series if the Twins are going to lose this series. (Not that they are going to lose - but today's loss doesn't exactly inspire confidence that the Twins will be steamrolling right through to the WS either.)
I guess the bottom line is that I will hate to see this season end, when it does eventually end no matter what the outcome.
Seriously...shouldn't the Yankees be embarrassed by not winning 110 games with this lineup?
ARod cost them at least 30 games with his terrible play.
Jeter can only do so much to get those back.
lol...the Casey profile brings back fond memories of the Little League World Series...but I want to know who his favorite baseball player is!
Okay, my little ploy worked, and I just got done watching the game and no one told me the score before the game. I thought the A's hit some pretty good pitches to cause the damage. I might've pulled the strings somewhat differently from Gardy, but I wouldn't say he cost us the game. Castillo was running on his own in the first, and I don't think moving the runner from second to third with no outs is all that important with a fast runner at second base and three guys with no power up to bat. Dumb luck almost screwed the A's a lot worse than any of Gardy's moves changed the Twins' chances.
Morneau hit the ball pretty hard a couple times and didn't get anything to show for it. Mauer also got pretty good wood on the ball with JB at third base. I don't think this has anything to do with their character so much as it has to do with our sample size. (In other news, the sun will rise tomorrow.)
If I was a gambling man, I'd put money down on that being the best-announced game of the entire postseason. I'm 99.95% confident of that. Morgan did a pretty good job at not over-analyzing anything, he's stopped putting the A's in his out-dated stereotype of them, he made a couple good observations during the game, and he made me laugh a couple of times. Jon Miller drove me nuts every time Bartlett came to bat, but he fessed up to the mistake later, and he really is one of the better play-by-play guys in the game. From here on out, everything gets more cliched and hackneyed.
I wish that FOX would let ESPN handle the production for their games, even if they insist on putting
the Derek Jeter fan clubBuck and McCarver in the booth. There were issues with the first pitch of the inning a couple of times, but both manager interviews were done before any pitches during the inning (actually cutting into ESPN's commercial time), and Joe Morgan really put it to Gardy with his question about letting Castillo steal. I've never seen an announcer ask a better question in-game. But back to the production, ESPN filmed the game like it was a baseball game. FOX insists on filming it like it's a theatrical release, constantly switching camera angles for worthless shots of the dugout or close-ups of player's faces.For as much as it caused me trouble that the game was on ESPN instead of FOX, I got a far superior broadcast as a result.
Why doesn't Fox use an animated, armored, dancing robot for its baseball broadcasts? I really miss that feature from their NFL coverage.
I really miss the little dancing light bulb Scooter (or whatever the heck that thing was called). Production values for an ADD generation.
Nick Punto should be fined for sliding into first base. That’s my latest determination.
So basically, you think the postseason is the same as the regular season?
Sliding into first is as stupid in the postseason as it is in the regular season. Physics doesn't change just because you are playing for the championship.
I appreciated hearing Joe Morgan point out that Punto slows down when he goes airborne, too.
Just in case my intent wasn't clear, I was just trying to take a jab at the "everything changes in the postseason" crowd.
Man, I didn't even get into the "Insider" portion of Keith Law's post-game analysis before I found something I didn't like:
Well, for one, Castillo's thinking that Mauer more or less only gets singles against LHP, so he needs to get to second base to score. For another, when did the Twins start hitting for power? I don't have the time to get team ISO (which I would use as perhaps the best indicator of team power) but only one team (Pittsburgh) has fewer extra-base hits than the Twins this year, and only two teams (Pittsburgh and KC) have a worse HR/AB ratio.
I guess if your standard is "not historically awful" then the Twins were hitting for some power this year, sure.
Well, maybe because it was the first inning? A leadoff walk, like a mind, is a terrible thing to waste.
re: moving the runner from 2nd to 3rd in the 8th. I generally agree with the sentiment. In this particular application, however, I don't really follow your logic, ubelmann.
You said "I don’t think moving the runner from second to third with no outs is all that important with a fast runner at second base and three guys with no power up to bat."
so, how is having three batters with no power coming up way in favor of not sacrificing? Guys with no power are (in principle) capable of hitting fly balls too.
According to the Win Expectancy Finder, the odds of winning, down one run in the bottom of the 8th with a man on 2nd and no outs was 0.432 (for 2000-04 data; 0.47 for 1979-2004, mostly because for 1979-1990, the odds were over 50 pct and over half the total observations were in this early period). But for a man on 3rd with one out, it rises to 0.549 (28 of 51; but only 0.43 for the entire 1979-2004 period as the win rate was below 40 pct during 1979-1990).
what does that mean? Uhh. I dunno. If you think the data pool across the entire 1979-2004 period (that the data-generating process is the same throughout -- no big changes such as distributions of player types or of strategies), then you should look at the win rates for the entire period, in which case there is no advantage to moving the runner over at the cost of an out. If you think the post-2000 period is different from the 1979-1990 period, then you DO move the runner over. Take your pick.
I'm definitely against stealing in the Castillo situation, I just think that Keith Law's reasoning was horribly flawed. You don't steal in that situation because you need to conserve outs, not because the Twins have "power" this year.
so, how is having three batters with no power coming up way in favor of not sacrificing? Guys with no power are (in principle) capable of hitting fly balls too.
A sac bunt to get a runner to third really only gives you one opportuntity for the sac fly, and that's with Punto at the plate. Punto might hit a fly ball every now and then, but he rarely hits them deep. Also, it becomes harder to hit a fly ball when the pitcher is trying to keep you from doing so, and Punto tends to screw himself into the ground when he tries to hit a fly ball. I'd maybe rather have the added chance that Castillo gets a hit in that situation than the added chance that Punto hits a sac fly.
In all, mainly because the A's would move the infield in with JB on third and one out, I think bunting in that situation marginally increases the Twins' chances of scoring one run. But I think it's probably a really small 1-2% difference, and not the big mistake that Joe Morgan made it out to be. (Though, I feel he's improving in this regard. In the past, we would've heard about that for about the next 10 batters. He's got potential in the booth.)
Well, for what it's worth. During the regular season, Punto was 8-17 with 4 doubles with a runner at (only) third; 7-37 with a runner at (only) second.
But with a runner at (at least) third and less than 2 outs, Punto was 4-18 (1 double, 1 triple).
Punto DID have 7 SFs this year, tied for 2nd on the club. Morneau led the team with 11; Mauer also had 7. I have no idea how many times he tried to hit a SF and failed. But given that he was 4-18 in "runner at 3b and less than 2 outs" situations, with 14 RBIs, 5 BBs and 3 Ks, he probably was close to a 40 percent success rate in getting a run home in those situations. Those are pretty good odds, despite his poor BA in those cases.
I'm going to call small sample size there, but YMMV.
Crain is Canadian, so is that his "playoff beard"?
and, more importantly, when is he getting his grunge band back together?
Dude, I hope they never get back together. I hated Nickelback.
Sid Hartman gushing over Billy Beane this morning on the radio, and once again praised him for "that book he wrote". Erik Eskola has corrected him so many times on that but Sid never remembers. I sometimes wonder if Erik hates Sid, or hates WCCO for making him ask him questions.
Lineup:
Castillo, Punto, Mauer
Cuddy, Morneau, Hunter
White, Tyner, Josh
8-9-1-2-(3) seems to be a gob of singles/obp hitters in a row.
Sometimes wonder if there's a more optimal lineup: White 9th seems simple enough.
Right now, I think White's swinging too well to risk losing a White AB late in the game by putting him 9th. And at any rate, I think it's too late to practically fix the lineup. Any changes would've needed to be made a while ago. If Gardy starts changing stuff now, then I can see where the players might be thrown off a little.