Category Archives: Other baseball

Making a 50-Game MLB Schedule Work

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Fifty games? In a Major League Baseball season? It’s some kind of joke, right?

We wish it was, but in 2020, the year a pandemic threatened to scratch entire professional and college sports seasons, it’s starting to feel like baseball fans will be lucky to get even a 50-game season.

I know. “Lucky” isn’t how I really feel, either. But when you consider that we’re almost certainly going to see zero minor league games in 2020, a 50-game MLB regular season, followed by an expanded post-season, is starting to look not so bad.

But how would you possibly put together a 50-game schedule that would result in anything resembling legitimate results?

Well, first of all, you need to immediately expand your usual standards for “legitimacy.”

Let’s face it, from the moment MLB sent players home from their spring training sites to wait out the pandemic crisis, there was never going to be a MLB season with even a trace of legitimacy to it. Individual and team records will mean nothing within any historical context.

This was never going to be anything but a glorified exhibition season, so let’s just not get wrapped up in what can or can’t be considered “legitimate.”

Yes, it could have been MORE legitimate if MLB owners had been willing to play 100+ games. as the MLB Players Association proposed. But that would have meant the teams’ owners would lose a few more dollars and we know that nobody parts with a nickel more reluctantly than MLB owners (unless it’s to pay off lobbyists and politicians to get favorable treatment from Congress, but that’s a totally different issue).

It looks like it will be something like a 50-game schedule or nothing at all. “Nothing at all” would be a black eye for both MLB and the players’ union, so let’s assume they’ll eventually agree to the short season.

Admittedly, the two sides probably deserve that black eye, given that neither of them has shown any regard for baseball fans throughout this process. But there’s a whole new round of negotiations over a new Collective Bargaining Agreement on the horizon in the next year, so there will be plenty of time and opportunities for both parties to demonstrate just how much of a shit they don’t give about fans then.

Back to the topic du jour. How could they make a 50-game schedule work?

First, throw out the American and National League labels fans have gotten accustomed to. We’re going to have a bunch of divisions based strictly on geography. This accomplishes a couple of things.

First, from a safety standpoint, it limits travel for teams. Let’s not forget that the COVID situation is not yet resolved. You minimize travel and you minimize the circle of contacts the uniformed members of each team have with different opponents.

Then you only play teams in your division. Period.

Not only does this minimize contact with other groups of players until the playoffs begin, but it at least offers some level of legitimacy to the results on the field.

If you play 50 games against 15 or 20 different teams, you don’t face any of those teams often enough to determine relative strength. But if you play all 50 games against just a few rivals, you stand a much better chance of at least crowning legitimate Division Champions.

How many teams in a division? Well, it obviously has to be an even number or you’d always have one team taking several consecutive days off. So we’re talking about five 6-team divisions, which allows teams to play ten games against each of their five divisional rivals.

That may not be as many games as they would typically play against division rivals in a 162-game season, but it’s a lot more than, say, major college teams play against one another, and conferences still seem to think that’s enough to declare conference champions.

So, you play 50 games and then start the postseason. But what would the postseason look like?

Well, if the owners had their way, they’d probably forgo the regular season entirely and just throw together a 30-team tournament. The prorated salary agreement from March only applies to regular-season games. No regular-season means no prorated player salaries. Problem solved!

But those greedy ballplayers won’t stand for that, will they? They’re going to want to get paid.

Reports are that both sides would agree to an expanded playoff structure this year, so let’s say it’s 16 teams, which seems to be the most prevalent number you hear being tossed around. How do you get 16 teams from five divisions, especially when there have been absolutely no cross-divisional games?

It’s not so hard, really.

Obviously, the five Division Champions go in. You’d probably even say the five Division runner-ups should all go into the postseason. So there are ten of the 16 teams.

I suppose you could say the six remaining teams with the best regular-season records should get the remaining spots, but how do you know a third place team in Division A, with a record a couple games above .500 is really better than the third place team in Division B, with a record a couple of games under .500, when you have no cross-divisional head-to-head games to base that opinion on?

So, I say we just add the five 3rd place finishers into the mix, giving us 15 teams. But who gets that final 16th spot?

Since I’m one of those people who actually LIKES the current system that forces two teams in each league to play a one-game, win-or-go-home wild card game every year, I’m going to suggest expanding the postseason field to 17 (or, potentially, more) teams. Of the remaining 15 teams, the two with the best record play a one-game play-in game. If there are ties for those spots, you play additional one-game play-in games to get to the play-in game. Just the way you can potentially have multiple “game 163” scenarios in a normal season. Let’s start the postseason with some immediate drama!

Once we have 16 teams, we have the issue of seeding. Seemingly, the simplest thing to do is seed the teams 1-16 based on regular-season record. (1-15, really. The wild card play-in game winner would be the automatic 16th seed). Seeding of teams with identical records could be determined by:

1) assuring they don’t play a team from their own division in the first round (no guarantees that might not happen in round 2, however), and
2) coin flip/draw straws/rock-paper-scissors/whatever. Not fair? So what. It’s one freaking season that barely counts as a season anyway. Get over it.

So let’s plug teams into these divisions and see how this might play out.

One Good Earthquake and We’re in the Ocean Division: Seattle, San Francisco, Oakland, LA Angels, LA Dodgers, San Diego

Deserts, Mountains and Other Wastelands Division: Arizona, Colorado, Texas, Houston, St. Louis, Kansas City

We Think We’re So Good We Don’t Know Why They Let Anyone Else Play Division: NY Yankees, NY Mets, Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Toronto

Damn It’s Cold Here Division: Minnesota, Milwaukee, Chi White Sox, Chi Cubs, Detroit, Cleveland

We Didn’t Fit Anywhere Else Division: Cincinnati, Baltimore, Washington, Atlanta, Tampa Bay, Miami

Could you make an argument for slightly different alignments? Absolutely. Do I want to hear your arguments? Not really.

Playing only 50 games, at six games per week, you only need a little over eight weeks to play your season. Kick things off Friday, July 10 and you can be finished with your regular season over Labor Day Weekend (just like the minor leagues do in any normal season).

With five divisions and only 50 games being played, you know you’re going to have several very interesting series over the holiday. Then play your play-in game on Labor Day, itself. TV ratings, anyone?

So, 50 games later, we have standings that look like this:

Earthquake Division: 1-Dodgers 2-Oakland 3-Angels 4-San Diego 5-Seattle 6-San Francisco (Don’t like these picks? I don’t care)

Wastelands Division: 1-Houston 2-Arizona 3-St. Louis 4-Texas 5-Colorado 6-Kansas City (I still don’t think Houston should even be allowed in the postseason, but that ship sailed)

Arrogant A-holes Division: 1-Philadelphia 2-Boston 3-Pittsburgh 5-Toronto 6-Mets (NYY in 4th?! Yeah. Screw the Yankees)

Ice Division: 1-Minnesota 2-Cleveland 3-Milwaukee 4-Cubs 5-White Sox 6-Detroit (Cubs in 4th? Yeah. See “Yankees” above. Same deal)

Leftovers Division: 1-Washington 2-Atlanta 3-Tampa Bay 4-Cincinnati 5-Baltimore 6-Miami (hey look, we found a way the Orioles might not finish in last place!)

We’re going to say the Yankees and Cubs get the play-in game because, come on, who WOULDN’T want to hear the media and those two fan bases bitch forever about how they got screwed by having to play one game to get into the postseason?

We’ll say the Cubs win. I’ll admit this is possibly influenced by me not wanting there to be any chance the Twins have to face the Yankees in the postseason.

For the sake of brevity, we’re just going to assume the 16 teams get seeded using a zig-zag process. Frankly, for this situation, it would probably make more sense than trying to analyze completely unrelated schedules to determine legitimate seeds, anyway.

So we end up with 1-Dodgers 2-Houston 3-Philadelphia 4-Minnesota 5-Washington 6-Atlanta 7-Cleveland 8-Boston 9-Arizona 10-Oakland 11-Angels 12-St. Louis 13-Pittsburgh 14-Milwaukee 15-Tampa Bay 16-Cubs

Feel better about seeing it in a (very informal) bracket? How about this?

With all of the teams set after Labor Day, we can kick off the postseason on, let’s say, Wednesday, September 9. Let’s allow 13 calendar days for each of the first couple of rounds, simply because you know the networks aren’t going to want several games being played at once.

First round: September 9-22. Elite 8: September 24-October 7.

For the semi-finals and World Series, we can use the same schedule MLB uses for League Championships and World Series any other year. Start the semi-finals on a Friday and the World Series on a Tuesday (because that’s how the networks want it, dammit).

That gives us the semi-final series from October 9-18. Which sets up the World Series beginning Tuesday, October 20-28. We are all finished before November 1. Easy-peasy.

Now, explain to me why you wouldn’t watch these games. I know I would.

Canadian (will be) Mist

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You may or may not have noticed this, but Minnesota Twins fans tend to complain a bit.

We complain about home grown players who have MVP and batting titles to their credit.

We complain about managers and coaches who don’t guide the team the way we think they should.

We complain about General Managers because we don’t like the deals they make and, even more, don’t like that they don’t make the deals we think they should.

And we complain about owners. We complained about Calvin Griffith and Carl Pohlad. We still complain about Jim Pohlad.

But if the information being reported out of Toronto is accurate, it’s quite possible we should embrace Mr. Pohlad and thank the baseball gods that our Twins are not in the hands of Rogers Communication, owners of the Toronto Blue Jays.

Blue JaysOn Thursday, Blue Jays General Manager Alex Anthopoulos was announced that his fellow baseball executives had voted him the winner of Sporting News’ Baseball Executive of the Year Award for the work he did before and during the season to assemble the best team Toronto has seen in over 20 years. It was well-deserved.

The timing of the announcement was more than a little ironic, however, given that it came shortly after Anthopoulos announced he would not be continuing to serve as the Toronto GM.

Anthopoulos has not been perfect. He’s made good deals and bad deals, just like every Major League GM. But he’s certainly been on a roll over the past year.

He added Marco Estrada, Russell Martin and Josh Donaldson last offseason. He traded for Troy Tulowitzki, Ben Revere and David Price before the trade deadline this season.

Did he pay too much, in money, years and/or talent, for some of those guys? It’s certainly possible that, over time, we will concluded that he did. We just don’t know, yet.

What we do know is that the Toronto Blue Jays roster he put together was 40-18 after the calendar tuned to August and came within a whisker of being the American League representative in the World Series.

The owners hired Mark Shapiro to be their new team president and, it appears, Shapiro isn’t a fan of some of the deals that the GM he inherited made and envisions his role as more than just running the business side of the team the way he had been doing with Cleveland since their ownership bounced him upstairs and took away most, if not all, of his authority to make player personnel decisions for the Indians.

Now, say what you will about Anthropolous’ wins and losses at the bargaining table, but I’m pretty sure any objective observer would tell you his record stacks up pretty favorably against his new boss’ record.

So the Jays made Anthopoulos an insulting low-ball extension offer they knew he wouldn’t accept. Then, after they torched the relationship and he told them to take a hike, they came back with a five-year offer – again knowing very well there was no way Anthropoulos would forgive and forget and accept that offer.

To top it all off, when everyone in the game is trashing them publicly (everyone EXCEPT Anthropoulos, who has remained above that kind of behavior), the Jays go to the media to make sure everyone knows their GM turned down a five year extension (without mentioning any of the other pertinent details, of course).

I don’t agree with everything the Twins ownership and front office does but, yeah, right now I certainly would not trade my team’s group with those still in Toronto.

-JC

 

Manfred Should End Outdated Selig Policies on Minor League Pay & Blackouts

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In case you missed it, there’s a new Commissioner of Major League Baseball.

I know that, for many fans, that may come as a shock. There are fans that legally enjoy a brew or two at ballgames who have never attended a big league game that wasn’t played under rules dictated by Bud Selig. If it’s true that, “the exception proves the rule,” then that applies to Bud Selig’s role in “proving” the Peter Principle. There’s no other way to explain that man surviving 22 years as Commissioner of Baseball.

Rob Manfred, Bud Selig (Getty Images)
Rob Manfred, Bud Selig (Getty Images)

But today is not the day to trash Selig. Today we humbly beseech his replacement, Rob Manfred, to finally do something about a couple of the most outdated and ill-advised Selig policies. These are two issues that I have long felt were the dumbest, most indefensible of all MLB policies and yes, I’ve written here about both before – several times, in fact.

I’m referring to baseball’s policies concerning compensation for minor league players and their MLB.tv blackout policy.

These two issues are illogical, at best, and offensive, at worst, in the way that they reflect MLB’s low views of the value they place on two of the assets most critical to the game’s long-term viability – their future players and their current & future fan base.

FOX Sports writer Jon Paul Morosi posted an article recently that listed a number of issues that Morosi felt Manfred should focus on as he inherits Selig’s throne atop Major League Baseball. I may disagree with Morosi’s view concerning Selig’s legacy, but his list of topics where Manfred could make improvements included a number of valid possibilities.

Unfortunately, it did not include any mention of paying minor leaguers even minimum wage, much less a living wage, nor did Morosi mention the blackouts. I’m not surprised, of course. The next baseball writer from a major media outlet to properly and persistently shame baseball on either topic will be among the first.

I won’t go in to great detail concerning either topic. There are plenty of articles available with a simple Google search authored by far more knowledgeable and talented writers than yours truly.

But if you really want to read my take on the issues, you can find my thoughts on minor league pay by clicking here and on blackouts by clicking here (where I asked the Twins President why he didn’t want me to be a fan) … and here (where I attempted to start an “Alice’s Restaurant”-like movement)… and here (where I basically just trashed Selig for his inaction on the subject).

Most of these guys are among the lowest compensated people at the ballpark.
Most of these guys are among the lowest compensated people at the ballpark.

On the pay issue, suffice to say that, unless you are a US player drafted in the top couple of rounds or one of the very highest regarded international 16 year olds playing ball anywhere in the world, signing your name on a contract to play professional baseball in this country is a losing proposition. You’d almost certainly have a better shot at making a living off your competitive fire by taking up Texas Hold’em.

Wages for minor leaguers start in the neighborhood of $1,100 a month. That’s gross (in more ways than one). Uncle Sam is going to take his share and then there’s clubhouse dues, all of which leaves a typical player with a few hundred dollars a month to cover luxuries like housing, transportation and food.

Of course, the players only get their money while they are assigned to an actual minor league roster. No pay for offseason workouts or team-sponsored appearances. No pay for spring training.

You think there’s really little difference for a player who gets the final roster spot on a full season Class A roster coming out of spring training and the first guy left off who stays behind at extended spring training? Guess again. One guy gets paid a pitiful sum. The other guy doesn’t even get that.

In his article, Morosi did include this item on his recommended to-do list for Manfred: “Engaging young athletes, especially African-Americans.”

Here’s a thought, Mr. Manfred. Maybe if you actually paid young players working their way toward the big leagues a living wage, athletically gifted kids (of any ethnicity) wouldn’t laugh at you any time you suggest they put their talents to work at baseball instead of other sports, where at least they have a shot at becoming more famous indentured servants of major colleges.

The good news is that a lawsuit against baseball has been filed on behalf of minor leaguers, asking the courts to require teams to pay at least minimum wage salaries to players.

What is MLB’s reaction to that challenge, under Selig and, so far, Manfred? They’re trying to convince Congress to specifically categorize ballplayers as “seasonal workers,” akin to carnival workers. And they’re enlisting the help of their minor league affiliates to help lobby their elected representatives on baseball’s behalf, via not-so-thinly veiled threats of “contraction” of minor league teams if baseball is forced to increase pay to their future players.

Those are nice guys running big league baseball, huh?

Likewise, the issue of blackouts has been out there for years. Promises from MLB executives (including Mr. Selig, himself) to take a look at the issue go back at least to 2008 and probably further. But here we are, in 2015, and still cable TV subscribers in Iowa are blacked out from watching any game involving the Twins, Cubs, White Sox, Brewers, Cardinals or Royals, unless it’s a national network game. The blackout even applies to subscribers of MLB.tv.

blackoutmap
Look at all the pretty colors in Iowa and Nevada!

This has been frustrating to me and my fellow Twins fans in Iowa for years, but nobody in baseball or the media has really cared.

Now, however, thanks to WGN no longer broadcasting Cubs games on the national version of their network, a lot of Cubs fans outside of greater Chicago may suddenly discover the problem. Welcome to the club, folks. Maybe you can get the national media to notice the problem.

As with the minor league pay issue, there’s some news on this front. Baseball has indicated they are looking in to the matter and there may be changes to the policy forthcoming.

Hmmmm… I think we’ve heard that before.

Anyway, Mr. Manfred, if you want to convince me you are any different than your predecessor whatsoever, you can start by proving you give a damn about your fans and about just being fair to the thousands of young players who are feeding your talent pipeline by clinging to their dream of playing big league baseball.

Until then, a lot of us will continue to view you as nothing more than “Bud Light.”

– JC

ARod, Selig, Bosch, Yankees, CBS: Nuke ‘em All

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I know, you’re tired of talking about Alex Rodriguez and his war with Bud Selig and Major League Baseball over his use of Performance Enhancing Drugs.

nuke2Me, too.

Still, we all knew we were going to have to go through another bombardment of stories about the subject whenever the arbitration system played itself out and a final decision (and I use that term loosely, because I’m not all that convinced this decision is “final”) was announced concerning ARod’s suspension for using PEDs.

That decision came down over the weekend and the tie-breaking member of the panel ruled that a reduction from the MLB-imposed 211 game suspension would be reduced to 162 games. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that baseball plays 162-game seasons.

As I read and heard the details of the decision, I couldn’t generate even a little bit of enthusiasm for it. Even the promotional spots during CBS’ NFL Playoff game Sunday afternoon for the big “60 Minutes” interview of ARod’s one-time PED supplier, Tony Bosch, couldn’t get me to care about what any of the parties had to say. I wasn’t even going to watch the interviews that CBS magically had conducted, edited and prepared for airing the same weekend as the announcement of the arbitrator’s ruling.

I channel surfed a bit after the football game ended, but I found nothing I really felt like watching. So I watched “60 Minutes.” After the half-hour segment in which Bosch, Bud Selig, Selig’s likely heir as MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred and ARod’s attorney Joseph Tacopina all got face time, I came away with one thought on the whole thing.

Nuke ’em all.

I don’t believe any of them. Every one of them is lying or, at best, not revealing the entire truth.

Bosch is the embodiment of sleaze.

Selig did nothing to change my feelings about him. I thought he was a sanctimonious, incompetent ass before and his small bit of camera time on the show reinforced that view. Manfred is nothing more than a Selig lap dog.

Tacopina has a job to do, I know. If serial killers are entitled to the best legal representation they can afford, then certainly a baseball player who finds himself on the opposite side of the Commissioner of Baseball deserves the same. But he still came across as a slimy lawyer representing an even slimier client.

CBS and their interviewer, Scott Pelley, couldn’t have possibly created a more one-sided piece than what they ended up airing. I grew up watching Mike Wallace and others on “60 Minutes” play hardball with interview subjects. Bosch, Selig and Manfred got slow-pitch Nerf balls.

What a joke.

Some media are saying there were no winners in this debacle – that it made everyone look bad. I disagree. There was a winner. The New York Yankees escaped the “60 Minutes” segment without so much as seeing anyone have to answer a question over their obvious motives for wanting Rodriguez to be assessed the longest possible suspension.

But, as everyone who is not a Yankees fan knows, any time the Yankees win at anything, everyone else loses (at least everyone else who isn’t in the business of making money from the Yankees winning a lot of baseball games).

In fact, the Yankees are having one helluva party right now.

With Rodriguez’’s suspension, they’re off the hook for the $25 million salary he was due for the 2014 season. That means they can either spend that money on someone who, unlike Rodriguez, is actually still good at baseball or they can use the savings to meet their stated goal of remaining below the league’s luxury tax limit for payroll this year.

There’s a bit of speculation over how the team might manage to keep the player out of their Spring Training camp without violating the terms of the player agreement negotiated with the MLBPA, but here’s a point I haven’t seen mentioned in the media: If the Yankees manage to qualify for the postseason, I don’t think there’s any reason they couldn’t activate Rodriguez at that point.

Would they want the pariah in their clubhouse and in their dugout?

Don’t kid yourself. If there’s anything the Yankees organization wants more than to rid themselves of as much as possible of the stupid contract Rodriguez was handed by George Steinbrenner on his way to his everlasting resting place, that thing is winning another World Series. If they believe Rodriguez can help them get that with his bat in the postseason, they may posture and moan about it, probably telling the world that they’re only doing it because they “have to” for legal reasons, but then they’ll suit him up.

[NOTE: A review of the actual arbitrator decision, now made public as an exhibit in Rodriguez’s lawsuit against MLB and the MLBPA, clarifies that his suspension is for the entire 2014 regular season AND the 2014 post-season.]

As Ed Thoma at Baseball Outsider reminded us in his piece on Monday, this isn’t the first time the Yankees have attempted to escape responsibility for a badly thought out long-term contract. In 1990, Commissioner Fay Vincent banned George Steinbrenner from baseball for life* after an investigation revealed that the Yankees’ owner paid a sleazeball informant to provide dirt on Dave Winfield in the hope that it would provide sufficient grounds to void his contract.

* As it turned out, “for life,” in this case, turned out to be a bit over two years, after which Vincent gave in and lifted the ban. Too bad Pete Rose couldn’t have had the same kind of “lifetime” ban. Even more so, it’s too bad Steinbrenner didn’t have the same kind of “lifetime” ban that Rose has had enforced upon him.

So one Commissioner banned a Yankees owner for life for paying a scumbag for dirt on a player, in an attempt to void the player’s contract.

Now, over 20 years later, a different Commissioner pays a different scumbag for dirt on a player, in an attempt to suspend that player for a full season of games, far more than anything called for under the terms of the current negotiated drug plan with the players’ union. In doing so, the Commissioner gets the Yankees off the hook for $25 million of salary owed to the player otherwise.

But I’m sure that’s just a very happy coincidence for the Yankees.

I agree with Thoma’s conclusion. The lesson here is that, if you want to get off the hook for your stupid decisions and get out of a contract, you don’t take action yourself – you get the Commissioner’s office to do it for you.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t feel at all sorry for Rodriguez. He made his bed and he can lie in it. He’s about as unlikeable a player as there has probably ever been in baseball (and in a game that’s given us Ty Cobb and Barry Bonds, that’s saying something).

But this action by MLB sets a dangerous precedent and the next player they decide to go after with another “the ends justify the means” vendetta may not be someone as universally despised as Rodriguez. Now, when that happens, they will have precedent on their side and it will be challenging, at best, for the player or the union to do much about it.

In addition, as John Paul Morosi pointed out on Monday, Selig’s actions seem to have turned the players and their union from allies in his war against PED use in to adversaries again. While clean players and the MLBPA have been on board with tougher testing and attempts to clean up the game, they certainly are not going to stand by and let the Commissioner unilaterally blow past the penalties called for in the negotiated agreement. Frankly, nor should they.

Morosi speculates – and I think he’s right – that Selig’s actions, by turning the relationship with the Players Association in to something much more adversarial in nature, pose a risk to future labor peace.

Those who have stood up most often to defend the overall record of Bud Selig’s reign as Commissioner have consistently pointed out that he has overseen a long period of relative stability in labor relations. In many minds, the labor relations peace alone is more important than his failures (including, perhaps most damning, the way he and the rest of the league turned a blind eye to PED use in the first place).

It would be ironic if one of his last, and most dramatic, actions as Commissioner turns out to undo whatever previous good he may have done in the labor relations area.

Anyway, you can tell me you hate Alex Rodriguez; or you can tell me you hate Tony Bosch; or you can tell me you hate the lawyers involved; or you can tell me you hate the Yankees; or you can tell me you hate Bud Selig

I’ll agree with you.

– JC

Minnesota Twins Podcast – Talk to Contact – Episode 27

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Episode 27 of the Twins baseball podcast,  Talk To Contact (@TalkToContact), is now available for download via iTunes or by clicking here.

sausage

Eric and Paul discuss the Twins news of the week, ranging from the Oswaldo Arcia injury, the CF competition, Joe Mauer‘s twins to the Baseball Prospectus prospect rankings. They are joined this week by Kristen Brown (kbrobaseball.blogspot.com) to talk about spring training, voodoo paper dolls and being a female sports writer in a male dominated world. After K-Bro the twins take a closer look at Gary Gaetti‘s time in Minnesota, and Deolis Guerra‘s future with the organization before getting into the world of beer and stolen sausages.

If you enjoy our podcast, please take a couple extra minutes and rate and review us on iTunes (ratings and reviews have magical iTunes powers, which buy us beers).

You can follow Paul on Twitter (@BaseballPirate) or read his writing at  Puckett’s Pond.

– ERolfPleiss

Minnesota Twins Podcast – Talk to Contact – Episode 23

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Episode 23 of the Twins baseball podcast,  Talk To Contact (@TalkToContact), is now available for download via iTunes or by clicking here.

This week the Pleiss brothers spend way too much time discussing obscure state capitols and bantering on about MySpace and hipsters.   In between those strange and obscure conversations you can find plenty of talk about the Minnesota Twins, including a discussion about the 25-man roster, Frank Viola, prospect Luke Bard and former Twins around the MLB. Also making his Talk to Contact podcast debut it Jason from The Inverted W podcast (www.invertedW.com) to continue the series looking around the AL Central, this time discussing the Kansas City Royals.

If you enjoy our podcast, please take a couple extra minutes and rate and review us on iTunes (ratings and reviews have magical iTunes powers, which help us become more like summer time on the shores of Cape Cod.)

You can follow Paul on Twitter (@BaseballPirate) or read his writing at  Puckett’s Pond.

– ERolfPleiss

Minnesota Twins Podcast – Talk to Contact – Episode 21

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Episode 21 of the Twins baseball podcast,  Talk To Contact (@TalkToContact), is now available for download via iTunes or by clicking here.

The OTHER (cooler?) Greg Gagne

Once again the Pleiss brothers get together to talk Twins baseball. Continuing their look around the AL Central division they are joined by Lewie Pollis (@LewsOnFirst) from Wahoos On First and Beyond The Box Score to talk about what’s been happening with the Cleveland Indians since the end of their season and what we can expect from the Tribe in 2013. Later in the podcast Seth Stohs (@SethTweets) joins the podcast to talk about the recent release of his Minnesota Twins Prospect Handbook 2013. By the end of the podcast you will have learned something about the Heart of Darkness, Greg Gagne, Josmil Pinto and a whole slough of other Twins news and notes.

 

If you enjoy our podcast, please take a couple extra minutes and rate and review us on iTunes (ratings and reviews have magical iTunes powers, which help us become more like the Red Power Ranger.)

You can follow Paul on Twitter (@BaseballPirate) or read his writing at  Puckett’s Pond.

– ERolfPleiss

Congratulations(?) Red Dog!

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I guess congratulations are in order for former Twins catcher Mike Redmond. He’ll be announced as the new Florida Marlins manager at a press conference on Friday and there are only 30 of those gigs out there, so getting one of them after just a couple of years of managing at the Class A level in the Blue Jays organization is a big deal!

But there’s a part of me that feels bad for Redmond that he’s getting this opportunity with an organization as dysfunctional as the Marlins. I won’t go in to all of the issues with their ownership and front office, but suffice to say that Red Dog will have his work cut out for him. At least he’s getting a three year contract (then again, his predecessor, Ozzie Guillen, was dismissed after one year, despite having a four-year contract).

Redmond is certainly a familiar face in Miami, having come up through their organization. He also won a Championship ring with the Marlins, before moving on to the Twins, where he spent five seasons backing up Joe Mauer. Redmond finished his playing career with the Indians.

Despite being a backup catcher with the Twins, he was clearly a leader in the clubhouse during many of the Twins better seasons over the past decade. It comes as no surprise that he’s getting an opportunity to manage in the Big Leagues, though it’s happening a bit sooner than might have been expected.

Of course, the entire baseball world will anxiously wait to find out if Redmond imports his unique “naked batting practice” approach to his new club.

In any event, best of luck to Mike Redmond with his new opportunity!

– JC

Some EARLY 2013 MLB Draft Options for the Minnesota Twins – Part 1

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It is way to early to start thinking about the MLB draft, especially with real, meaningful baseball being played.  But it probably does not hurt to start familiarizing ourselves with some of the names that might be floating around the top of the pre-draft rankings.  If the draft was to start today, the Twins would find themselves with the third overall selection.  Here are the first 6 of 11 potential first round draft picks the Twins could take in 2013.

Mark Appel, RHP, Stanford
Appel is back in the draft for the third time after being selected in the 15th round by the Detroit Tigers in the 2009 draft, and again by the Pittsburgh Pirates in the first round (8th overall) by the Pittsburgh Pirates.  He has a fastball that sits in the mid 90s and a nice looping slider that devastates right handed batters.  Appel will be 22 next July and with the current state of Minnesota’s pitching staff, he would instantly become one of the best pitchers in the organization.

Ryne Stanek, RHP, Arkansas
Stanek was originally drafted in the 3rd round of the 2010 draft by the Seattle Marinersbut chose instead to attend college at the University of Arkansas.  From his Arkansas Razorbacks profile, he has a low 90s fastaball and a “tremendous” breaking ball.  He was 8-4 in 2012 as a weekend starter for the Razorbacks and was an All-SEC performer.  Matt Garrioch at MinorLeagueBall.com says of Stanek, “One of the best college pitches I have seen over the last 3 years.”  He’ll need another strong season in the SEC to move onto the Twins’ radar at the top of the 1st round, but with a big time need for starting pitchers, you can’t count him out.

Jeremy Martinez, C, Mater Dei HS (California)
Jeremy Martinez is ESPN’s number 1 rated HS prospect on the ESPN 60 list.  He’s committed to playing for the USC Trojans in 2013, but if the Twins are looking down the road for a guy to replace Joe Mauer, Martinez could be their man.  Power showcase.com lists his pop-time from home to 2nd base at 1.86 seconds, which is pretty quick no matter who you are (MLB average is usually right around 1.8-1.9).  In 2011 he was one of just two juniors on the USA 18 and Under squad so he’s been a front runner for the 2013 draft for some time now.  The Twins seem to like current Minor League catcher Chris Herrmann, but Martinez would have a much higher ceiling than any catcher in the Twins organization.

Austin Wilson, OF, Stanford
Austin Wilson was drafted in the 12th round of the 2010 draft by the St. Louis Cardinals but found his way to onto Stanford Cardinal squad instead of going pro.  As a sophomore in 2012 Wilson hit .285 and lead the team with 56 runs scored and 10 home runs.  He also walked 24 times and was hit 15 more, raising his OBP to .389.  Wilson will need to cut down on his strike outs (44) without sacrificing any of his power to move up the draft boards prior to the 2013 draft.

Austin Meadows, OF, Grayson HS (GA)
Meadows is a big kid at 6′ 3″ and 200 lbs as a HS Junior and the number two ranked player on ESPN 60, and like the Twins 2012 first round draft selection, is also a toolsy outfielder from Georgia.  He had a big junior season hitting .390 with 4 HR, 28 RBI and 19 steals, brining his team all the way to the Georgia 5A state semifinals.  Meadows is also a great football player, but has decided his future lies in baseball and will forego his senior season on the gridiron to focus on baseball.  He is, however, committed to Clemson, so any team that drafts him will likely need to offer him a significant signing bonus.  With all of the outfield talent spread throughout the Twins’ farm system, I do not see them going after Austin Meadows, but Minnesota is a team that is not afraid to draft the best available player, regardless of position, so Meadows could end up being their guy with a strong senior season.

Kris Bryant, 3B, San Diego
Bryant has been destroying West Coast Conference pitching for two yeasr hitting .366/.483/.671 over 110 games.  Bryant was previously drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays in the 18th round of the 2010 draft.  Bryant does not play great defense, but he has pretty decent speed, hits for a lot of power (9 home runs as a freshman and 14 as a sophomore, to go along with 17 doubles each year), and walked more than he struck out in his sophomore season.  The Twins may have found a long-term slugging solution at 3B in Trevor Plouffe, but Kris Bryant would fit into the Twins MiLB system with as much power as anyone other than Miguel Sano.

Like I said, it is still REALLY early to start thinking about the 2013 draft, but the the Twins season spirally quickly down the drain, it cannot hurt to look toward the future.  Part 2 coming on Saturday.

–ErolfPleiss

 

Butterflies With Hiccups – Iowa Style

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I’m taking advantage of a bit of extra free time I have this afternoon to do another post of random news items (if you use a very generous definition of the word “news”), most of it with an Iowa connection today.

I played hooky this afternoon and watched the Twins and White Sox. True, I had to deal with the Comcast broadcast out of Chicago due to the MLB blackout rules and that means listening to Hawk Harrelson, but that’s what the mute button is for, right? I hear he left the broadcast booth in the 7th inning of the Twins 18-9 blowout of the Sox on Tuesday night and I have to admit I wish I had witnessed that.

As this MLB season winds down, I’m rooting for two things: First, as many of you know, I’m a bit of an Orioles fan, so I still have a team in contention. I still think the Birds are doing it with smoke and mirrors, but I really don’t care how they get the job done, I just want them to beat the Yankees over in the AL East and get in to the playoffs. (Admit it, you wouldn’t mind seeing JJ Hardy and Lew Ford in the playoffs, either.) Second, I’m hoping that the White Sox end up on the outside of the playoffs looking in AND that they finish just close enough that their losses to the Twins this year account for their failure to qualify.

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Miguel Sano

Speaking of playoffs, I’m driving over to Clinton IA this evening to catch game one of the best-of-three playoff series between the Twins’ Midwest League (Class A) affiliate Beloit Snappers and the Clinton LumberKings (Seattle’s affiliate). Clinton finished the MWL regular season on a 10-game winning streak (the last three of which came against my Cedar Rapids Kernels). I saw all three of the Clinton-CR games this past weekend and I think Miguel Sano, Eddie Rosario and their Beloit teammates have their work cut out for them. Either way, at least I’ll get to check off another MWL ballpark with my visit to Beloit tonight.

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There’s nothing really new on the Twins’ affiliation front for 2013. Now that the minor league regular season is over, teams that are interested in exploring new affiliation options (both MLB teams and minor league teams) can notify the MLB Commissioner’s Office or the president of minor league baseball of such. The teams are not allowed to state publicly that they’ve submitted that notification, however.

The powers-that-be will provide a list of potential affiliates to those teams by September 15. Then, and only then, are the various MLB and MiLB clubs able to start negotiating possible new partnerships with one another.

There was a new article posted online at the website of one of the local CR TV stations (KCRG) this week, but it really didn’t tell us much we didn’t already know. KCRG is owned by the same company (SourceMedia) as the Cedar Rapids Gazette and the report was written by the Gazette writer, Jeff Johnson, that covers the Kernels beat. Johnson has written about the affiliation issue a couple of times already this season and I think he has a pretty solid sense of what’s about to happen.

I’m optimistic, at this point, that I’ll be watching future Twins play baseball at Perfect Game Field here in Cedar Rapids for the next few summers, but the Kernels Directors (essentially, the team’s “owners”) still have a few questions they should be asking the Twins (such as, “Are you planning on buying a MWL team and moving it to St. Paul in a couple of years?”) before anyone is going to sign a deal. As soon as I hear more, I’ll post something, but I don’t expect to hear a lot before the end of September.

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Since this is an Iowa-centered post on a baseball-centered blog, I thought I would mention this little piece of news, as well.

How many of you have seen the movie “Field of Dreams”? Everyone? I thought so.

How many of you have visited the site near Dyersville, in Eastern Iowa, where the movie was filmed? Did you even know the site has been a mini-tourist attraction, complete with cornfield-bordered baseball field, pretty much ever since the movie was released? No? Well now there’s going to be even more of a reason for you to visit, especially if you have kids who play baseball or softball.

Go the Distance Baseball LLC plans to build a $38 million youth baseball/softball complex at the Field of Dreams site. The complex will include 24 ballfields of varying sizes (over and above the original field, which apparently won’t be altered).  The company received approval of a $16.5 million sales tax rebate from the Iowa Legislature & Governor last spring and now have a $5.1 million property tax rebate from the Dyersville City Council, as well.

New Field of Dreams complex (from their Facebook page)

Here’s the artist’s rendering of the site:

Sounds like Ray Kinsella is hearing more voices, doesn’t it? He and his tractor are going to be kept awfully busy plowing under all those other fields. Almost makes me want to get back in to coaching youth baseball. Almost.

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This is rivalry week down here in Iowa. It’s the week of the annual Iowa – Iowa State football game, which I know is of very little interest to much of anyone outside our state’s borders. But it’s a big deal here. It’s in Iowa City this year, which means that’s where I’ll be spending most of my Saturday.

I’m a Hawkeye season ticket holder, but I’m not “anti-ISU” like a lot of people are. I went to high school over in central Iowa, about 40 miles from Iowa State’s campus in Ames. My parents were even ISU season ticket holders for a few years (back in the days when Johnny Majors coached the Cyclones), so I saw a game or two back then. I enjoy taking jabs at my ISU-fan friends and co-workers, but I really don’t mind them having some success on the football field from time to time.

But not this Saturday.

The trophy case in the Iowa football complex that is built to hold the various traveling trophies that the Hawkeyes play for is empty at the moment, with all three of them currently in the possession of various rivals. It’s time the Cy-Hawk Trophy resumes its rightful place in Iowa City.

It may feel a bit lonely for a while, but come September 29, after the Gophers have been sent packing, Floyd of Rosedale will be there to keep it company.

– JC