Month: January 2017

Time for Falvey and Levine to make a decision

Brian Dozier

The rumors of the Minnesota Twins trading their 29 year-old power hitting second baseman have been flying this entire off-season but here it is mid-January and Brian Dozier is still part of the Twins organization. Don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining that he has not been traded, right now Dozier is the heart and soul of the Minnesota Twins and I would hate to see him go unless the Twins can get major league ready players in return. I am getting real tired of all the talk about the future, I want to see some players that can play today. Prospects are nice but why trade an All-Star power hitting second baseman for more prospects. There is no guarantee with prospects, with Dozier you have a known commodity.

The problem I see here now is that the Twins have gone so far down the road with all this trade talk is the possible repercussions that may occur in not trading Dozier. No one likes to hear their name bandied about in trade talks and all this chatter about being traded may have negative impacts on Dozier’s play this season even if he tries to make it a non-issue. Dozier is no different from the rest of us, the more comfortable and happy you are in your work environment the better work you will perform.

Miguel Sano

I blame the Twins for Miguel Sano‘s poor season in 2016 by sending him to the outfield with little or no experience. Sano with just 80 games of big league experience all at third base or DH was forced to try to learn how to play the outfield while learning how to play in the big leagues. Sano did his best but the pressure of learning the outfield and playing in the big leagues was just too much for the then 22 year-old. 

I know that Dozier is more experienced but I can see a similar scenario playing out with Dozier. Starting the season with Minnesota but waiting for the hammer to drop in a trade deadline deal might just cause him to struggle and the more he struggles the worse it would get and then his value plummets. Will Brian Dozier hit 42 home runs again? No one knows the answer to that but he is at peak value now, either trade him or just say he will not be traded and move on. End this thing with the Dodgers once and for all, either they give us what we want or we move on, this limbo business helps no one. Personally I am not a fan of Jose De Leon so a deal for De Leon and another prospect doesn’t spin my wheels so moving on from the Dodgers would be a blessing in my eyes. Whats wrong with keeping Dozier and building around him?

The time has come for Derek Falvey and Thad Levine to make a decision, so let’s move on boys, spring training is just around the corner.

Baseball Cards

I started collecting baseball cards back in the late 1950’s. I didn’t collect cards because I thought they would be worth some money some day, I collected them because I loved baseball and we had no TV so the only way I had to see what these players looked like was through baseball cards or a picture in the paper now and then. I also collected baseball cards because they showed all the stats that a player had accumulated as he worked his way up from the “D” leagues to the big leagues. Today’s cards don’t have that, a damn shame I say.

On top of all that, if you happened to get a star player you had bragging rights with your friends. A favorite card could be anyone, it could be a star player, a player from your favorite team, or in some cases a player became a favorite of mine just because I liked how he looked on his baseball card. Oh the trades, we used to trade baseball cards every day during baseball season. Today fans follow MLB Rumors on the internet to hear about a big signing or a big trade, we made our own big trades day after day. I remember how tough it was to trade a favorite card even if it was for a card you really wanted. There was a life lesson to be learned when we traded those cards, you never get something for nothing.  If you want something bad enough you have to be willing to give up something valuable to get it. Later on in life I learned it was called “opportunity cost”, any time you want something or want to do something there is an opportunity cost, you have to give up something to get something else. A valuable life lesson learned by trading baseball cards.

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Know your Minnesota Twins closers

The folks at Baseball-Reference.com describe a save as follows: 

A save (abbreviated SV or S) is a statistic awarded to a relief pitcher, often called a closer, who enters the game under certain conditions and maintains his team’s lead until the end of the game. The save rule was first adopted for the 1969 season and amended for the 1974 and 1975 seasons. Baseball researchers have worked through the official statistics retroactively to calculate saves for all major league seasons prior to 1969.

The first save credited to a Minnesota Twins pitcher occurred on April 16, 1961 long before the save rule was actually in existence in 1969.

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Another bad move at the U of M – Tracy Claeys fired

Minnesota acting head coach Tracy Claeys calls out to players during the fourth quarter against Nebraska in Minneapolis Saturday, Oct. 26, 2013. (AP Photo/Ann Heisenfelt)

I have to rant this morning and it has nothing to do about baseball or the Minnesota Twins. It has to do with the Minnesota Gophers football team that I have followed since I was a kid living on a farm in the 1950’s. Back then we lived in a small farm-house and our only source of heat was the wood stove that sat in our living room. If you wanted to get up to warm house (we considered low 60’s warm) in the morning you had better get up during the night and put more wood on the fire. It takes a lot of wood to last through those long cold winters in Taylors Falls, Minnesota.

Which takes me back to my rant, I used to spend many a Fall Saturday afternoon listening to Minnesota Gopher football games as I chopped, split and piled the wood in the shed for the long winter ahead. I chopped a lot of wood growing up and listened to the Gophers win a lot of football games. I still remember how disappointed I was when the Gophers lost 17-7 to Washington in the Rose Bowl after the 1960 season. My biggest Gopher disappointment was probably their 14-9 loss to those hated Badgers and QB Ron VanderKelen in 1962 due to some questionable calls by the ref’s.

I have followed Minnesota golden Gopher football ever since….. now we have AD Mark Coyle firing coach Tracy Claeys. I have seen all that has gone with the program this year and the challenges that the team and coaching staff have endured on their way to a nine win season.

For the life of me I don’t see how Tracy Claeys can be blamed and fired after this season. Claeys is a good man who ran a good program and yet the University and Coyle see fit to fire him. On of the stated reasons was low season ticket sales and low attendance at the games, maybe the U of M should look at their own Marketing department for some answers. I guess I didn’t know that the head football coach was also responsible for attendance numbers. You think you saw low attendance numbers this past year? Wait and see what you get in 2017.

This firing is totally unfair and unjust to Tracy Claeys and his staff and the University of Minnesota leadership should be embarrassed to have something like this happen on their watch. I am not a Gopher season ticket holder but the U of M leadership team has chased off yet another Minnesota Gopher football fan.

How have teams fared with their first round picks in the June Amateur Draft

The 2017 MLB June Amateur  Draft is still a long ways off but since my home town Minnesota Twins have the first overall pick in the draft it got me to thinking. I spent some time recently researching how MLB teams have fared with their first round picks in the June Amateur draft that first started in 1965. The very first pick in the very first draft was made by the Kansas City Athletics and they chose Arizona State University outfielder Rick Monday who went on to a nice 19 year career with three teams with two All-Star selection and a career WAR of 33.1 but he was not HOF worthy. Drafting back in 1965 was an inexact science just like it is today, HOF pitcher Nolan Ryan was drafted in round 12 and ended up with a career war of 81.8 and HOF catcher Johnny Bench who ended up with a 75.0 WAR was selected in round two. Other first round picks that year that you might remember were RHP Joe Coleman, catcher Ray Fosse and third baseman Bernie Carbo.

The question becomes how to rank the teams and I decided to rank them in order of career WAR as determined by Baseball-Reference. I looked at how many players were drafted and signed by each team and then totaled the career WAR numbers and then determined an average WAR for each drafted/signed player.

It was a fun exercise looking at the list of players that were drafted and signed as first round picks. Did they deliver on the promise you thought they had when your team announced that they had drafted and signed them? In baseball there are no guarantees that a first round pick from high school or college will make it to the big leagues and wear your teams colors.

The thing to remember here is that I only looked at first round picks. There are many great players drafted in later rounds but the round one picks get all the ink, most of the money and they wear that “first round pick” label for ever. 

Continue reading How have teams fared with their first round picks in the June Amateur Draft

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to all. We thank you very much for stopping by our site regardless if you are a first time visitor or a regular at Twinstrivia.com. We hope that 2017 will be the best year of your life and that the Minnesota Twins can put things back together again and show us some winning baseball.

The beginning of a new year is always a fresh start and filled with hopes and dreams. The sun is shining on the white snow today with the temperature pushing the 30 degree mark, it is one of those Minnesota “Top Ten Weather Days as those weather forecasters like to say. But I still can’t help thinking about the green grass, the home-plate umpire yelling “play ball”, the ball hitting the catchers glove, and the crack of the bat when it meets the baseball and sends it flying out towards the scoreboard in deep center.

Maybe the Minnesota Twins can turn things around give us a reason to cheer for the “winning” Twins. Baseball Opening Day is just 93 days away folks!