SB Nation User Blog: BeefMaster

Batting Stance Guy covers the Minnesota Twins

BeefMaster — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 15:55:37 -0000

Batting Stance Guy covers the Minnesota Twins

Twinkie Town Favorite Icon

BeefMaster — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 19:07:25 -0000

A little nerdery to distract us all from the wretched recent play of our favorite team.

As a frequent Twinkie Town visitor who has the site bookmarked, I'm thinking it's high time we got ourselves a favorite icon. For those of you who don't know, a favorite icon is the little picture that shows up next to the website address in your address bar and next to the site name in your bookmarks/favorites - for example, MSNBC.com has the familiar NBC peacock logo, and ESPN.com has their stylized E. More specifically, it's a 16x16 (or possibly 32x32, but I believe it's scaled down to 16x16 in the browser) pixel image, a size that's small enough to make it really difficult to come up with something that 's both small enough and recognizable.

Anyway, I think Twinkie Town should have one. Does anyone have any suggestions? A snippet of the skyline view that the site uses as its logo would be okay, I suppose, although it wouldn't end up looking like much of anything at that size. I've been thinking that a little Metrodome would be cool, but that's out of my personal range of artistic expertise. The TC and M logos could probably be reproduced okay, but I'd assume they're off-limits, as SBNation has tried to avoid using trademarks. I can't think of any other great Twins-centric ideas offhand, other than maybe a little Kirby Puckett face or something.

Twinkie Town, unleash your creativity!

Your Favorite Game

BeefMaster — Wed, 07 May 2008 15:01:48 -0000

Tell the story of your favorite game you've ever attended.

Chad Moeller - Baseball Hero

The best game I ever attended wasn't even planned in advance - I was living with my aunt in St. Paul during an internship, and we decided spur-of-the-moment to head to the Twins game that evening because Roger Clemens was pitching against Eric Milton (as a bonus, when we got there we found it was Dairy Queen Hat Day). This was in 2000, when the Twins weren't exactly good, but they were fun to watch, and you could see that the Koskie-Hunter-Guzman-Jones core was starting to come together.

The game started off as a pitcher's duel - Milton struck out 7 of the first 9 Yankees he faced, and the pitchers had dueling no-hitters until the fifth inning. The Yankees scratched together a couple of runs in the sixth off Milton, and it was looking hopeless - the Twins couldn't get anything going against Clemens.

But this was 2000 Roger Clemens, on a pitch count, and the eighth inning brought with it a new pitcher, and new life in the Twins' offense. The Twins strung together a series of hits to tie the game, and up to the plate, with runners at the corners and two out, came Chad Moeller. Moeller was the latest in the Twins' Rotten-Hitting Catcher Patrol, following Matt LeCroy (who hit .174 that year) and Marcus Jensen (.209) and preceding Danny Ardoin (.125). Moeller was hitting just under the Mendoza line at the time, and he had just one career extra base hit, a double.

Moeller proceeded to hit a low liner to left field, where Ryan Thompson was playing instead of David Justice. Thompson charged the ball and tried to make a diving catch... but he missed (I suppose we now would refer to that as "pulling a Torii"). The ball rolled to the wall, and by the time Bernie Williams got it into the infield, Chad Moeller had crossed the plate standing up for a three-run inside-the-park homer - the first homerun of his career, and his only one of the season. The Twins added another insurance run that inning, and LaTroy Hawkins finished off the Yankees in the 9th for a 6-2 win.

On that day, Chad Moeller cemented his place as one of my all-time favorite players. to the point that I was actually excited when he was the Brewers' starting catcher at a Twins-Brewers game I attended a couple years ago. He struck out four times.

Random Acquisition Proposal: Julio Franco

BeefMaster — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 20:11:43 -0000

The last active position player from RBI Baseball was recently designated for assignment... could he be a worthwhile acquisition for the Twins?

I'm proposing the Twins acquire Julio Franco, who the Braves designated for assignment when they acquired Mark Texiera. In my scenario, Franco would either be claimed off waivers or traded for an conditional prospect (like the Bret Boone deal), and the Twins would send down Luis Rodriguez to make room on the 25-man roster. Yes, I know Franco's almost 49 years old. Yes, I know he's only hitting .221/.324/.291 this year. But I'm serious about this. Here's an (admittedly off-the-cuff) analysis of pluses and minuses.

Pluses:

Have you seen the Twins' bench? With the standard Twins starting lineup, the only decent bench bat is the backup catcher, and although Gardy's been better about having both Redmond and Mauer in the lineup, it still wouldn't hurt to have another option available.
That horrific stat line could be an issue of small sample size. Julio's poor results this year have been in extremely limited at bats (just over 100 PA). As recently as two years ago, he put up an OPS near .800, and even the .700 he managed last year is a step up from Tyner at DH.
Really, will we miss L-Rod? Punto's move to the utility role has made Rodriguez pretty much redundant, as the Twins can back up any infield position with Punto or Cirillo.
I'd assume the Twins could basically get him for free, since the Braves will be letting him go anyway. I'm not sure of the 40-man roster situation, although I'd assume there's an opening thanks to the Castillo trade.
Karma - it seems like having the oldest player in the league on your team should be a positive force for your team somehow.

Minuses:

Did I mention that he's almost 49? That is older than both players who were inducted into the Hall of Fame this week. He's not getting any younger, and it's very possible that his struggles this year aren't a product of small sample size - they're a product of being old.
He's already been released by two teams this year... obviously they haven't found his performance acceptable.
The desire has been for a power bat... and Julio ain't it. His career high in homeruns is 20, and he hasn't had half that in over a decade (although he did hit 9 in 2005).
It's not a guaranteed upgrade by any means. Julio would likely be taking at bats away from Ford and Tyner (DH and PH), and he's not outperforming either of them so far this year.

In my opinion, the pluses outweigh the negatives just enough - an upgrade is an upgrade, no matter how small, and it'd probably be close to free.

TwinkieTown, tell me why this is a bad idea.

Poll

Should the Twins acquire Julio Franco?

Tyner = Hunter ?!

BeefMaster — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 21:38:10 -0000

Is the Tyniest outfielder as valuable as everyone's favorite homerun robber? According to some metrics, yes he is.

An article today at the sports blog Sportszilla made a claim that I thought you here at TwinkieTown would have some good, strong opinions on, one way or the other. The article started straightforward enough, discussing the underrated value of fielding when people propose trades, underpinned with quite a bit of statistical analysis (primarily Ultimate Zone Rating), before moving on to their central thesis, a discussion of a Fire Joe Morgan post that they thought was unjustly harsh toward the idea of a straight-up Hunter-for-A-Rod trade posited by Howard Sinker in his blog for the Star-Tribune.

This is where it gets interesting. According to Sportszilla, the trade would be great for the Twins not just because it's an upgrade at third base (duh), but because it would occur without a downgrade in center field. "What?!" I hear you all asking. "If Torii were gone, the Twins would have to put someone like Jason Tyner there!"

Exactly. According to their stats, Hunter's offense is pretty much average for centerfielders, and UZR has him at one win above average in the field. Tyner comes in at 1.5 wins below average at the plate, as we'd all expect, but UZR says that he is worth 2.5 wins above average as a centerfielder. Add that up, and either player is worth one extra win to his team over the average centerfielder.

What say you, TwinkieTown? Are these fielding metrics a load of hooey, skewed by sample size or pure unreliability? Have we been panicking about the centerfielder of the immediate future too much, ignoring a good one sitting just down the bench? What are everyone's personal observations of Tyner's defense, for those like me who don't get to see many games?

The Real Deal: Boston

BeefMaster — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 21:00:42 -0000

Our favorite failed draft pick has caught on with a new team!

The Red Sox have claimed J.D. Durbin off waivers from the Diamondbacks. Durbin has pitched exactly two thirds of an inning at the major league level this season, giving up seven(!) earned runs on seven hits against the Rockies, leaving him with a career Diamondbacks ERA of 94.50.

I highly encourage all of you to also check out Deadspin's coverage of this transaction, includes a mildly disturbing picture of The Real Deal dressed as a cooler and a link to his MySpace page.

Tony Batista: Gold Glover

BeefMaster — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 15:33:55 -0000

The latest from the crazy person managing the White Sox

According to the Chicago Tribune, Ozzie Guillen intends to give his third base Gold Glove vote to Tony Batista. The Batista Bashers of this site should absolutely love his reasoning:

"I'm going to vote for the worst guy on the field so my guy is one vote ahead. That's the way people should do it. I will do that. I will vote for [Batista]. I will vote for him so Chavez doesn't get his. That's the way."

You read that right - in order to improve Joe Crede's chance of beating out Eric Chavez for the Gold Glove at third base, Guillen is going to vote for Tony Batista, since managers can't vote for their own players and Batista was (by Guillen's estimation) the worst third baseman in the league. Guillen is also considering voting for Alex Rodriguez, who leads AL third basemen in errors.

I thought this was kind of a bush league move, until I saw elsewhere in the article that Ken Macha is leaving his ballot empty at third base, to improve Chavez's chances. Ozzie is just doing the same thing, only funnier.