For those who underestimate the relevance of in-game managing and coaching decisions, the final play of last night’s 2-1 Astros’ win over the Yankees offers a lot to talk about. The situation: one out, the marvelous Jose Altuve on first base, game tied 1-1 bottom of the 9th, Aroldis Chapman pitching to Carlos Correa, who […]
No true Twins fan could be surprised that they lost to the Yankees in the one-game Wild Card Playoff last night. Their only legitimate hope was that Ervin Santana would regain his early-season form and throw a near-shutout, which was a possibility. When he missed with his first two pitches, however, and proceeded to walk […]
Readers of earlier posts can imagine how little I ever expected to be writing about the Twins’ “stretch run” at the start of September 2017. Yet here they are, one game behind the faltering Yankees for the top wild-card spot in the American League, two games in the loss column ahead of the closest of […]
Few, if any, predicted that the Twins would end the first half of the 2017 season above .500, albeit by one game and falling fast; so despite my negative thoughts to come I have to rate their performance so far as a wonderful surprise. More days than not this spring I have found myself on […]
Watching Ervin Santana breeze through a four-hit shutout of the Giants Friday was a relaxing marvel; he was so dominant and he had such a lead, thanks to his own three-run double, that I was never even nervous. His delivery is effortless, his demeanor unchanging, and he spots his pitches perfectly, mixing sliders and fastballs, […]
Baseball these days can seem overrun with statistics – Batting Average with Runners in Scoring Position and Two Outs, for example – yet records for pitchers all seem to me fundamentally flawed. Which is why I am proposing a new, more meaningful, one, which I will get to in a minute. First, however, a recap […]
Twins pitchers are apparently taught, or instructed, to waste a pitch whenever they get an 0-2 count. The theory, I’m guessing, is to see if the hitter, suddenly wary of striking out looking, will expand the strike zone and wave at an unhittable pitch. The 0-2 pitches that Twins hurlers deliver, however, tend to be […]
It is far better to enter the baseball season with no, or low, expectations than to have high expectations that are quickly dashed. SI was not alone in predicting that this year’s Twins would have the third-worst record in the AL and even the Minnesota writers were guarded, expressing doubts, especially, about the Twins’ pitching. […]
In 4-1/2 days of birding from Palm Springs to Brawley, the Norseman and I came across 100 (or so) species in terrain ranging from below sea level to 8,400 feet above, from arid desert to snow-covered mountaintop. But rather than the numbers, it was certain sightings that will linger in my memory, notable either for […]
Woody Hayes famously disparaged the forward pass because “three things can happen, and two of them are bad” – i.e., incompletion or interception. After the Atlanta Falcons’ stunning collapse before the New England Patriots, their coach Dan Quinn might want to add three more reasons not to pass: 1) a sack and 2) a holding […]
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