lol Mauer. wow. just wow. And Cuddy too.

Gardy, I think we've let things sort out enough. Span-Gomez-Cuddy every day. Hit Gomez 8th. Send DY to AAA and teach him to hit. Call up Pridie (unless there's a better option?) and let's go.

Mauer is amazing

Jason Pridie is hitting .233/.257/.302 in AAA. Keep him as far away from the majors as possible plz. Another fantastic player acquired in the Delmon Young deal...

Delmon really is getting abused out there though, and should definitely go to the minors to regain some confidence (or something like that). Our AAA outfield is really horrible though so I don't know who we'd even replace him with.

Gomez should definitely be the every day CF. He's actually been more disciplined at the plate I think (fangraphs backs this up but it's a small sample size) and he's so ridiculously elite defensively that we can afford to let him grow in MLB. He made a couple sick catches today, especially that one early on where he slammed against the wall. I don't think any other CF in the league makes that catch.

Anyways, not a terrible game today. Our lineup was so horrible with Span, Mauer, and Crede out that I wasn't expecting to win. I don't think Liriano really pitched as bad as his line indicated either and it's a good sign that he's striking people out. Mauer is obviously not human.

A friend made this;



Also, I'm so gay for Mauer it's absurd.

Well, we don't need Pridie to play, just to be here. We wouldn't want to have to put Punto in the OF if something happened in-game. The clocks already ticking on Pridie so calling him up won't affect anything that way.

We could call up Tommy Watkins who hit .357 for MN in 2007 in 28 AB's. But, Pridie is our only OF that's on the 40 man roster. Anyone else and we'd risk losing a player. (And I *think* we can send DY down because he has options left?!?)

nah, it's not like having punto play LF for two games would be a disaster.

5th outfielder thing isn't a big deal. punto can be the 5th outfielder, harris can be the 5th outfielder, hell, mauer can be the 5th outfielder. i would also like to see young go somewhere other than the major league roster. well, more like i would like to see young never take away atbats from gomez/span. i wouldn't mind if they made him a true 5th outfielder who played once a week or seomthing

Well, no. But, you got to call someone up if you send DY down. We don't need any more IF's. And Pridie's the only OF on the 40 man. I suppose you can recall Morales but that's kind of silly. You want to be able to PH for Gomez late if needed and if Kubel is DH'ing you need someone to put out there in the OF and that's the only action Pridie should get because Kubel would be the 4th OF. iirc Pridie is good defensively??

I wouldn't mind seeing hughes called up. It would surprise me if he isn't better than Tolbert. Although he is probably very similar to Harris who also has to be better than Tolbert...

God that trade was horrible. Even if Delmon starts hitting something like .300/.350/.500 the Bartlett/Harris swap makes it negative again and then throwing in Morlan just makes it silly.

even if delmon hits .300/.350/.500 i don't think he's worth what garza is, considering he's a LF and horrible one at that.

Yeah, true.

well, if we want Hughes up we can ship Buscher down, he's not doing much.

Yeah, I think Buscher needs to go. He's looked absolutely terrible the last few times he's played. Awful defense today and way behind every fastball.

Yep. And we already have a ton of guys who can play third (Crede, Harris, Punto, Tolbert, even Cuddyer). No need for a dedicated backup thirdbasemen.

buscher is the best hitter of all our 3B. maybe the worst fielder though.

ehh wat

He's probably right. It is close between Buscher and Harris though.

/edit and I meant bring up Hughes as a replacement for Delmon... we don't need to worry about bringing up an OF... plus anyone we bring up is going to be a huge defensive upgrade from Delmon in left anyway. Hughes mostly has played middle infield, he for sure can do better than awful in left if necessary.

fyp

pretty lol to be leaving Crede out of this discussion, he has the best numbers by far this year and last year they were all pretty equal with the edge probably going to Crede

Calling up Hughes would also have the benefit of getting Danny Valencia up to AAA. He's supposed to be our 3B of the future and has been crushing the ball (.339/.432/.597) at AA.

That Morneau HR tonight was ridiculous. I wonder if anyone in MLB right now has a faster bat speed than Justin? It looks like he swings so much harder than anyone else.

crede is clearly our best-hitting 3b... that said I don't see any reason to drop buscher or harris.

It isn't clear at all. He gets out 70% of the time. It's relatively close between all three but if I had to make a projection for the rest of the season for something like eqa he would probably be third.

so do harris and buscher

and at least crede has some power, his SLG% this year is way higher than both and he has the advantage in pretty much every offensive metric. updated ZiPS projections have him ahead of both as well, its not like hes running really hot his numbers are pretty much inline with his numbers from the past 4-5 years (excluding 07 when he was injured)

harris has the best career numbers. buscher has been running very cold this year (i assume because he never plays) and still has a career OBP 27 pts higher than crede. in fact, even though buscher is having about as bad a start to 09 as he possibly can, crede has only had one year in his entire career where he had a higher season OBP than buscher has so far in 09. buscher in AAA in 07-08 was about .315/.390/.515.

if i had to guess what each would do the rest of the season as a full-time starter i'd say:

crede: .250/.300/.450
harris: .270/.330/.405
buscher: .270/.340/.400

i guess that's pretty close, but i don't know. i think buscher would be the most likely to exceed expectations and have a "good" season of the group. what i should have said is that buscher is the best hitting 3B most of the time. (when a RHP is pitching)

when you factor in defense, crede is probably the best 3b and harris is probably the best player (because of versatility), but, basically, there was no reason for the twins to spend $7 mil on crede when they had a platoon that was as good already.

here's buscher career vs. RHP: .274/.345/.385
here's harris career vs. LHP: .296/.357/.429
here's crede career: .256/.306/.449

and of course crede is always battling a minor injury while harris and buscher seem to be pretty durable, are younger, and much cheaper.

That must have been the most boring baseball game I've ever gone to. Nothing interesting happened, and it took, what, 3:20 to play 8.5 in a 4-2 game? Jesus.

Pretty sure Crede is the best overall by a fair margin. I'd be shocked if he can't play SS or 2nd better than Harris, he is miles ahead at 3rd.