Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Links, Because I'm Lazy

The Twins played a late-nighter on the West Coast last night, and this is a really busy week for me so I just didn't have time to stay up and write a post about it. Instead, here are a few links to other quality Twins material around the interweb:

* On Saturday, SBG held his Second Annual SBG Convention at Minnehaha Falls in East Minneapolis. It was a beautiful day in the park, filled with great food and conversation, and attending provided me with the opportunity to match faces to some familiar online monikers (although I'd already met the majority of bloggers in attendance). Naturally, one of the biggest highlights of the day was meeting the imitable ubelmann face-to-face. He has become one of the most respected Twins bloggers out there since taking over the majority of Twins-writing duties over at SBG's place, and it was especially nice to rub shoulders with him for a bit, although his stay was all-too-brief.

You can click on the link above to see some pictures from the convention. I'm only in one of them, which may be a good thing depending on your point of view. I think the best reaction to the series of photos so far came from my friend Luiza, who said that viewing the pictures of us bloggers mulling around was "like a trainwreck I can't look away from" because we "all look so nerdy." That's what friends are for.

* I recently added a new link to the sidebar for Twins Fix, a new blog operated by Andrew Kneeland, who is a frequent commenter on this site. It's looking good so far, be sure to stop by and say hi.

* Twins Geek has been very thin on content this month, but he wrote up a post on Brian Buscher on Sunday night which is absolutely worth a read. Geek draws a potential parallel between the careers of Buscher and another late bloomer in Ron Coomer, which would hardly be a bad thing. As much playful flak as Coomer takes for being one of the worst All-Stars ever, he was a pretty productive player for the Twins for a number of years and I think we'd all be satisfied if Buscher followed a similar path.

* Steve Rudolph makes a series of interesting observations over at Bleacher Bums, one of which makes note of an interesting thought brought up recently by La Velle E. Neal III:

As you may have heard, Twins manager Ron Gardenhire was fined $1,500 for violating the league's pace-of-game (POG) requirements. The Strib's La Velle E. Neal raised an interesting question the other day that helped sooth my disappointment over the lack of minor league stats and the lame headline.

Neal wondered why MLB is singling out Ron Gardenhire when Twins games are among the fastest in baseball at an average time of 2:44? Yankees games average 3:03 and the Red Sox usually take 3:01 to play a game.

I'm all for a quick game, but fining the manager of a team that plays at the pace the league want while ignoring the true offenders is just another example of the inherent biases that exist in the game.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gardenhire being fined doesn't bother me too much since I'm sure he said something worthy of getting fined. The league needed a poster manager to show that they actually would fine someone, and this was the first example apparently.

My issue is that Gardenhire's not the problem, it's Brendan Harris. Harris calls for time just about every time he's at bat, so to me Harris should be the one to be made an example of.

Anonymous said...

This is one of the good reasons I moved to the West Coast (Arizona). I can watch the late games.

One of the problems is that once I wake up, the world is already moving! :D

Thanks for the mention!

Anonymous said...

Drew, it actually was Harris that the umpire was making an example of, but it was Gardy who ultimately had to pay the fine. It was the June 15 game in Milwaukee. Harris was calling for time at the plate as he so often does, home plate umpire Brian Runge refused to grant it because umps are getting pressured to speed up games, and the pitcher threw one in for a strike while Harris wasn't even looking. Of course, that ticked Gardy off to no end and he went out to argue with a very valid point - that Runge had created a very dangerous situation for his player. I'm sure he'd do it again in a similar situation. The ironic (and stupid) thing is that the whole argument, etc. took about five minutes, while giving Harris his time out would have added maybe ten seconds to the time of the game.

Anonymous said...

and to emphasize part of what twayn said, Brian Runge was behind the plate.