Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Notes, quotes and comments

Tough times for those of us needing our Twins fix: Rained out on Sunday, scheduled day off Monday, and a weather forecast that suggests it will be difficult to get the Dodgers series played.

(They probably will play the games anyway, because it's darn difficult to reschedule these interleague series — and why do the schedulemakers give the Twins home interleague series in April against teams like Miami and Los Angeles anyway?)

Let's poke around for stuff for today's post:

* The Twins' TV broadcast crew came in seventh in the Awful Announcing website's fan poll. That's considerably higher than I would have expected, and indeed, the writer found it odd:

This rating is a little puzzling, because many of the negative comments were directed towards the regular crew of (Dick) Bremer and (Bert) Blyleven, and most of the praise was devoted toward part-time analyst Tom Kelly.

I'm always disappointed when I'm working during a game for which TK's in the booth.  I don't know that a dozen games or so of Kelly's work balances out the dreck from Blyleven.

I find myself muting the TV more often than I used to — such as when Blyleven launches into his daily pitch count rant — and the overall lack of comprehension among the broadcasters (radio and TV) of where analytics are taking the game does the audience a disservice. Blyleven (and Dan Gladden on the radio side) really need to modernize their thinking, or at least understand what they're railing against.

* Peter Gammons wrote this piece on Chris Colabello. I recommend it not only because it's about a Twins player, but because it is so Gammons-esque: Overwritten and sentimental, with a lengthy extraneous Dylan quote stuck in the middle. Gammons has been a great baseball writer for decades, but he needs an editor.

* This chart has Trevor Plouffe seventh in the majors at hard-hit ball rate so far this year, a very good sign for the Twins third baseman.


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