Jordan Independent - catchers - Comments

I can't wait for the real

swansonmej — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 11:06:37 -0600

I can't wait for the real season to begin.

The fact that baseball has started means that spring is just around the corner.

Hallelujiah!!

I can’t believe they’re

Brandon — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 10:26:39 -0600

I can’t believe they’re already playing baseball this year – the months are just flying by.

Just for the lack of

Mathias Baden — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 14:53:36 -0600

Just for the lack of scoring, I've never much appreciated soccer. Especially playing it -- too much work for no reason is bad for my attitude.

(Mathias Baden is the editor of the Jordan Independent. He can be reached at editor@jordannews.com.)

I do really want to learn

Brandon — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 12:28:30 -0600

I do really want to learn about baseball, but it’s something I feel I’ll have to ease myself into. I didn’t like off-season football until I knew what was going on with the trades and how they effected the team during the season. Would it be great to know why certain players are important to a team’s future? You bet, but first I have to know what goes on during the regular season.

Jumping into baseball during spring training would be like trying to understand math by learning calculus. Sure, there’s a lot of great information there, but unless I have the basic skills I can pick up during the season, I won’t know what the heck is going on.

I will try to lay off the “baseball is boring” jokes, though.

I have to agree with

Lori Carlson — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 11:45:32 -0600

I have to agree with Brandon. At the risk of being called un-American, I have to admit I've never much liked baseball (or football, for that matter).
My idea of a sport is one in which the ball and the players are kept in near-constant motion. Go basketball and soccer!

Wow, that's pretty

bhall09 — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 11:19:45 -0600

Wow, that's pretty harsh.

Not to mention, you can have spring fever without thinking about baseball. I do. It is more about just the desire for better weather and the opportunity to spend some time outside.

But, you sound so cynical. I don't think you really WANT to like baseball or learn about it at all. I think you would rather just talk about how boring of a game it is.

Try not to be so cynical and open up your mind to the game and maybe you will like it. Although, yes, it helps to know the insider stuff to make it more interesting.

(Brian Hall is the Sports Editor for the Jordan Independent and Shakopee Valley News, and can be reached at bhall@swpub.com.)

Now that football season is

Brandon — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 11:01:06 -0600

Now that football season is over, I guess I’ll have to sit through report after report on spring training baseball on ESPN. It’s that time of year that the best plays they can conjure up for the top 10 on SportsCenter usually involve animals doing something stupid (like a water skiing squirrel) or no names in spring training making boring plays in even more boring games. Maybe thinking of it as spring fever is right – it's a disease you just wish would go away.

I’m ready to learn more about baseball, but I’m definitely waiting until the regular season to get interested – at least at first.

Spring fever? Yeah, me too.

Mathias Baden — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 13:45:54 -0600

Spring fever? Yeah, me too. This is the time of year when you get through the cold weather by curling up in bed with a Kirby Puckett (slightly lesser known former Twins shortstop Pat Meares, if he happens to be your hero) highlight video on the TV screen.

(Mathias Baden is the editor of the Jordan Independent. He can be reached at editor@jordannews.com.)

I went to Twins Fest once,

bhall09 — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 11:32:33 -0600

I went to Twins Fest once, quite a few years ago before I ever lived here. I paid the money for the Autograph card. Happy to say the one I am most pleased with still to this day is the auto I got of Paul Molitor on one of his cards.

Maybe the crowning achievement (at the time) was getting a combo Chuck Knoblauch and Marty Cordova signatures on one card. Its a combo card about Twins young players with pictures of the two of them, so I got autos of both of them on the same card. Neat concept...years later, well, yeah....

And I got one signed by Pat Meares....Ah the grand days of the Minnesota Twins.

I remember that same year I participated in the silent auction for a few things, but never won.

If I wasn't working I wouldn't have minded hitting up Twins Fest this year. I was interested in the card show portion of things. Ah well.

I must admit, I have big-time spring fever and can't wait for nice weather and baseball season.

(Brian Hall is the Sports Editor for the Jordan Independent and Shakopee Valley News, and can be reached at bhall@swpub.com.)

Baseball rosters are

bhall09 — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 12:43:46 -0600

Baseball rosters are easy....The Twins start nine players in the field and nine in the batting order (taking away the pitcher and adding the DH), and all 1-9 can't hit for power.

And then you have the rest of the 25-man roster on the bench. For the Twins, a lot of those guys don't even deserve to be major leaguers.

That's your basic Twins roster for ya.

(Brian Hall is the Sports Editor for the Jordan Independent and Shakopee Valley News, and can be reached at bhall@swpub.com.)

Baseball rosters are easy --

Mathias Baden — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 16:57:19 -0600

Baseball rosters are easy -- 40 players in the offseason, 25 during the season, not counting the disabled list.

For the Twins, three catchers isn't much, because Joe Mauer and Mike Redmond often play in the same games -- one of them at catcher, the other at designated hitter. This is risky, because if one of them gets injured, you'd have to play Mike Lamb or some other position player there. Wasn't Luis Rodriguez our emergency catcher last year?

As near as I can tell, the Twins system is shallow at the position. Jose Morales isn't all that likely to make the major league roster, and only one guy -- the guy at Triple A -- seemed to have had a really good 2007 season. Maybe their defensive specialists, as are many catchers.

(Mathias Baden is the editor of the Jordan Independent. He can be reached at editor@jordannews.com.)

I don’t know if this

Brandon — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 13:32:29 -0600

I don’t know if this really pertains, but Joe Mauer is my favorite Twin specifically because of his awesome sideburns commercial.

But how can a team with three catchers on its roster be short on that position? Only one plays at a time, unless I’m completely off base. In football, each position has only three men listed on the depth chart, which is why baseball rosters are yet another facet of the game that I’ll probably never understand.

I think they would confirm

Mathias Baden — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 16:56:29 -0500

I think they would confirm your suspicion, goldengopher, for sure. I'm willing to bet that Travis Hafner is the only underachiever of the bunch and that the pitchers are the severe overachievers.

Nick Punto, however excellent he is in the field and however often I defend him, has seen an unbelievably severe drop in most of his stats. A hundred points is a lot to lose from your batting average -- it's unreal.

(Mathias Baden is the editor of the Jordan Independent. He can be reached at editor@jordannews.com.)

Wow you're good! I wasn't

goldengopher — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 16:03:18 -0500

Wow you're good! I wasn't really serious, but just thought those stats would confirm my suspicion that Cleveland is overacheiving, and that the Twins are severely underacheiving from last year.

I know Punto has been ripped by everyone, but how can he drop 100 points off his average from last year?

I gotta go... car cruise time.

Comparing all those stats

Mathias Baden — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 14:44:24 -0500

Comparing all those stats takes time. I like the suggestion and will probably take you up on it, but it sounds like a blog for another day. Keep reading, and I'll try to look into that soon.

If you want to look right now, here are the Twins stats for this year: http://minnesota.twins.mlb.com/stats/sortable_player_stats.jsp?c_id=min.

(Mathias Baden is the editor of the Jordan Independent. He can be reached at editor@jordannews.com.)