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Back on the horse.

Sign who?

Or pick up an additional three or four actual hitters. The rot was so deep when Harris came onboard that we all knew it wasn’t going to be fixed by now, or fixed all at once. I don’t know how long it’s going to take, but probably at least another year, if at all. The hitters are also probably going to have to come up through the system—hitters like Keith and Jung and Clark and McGonigle—versus relying on a free agent market as long as we have an inherent disadvantage built into this ballpark.

Well, you got half that right, anyway …

Alex Lange is always going to be the Little Girl with the Little Curl.

What a fantastic map! A+!

Difference being that people liked Adam Everett.

True, they still have 52 minutes to get the thing delayed.

That does seem to be a thing the last few years, where obviously talented performers such as athletes and musicians play down their skills by publicly positioning themselves as everyone hates them and wants to see them fail and they’re fighting against all odds to succeed, so they try to get people to root for them on that paradoxical basis. It’s such a common thing now it must have some cool name attached to it. Fake Underdog Complex? I don’t know, probably too on the nose. Plus a problematic acronym. But you get the idea.

Funny you say that because ever since I moved to Chicago, I am frequently struck by how flat and clipped and nasal Michigan accents are. I sure didn’t notice it while I was living there. I thought we were the Walter Cronkite network standard accent.

Happy Jose Lima Day!

I agree that luck matters, but a good foundation can help you make your own luck, and I think we’re going in the right direction.

If he can turn them against the union, he can turn them against the government, and then he can remake it all to his own liking.

Elite on defense and low BABIP are directly related. Just goes to prove the axiom that a lot of pitching is actually fielding.

Way to gut that out and get the split, Foley. Man, we've seen some games this season so far!

Holy ****, what an at bat by Julien. This turned out to be a game!

That play at third, right there, for the second out in the ninth? That's what we signed Urshela for.

And Tork drives in the run in exactly the way we aren't paying him to hit! FANNTASTIC!

Holy crap, when did the Twins replace people with mannequins in the infield? Come on, Tork, this is your moment!

I think with Tork there are quite a few potential outcomes. The one we all hope is that is he so super-talented that he will inevitably click and become a perennial All-Star hitter. That's the outcome we obviously hope for. The range of remaining outcomes includes that he is talented and has big-league hitting potential but his ceiling is a lot more limited than All-Star caliber; that he is talented but our coaching can't figure out how to fix him; that he is talented and our coaching has a good idea how to fix him but he is obstinate about instruction and/or lazy about applying it; that he is talented, our coaching knows how to fix him, he's willing to do it, but he can't figure out how to apply it; that he is talented in ways that make him a great hitter for college ball but not a good MLB hitter; or that he was talented once, but now his talent has abandoned him. Any of these outcomes are in play for Tork. I'm swagging that the chances of the perennial All-Star outcome occurring for Tork is somewhere between one half and one third—probably closer to a third—and that it's more likely one of the field is true. That happens to some 1/1s. It happened with Mickey Moniak, Tim Beckham, Matt Bush, and Delmon Young, all flops. Or he could be Royce Lewis, who took six years to come through the minors before finally clicking with the Twins with an upside still TBD. Or maybe he'll be Pat Burrell or Phil Nevin or Jeff King or Shawon Dunston, all of whom were drafted with great promise at 1/1 only to have merely decent careers. The range of outcomes are wide and varied, but the one thing we know for sure is that he is ours for the next five years, so sit back and enjoy the show. As for Javy—we may be seeing one of the most spectacular career flameouts of all time. Not like there weren't warning signs that this might happen, giving his skill set and approach. I think we all accept that his chances of becoming an acceptable major league hitter again have dwindled down to neatly nothing. The only thing I know for sure about that guy is that we are going to keep running him out there until we get someone in-house we know can do better than he.

After all, we need the keep Israel going so that Iran and Russia will “come against Israel” so “God” can “wipe them out,” after which “there will be 1,000 years of perfect peace, no presidential elections, no fake news, none of all of this nonsense.” Instead, there will be “one king, and one leader, Jesus Christ the Son of God. One law, it will be his law.” Can’t stop it, might as well lay back and enjoy it.

In Avila’s defense, TORK! was the consensus 1/1 that year. Most if not all of the other 29 teams would have taken him that year.

What if the problem is not the coaches, but the hitters themselves?

I can’t tell—is that actually Ivanka on the far right, or a creepy look-alike?