The Week that Was

Another week is in the books.  I’m a day late with my weekly links column, but you’ll have to forgive me because I have a 13 year old guest in my apartment who is consuming every free second and all of my energy.  I’m sneaking this post in while he watches some sort of Fast and Furious knock off racing movie.  Can a movie be worst than the Fast and the Furious?  Yes.  Here are the links:

The Common Man isn’t wild about wins as a statistic that accurately measures a pitchers’ performance.  He isn’t alone, the growing crowd of baseball fans that is embracing sabermetrics is beginning to lose faith in wins as well.  (Remember when Matt Capps blew the 9th inning lead only to be bailed out by Phil Dumatrait and Ben Revere, and then Capps was given the win?)

Just because Kevin Slowey is on the DL and off to AAA Rochester doesn’t mean that his trade saga is over.  And who doesn’t love to beat a dead horse?  Here are some starting pitching trade candidates, featuring Kevin Slowey, from Dave Cameron over at FanGraphs.

Are their baseball fans that don’t dream about visiting every stadium?  I certainly don’t know any.  Thanks to Ben Blatt at the Harvard College Sports Analysis Collective we can now visualize the shortest possible route from stadium to stadium.  And if you started earlier this week, Blatt even factored in team schedules.  Check it out, pretty fun to fantasize about making the trip.

Good ideas are not always so good.  Case in point, 10 cent beer night.  Here is a souvenir from a good idea gone awry.  Thanks to Flip Flop Fly Ballin’.

Over at Uni Watch Paul Lukas examines the 1987 Minnesota Twins‘ uniforms and wether or not they were instrumental in the Twins’ championship run.

Minnesota’s very own Kyle Gibson was the Prospect of the Day over at SB Nation’s Minor League Ball earlier this week.  John Sickels talks about Gibson’s upside and what Twins fans can expect from the top starting prospect in their system.

Dayn Perry of NotGraphs shows everyone Ty Cobb doing his best ninja karate move on an opposing catcher.  Buster Posey, you’ve been advised to look away.

Seth Stohs isn’t the only blogger out there providing quality Minor League coverage of your Minnesota Twins’ affiliates.  Over at The World’s Greatest Online Magazine (WGOM) Jeff A. gives Twins fans his top Minor League performers from the month of May.

This is a really neat article about something which most baseball fans will never experience, sitting in the seats atop Fenway’s Green Monster.  Steve Berthiaume was lucky enough to grab a couple of those tickets and share the experience with readers over at ESPN’s SweetSpot.

Here is an interesting read from BallparkMagic that examines baseball in the bay area, in this article, Part II of the series, Rick Prescott examines San Francisco’s AT&T Park.  Pretty neat stuff from a guy that really knows his ballparks.

Peanuts from Heaven started it by publishing “The Daylight Ride of Ben Revere” and then over at Twinkie Town, Twnzfan gives us the poetic masterpiece, Ben Revere’s Day.

Back at the Platoon Advantage, Bill sort of defends Bill Smith and the Twins’ 2011 collapse.  If nothing else, this piece gives us a great look at Bombo Rivera in a Twins uniform.

The Scruffy Rube at Peanuts from Heaven describes each of the Twins’ 2011 draft picks in 5 words or less.  My favorite?  “Timothy Shibuya, CA–Hopefully pronounced: Shi-BOO-YEAH!”

The North Dakota Twins Fan presents Tsuyoshi Nishioka‘s rookie card and gets in a couple of zingers on Joe Mauer‘s behalf as well.

I’ll leave you with Randball Stu’s list of all the injured Minnesota Twins, including some rather humorous color commentary.

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And don’t forget, Twins fans, that This afternoon our home town nine takes on the Rangers looking for a series win against arguably the best team in the American League.