*Tolbert has yet to sign elsewhere, but with the Twins’ utility spot likely occupied by Tsuyoshi Nishioka or Luke Hughes, Tolbert’s time in Minnesota is over.

They say that everyone experiences Five Stages of Grief; Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance.  The Five Stages of Grief even have a great sabermetric acronym, DABDA, so they’re particularly well suited for baseball.  In this case, Twins fans are definitely feeling loss as the roster turns and evolves.

The Five Stages of Baseball Grief are the very same stages, just expressed differently.  (more…)

While he’s at it, MLB Commissioner Bud Selig should take this opportunity to realign all six divisions and allow National League teams to use the DH (allowing for traditionalists, at a competitive disadvantage, to continue allowing pitchers to hit).  The discrepancy between the AL and the NL would essentially disappear and bouncing a few teams from league to league would not be such a big deal.

Geographically, the MLB is heavily weighted by teams on the East Coast and in the MidWest.  There is another nice cluster of teams out on the West Coast, but Between Kansas City and California there is pretty much a baseball wasteland.* I know there are a lot of reasons why there are no teams out there, but it seems like a missed opportunity to add two more teams and have two 16 team Super Conferences, but I digress.

  *If a metro area of at least 1.5 million people is what’s needed to support a MLB franchise (That’s what they have in the Milwaukee area, the smallest metro area that is home to a team), then you should add a team in Portland, Oregon and Las Vegas, Nevada; maybe even stretch to get a team in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; and Salt Lake City, Utah; if you were really trying to expand to “western markets.”  

In the unlikely event that Bud Selig and the owners adopt such a strategy, here are the 6 new divisions they should adopt.  (more…)

 I am starting to think that the Twins won’t make the playoffs this year. An ordinary person would have given up hope long ago, considering that the Twins were eliminated from contention weeks ago, they have the worst record in the AL, and they are quickly spiraling toward 100 losses. But I’m an optimist, and I was holding out hope that MLB would suddenly decide to contract the 10 best AL teams, thus leaving the Twins to duke it out with Baltimore, Kansas City, and Oakland for the title.

But that’s not going to happen. The Twins are done. So if you want to still have a dog in this fight, you’re going to need to pick another team to root for. The good news is Puckett’s Pond is here to help. For the next week or so, we’ll profile one playoff contender at a time so you have enough information to know who to cheer on to a World Series title.

First up (thanks to the magic of alphabetical order) is the Arizona Diamondbacks. Make sure to check out Fansided’s Diamondbacks website, Venom Strikes for a little background on this team.

Why Should You Root For Arizona?

Unlike some of the other contenders out there, the D-Backs do not have a long, storied history. Born in 1998, the franchise still isn’t old enough to drink, much less elect anyone to the Hall of Fame. But they have featured some impressive names in their short existence: Mark Grace, Matt Williams, Curt Schilling, and Randy Johnson among them. (more…)