After dive, no more Dome

Two questions:
No. 1: Did anybody record the Twins-Yankees game on Sunday night?
No. 2: If so, can you send a copy to Hawk Harrelson?
The team that never, ever beats itself did just that for the second straight night.

punto1011
Oh, the tears of unfathomable sadness! Yummy!
Few things give me a greater sense of schadenfreude than when Nick Punto unsuccessfully dives into first.
One item to add to that select list: Nick Punto unsuccessfully diving headfirst back into third base … after blowing through a stop sign … as he represents the tying run … with zero outs … in the late innings … of a playoff game … and an elimination game. That’s not merely schadenfreude — that’s a wet dream on plastic grass. And when it helps bring the baseball career of the Metrodome to a close, all the better!
Meanwhile, Ron Gardenhire learned what Ozzie Guillen went through in 2007, when he had to use four pitchers in one inning after three different relievers walked the bases loaded.  Capping it off, a huffing, puffing, sweating Joe Nathan gave up a pair of hits to put the game out of reach — including one on a misread by Jason Kubel. The kind of defensive miscue the Twins never make.
In all honestly, I don’t think this game has a chance in hell at denting the popular theory of the Minnesota Twins as some sort of fundamental superteam, but it’s nice to dream.
****************************
Some Sox-related notes:
*Jim Thome says he would like to return to the Sox:

”I’ll be honest, I would still love to come back,” Thome said, tightening the blue batting gloves on each hand. ”I still care about the city. I mean, we’re going to live there. Chicago’s very fond in my heart. The time that I spent there, [chairman Jerry Reinsdorf] treated me great. I guess we’ll deal with that when this is all over with.” […] “Chicago is a great city. It’s a great ballclub. The people there were great. If anything, I thank them for putting me where I’m at right now, giving me that opportunity.”

At the time of the trade, I said this move might be a way for the Sox to position themselves as a friendlier organization after numerous instances of trashing outgoing players.  This quote could go on the media guide cover.
*The Charlotte Knights will have a hitter-friendly home for the next four years, as they re-upped with York County to keep the team in Fort Mill, S.C.
I’m guessing it’s a reluctant renewal, as it seemed like they didn’t put a lot of work into making Knights Stadium a fan-friendlier home.  But in this economy, getting a stadium closer to downtown Charlotte probably can’t be accomplished.

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iowaoaks

Jim, your pictures, above everything else, are always worth coming to this site for. I’ll be sending all my loser Twin fan friends the link so they too can cry. HA! HA!
Do you really think there is room for Thome to return?

JJ

No pony, he’ll like that!

knoxfire30

I loved punto over running third and getting gunned out, however it was the lesser of two evils as the broadcasters and inevitabally the media had another “heads up” derek jeter moment to stroke themselves over.
Thome for 4 mil or under sure, over that NO.
I thought Nathan looked horrible in the series visably nervous and shakin, so I went back to look at if this was just a fluke but it really isnt, granted its minimum innings pitched but his postseason numbers are pretty terrible.
The house of horrors is gone, but thats just in baseball so far that vikings team will give chicago enough to worry about in the immediate future.

striker

Papelbon, Wagner and Nathan’s failures in the playoffs just go to tell you that there is no gurantees in the bullpen. I wonder if anyone has changed their mind about trading Jenks.
I’m with Knox, $4mil or less for Thome and I’m fine with that. I also don’t want him batting sooner than 5th in the lineup. A #3 or #4 hitter has to hit .280 or better, regardless of OBP, IMO.

striker

Add Huston Street to that list.

therestoomuchlove

None of my non-White Sox fan friends understood why I laughed maniacally when Punto was tagged out–I finally have the image to express my feelings.

pander

Some opinions here are pretty fucking awful.
First, he’s old and slow, but he’s built for the DH position, but let’s look at a sobering fact.
He had a down year for OBP, and take a wild swing where it placed him amongst the Sox this season. If you guessed anywhere but first you’re wrong. With an OPS above .850, that is still a damn potent bat, AVG be damned. He stayed roughly even rate-wise, and simply found fewer ABs because of the glut of sub-par OFs Ozzie wanted to play in the 2nd half.
Second, the last time he made under $8 mil was when the internet was going to make people hundreds of billions of dollars. He is not going to decide to cut his salary by 75% for the privilege of coming back to the south side. I see a 2 year $11-14m contract, possibly incentive-laden.
He really has been the most consistent force for the last half decade for the Sox, and it’s stupid to place a ceiling around $4m for his services. And mind you I’m completely ignoring any clubhouse effects he brings as well (see another lefty ‘power bat’: Bradley, Milton).
Now DYE for $4…that’d be very tempting.

knoxfire30

2 years 11-14 million with incentives, your right their are some fucking awful opinions here.
Have you seen the where the current market place is at???
And on offense alone Thome still gets it done, I like him, he gets on, drives in runs, hits some homers, but the value a lot of teams have that the sox dont with a set dh is being allowed to gain rest for other players. Say the sox invest in Nick Johnson or Hank Blalock, they wont put up Thomes numbers but the increase in numbers for keeping CQ, Konerko, and AJ possibly fresh by having chances to DH them would more then make up for it.

pander

Ugh, the grammar in that second sentence is awful. What I was trying to get it at was that even though he’s old and slow, he’s still the best we could possibly do at any price.

conor

Your grammar was so awful I think you should kill yourself.
Seriously, the rantings found in the comments section of blogs (even a blog as fine as this one) are so nonsensical that all you need to do to obtain respectability is use “your” and you’re” (interchangeably even!) instead of “ur/u r”.
With Thome’s reduced playing time due to age and injury combined with his declining skills, I think a 4 million base contract with an incentive-laden clause working his way up to 8 million would be fair. Throw in a big bonus if he hits 600 HR. I loved Dye, but I think it’s time to part ways. I’d move Quentin to right and see if we can snag an Abreu type player on a short contract for left until some of our other prospects develop. It’s been a long time since one of our OF prospects actually did anything for this team that didn’t involve getting traded for parts.

john

Even better, Punto tried to use the fans as an excuse as to why he ran through the stop sign. “TOO MANY PEOPLE SHOUTING! CAN’T CONCENTRATE!!”

marshlands

There’s a whole lot of problems with Thome coming back, though if it was at a solid discount ($4M-$6M) I’d probably be okay with it.
Using FanGraphs (RAR/WAR and Value) rankings, Thome was worth roughly $6M this year, while last year he was worth $9M. Still not close to what he was actually making (around $14M). But anyway.
Thome’s still a solid hitter, but the problem here is, what good does it really do the Sox? If Tyler Flowers has any sort of future, I’d like to think he would spend most of next year in the DH spot (especially given the way AJ decided to have a career year with the bat). On the flipside, if they think they are any sort of contender (which I’m sure they do think), Thome definitely isn’t a bad bat to have, especially if it’s at a discount.

knoxfire30

Im a big fan of keeping flowers service time in check by starting him at AAA.

soxexile

I think the larger question about Thome is who we get to play DH if he doesn’t return. Besides, finding a slugger to DH matters less at this point than getting some serious OBP elsewhere in the lineup, particularly from whomever replaces JD. Maybe we can hope that Getz & Beckham improve with maturity, TCQ may revert to 2008 form if healthy, Rios finds himself, and Paulie & A.J. don’t decline with age, but that’s an awful lot of things to hope for.

conor

Jim, what kind of OBP can we expect Beckham to contribute over the long haul? I don’t have him pegged as an automatic .400 like our last 2 HoF sluggres were, but he seems like he could crank and keep it above .350 pretty easily. If we bring back Thome and Quentin is healthy, I think Beckham, Konerko, and those aforementioned two comprise a solid if not stellar OBP base.

stopdrop8

Does anyone else think we should offer dotel arbitration? He would still be
valuable in our bullpen at around 4 millions, especially if we trade jenks. And mlbtraderumors has him as a type a free agent, so if he declined we would get a first round pick

knoxfire30

I think Dotel makes a tough case to get a lot more then 4 mil. He likely would get 6 or 7 if his case went to arbitration, I mean his teammate who isnt any good Linebrink makes 5.5

stopdrop8

The way I see it there’s three possible ways to go about it.
1. Offer Dotel arbitration, he accepts, and we trade jenks. We get dotel, 2 million dollars leftover from what Jenks would have made and whatever we can get for Jenks.
2. Offer him arbitration and he declines, we get a first round draft pick and probably keep Jenks.
3. Do not offer him arbitration. Then either trade Jenks and save around 8 million dollars plus get whatever players in return from the trade, or keep Jenks.
I guess it depends on how much more value they think Jenks has than Dotel. We probably can’t afford to lose both. I think the best possible situation would be the second one, but I don’t think he’d decline arbitration.