Randy Dobnak fell into the Twin’s lap…

Dobnak, a rookie 24 yo righthanded starter, carved up the Tigers last night for 6 innings in the game that clinched the AL Central title.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=dobnak000ran

Prominently, Dobnak is an ‘everyman’ makes good trope story in the making. He worked through the minors having not been drafted out of a D2 college. That means his signing bonus was not ‘modest’. It means it was ‘nothing’, for the privilege of going into A ball at $1500 a month or whatever they make there. He was Uber driving as recently as this spring, while in Florida for spring camp.

That’s not quite the angle I find compelling though. See, its that as a matter of taxonomy the trope would dictate that the ‘everyman’ type is kind of an average guy quite a bit like other guys. Well, Dobnak really isn’t. Dobnak has a very good pro arm. The more one watches him, the more you discern that he’s a legit big leaguer. So the taxonomy curiousity is actually that he went his amateur career performing at a high level (which he did) and no team discerned he was a pro prospect such that they drafted him.

In terms of taxonomy, a hot shot pitcher draftee who’s selected high because they look almost MLB ready and can help the big club within a modestly ambitious timeline is from a D1 college, and is picked between say the 3rd and 5th rounds. And they are juniors, age 21, they go pro after 3 college years. At that point, teams would like the taxonomical hot shot pitcher draftee to play 3 seasons or less of minor league ball and be ready for MLB about age 24-25. These guys get signing bonuses from high to low six figures.

Dobnak played 4 seasons of D2 ball, and signed a minimum minor league deal with Twins at age 22. Then he played about 1 5/8 seasons in the minors… going through high A, AA, and AAA this year, basically in residencies that lasted a few weeks…. and had his contract selected for the MLB club at age 24. And he’s… GOOD, a good major leaguer.

So, they got a hot, very valuable commodity here, a 24 year old starting pitcher with juice….

Wisdom: having 24 year old starting pitchers with juice is one of the things that makes it all happen in terms of winning for an MLB club, it really is…. and none of this was ‘planned’, or great scouting, and they got him for nothing. He was signed originally because he had a superficially nice looking arm and had success in college and they have a continual need for fresh players in the minors…. Do give the Twins credit for not typecasting their cheap signees as minor league cannon fodder for the actual ‘good players’, the draftees, to sharpen their skills against. When Dobnak’s stuff kept playing at the next rung they kept promoting without consternation. Now he’s here.

There is some there, there. http://twinsdaily.com/_/minnesota-twins-news/minnesota-twins/randy-dobnak-is-more-than-a-great-story-r8465

Ya know, its one thing to say a guy has decent control because because they don’t walk a lot of guys in the end and its another to compress the length of the at bat because you’re going 0-1, 0-2 constantly on the batter. He’s doing that, the second thing.

His game is a sinker, a running fastball that has a good bit of kink to the righthand box as it approaches the plate. So he’s a sinker baller… But he was really cracking off a hard deuce in the Tiger’s game the other night, and I thought he looked very Kluber-esque at that moment.

He’s not as tall as Kluber. BBREF says Dobnak is 6-1, 230… I think they are high on the weight, he hasn’t appeared quite that thick on TV. But he does look country strong rather than the lean way the modern pitcher tends to look. Dob has a fairly cyclonic turn to the plate, and I see his arm action as pretty short…. Kluber is not quite that way.

St. Paul Chief Axtell: “I’m very happy to say this OIS / UoF isn’t tarted up with a bunch of cop lies”

Not that he said that. But he’s got this, like, this enthusiasm that this one isn’t a police clusterf and its on video

http://www.startribune.com/st-paul-police-to-release-body-camera-footage-of-recent-fatal-shooting/561226632/

What can ya say…. BLM had a protest over this one already, and the dead perp wasn’t worthy of it. Dead perp is obviously nuts or stoned.

Baseball’s hustle police, play the game the right way police….

…which, ya know, has a way zeroing in on Latin players to critique….

http://www.startribune.com/white-sox-announcer-roasts-eddie-rosario-for-not-hustling-on-hit/560779432/

What Steve Stone is really doing here is playing the Rosario didn’t hustle here because he’s Latin card. And you have various members of Twins Twitter affirming this view, Pat Borzi of Minnpost for one.

Its complete bullshit. This is not ‘not hustling’ by Rosario. Not getting from 1st to 4th gear halfway to first is not, ‘not hustling’. He’s running, he’s trying to track the ball, he’s fine.

Total bullshit.

Irwin Jacobs, properly sized up…

I was a kid who read the paper from cover to cover, including the business pages, so I knew who Irwin Jacobs was as far back as the early 80s. The file card that got stuck in my head at that time was “Irwin Jacobs, corporate raider”, and it may have gotten inserted in that way because my father had said something pertinent therein about Grain Belt.

As life went on I was familiar with his transition to the boat business up there in Little Falls and New York Mills. And with those enterprises Irwin maintained his stature, but…

We in these parts got accustomed to reading him described as a ‘billionaire’, and he obviously never got literally very close to that. He started out as basically a working dealmaker / speculator of an ethnic, antebellum type, and became a business proprietor. Nothing wrong with that!. He might have accumulated $250M in companies at a point, these being very leveraged for operational capital. Nothing wrong with that either. But its probably a net worth of about $100M.

http://tcbmag.com/news/articles/2019/june/there-may-be-more-to-irwin-jacobs-than-you-know

I would be curious to understand how this Pohald / Jacobs synergy formed, Pohlad being banky type WASPy and Jacobs being 25 years younger out of N Minneapolis with his Jewish family’s antebellum scrap metal and burlap bag business. There’s a story there, probably mundane, but local history lacks for what it might be.

There’s some local twitter punditry that is suggestive Jacobs killed himself over the debt and not his wife’s health.

http://www.startribune.com/son-says-irwin-jacobs-left-more-than-110-million-in-debts/560728042/

I doubt that… there’s not detail to suggest that on the whole his group of business were insolvent vs the debt, and that this would make him commit suicide. But I don’t know anything.

Welding vs philosophy major update

Which was, recall, really an argument about college vs the trades.

In any event, helluva article on welding. They don’t make that much money. And thing is, college grads do make more than welders.

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/09/welding-doesnt-pay-as-well-as-republicans-think/597733/

As I have observed this and that vocationally the last couple years, I think I’ve noticed that to be true… Being a staff welder with a fabrication role in a mfg company seems to be max a $25/hr job.

To make more as a welder…. and this is not properly understood as an observation that smart people go to college and dumb people go into the trades, cuz that’s not it…. you are A) great at it, with advanced understanding, and B) probably have your own niche practice where you can invoice a lot and keep most of it for yourself. Guys with that kind of ability set do more often than not go to college anyway, so… you ain’t going to make more of these guys necessarily just by encouraging more people into welding.

9/12/19 Dem Debate: Cory’s veganism question

Vox didn’t like it.

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/9/12/20863693/democratic-debate-cory-booker-vegan-animal-welfare

I didn’t think it was an answer that was either obnoxious or lacking in activism… I thought it was fine, and I’m an extreme steak eater. I’m moved now to understand Cory might be a vegan because he has an extreme animal rights bent, and I would usually think that’s a pretty silly thing.

At the moment the question was answered with the reference to the anti-consolidation bill, I was moved to wonder… how the eff do you write a bill to stop farms from buying and merging with other farms…

Beto’s gun grabbing

As an advanced gun guy, I am so NOT motivated by Second Amendment issues etc. I am not troubled by whatever discourse there is on gc now or what changes may come.

There’s not going to be an AR mandatory buyback though, alright. Even if by some chance one gets passed into law, it never happens. I don’t say that as a guy who gets a kick out of some notion of molon labe. I say this as a guy who I think understands sociology and large problems, and thing is… there isn’t a law enforcement apparatus in this country prepared to take on the ‘problem’ of confiscation in an earnest way once it gets put on the table. Which means the whole thing would get demurred in some way, probably by the courts. Also, there’s this, which i think is true: https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/beto-is-a-disaster-for-the-gun-control-movement/

It’s Warren…

Ya know, we’ll get to the primaries and she’ll beat Joe, and it will be like this surprise. But its going to happen. Bernie: too old and too crabby. Kamala: the affectation last night for her was Sammy Davis JR crossed with Dennis Miller. It was weird.

You know this guy was smart because he drove a Corolla

I don’t mean to be flip….

http://www.startribune.com/police-suspect-arrested-in-downtown-minneapolis-beating-of-man-who-later-died/560167422/

But its true. Guy was a prosperous brainiac and drove Corollas because they were the best eh.

But, other thing… I have taken some comfort in the notion that given choices, ambient thugs in the downtowns aren’t going to target 40 something white guys (even though they have they $) because the physicality is there and it thus risks a competitive fight where it doesn’t / isn’t when you rob women and old people.

Who knows what went on here. It often starts as a panhandling overture (which you got to say no to…). Maybe guy took out his wallet and thus got hit in head with a 2×4.

The day in DFL legislator make work / no show jobs

This is so laughably crass, cept to say it is something less than DJT fixing it so Air Force crews stay in Trump hotels….

http://www.startribune.com/democratic-lawmaker-quits-university-of-minnesota-post/560135452/

It justified by climate change though I suppose.

I do have questions….

Gal I went to high school with and knew well is the DFL house rep from Hopkins. I believe those rep slots remain reliably less than $40k jobs even with a bump recently. So the gal I know there, through social media I have observed her hustling for a job for when leg is not in session. And I think she’s taken like $18/hr pt clerical work to keep some money coming in such that the leg post keeps her from committing to a FT job that pays real adult money.

Now, I think you can assume the gal’s clerical work is ‘real work’ as opposed to Rep. Longs, ya know, ‘fake work’.

Question: why is this spaz Long so special that its a party priority to top off his income with a no work / no show patronage job? You look at his linked in, he’s 35ish, and one of these Carleton grads who was a congressional aide (for Keith Ellison). Why does he get a fake job and not the gal I know (… who is a true believer also)?

One also wonders at the ‘good government’ crowd there within the DFL, ie, Ellen Anderson, having this total disconnect in not perceiving that offering no show / no work patronage jobs to cogs in the party machine is not, ya know, “good government”.

Lefty climate alarmists: boy that Jonathon Franzen is a doomist ….

… for concluding we can’t use MMT to muster an army of man bunned apparatchiks to make bourgeois America drive half as much, use half as much heat, stop using straws, stop eating beef, stop flying, and have all this work to mitigate climate change….

https://www.businessinsider.com/scientists-blast-jonathan-franzens-climate-doomist-new-yorker-op-ed-2019-9

The original Franzen piece:

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/what-if-we-stopped-pretending

Therein Franzen puts his finger on the superseding piece of wisdom on ‘climate change’, that being its all talk to the extent the American public is not going to let its standard of living be reduced by 10 – 45% such that they can control it at the ballot box.

So yeah, the logical thing is to work on other issues in other ways such that its understood climate change can’t be fixed (… even if you try, at this point). But thing is climate change is not really about fixing climate change. Franzen is oblivious to that point…