Thread: Can't we just enjoy what we have?

Originally Posted by rocketpig

You two are such a cute couple.

I'm pretty sure he is joking. At one point he was supposed to crash on my couch for a weekend here in NY for the playoff series.

Originally Posted by rocketpig

You two are such a cute couple.

Could have been you and I if you wouldn't have ruined it.

I feel like the people who are complaining that the Twinsdaily message boards are "way to negative" have never ventured into an internet forum, blog or comments section before.

Yes, some people are negative, these things will happen when you have one of the worst teams in baseball two years in a row. However these forums are some of the more balanced ones I have seen. Of course there are a couple people who take different viewpoints/sides to an extreme, but it's really not that hard to avoid them.

The Twins are currently the 2nd worst team in the AL, nobody should be jumping for joy right now as Twins fans. Though I certainly think we have a decent shot in 2013 if Ryan gets the job done this off-season.

Originally Posted by Jim Crikket

So the only point for a message board is to bitch. Now that I understand that, at least it explains why I find the message board to be the least valuable aspect of the TwinsDaily site.

No, but it's shining the light on the failures on just about every level this franchise is going through. I'm sorry if you wanna bury your head in the sand or plug your ears, but
there's a reason this team has been this bad the last couple years and I don't think myself of anyone else should apologize for focusing on it.

There's a good mix of neg and pos on this board, I think it's good for debate and good for a board to have both views.

Originally Posted by spideyo

So why can't we just enjoy the improvement and enjoy the success, instead of advocating that we blow up the whole team and plan for 2015?

I agree with your sentiment about some of the negativity and constantly needing to mentally fiddle with trades/promotions/demotions/position changes et cetera. Though, I also believe that most folks on here share in the spirit of your post: we want the Twins to win and that means to continually improve at every position and improve every player fielding those positions. As to the title of you post, "Can't we just enjoy what we have?" I am enjoying the resurgence of production and winning attitude I see with many of our young and formally injured players. I, like most others, see a tremendous amount of work, smart trades and smart FA signing that must occur for this team to be a competitive playoff squad. I see us requiring three good to excellent SPs in order to win the division. Can we buy them all? I don't know, but I have very little faith that this front office is the one that can buy them all.

Originally Posted by SpiritofVodkaDave

I feel like the people who are complaining that the Twinsdaily message boards are "way to negative" have never ventured into an internet forum, blog or comments section before.

Spot on. Apparently, the creed of the Interweb (brought to you by Al Gore) forumsphere is:

The only way to appear sophisticated is to offer negative criticism. Positivity is viewed as uneducated and beneath those of us who are smart enough to know better.

There's plenty of complaining on this site as expected due to a losing club, but since when are trade suggestions a mark of negativity? Sure, poor ones leave a bad taste in our mouths, but a successful one gets people pretty pumped up. It's bittersweet losing a fan favorite, but getting upset about trade talk seems naive. Keeping a player from their rookie season until their retirement is rarely a good business move. I'll bet no one is still upset about trading Chuck Knoblauch except the Yankees.

Originally Posted by SpiritofVodkaDave

I feel like the people who are complaining that the Twinsdaily message boards are "way to negative" have never ventured into an internet forum, blog or comments section before.

Nah, I ran one for a decade. Thankfully, it was technology and not sports related, so the focus was a whole lot different.

Certainly, the level here is much better than the Strib and several orders of magnitude higher than ESPN. No argument about that.

Originally Posted by SpiritofVodkaDave

I'm pretty sure he is joking. At one point he was supposed to crash on my couch for a weekend here in NY for the playoff series.

Oh, I know the two of you don't really hate each other. Both of you just think the other is kinda dumb.

Originally Posted by DPJ

No, but it's shining the light on the failures on just about every level this franchise is going through. I'm sorry if you wanna bury your head in the sand or plug your ears, but
there's a reason this team has been this bad the last couple years and I don't think myself of anyone else should apologize for focusing on it.

There's a good mix of neg and pos on this board, I think it's good for debate and good for a board to have both views.

I thought it was a little silly for one of the bloggers (aside from the big 5 on this board) to say this was his least favorite part of the site.

Originally Posted by rocketpig

Pictures of cute baby animals! Use your head, DPJ!

Can that little guy turn a double play?

Geez, SpiritofVodka Dave, way to pee in the punch bowl with all that meaningless droning of positivity! Yep, the damn excuse factory is workin' overtime, Dave, and you're the foreman.

I'm here to fulfill the Community Service requirements of my last sentence. Just trying to keep the bruises down in the DPJ household.

The Twins is 2013:

Need to address 2B/SS Carroll/Dozier and someone for backup is adequate.

Plouffe at 3B - let's see how he comes back from thumb injury.

Revere and Span in the OF -- two very similar players. Do we want more big pop in RF, or settle for getting on base and speed.

Bench - non-existent.

The Twins, to succeed in 2013, need to improve at-the-plate. Advancing AND scoring runners. Taking more pitches. Running. The possibility exists.

Bullpen: A strength. Right now 2-4 suitable long men. A dynamite lefty who can get out one or two batters. Decent setup. Terry Ryan did good trolling last winter.

Starting Rotation: Diamond, Deduno, DeVries (potential bullpen longman), Duensing (keep in bullpen, but he throws lefty). I'm not sure Walters will contribue. Hendriks will get to show off some in September.

The Twins still need two starters, top of the rotation innings eaters who won't pull up lame. You can spend the money if you wish, and that would be the easiest way -- buy them and hope they pitch to keep 38,000 butts in the stands and everyone who has been performing the latter months of 2012 continue to do so equally.

Originally Posted by PseudoSABR

Can that little guy turn a double play?

Betcha my 13 week old Golden puppy would make one heck of a cutoff man.

Originally Posted by crarko

Betcha my 13 week old Golden puppy would make one heck of a cutoff man.

Back in 2006, BYTO spent months lobbying to replace Jose Bautista with a labradoodle.

Originally Posted by rocketpig

Back in 2006, BYTO spent months lobbying to replace Jose Bautista with a labradoodle.

Not unlike the Bombo Rivera for Governor campaign.

Originally Posted by rocketpig

Pictures of cute baby animals! Use your head, DPJ!

Well played, but I've got a proven player right here:


As far as the original part of this thread goes, I would agree that it is nice to see improvement from what we saw in 2011. I have to admit that the team is looking much, much better than it did last year or even the beginning of this year. I'm actually enjoying watching these games and having some things to root for.

That being said, some of the things mentioned in the first post were not negative at all. The idea of trading Moreau or Span or Revere or Willingham have nothing to do with being negative about the team. They have everything to do with posters on this forum coming up with ideas to help the Twins improve over the next year. And I think that is a positive.

(Also, I don't know how moving Mastro to 2B is a negative comment. I think anyone suggesting that clearly wants him playing every day with the likes of Span and Revere and the Hammer... There's only 3 outfield spots to put players in).

One of the things that I enjoy about baseball is that, even on the suckiest team in the league, there is still a 1-in-3 chance that you can go home happy with a win. Blackburn gets blown out? Maybe tomorrow will be better. You don't have to sit and mope about it for a whole week like in football.

Do I wish the Twins were a better team? Yes. Do I yearn for the days when we are back in the playoffs? Yes (and I might even like to see them win a post-season series again at some point). Do I think changes need to be made to make that happen? Yes. But I choose not to let that stop me from enjoying the good moments when they come. When they pound a team like they did last night in Cleveland, it's fun to watch (or follow on the internet) no matter what their record is. And even on the worst team there are positive things that you can look at and take the sting away a little bit. It doesn't mean you have your head in the sand and are not seeing reality. It means that, at the end of the day, you remember that this is just a game. It's meant to be enjoyed, by players and fans alike, and when that gets lost - then what's the point?

Coming off the ridiculous number of injuries last year, it would have been pretty hard to have a gameplan for this season. Who could you be absolutely certain was going to be a contributor? Barring blowing up the whole team that is, but there was too much "potential" in too many players for that to be realistic, either. It's been pretty lousy to be a fan for the last couple years, but at least this coming offseason you can have a more legitimate evaluation of what you have in the players on the team from this year. That's what has me a little more optimistic. I don't expect grand things from the team next year, but they're showing the signs of having bottomed out and moving upwards again. The ceiling doesn't appear to be really high yet, but it's easier to identify what to work on.

The real question is what kind of team do you want? The Marlins have two fairly recent World Championships, followed up by dismantling the team and playing lousy baseball for years. And honestly, for some fans, that is what they want. Competing but ultimately failing doesn't leave a great feeling after it's all done (many of us also get the pleasure of being Vikings fans - Yay). Winning a championship so you have something to brag about is ultimately what you aspire to. But baseball is a different sport than the other big ones in that winning 60% of your games is ultimately regarded as being very successful, where the other sports the really good teams win more like 75-80%, some even more. It's pretty hard to build a team that you can say "that's definitely a championship team" in baseball, because a 10-win difference in record out of 162 games really isn't all that much (i.e equivalent to a 1-game difference in record in Football). We've been conditioned to believe a 95-win team is way better than an 85-win team, which is in turn way better than a 75-win team, but they're probably not much, ultimately.

The season is 162 games long over the course of 6 months. Teams are going to change over the course of that time. The current team looks better than the team that started the season, but naysayers can (understandably) claim you can't just cherrypick when to start counting the record from. Last year's team had a silly-good month of being the best pitching team in baseball, which led to the mirage of being competitive, only to ultimately regress back. This year's uptick feels a little more legitimate to me, but not everyone will agree. I'm more inclined to believe Span, Revere, Mauer, Willingham, Doumit, and Morneau (and possibly Plouffe) will continue to hit well than I was to believe last year's team could keep pitching like they did for that short stretch. But it could come crashing down pretty fast, too, if the D's regress as a pitching staff (not hard to believe will happen) or if any of the hitters get hurt or cool off.

The Twins need better starting pitching, I doubt you'll find a single person to argue that. But look at last year's Phillies. In the discussion as the best starting rotation ever, first round flameout in the playoffs. How many championships did the Braves win in the 90's? There's no ultimate answer "do this and you'll win." The 2001 Seattle Mariners went 116-46, and didn't win the series. I see a Twins team with a fairly good looking lineup 1-7 when everyone is healthy, and some pretty suspect pitching. And most of the suggestions revolve around trying to keep that 1-7 in pretty good working order and somehow improving the pitching. There are some reasonable suggestions to do that (move Morneau or Span to get pitching, put Parmelee in the lineup), but they don't guarantee success. They just indicate a team is trying to do something. We've tried to do things in the past, some have worked (Shannon Stewart), some haven't (pick one, there's lots). After an offseason of doing very little and not getting much better recordwise, the temptation to recommend numerous ways to get better by trading/signing/firing/whatever is pretty understandable.

If you enjoy watching the Twins right now, good for you. If you believe this team needs serious work and the owners/front office/coaches/players need to be held to a higher standard, good for you. Passionate fans are better than apathetic fans. </soapbox>

This thread needs more dogs named after Twins players: