Thread: ESPN Future Power Rankings: Twins #25 - Insider required

Originally Posted by Brock Beauchamp

Much more politely than I would have stated it.

Sure if you want to use Statfreak and Dave as your ying and yang that's a fair criticism. The fact is, most of the time when you are a realist and slightly pessimistic you take a beating for it. I've mistakenly done that after 2010 (Nick) to others too, so I'm not trying to play any games with this. The fact is there are many that always want to see the glass half full. They have noble reasons for doing so, but that doesn't make every pessimistic take wrong.

Take this year, we're one of the worst teams in baseball and people are talking about how we can use FA as a silver bullet for contention next year. I want to hope for the best too, but at some point reality should enter the equation. And the reality about this rotation coming into things was that it was likely to be a major problem. Lo and behold, it was.

Originally Posted by TheLeviathan

Originally Posted by Brock Beauchamp

Much more politely than I would have stated it.

Sure if you want to use Statfreak and Dave as your ying and yang that's a fair criticism. The fact is, most of the time when you are a realist and slightly pessimistic you take a beating for it. I've mistakenly done that after 2010 (Nick) to others too, so I'm not trying to play any games with this. The fact is there are many that always want to see the glass half full. They have noble reasons for doing so, but that doesn't make every pessimistic take wrong.

Take this year, we're one of the worst teams in baseball and people are talking about how we can use FA as a silver bullet for contention next year. I want to hope for the best too, but at some point reality should enter the equation. And the reality about this rotation coming into things was that it was likely to be a major problem. Lo and behold, it was.

The point is, it didn't take a genius to anticipate problems with the rotation or to know that the Twins would struggle to compete this year. When the team is this crappy, optimism is still pretty bleak.

And no one believes a silver bullet FA will help the Twins compete, but if a lot of things break right it's not unimaginable.

Originally Posted by PseudoSABR

The point is, it didn't take a genius to anticipate problems with the rotation or to know that the Twins would struggle to compete this year. When the team is this crappy, optimism is still pretty bleak.

And no one believes a silver bullet FA will help the Twins compete, but if a lot of things break right it's not unimaginable.

Pseudo....the discussion is happening because in this very thread someone is suggesting that the rotation wasn't even viewed as a problem preseason! Please look at the context of the discussion.

And all over this forum people are talking about one or two FA pitchers putting this team into contention next year. I would call that using FA as a silver bullet. Especially when I could list a dozen things that have broken right for this 2012 team and they're still awful.

Originally Posted by TheLeviathan

Especially when I could list a dozen things that have broken right for this 2012 team and they're still awful.

And someone else could list a whole bunch of things that have broken wrong. And a bunch of things that have broken just about the way one would expect. That's how things happen in pretty much every facet of the world since...well, always.

Originally Posted by CDog

And someone else could list a whole bunch of things that have broken wrong. And a bunch of things that have broken just about the way one would expect. That's how things happen in pretty much every facet of the world since...well, always.

Except that's not the context of the point. People are often ignoring the things that broke right because they see one of the worst teams in baseball and figure much more has gone wrong than right.

Yes, many things have gone unexpectedly wrong. And some of the unexpectedly right things will continue. But it isn't as lopsided towards "gone wrong" this year as many around here try to portray. In fact, I'd argue we've had more unexpected pleasant suprises than we've had unexpected unpleasant surprises. That doesn't bode well for the immediate future.