Brock Beauchamp

They drafted Shooter Hunt. Again, the Twins may not place as high a priority on power arms as some other teams but you act as I'd they consciously avoid them. That is simply not the case.

Johan Santana, Francisco Liriano, Scott Baker, and Matt Garza say "hi". The bottom line is that the Twins have done a bad job of scouting hard-throwers and when combined with their bottom 15 picks through most of the 2000s, they've come up woefully short on arms. It's possible that they don't value hard-throwers as much as other teams but they certainly don't hate them.

I don't remember saying anything about them being scared of strikeout pitchers. I find it absurdly stupid you read what I wrote and thought that's what I said. But... but... you just said: So they're not "scared" of them, they don't "hate" them, they just draft them and then try to change them? Does not compute. Also, Matt Garza is not a strikeout pitcher unless you consider Scott Baker a strikeout pitcher as well.

Who on Twins Daily defends the Twins' drafting and development of pitching? I sure haven't seen 'em. See the post right below yours Yeah, I don't see him defending anything there... Just stating that low draft picks and finances may have had something to do with the Twins' current woes. And he's right in one regard: repeating that the Twins hate strikeout pitchers is absurd.

Yeah, it really is a good time to strike. Yankees are getting old. Boston looted their team at the deadline. Baltimore was absurdly lucky. Tampa continues to lose players to free agency. It's rare to get this kind of a window in that division. All four of their division rivals could be significantly worse in 2013 than they were in 2012.

Oh, and he doesn't have to close his glove at just the right time? Hmmmm???? C'mon, man, you're smarter than that! Didn't you know, playing the outfield is simple... It's actually quite hard. But when compared to playing catcher, it's absurdly simple.

Holy crap. Those Canadians aren't ****ing around.

Who on Twins Daily defends the Twins' drafting and development of pitching? I sure haven't seen 'em.

Joe Mauer was a #1 pick from the local area...and you're comparing numbers from a catcher as opposed to an OF. Which makes Dave's case stronger, not weaker. It's far more difficult for a catcher to move through any farm system quickly than it is for an outfielder to do the same. It usually takes a few years for a catcher to learn how to call the game on a professional level. An outfielder just has to run fast and open his glove (a simplified take on it but mostly true).

Johnson was an obvious "can't miss" prospect. After all, it's not as if every team in baseball passed on him. Twice.

More than anything else. Winning teams tend to form "chemistry" by, you know, winning.

They did about five years ago, but sadly it only works with Carlos Silva. Fantastic.

I don't think it matters whether he starts in Rochester or Minnesota but I'd prefer Rochester. If he starts there, that means the Twins have actually picked up some arms this offseason and won't have to rely on Kyle out of the gate. Plus, it will allow him to build up more arm strength/control in a setting where the pressure will undoubtedly be lower. Either way, being disappointed one way or the other is premature. Kyle still has several months of rehab and innings in ST before the Twins need to make this decision.

I was of the opinion that JR should have done what he did with Pierzynski/Mauer for Mientkiewicz/Morneau. Maybe he learned his lesson from sticking with Mientkiewicz too long and that's why we saw Pierzynski dished to the Giants. The Twins should have received more for Mientkiewicz but whatever, that situation is long gone. My point is that there have been very few players who have sat in the minors for too long. Gardy's management of some of these players (Cuddyer, Kubel) early in their careers once they were on the Major League roster was more problematic, in my opinion.

Yes, Trout would be in the majors if he was drafted by the Twins. That's not even up for debate. The guy absolutely raked at every level of the minors. Would he have been called up in May of this year? I don't know about that but we would have seen him by the end of the season. There is a ridiculous myth surrounding the Twins that they coddle their players in the minors... News flash: those players they "coddle" just aren't that good (yet). The last time I was really irritated with the Twins about a minor league player was Jason Bartlett. Before that, it was Justin Morneau. Right now, it's Slama. That's three players in a decade, one of which turned into a middling position player while the jury is still completely out on the other. The only sure thing of the bunch was Morneau and he stumbled quite a bit in his first cup of coffee.

I'd prefer to get pitching but the middle infield isn't going to be fixed from the minor leagues any time soon, either. If Span can't be dealt for pitching, a young SS is a perfectly viable alternative.

I think you are giving the show a bit to much credit, there is still plenty of eye rolling moments that occur, Michonne is a bad ass, but I feel they are really limiting her quite a bit. In the comics she is arguably the best character, through her entire time in them, in this she is the weird chick who is a killing machine but has zero social skills and is paranoid. I think they have really ****ed up her character. The governor should have been Danny Trejo, end of story. Agreed on Danny Trejo. I always pictured the Governor as him in the comic. Funny that you mention him specifically. It's still early with Michonne. I'm willing to give her a few more episodes to see how the character develops. I also agree that she's probably the best character in the book.

Now all the front office needs to do is uncover a breakthrough in cloning technology.

You have a couple of fair points there but they assume that we haven't been talking to some of these posters in private. If we openly criticize posters on the forum for being negative, we receive complaints that we're "engaging them and distracting the forums". If we do it privately, we receive complaints that we're "protecting" negative posters. If we keep that thread open, we receive complaints that the forums are too negative and that we will allow personal insults when it suits our purposes. If we close it, we receive complaints that people aren't allowed to voice their opinions. Do you see the problem here? We've *mostly* settled on policy in regards to how we approach and deal with problem posters. Protecting Thrylos was never a consideration in our decision (at least, not any more than we "protect" any poster who has personal insults directed at him/her). We try to do things behind the scenes to cause as little commotion as possible on the forums. As such, situations such as this one will be misinterpreted by some. Overall, we feel it's better than the alternative.

There seems to be a gross misunderstanding of what forums are and what they represent on Twins Daily. Forums are a free-for-all, a place where every user has a voice and can talk about any baseball subject they see fit (within reason). We do not sanction forum posts. They are not "official" Twins Daily topics. They are (mostly) user-generated subjects where baseball minds can bounce ideas and opinions off one another. No one at Twins Daily ran with Thrylos' report on Baker. It didn't make the front page of the site, which is the "official" section of Twins Daily where Nick, John, Parker, Seth, and others report on news they believe in from sources they trust. None of that happened. We monitored Thrylos' thread but didn't take part in legitimizing the "news". It's akin to blaming KFAN because someone on RubeChat announced that the Twins have traded Joe Mauer for A-Rod and a bag of balls. While we try to run a tighter ship than RubeChat (and thankfully so), part of running a successful forum means making allowances for users to say (sometimes stupid and off-base) things about Minnesota sports. As for the thread, I thank Seth for taking the bullet there but I was more than happy to close the thread. We didn't delete it, we closed it. It's there should you wish to reference it in the future. We were not protecting Thrylos, we were protecting the forum itself. We kept the thread open long enough for people to have their say on the subject and once it descended into "everybody dog-pile Thrylos", there was no reason to keep it open. At that point, the thread was no longer about baseball. It was about mocking another user with no substantive baseball discussion. To boot, another thread had been created that actually discussed the baseball topic at hand; the signing of Scott Baker by the Cubs. There was simply no reason to keep Thrylos' thread open other than to feed users' want of vengeance for Thrylos' arrogance and mis-reporting of the news.

At some point, Rick is going to have to go. I don't know if it will mean the end of the series but the guy has been up and down too many times. At some point, he's going to jump the shark with his behavior and turn into a caricature of his former self. I don't think that point is too far off, either.

I was shocked that Kirkman went back to the well and re-instituted the "no one is safe" rule. I didn't necessarily like what happened but I appreciate that he was willing to off some major characters in the book again.

Have to keep the Token Black number at one no matter what. I mean, the show takes place in Georgia. There aren't many black people there at all. I was so freakin' relieved that they killed the wife. I was scared that they were going to shy away from following the comic in that regard and the idea of that character being with the show for several more seasons is enough to make me stop watching. BTW, anyone here keeping up with the comic? The storyline right around #100 brings the comic back to its roots and it's getting good again.

Ownership has shown on multiple occasions that they would never consider such a move. That's all there is to it. You can disagree with them all you want but they hold the purse strings.

What would you say its DORP is? I am cracking up over here.