Brock Beauchamp

I figured there was about a 90% chance that Suzuki opens the season as the starter. Hopefully, Pinto hits his way into the position by mid-May and they start splitting duties.

They broke camp with Aaron Hicks on the roster just last season. I'd say that service time matters less to the Twins than it does many other teams, much to my chagrin.

I don't see any reason why Meyer's service time should be a consideration past June of this year. What are the Twins going to do, stash him in the minors until June of 2015? That seems like a giant waste for everyone involved. Let him get some starts in the second half of 2014 and then evaluate from there.

This, this, this. The upcoming draft should have zero bearing on the construction of this year's MLB roster. Take the BPA in the draft (as one should in every draft) and then base your MLB roster decisions on your current roster, available trades/free agents, and a couple of guys in the upper minors.

Well, sure... You can always get lucky with a breakout prospect but that doesn't mean it's a good idea to form a roster around the concept of striking gold multiple times.

You're both talking about free agents. I didn't want the Twins to break open the bank the past two seasons but I definitely wanted to see them acquire better players than they signed. So that's fair. I was under the misconception that people were complaining about prospect playing time... And my rebuttal is that there weren't many prospects worth playing the past two years.

They count but they're not likely to be repeated and involve a fair amount of luck. 3-4 feet closer and some of those balls are outs, not homers. But yeah, Mauer missed all or most of April 2009 with an injury and came back on fire, hitting .400 for a couple of months, IIRC.

Can you send a screenshot to me at brock.beauchamp@twinsdaily.com? Thanks!

Some prospects will fail, absolutely. On the other hand, they need to play before we know if they have failed. If the team picked up a couple of OF bats, maybe a decent catcher, then those prospects will struggle to get the ABs needed to become a successful MLB player. No matter how many FAs Ryan signs, this team won't be consistently successful until Hicks, Pinto, Arcia, Sano, Buxton, Rosario, Gibson, and Meyer establish themselves as MLB players. At shortstop, there are no high upside prospects coming in the next year or more.

If the Twins aren't interested in Drew (and given Ryan's current situation, I think this offseason is done), then strongly considering Diaz is a smart move. I'm on board, provided he doesn't get stupid money thrown at him (and you never can tell with these international guys).

The only guy I think the Twins have unnecessarily jerked around is Parmelee, actually. He should have been out there everyday in 2013 because "why not?" Other than that, I struggle to see how the Twins have wasted seasons, other than fielding too many bad players on the roster. Arcia got time last season. Gibson got time last season and after seeing him in the Majors, Ryan was right to keep him down for as long as he did. They pushed Hicks too hard and he imploded. Plouffe, when healthy, has played every day. Dozier was awful until he wasn't but received a lot of playing time to sort it out. After that, what players with upside are left? Do we really care if guys like Colabello get playing time? No offense to Colabello but his upside is almost zero.

At first glance, yes... But then you look at all those wall-scraping opposite field homers and realize "not so much". 2009 Joe Mauer was pretty much just everyday Joe Mauer with a four leaf clover stuffed into his jock. A lot of fun to watch but hard to repeat, especially after moving to Target Field.

Frankly, I'm neither surprised nor dismayed that they didn't talk about position during negotiations. Why? Because it wouldn't have impacted dollars or years one bit. Joe was going to get big money. He wanted to catch. He was in the driver's seat during negotiations after his 2009 season. If something changed down the road (as it did), then make the call at that point.

The same rules apply to everyone employed by the Twins, including ownership. If you remain respectful to the people themselves (ie. no cheapshot insults) and keep the pro- or anti- comments to relevant threads, we have no issues with people dogging Twins ownership. Hell, I'll admit it now. I've hated Twins ownership for years. Still hate it.

We let a ton of comments slide that could derail a thread. I'm a firm believer in the fluidity of threads and that, by nature, a lengthy thread will evolve into different topics once the original has run its course. That's not really what we're talking about, though... We rarely take action against an off-topic post until we see a poster make repeated, non-stop attempts to derail multiple threads in the forum. Talking about Ryan's refusal/inability to spend to Perceived Spending Threshold X in a Terry Ryan thread is fine. Taking that topic to another thread about the front office on occasion is probably okay, too. But when we see the same poster make the same comment in five different threads, two of them unrelated to Terry Ryan and/or the front office, that's when we roll our eyes and are forced to take action. It's a tough call to make and yes, posters are going to feel unfairly targeted at times... But they have to take accountability for their own actions. We have clearly outlined the rules multiple times. Any time a poster makes an attempt to derail a thread and/or inject a pet argument into the forum, they risk deletion of that comment. It doesn't mean their comment will be deleted every time but the post runs risk of deletion and they have no right to complain about it if it happens... They're the ones clearly in violation of the rules, not the moderators for enforcing those rules. In short, there are some posters that could do well for themselves by taking on a little accountability for their own actions instead of blaming the moderators for enforcing rules that they didn't make. If you don't like the rules, feel free to complain to me any time. I'm one of the people who made a large portion of those rules. Don't take it out on the moderators.

It's a two way street. Every moderator at Twins Daily works their ass off and deliberates constantly over rules, violations, when to take action, and when to "let it slide". The same cannot be said for many posters. If you want the moderators to step up their game, it's only fair that the moderators demand the same accountability for the posting community.

Clearly a joke. I'm pretty confident in saying that Eddie Rosario is not a purveyor or fan of black tar heroin.

Eddie Rosario, star of the upcoming documentary "The Baseball Diaries".

Well said and I'm bolding this paragraph because it's so bloody easy to understand, yet we still get flak for enforcing it. This isn't difficult, folks. We don't care if you're pro-Ryan, anti-Ryan, pro-Gardy, anti-Gardy, pro-trees, or anti-trees. What matters is that you do not insult other posters and that you do not take your personal pet topics into every thread you enter. We don't care where you stand on the subject, only that you argue your opinion in a way that doesn't detract from the conversation or the forum at large.

Again, you need to look up the definition of "mediocrity" because you continue to misuse it. Six playoff appearances and five 90 win seasons in a decade cannot be considered mediocrity. Period. End statement.

I'm not discounting Chicago at all. Sale and Quintana combined for 10 WAR, yet the Sox only won 63 games. How much more improvement is possible with that staff? I'm expecting improvement for Hughes, sure... But not Nolasco. Considering how he's replacing a negative WAR pitcher, it's not unreasonable to expect a 2-3 win improvement from him alone. As for Hughes, I don't see how anyone would predict him to not improve over 2013 and by a significant margin. Again, it's not so much that either Hughes or Nolasco are amazing pitchers... It's that the guys they're replacing were below replacement level. At that point, it's not hard to see improvement and significant improvement, at that. Hicks, Gibson, and Arcia will see significant playing time out of Spring Training or shortly thereafter (barring implosion). If Sano is healthy, I don't see how he isn't up here by July (unless Plouffe goes nuts, at which point we're looking at a significant improvement at third already). Meyer is more of a question mark. When he gets here is dependent on a lot of factors including how the rest of the pitching staff is performing (again, if he's not up and he's healthy, that's a good sign for the Twins' staff).

Boy, it's hard to be a Twins fan right now. "Hey, I think the White Sox are the 28th best team in baseball." "No, the Twins are 28th. The Sox are 29th." "I'm gonna go watch some soccer."

It's an incredibly low bar, yes... But considering that most of the Twins rotation was negative WAR in 2013, it doesn't take much to get a lot better. And if Hughes is healthy, I don't see how he doesn't improve drastically in Target Field. The guy was a Yankee Stadium nightmare and his home/road splits were comical. Ignoring potential injuries, worst case scenario is that he turns into Scott Baker lite. Best case scenario, he turns into "good" Scott Baker. That's a 3-4 win difference in the rotation right there. Yeah, lots of stuff can go wrong... But you can say that about any baseball team. When your team is graduating around a half dozen top 100 prospects in 13-14 months, chances are at least two or three of them will stick. I just don't see how the White Sox improve much on their 2013 campaign while the Twins are almost surely going to improve on theirs. It's not as if Sale and Quintana are going to get that much better than they were in 2013 and the Sox won only 63 games. In 2013, they posted 10 WAR between the two of them. What kind of upside do they have at this point?

The Twins haven't hauled in the quality or quantity of starting pitchers we've seen this offseason since, what, 1991? While "we've heard it before", it doesn't really apply here. The Sox aren't in the midst of deploying five top 100 prospects to the MLB roster in 15 months. They may have optimism but it's not very grounded.

Yeah, the Sox staff looks better on paper, for sure... No arguments there. But the Twins drastically upgraded their staff in both quantity and quality. The gap between the two is almost surely going to be less than it was in 2013 and could reach parity if a few things break right for the Twins. The Twins' starters had a 5.26 ERA in 2013... Without catastrophic injuries, is that any way they don't cut close to a run off that total? How many wins is that worth by itself? As for the offense, the Sox added Abreu, which is nice for them. But, again, they have no breakout players on the team outside of him. They have a smattering of good young players and a bunch of stiffs. Not terribly different than the Twins, really... Until you factor in that the Twins have a handful of wildcards that could drastically alter the 2014 season. Hicks, Arcia, and Gibson out of spring training. Hey, they could all flop on their faces, like Gibson and Hicks did in 2013... Or they could just as easily turn into 2+ WAR players apiece. Later in the season, Sano will be on the roster and Meyer will probably be right behind him. Hey, maybe they flop as well... Or maybe they dominate right out of the gate. That's five guys who could be the difference between 65 and 75 wins on the season and I'm not even mentioning Phil Hughes, who *should* profile extremely well in Target Field and easily trump his Yankee Stadium numbers. He's still just entering his age 28 season. Again, both are bad teams. One team has a bunch of kids who could break out and change the team dynamic beginning in Spring Training. The other, not so much and one very good player isn't going to change that. Hughes, Nolasco, and Pelfrey combined should easily post a larger WAR increase over 2013 than Abreu unless he suddenly turns into Miguel Cabrera.