Brock Beauchamp

Sure, and that'd be a smart move. The problem with the Shields trade is that Moore had no reason to think the young hitters in KC were legit. On the other hand, Wil Myers, 154 OPS+ in Tampa. Moore simply opened a hole by closing another one, except the hole he closed is only for two years instead of six or seven.

Yep. Mediocre pitchers have months like Correia has had thus far. One great month, another one or two acceptable months, and then absolutely awful other months. That's how players end up with a league average ERA... We can't expect 6 IP, 3 ER every start. On the other hand, hoooooo boy has he looked bad lately. Given his track record of fading as the season progressed, it's not a good sign and he may end up with some pretty bad numbers by season's end.

Except for the fact that he was jumped two levels out of Spring Training and is still pretty young at 23. Will Aaron Hicks be an All-Star? I have no idea and neither does anyone else. It is premature to say he won't be a good player? Absolutely. Projecting a 23 year old's career from less than 300 PAs after he skipped AAA is a good way to make yourself look foolish 3-4 years down the road. Cristian Guzman posted a 38 (!) OPS+ in 1999 and turned into an everyday MLB player. Yeah, Hicks has been bad. He's also 23 and has about 300 PAs under his belt. Jason Kubel posted a 72 OPS+ in his first 235 PAs and turned out just fine. This happens with every prospect that struggles. I saw it happen with Kubel. I saw it happen with Cuddyer. I even saw it with Morneau, which was maddening. People put way too much stock in a half season of numbers instead of giving the kid a season or more to see if he can figure it out. This has nothing to do with faith or reality. This is about patience and not jumping to conclusions based on incomplete data.

Aaron Hicks is 23, not 24.

Everyone here knows how I feel about Butera. He never counts for anything in my book.

I don't care about the money. It's also not my money and I don't have to report to the man whose money it is.

Or, more likely, the prospect coming back wasn't worth anything close to $6m. I don't blame JR for not trading any single player but I find it pretty damning that he didn't trade ANY players.

You think I actually read the thread?

You're all chuckling now but just wait until mid-August when Coletti calls up Ryan, yells "TERRY, YOU BEEN PUNK'D", hangs up, and announces that the PTBNL is Drew Butera.

It's insanity to not want Plouffe to absolutely light it up on offense. If he turns into an above-average third baseman, we're looking at a Denard Span-type trade chip in 2014 or 2015. And Denard Span fetched the team Alex Meyer. I sure would like more Alex Meyers in this farm system.

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I'm surprised at how many people think it's okay for a 20 year old kid to yip back at a coach when told that what he did was unprofessional. I don't care how much talent a guy has, he still has to listen to his coaches and management. That's just how things work in... well, pretty much everywhere. It's one thing to grandstand after a long homer. It was a mistake but it's the type of thing kids do when they're talented and young. What I find far more problematic is that he was spoken to in private and apparently didn't listen to what was said to him. That should be the story here and a minor leaguer that talks back to his coach should be benched 101% of the time. He's not above the game, he's not above his teammates, and he's sure as hell not above his coaches. It sounds to me like the Twins did exactly what should have been done here.

The question wasn't aimed at the customers. It was aimed at Ryan himself and he gave a frank answer. It's be vastly different if the question was "what trade do you think improved the franchise the most?" and he answered "Erickson for Rodriguez". That would be... Strange.

I tend to ignore comments because a GM is also a PR face for the organization. They're going to spin a lot of stuff and talk fluff. I prefer to look at actions, which is why I was so angry after this past offseason. He failed to get enough pitching. Did I agree with his comments that went along with those acquisitions? No, not at all. I also didn't care about those statements... What I wanted was better pitchers and he didn't do it. I don't really care what he said to go along with those actions. The one exception is the trade market because frankly, it takes two to tango and sometimes a GMs comments can be telling about the market itself. But even those are hard to sort the fluff from the real information at times. As it turned out, most of that "better" pitching hasn't actually performed much better but I still don't like the thinking that went behind the Correia acquisition (was actually pretty okay with the Pelfrey pick-up as a third move, not a second).

Snepp has a point. There was no reason to jab at jokin... While I'm not crazy about using pure W/L as a metric of quality opposition, it's a fast-and-loose way to tell whether a guy has been facing the Astros offense or the Red Sox offense. If you want to continue the debate, I'd suggest looking at opposing offense and seeing if that aligns with W/L. After all, Correia doesn't face the opposing pitching staff, which might skew the argument of "quality opposition".

Yeesh, a qualifying offer? No thanks. I really don't care if the Twins overspend for one year of a guy but that seems like an absurd waste. One should be able to get Pelfrey for two years for not much more than $13m.

Unless you were the man who actually worked your ass off to do that trade. There's apparently something that stuck with Ryan about that trade or he wouldn't bring it up nearly 20 years later. I've drawn more illustrations and coded more websites than I can count in my lifetime, some of which were for multi-billion dollar conglomerates that involved months of work. On the other hand, I've also done very small drawings and websites for local businesses. My most difficult website was a sub-$1000 affair for an artist in LA. It almost reduced me to tears several times because it was so maddeningly difficult to develop and code. I nearly bailed on the project several times before deciding to stick it out. If I was to line up the hundreds of websites I've coded and said to an outsider, "Pick the hardest site to create", they'd surely go for the Duracell site, one of the Polaris sites, or any number of other national/world brands I've worked with in the past. But no, the hardest site I've ever coded is a crappy little site for an artist who never even made it in the business and gave up trying less than two years after I finished the site. Ask me which was hardest and I'll tell you it was that crappy little site almost every time. Ten years later, I still vividly remember the thing, more so than the vast majority of other, larger, better projects I've been involved with since that time. The "average person" has a very different perspective on events than the guy who actually did the work. Whereas an outsider's only basis for "best" are results, there are moments and difficulties that we will never know about, stuff that must have really stuck in Ryan's craw to bring up nearly 20 years later. The man has made many trades, both good and bad. Some shed payroll while others acquired it. Obviously, there is something about this trade that makes it spring to mind during such a question. And does this really matter? He was asked a frank question and gave an unexpected answer. To assert any kind of real meaning to this statement past "huh, must have been a hard trade to make" requires one to fill in some pretty large blanks.

Or a third option where some of us don't come unraveled about an interview comment about a nearly 20 year old trade but instead try to judge the man upon his actions, both good and bad. There are plenty of things Ryan does that deserve criticism (last February, you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who had anything pleasant to say about his free agent acquisitions). Is this really one of them? An off-the-cuff throwaway comment about a trade that happened 18 years ago?

It might be. It depends on how aggravating and challenging that particular job was in the first place. I think people here are confusing "I wanted to do this" versus "I was told to do a difficult job and accomplished that task".

Yes. Sometimes, an answer seems weird or half-complete when answered in 20 seconds or less. If you asked me about a work I was most proud of, I might give some oddball answer about some work I did as a teenager. Left at that, people might scratch their heads and say "What the hell is he thinking?" I just don't see the point is making a big deal out of such an insignificant comment in a throw-away article.

Would you rather have him say "Well golly, Bernie. I just liked 'em all, shucks." What I don't understand is why every single comment by Ryan has to be dissected to the point of exhaustion. He mentioned that he was proud of a trade that happened almost two decades ago, early in his career. Is this really our talking point for the day?

I can't count how many times I've been told to write code or design something by a client or a boss and said "Christ, this is an awful &^%$ing decision". But I did it anyway.

Why connection do the trades have with one another? I really doubt that Ryan woke up one morning and said "I sure would like to save my boss some money so I'm going to trade Scott Erickson". He was under orders to do something difficult and accomplished that goal. What does that have to do with Thome?

It depends on perspective. Were Bernadino to ask "What do you think was the trade that netted the largest gain for the franchise?", I'm about 99% certain that Ryan would not mention the Erickson trade. Sometimes, the hardest things and the things someone are most proud of are not the "best" things from an outsider's perspective.

This. Sometimes, the work you're most proud of completing is not your "best work" from an outside perspective. It was the hardest work, the job where you pulled off something you didn't think possible. From the outside, it might garner a "sheeeeesh, that was ugly" reaction. From the inside, it was "holy crap, it was ugly but damn, we pulled it off". I wouldn't go quite that far. It's an accomplishment every time you improve your MLB team without giving up much in return.