chaderic20

I could, but the point is if I'm considered part of the "home" market for a team, in my opinion I shouldn't have to change providers and buy a separate sports package on top of that just to get my "home" team. I've actually since dropped my cable subscription anyway and watch all my TV via my Roku. Which, if it weren't for the ridiculous blackout restrictions in Iowa, I would gladly pay for MLB.TV, install that channel, and watch games that way. So, in my case, MLB, the Twins, FSN, and Mediacom have all lost my money because of the blackout restrictions.

I live in Des Moines, and I remember a few years back I emailed both my cable provider (Mediacom) and MLB every single day for a few months, until both of them told me that they would no longer acknowledge any future requests from me. I also got into a brief twitter spat with the president of MLBAM until he blocked me. The lesson I've taken from this is that none of them give a rat's ass what we think or want. And if we get too annoying, they just ignore us, and won't change a thing. So I've resigned myself to Gameday Audio for most games, and less-than-legal methods of watching games of particular interest.

Just to be clear, I definitely think it's ethically questionable, just wanted to play devil's advocate and give a possible explanation for some teams' thinking. You could use the logic in my previous post to justify to yourself just about any rule- or law-breaking activity. It doesn't necessarily make the activity any more or less ethical though. As many others here have said, I think the easiest and best solution to this is to just have an international draft.

As much as we may not like it, and as much as it may not be in the spirit of the rules, it is perfectly allowable as long as they take the sanctions as mandated. I would say it's akin to intentionally taking a penalty in football in certain situations (e.g. committing pass interference to prevent a TD, or taking a delay of game to burn clock or give a punter a few extra yards to pin the ball), or fouling at the end of a basketball game. They're intentionally breaking the rules, knowing and accepting the consequences, because in their opinion what they gain from breaking the rules is greater than the consequences suffered.

Maybe instead of voting yay or nay for getting in they should use a ranking process. Send out a ballot with all eligible players, and voters MUST rank ALL the players from 1 through however many players there are. Then either assign points to each rank and have a point threshold a player must reach to be elected, and threshold to reach to remain on the ballot (though the thresholds would have to change every time the number of eligible players and/or voters changed, so that would get messy). Or say a player must have an average rank better than a certain number to be elected and better than a certain number to remain on the ballot.

Hopefully these post season series losses will leave a bitter taste in these guys' mouths that they'll clearly remember when they're in MN in a few years.

Perhaps package up Perkins, Doumit, and say, Correia, for Skaggs? Any chance of something like that happening?

It wasn't from the Twins, but I'd love to see the Jean Segura play in legovision.

I was thinking the same thing...

As far as Delmon is concerned, maybe the Phillies should tie the bonus to a weight-to-batting-average ratio (or OPS or whatever measure you want to use). Say, after the All Star break, so his BA shouldn't be fluctuating dramatically day-to-day anymore assuming he plays regularly, his weight-to-BA ratio must never be higher than .8. The better he plays, the more he's allowed weigh. *Before anyone takes me too seriously here, this is about 98% sarcastic...

Regarding players coming back healthy, Jayson Stark had an interesting article on ESPN about that. Now, there have only been two previous WBC, but so far the data shows that players who played in the WBC are actually less likely to be injured than those who only play in Spring Training.

I've always thought this would be an interesting experiment for a team with a bad conventional starting rotation. A 12-man pitching staff: Nine what I'll call "primaries", instead of starters, and three "situationals", instead of relievers. The primaries are grouped into three sets of three that pitch approximately three innings each every three days. You can mix-and-match styles and righty/lefty to keep hitters off balance throughout the game since most hitters will only see each pitcher once or maybe twice. Then the situationals are brought in for specialty matchups in high-leverage situations and for extra innings.

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Just curious what people think. Do the recent injuries to Votto (torn cartilage in knee - out 4 weeks) and Bautista (unknown wrist injury, but he appeared to be in significant pain) have any effect on the Twins trade market? Does it make the Reds more desperate for another power bat like Willingham? Are they maybe now even interested in Morneau? Same for the Jays, with Bautista possibly out for a while does that make them more willing/desperate to make a move?

Seth, what do you think Texas would be willing to give up in return for BOTH Morneau and Span, if they were packaged together? What do they have for prospects?

I completely agree with gunnarthor here. Too many people on this site seem to think that all the other GM's in the league are either stupid, gullible, or both. You can't in one breath say "Valencia sucks, we need someone better! And our high minor leagues suck, we need more talent!" And then in the next breath claim that we could package Valencia and our high minor leaguers to get something valuable. If those players aren't good enough for a team as bad as the Twins are right now, what makes you think that a team actually in contention would give up top-talent prospects in a trade for them? As I think some others have asked, would you take players like Valencia, et al, in return for a player like Span, or in return for a top ML-ready pitcher if we had one? No, you would laugh at any such trade proposal! And that's what any other GM in the league will do. The Twins are not going to win this year, and probably not next year either. So yes, even though Span is one of our best players right now, he is exactly what we need to trade away. Another common complaint I see on here is that the Twins don't ever "trade high". And then again, on the other hand, I see people yelling and screaming when there's talk of trading players like Span. It doesn't make any sense to me! You can't have it both ways! As much as it sucks to see good players now get traded away, we don't have enough good players now to win. So we need to turn those good players now, into future good players by trading them for prospects. As for the Nats situation, with Werth now breaking his wrist, they might be a little more willing to deal. No, we're not going to get Zimmerman (that's another problem with most people on this site, if they are willing to trade away good players like Span, they are completely unrealistic in what they expect to get in return). We MIGHT be able to get Gonzalez or Jackson. Hopefully the Twins don't trade for Storen or any closer as that's not our primary need and is such an unpredictable position.

I don't have a problem with it. As was already mentioned, Harper was hit on the back and Hamels on the leg - no one got beaned, no one was headhunting. The benches didn't clear or anything, there wasn't even any tension in the air. Everyone on the field knew exactly what was going on - Hamels was just putting the hot shot kid in his place, and Zimmerman was protecting his guys. (I'll note here, that I love Harper right now, but let's make him earn it for a while before we crown him, well, anything.) Also, Harper got his own revenge that very inning by stealing home. And Harper showed great maturity by not taking a shot at Hamels when asked about it after the game. As for suspensions, sure, MLB has to suspend both Hamels and Zimmerman to save face. Give 'em each 5 games so they each miss a start and then move on.

Best post I've read on this site yet.

AL West: Angels AL Central: Tigers AL East: Rays AL Wild Card 1: Rangers AL Wild Card 2: Red Sox AL MVP: Miguel Cabrera AL Cy Young: King Felix AL Rookie: Yu Darvish NL West: Diamondbacks NL Central: Brewers NL East: Phillies NL Wild Card 1: Braves NL Wild Card 2: Nationals NL MVP: Carlos Gonzalez NL Cy Young: Cole Hamels NL Rookie: Bryce Harper World Series: Angels over Phillies

Things I'll never forget: At game 162, the entire crowd chanting "Let's go White Sox! Let's go White Sox" while watching the scoreboard, and the roar that went up when that final score posted was enough that the players on the field called time out. My friends and I then spent the entire 4-hour car ride home calling the Twins box office until we could finally get through and bought tickets for 163. Then the next day turned around and made the 4-hour drive back up to the Dome. I do remember the taunts of Cabrera (though not fondly, I was actually ashamed of Twins fans for that one), and of course Gomez rounding third and diving into home. Hands down the best game I have ever seen, and probably ever will see. And I also still have my cell phone video of the celebration afterwards. Unfortunately I hadn't thought to take it out to record the actual winning run.

Sounds like I might be in the minority here, but I think the Twins do need to take 3 catchers north. Given Mauer's and Morneau's injury history you can be sure that there will be many times that both Mauer and Doumit will be in the lineup at the same time in some combination of C and 1B/OF/DH. When that's the case, we will need to have a 3rd catcher on the roster in case either of them needs to come out of a game.

I agree, if the Twins are out of the race, and any of those guys have "returned to form" we need to trade them for whatever prospects we can get. I think we're all in agreement that some of the Twins' best players (or maybe I should say potentially their best players) are a few years away, so if any of the guys above have value at the deadline, we might as well see if we can get another prospect, particularly a pitching prospect, or two that will be coming up at the same time.