twinsfansd

Sorry, I misspoke. I meant to say teams can only carry 13 pitchers.

Don't forget, even with a 26th man, teams can only carry 26 pitchers. And it is going to be more difficult to rotate players back and forth to Rochester because of a change in rules for how long a player has to stay down before they can return.

Jake Odorizzi was acquired in a trade with Tampa Bay.

I thought about Buchter, too. But it appears he can't get right handers out, and the new 3 batter minimum would work against him. Probably why he was non-tendered. Alex Claudio of the Reds the same thing.

I have been a Twins fan for well over 50 years, and even in some of the bleakest years of the 70's and the 90's, there was still something to cheer about. If you didn't follow the Twins during those 70's, you missed prime years of Rod Carew and Bert Blyleven, the early years of Roy Smalley, the best days of one of the Twins better pitchers, Dave Goltz. Or Larry Hisle's entire time with the Twins. And Butch Wynegar, maybe the best Twins catcher not named Joe Mauer. Gave up on the Twins in the 90's? You missed most of Brad Radke's better years. And Chuck Knoblauch before he imploded. You missed the 3000th hits of Dave Winfield and Paul Molitor. The final years of Kent Hrbek and Kirby Puckett. And you missed the early days of the 2000's teams, back when you could see the talent budding even if it hadn't clicked yet. Torii Hunter, Dougie Alphabet (Mientkiewicz), Corey Koskie, Jacque Jones, Christian Guzman, Johan Santana, Eric Milton and lest we forget David Ortiz. I know most of the people reading these pages are fans year in and year out, but a good many fans are fair weather only. Every year has it's special moments, and many games in every year have memorable moments. I've missed very few games over the last 50 years, and I'm glad I followed through good and bad.

Seriously. They gave up Taylor Trammel to get this guy. They are not giving him up for the Twins expendable pieces.

I do not understand why everybody thinks the twins have $70 million to spend. on 1 year contracts, sure, but we are not talking about one year contracts. The FO has to take into account that almost everybody already on the roster will be more expensive next year, eating into next year's budget. Not to mention trying to tie guys up on long term contracts, which will also consume more of this year's budget, as well as maybe extra money next year. You can't just look aat one year.

I ordered the book and didn't get it. What do I do?

I did not get my handbook that I ordered. What do I do?

Didn't Rogers have a couple of back to back games that were total meltdowns. A couple of bad outings could really skew the numbers on such small sample sizes. He might have been perfectly fine on the other 12 outings. I seem to remember a good number of sucessful back to back outings he made.

Jeff Samardzija and Jason Hammel are two pitchers traded togrther, but that was more two starters than one of each. Sean Doolittle and Ryan Madson from Oakland to Washington is a 2 reliever trade (that cost Washington dearly). Cleveland got Adam Cimber and Brad Hand together, but again 2 relievers.

It looks like they drafted a lot of guys who may have had down years that they have high hopes. Along with a long line of pitchers that have some building blocks to work with. In every draft, if you can get a couple of pieces from lower in the draft, it's a success. So if just a couple of these college pitcher turn out, that would be normal. I was disappointed, too, that there were not many high upside high school kids. But it takes 2 to get a deal done. If they could not find kids that were willing to sign for what they could pay, then why draft them. If the college pitcher is willing to sign, take a shot on him. Just thinking.

What about Mychal Givens from Baltimore or Rasiel Iglesias from Cincinnati or Keone Kela from Pittsburg?

As far as the article goes, it is very interesting to know the background of some of these guys. Thanks for providing that.

At the same time, there are people working in all kinds of professions for less than desirable pay, and probably not earning any retirement benefits. Each person has different goals and aspires to different outcomes. My standard comparison is struggling artists, musicians and actors. They all pay the same kind of dues as they try to make a name for themselves. Many of them fail and move on to other professions that pay better. Really, it's no different than self employed people. Many of them struggles financially for many years trying to establish their trade or business, and many fail in the end. At some point they have to make a decision to move on. These guys are all young with many earning years ahead of them when they move on. They will be OK.

It's called MLBPA for a reason. Because it represents MLB players, who have a total different set of priorities than minor league players. The difference between the NFL and MLB is the amount of time it takes to develop most baseball players. An NFL player spends 3 years in college and then most of them are ready to play in the NFL. Thank goodness for them, because a great majority of them only last for 3 or 4 years then. Baseball players can spend 3 or maybe even 4 years in college, and then still need another 4, 5, or 6 years to make it to the major leagues. This is why teams have to "blow it up" and cash in their chips to accumulate as many prospects as they can, because it takes so long and so many of them to build another contender. No team can simply buy enough talent to be a contender, unless by accident. The NFL teams on the other hand can a lot of times reload on the fly, especially if they have a few key players, such as a good quarterback.

Seems to me that the obsession with declaring all but the best teams as trying to fail is a bit of exaggeration. After all, only 5 teams can get a top 5 draft choice. And none of those are a sure fire guarantee, and the rest are a shot in the dark. The international bonus budgets are not determined solely on order of finish either. Did the old way of doing international really work. The rich teams just ignored the spending limits and paid huge fines just so they could dominate the signings. Look at all the international players in the Yankees system that are about to flood the top prospect lists if you don't believe me. And of course these teams that are "trying to fail" should eventually emerge as the top teams if their prospects pan out. Isn't that the way it's supposed to work? I think we are blaming the wrong people for what is going on in free agency. When several players set at the top of the heap and refuse to sign all winter because of extreme demands, they put all of the players below them at risk. Those players wait for the others to sign so they can establish their place in the pecking order, but when a lot of teams are waiting out the players at the top in order to proceed with other options, nothing happens. The most vulnerable people in this scenario are the players near the bottom, who finally can't wait any longer and sell themselves short just to get a commitment from a team. I don't think the CBA is to blame for these behaviors. I think it is greed. Probably on everybody's behalf. One other thing. When it comes to so called service time manipulation, their is no manipulation at all. The players union negotiated that allowance into the agreement in exchange for the Super 2 arbitration arrangement. Do you suppose they would be willing to give up Super 2 in exchange for more leniency on the service time calculations? And in reality, that is probably a concession negotiated by the union anyway, since a player already doesn't have to play an entire year to get credit for an entire year of service, which is why there is this issue in the first place. The bottom line is that these rules were probably concessions gained by the union years ago, and now the teams are demonized for playing by the rules.

Not sure if this is the proper place to say this, but I have always been of the opinion that Terry Ryan wanted to fire Paul Molitor in the middle of 2016, and that's the reason he is no longer there. It should have been done then. We would be 2 years farther ahead. Not saying that I don't like what is happening with the current front office. I think they are doing a fine job.

As far a Luis Arraez goes, from everything I have ever read, the defense is adequate at 2B, he has very little speed or power. He has shown the ability to be able to play 3B and LF, although I am sure the jury is still out about how well. The only way he becomes a major leaguer is if his bat stays at that .300 plus level with an OBP about 50 points higher. He does seem to have some plate discipline. If that were true, he could be a poor man's DH if he can offer OBP. The added bonus would be that he could be a fill in at several positions on a short term basis.

In Castro's full season with the Twins, he had 5 passed balls and wildpitches during his catching time. In comparison JT Realmuto had 8 PB and 34 WP last year in similar # of games, Posey in his last complete season 1 PB and 32 WP, Yadier Molina last year 4 PB and 39 WP. Where do you see Castro out of line with the other top catchers?

Just the way you have them listed is the way I would go. Probably the best overall depth of any position ever for the Twins.

I, too, remember fondly 1987/1991 Twins teams. But you must also remember that those teams were also seriously flawed, but the Twins prevailed to win the WS. In 1991, the Twins brought in Chili Davis, who had been having less than stellar seasons leading up to 1991, and then turned in a career year. Jack Morris, too, had been less than stellar in the previous few seasons, but he also turned in a career year that season. They traded for Steve Bedrosian, but he was far from a major contributor. And lastly, of course, Chuck Knoblauch was a rookie that year at second base and turned in a key performance. What do you suppose the Twins were given as a chance to win the World Series either one of those 2 seasons when the season began? Probably not much.

I have been saying all winter that they reason the Twins haven't invested in some of these expensive free agents has nothing to do with this season, but the affects on seasons moving forward. I sat down this morning and tried to envision what the Twins may look like next season, if the current roster performs to expectations and all the young players earn raises on arbitration, or sign long term contracts going forward. Here is what I came up with for next year. I did not put down a dollar amount for catcher yet, but Castro would be gone, so they may want to bring in an upgrade here as well if they don't think Garver an be the starter. I decided they could probably extend Gibson for a couple years at $12 million per. I assumed that Schoop would either be so bad that he wouldn't come back, or so good they couldn't afford him next year, so I plugged Gordon in at 2B. C- 1B - Cron 8,000,000 2B - Gordon 3B - Sano 6,000,000 SS - Polanceo 5,000,000 UT - Gonzalez 9,000,000 LF - Rosario 8,000,000 CF - Buxton 6,000,000 RF - Kepler 6,000,000 DH - Cruz 12,000,000 SP - Berrios 10,000,000 (Long term contract) SP - Gibson 12,000,000 (Extension) SP - Perez 7,000,000 RP - May 5,000,000 (extension) RP - Rodgers 6,000,000 (Extension) Total 100,000,000 Adding at least 12 other players at 600,000 per year adds another 7,200,000. So now you are at 107,200,000. And you still have not addressed and upgrade at catcher, brought in a top line starting pitcher, brought in a closer, or any other experienced bullpen options. This is the reason the Twins are being cautious this winter. They do not have endless flexibility in their budget as so many people keep harping about this winter. The budget is soon to get very tight.