Nine of twelve

While I hope for the best this year for Happ it would certainly be great to see Thorpe blossom into a legitimate MLB starter. Very few teams win a world championship without at least one lefty in the rotation.

I agree with this post, but I'll nitpick and say that Boras isn't the one who moves a player. His client, the player, makes the final decision about whether to stay or go. However, Boras has deservedly acquired the reputation of being more aggressive about negotiating for his clients than most agents, presumably because a larger contract for his client gets him a larger cut. Also, I suspect that a player who puts the dollar amount of his contract as his highest priority is one who is more likely to choose Boras as his agent, which in turn makes it more likely Boras will be involved in these situations. It's kind of like a feedback loop. That said, in these situations Boras and the player are not being unethical. They are simply playing by the rules, exploiting the (inequitable) system. I think more extensive revenue sharing would benefit not only the majority of fans but also the majority of players. When only a few teams have much greater power to pay large contracts it means the few players getting those contracts benefit at the expense of other players. Giving all teams similar financial wherewithal would mean that player salaries will be more equitable, not just within a given team but within MLB as a whole. It also would mean players in one team's system have similar chances of succeeding as a player in another team's system, both in terms of on-field performance and in terms of salary. Think of it this way--compare a utility player for Kansas City to a utility player for the Dodgers. The two probably have similar performance profiles and so forth but which player will be more likely to have a higher salary and chance of postseason success? Which borderline minor league player will have a greater chance to be promoted to the majors, one in the KC system or one in the Dodger system?

Shouldn't there be a separate thread for how your contributors are ranked?

This is the name that must never be spoken. (Or written.)

Someone else alluded to the matter of whether there will be any grandfathering regarding any speculated changes in the service time provisions of the next CBA. The FO seems smart enough to take this into account. In any case it seems apparent that their philosophy is to do what they think is best for the franchise as a whole, and I expect they will make decisions on Kirilloff and the rest of the roster based on that.

Tampa Bay and Oakland have shown that lower-revenue teams can stay competitive enough consistently enough to challenge for the postseason almost every year. We can also do it with the right scouting and player development people, but it certainly would help to have a better revenue sharing program in place.

Rather than limiting the discussion strictly to LF I think the team should probably look at the outfield as a whole. Ideally there would be four players, each of whom can play at least two positions, with at least two players able to play at each position. Moreover, it would be best to have two LH batters and two RH batters. SH batters would be a bonus. Also a bonus is having Arraez available as an occasional fifth outfielder when it's necessary to get him in the batting order, especially against right-handed pitching. Looking ahead to the second half of 2021 and to 2022 it appears that Kiriloff has a good chance of playing a lot. Assuming that Buxton and Kepler are locks, that leaves one spot open. Cave is not a bad fourth outfielder but it would be better to have a right-handed batter. Even after trading Wade we still have a surplus of left handed bats in our outfield depth. I think Cave will be a strong candidate to be traded during spring training. My hope is that Rooker has a strong spring and is one of the 26 players going north.

It's unfortunate that Erickson's prime only really lasted two half-seasons.

Remember that Polanco got a 5-game taste of the Majors at age 20. We don't know exactly what the team thinks about Lewis but I could see him getting some appearances this season. (He'll be 22 in June.)

With the possible exception of pitcher, left field is the least important position in terms of fielding.

According to this source Target Field has the fifth-smallest foul territory among current major league venues, tied with Citi Field. http://www.andrewclem.com/Baseball/Stadium_statistics.html

I concur with those who point out that it's not just home runs that will be affected. There should be a slight decrease in the rate of ground balls getting through the infield, which means more ground ball outs. This would be most significant for grounders near the base lines, especially the first base line, in that what previously would have been doubles could be turned into outs. I expect that outfielders will be positioned a few feet shallower this season. If this is the case I would think that the rate of singles that fall in front of outfielders wouldn't change much. There may be an increase in the rate of doubles hit over a fielder's head but a decrease in the rate of doubles on other balls hit to the outfield. This positioning change would also make it a bit easier for baserunners to be thrown out, so coaches and baserunners will need to adapt.

After so many years of post-season pain and disappointment we Twins fans deserve favorable treatment from the baseball gods. It would be right and good and proper if every player on the roster has a 90th-percentile season.

I've posted this before, but I'll repeat. In addition to being far above and beyond his contemporaries as a batter Babe Ruth was also an elite pitcher. In terms of batting, fielding, and base running Mays may have been better than Ruth. Maybe. But Ruth was inarguably the best all-around player in baseball history.

This is a good point, and I think it's probably true in general, but with free agents there are are additional factors that lead to those exceptions. There may be teams that make a bid or want to make a bid but aren't considered because the player doesn't want to play there. Teams adjust their analytics based on need, so multiple teams may have essentially the same assessment of a player but one team may make a higher bid than another. And there may be intangibles that affect a bid, such as a player wanting to play for a hometown team or for a particular manager.

With all the left-handed outfield bats in the organization it would be poor management not to try to turn that surplus into different assets. My hope is that our scouting and player development departments have progressed to the point where we have empirical profiles regarding which players to trade and to trade for. I liked Wade but never pictured him as more than a role player. I hope both players involved do well for their new organizations.

Well, the deed is done. I'm skeptical but I hope as much as anyone on this board that he has another great season. And I'm sure his last appearance in a Twins uniform will be this year.

Any proposed major trade with Cleveland will almost certainly not happen. A prime directive of trading within your division is to have no doubt that you are coming out ahead. And of course that means the other team would come out behind and therefore decline the offer.

Acquiring Capps improved the Twins' 2010 bullpen, and this was a team that had legitimate postseason possibilities. That made it a good trade in the short term. Obviously, we now know that Smith overpaid and that made it a bad trade in the long term. Trades like that are risky and it takes excellent talent evaluation skills to make it work in one's favor. Smith seems to have been lacking in that regard.

Certainly the thought occurred to me. In this day and age of testing it has become difficult to get away with it but when a player who is about to have his career end due to mediocre performance suddenly becomes dominant it makes one wonder.

We are dinosaurs. We finally ditched our landline phone in 2020 but due partly to inertia the cable is still hooked up, so FSN it is. We are a one-TV family so if there's another show being watched by another family member I'll stream the game on a site that is not supposed to be mentioned on Twins Daily's web site. When I'm in the car it's SiriusXM (better sound quality than AM) unless the home broadcast isn't available there, in which case it's CCO. And even then I find that I sometimes enjoy listening to the opposition radio crew while the Twins are batting, even John Sterling if the Twins are having a rare good inning against the team that must not be named. As much as I love going to Target Field, I'll wait until community immunity reaches a satisfactory level before I venture there. I hope we get to that point sooner rather than later.

We would need to do a full trade tree as has been done on other threads regarding other trades. This was certainly not a popular trade but it wasn't horrible. Remembering the Nettles trade made me think of another one. We got Jerry Koosman from the Mets in exchange for Jesse Orosco in December of 1978. Look at the cumulative stats for those pitchers from 1979 forward and you'll see how bad that one was for our team.

Concur regarding beer and bratwurst. The Kramarczuk stand at Target Field has been a must-visit for me for a long time. I confess to being in the minority here in that I don't hate the White Sox. I don't want them to do well, especially against us, but having made many visits to Chicago they are the clear choice for me over the Cubs. I reserve my hatred for the team from the Bronx, whose name must not be spoken.

Does Hand have a son named Armand?

If he would truly love to play for the Twins I hope that can lead to to a home-team discount. That would make signing him worthwhile.