Nine of twelve

My suggestion, and it's just a suggestion, was simply to consider reorganizing the forums into a format that seemed more user-friendly to me. And your response has been one to dismiss the suggestion out of hand even though you are not in charge of organizing the forums (as far as I know). I have to say that I'm not clear on where you are coming from here. If you are saying this as an individual I say you are free to express that opinion and I welcome your participation in the discussion. But if you are speaking as a moderator you are speaking as an official of the site, and therefore essentially speaking on behalf of the owners. If the owners prefer not to implement my suggestion that's fine, but I would like to hear one of them address that. And beyond that, are you as an official of the site really encouraging a loyal regular visitor to quit being a loyal regular visitor? Is that what the owners want? As I said before, the owners can and should do what they feel is best for their business. But typically business owners welcome suggestions from customers regarding what customers would like to experience from the business. If the TD owners prefer that I not patronize their business because I made a suggestion and explained why I made it I'll respect that, but I would like to hear that from one of them, not from an underling.

And that made the Red Sox the last MLB team to integrate.

I accept that the site owners can run the site the way they want. It's their property to do with what they wish. And I understand that it's the role of moderators to carry out the wishes of the owners in managing the forums. But I'm free to disagree with how it's done, especially when I'm right.😉

This is where you and I have divergent opinions. I already understood how the Front Page News Forum is generated. And I already understood that the owners and other contributors wish to highlight these articles, and with that I have no complaint. But I find that having a separate forum for those articles is a needless barrier for the user to access information on the site. To use the Correa situation as an example, I LIKED that a lot was being written about it, I had NO complaint--NONE--about the number of articles written, and I WANTED to read ALL the articles and ALL the user comments. What I didn't like was that there were so many articles and threads and user comments that reading everything was inconvenient and that it was nigh on impossible to keep track of what was written in which threads and in which articles and by whom. That's why such articles should ALWAYS be merged either with other articles or other threads on the same topic in any forum. (IMHO, of course.) I agree that content should not be limited. However, if site administrators wish to highlight articles I'm sure that it can easily be done using techniques such as a larger or unique font or color, or framing, or even having links to articles within a particular thread. But for the sake of user-friendliness (which is something of highest priority, IMHO) please place articles in consolidated threads with other comments and articles about the same topic.

A player who is drafted is usually one of the best players on his team, often the best, especially one chosen with an early draft pick. A coach will generally put a team's best fielder at SS. So being listed as a shortstop does not necessarily mean a player will wind up there as a professional, it's simply a consequence of being the biggest fish in a small pond.

This year's April is atypical. There are only 3 off days from the start of the season on 3/30 until 4/30. Those dates: 3/31, 4/7, and 4/17. 29 games in the first 32 days of the season.

After participating on this site for years it was only today that I noticed this forum. I have PM'd Brock about this issue but thought I'd post about it here as well. I view it as a problem that there are often multiple threads on the same topic, or very closely-related topics. This was especially messy during the Correa free agency and subsequent contract signing when I think there were close to a dozen or more different concurrent threads on the matter in the various forums. Just today a new article was posted on the topic of the opening day starter when the matter had been extensively discussed only a couple weeks previously. My suggestion is for administrators and moderators to be much more active in the area of merging similar threads, and when doing this to keep in mind that there's nothing wrong with reviving an old thread if a new thread or article fits there. I would also suggest re-organizing the forums into just two sections: Twins organization topics and non-Twins baseball topics. (I guess archived game threads would still be in their own forum, and should be locked when moved.) I don't think there's a need for a separate minor league forum because some topics overlap major and minor leagues and because the title of the thread lets the reader know the topic anyway. I think taking these steps would make it easier to follow discussions, to merge discussions, and to minimize the number of redundant posts.

We just discussed this a couple weeks ago. What is the point of doing it again?

And I'll also say that I think robo umps would have little to no effect on how the game is played. There may be a few more walks and/or strikeouts at first until the players adjust but after that the biggest change will be positive, with more consistent and more accurate calls and less griping directed at Angel Hernandez and the like.

We all hope for that. Of course, we hoped for the same out of Jim Hoey.

If this is what the sport "needs" then it should not be limited to extra innings. Start every inning with a runner on base. Of course that would probably make the games even longer because there would be more scoring.

Correction: Using robot umpires is NOT a change in the rules of the game. The rules remain the same. The only change is in the method of determining whether a pitch follows the rule to be called a strike or the rule to be called a ball.

As with every hitter, the higher the OPS of a DH the better. But to me the DH role should usually be filled by the player who is the least-skilled fielder.

Maybe, but doing it once a week or so should be often enough for it to feel consistent to a major leaguer.

A catcher who has all of these tools is a very rare player. We Twins fans were spoiled for many years having Mauer who was elite in all three areas as well as strong at working with pitchers. If with luck we can find an up-and-coming catcher who is satisfactory we should be happy.

Give him a chance to start in AAA. If there's no room in the St. Paul rotation start him in AA. He needs some time to see what's there. Then depending on how things go make any appropriate moves.

As is the case with every player in the organization, I hope he exceeds expectations. But his leash had better be fairly short.

The Twins' schedule does not have as many off days in April as is typical. I could accept a 6-man rotation until the end of the month at the very latest, but after that it should go down to 5.

Off topic, but I have to chime in with the best thing Jim Souhan ever said. He once described Matthew LeCroy as a baseball player trapped inside the body of a softball player.

The Twins were actually pretty close to the league average with RISP.

I don't believe any of Buck's injuries were the result of a chronic problem or "fragility". I think it's been mostly bad luck. That doesn't mean nothing can be done about it. As an example, last year's knee injury came as the result of a bad slide. The reason for that is there was going to be a close play at second and he wanted to arrive at the base at the earliest possible time. The reason the play was close is because he didn't hustle out of the box on a bloop hit. Had he done so he would not have incurred that injury.

I guess not everything is free. *sigh* But that's OK. You get what you pay for.

I don't know that stat, but we were 5-10 in extra inning games last year. So your memory probably does not exaggerate by much.

It bears repeating: There are two seasons to every year--baseball season and waiting for baseball season. Welcome to the former and goodbye to the latter.

If that's the case I'm fine with letting another team take that risk.