LaBombo

Lump sum or reverse mortgage?

Glad you cleared that confusion up at the end. Now we can focus on worrying about elbow and shoulder problems instead of a partially torn prostate.

Sorry I'm late. What did I miss, other than half the summer?

How did you pack that many excellent insights into five sentences at six in the morning? Was there a whole lot of coffee involved?

And that's when the lady socked that man right through the internet and set off the donnybrook, officer!

Stayed in SD for a few days for a close friend's wedding there almost 20 years ago. Went out on the town with him and a bunch of his SD friends for his bachelor party and they were all great guys. Probably just a coincidence that almost all of them had moved to CA for college or work from the Midwest.

Alternative article title: "Twins still a pretty bad team despite record". If three of your five best players by WAR don't have significant trade value despite being on team-friendly contracts, then the question of whether or not your team is an over-achieving mediocrity that needs to trade them for the best reasonable offer just... sort of works itself out, doesn't it?

I'm hoping the Twins see the rest of this year as a chance to improve their talent instead of literally cutting their losses by fielding the lineups that will provide the fewest losses this year instead of the most wins next year and beyond. If Castro figures in their future plans, then he could use the rest from Garver playing in half the games.. If not, then that's all the more reason to see what Garver can do in the majors.

Yup, now that the fig leaf of contention is gone, it's hard to see what's keeping the Twins from thanking Top Gimmy for the memories and giving Garver regular playing time, unless it's that they don't believe he'll ever warrant regular playing time.

I edited exclamation points into it to make it louder. A little trick I learned while traveling in non-English countries like Indonesia and East Los Angeles.

'The Dodgers are a playoff team!!!' 'The Twins are not a playoff team!!!'

Either Santana and the other marketable veterans aren't going anywhere in the offseason just like they aren't going anywhere now, or else they'll be shopped in what may be a potentially less lucrative winter meeting environment. The former now seems much more likely to me. And I'm not terribly optimistic about the Twins organization making any significant improvement through free agency this offseason after its current owner and his new front office shored up the "total system failure" of the worst team in the history of the franchise with a one-point-something WAR catcher whose first search hit on Yahoo is person locator BeenVerified's boast that "We Found Jason Castro". So that pretty much leaves the progression of the young players as the only meaningful avenue of improvement. Maybe that's enough. I don't know. But I doubt it.

If nothing else, games like this force me to admire the optimism of Twins fans who actually hope to see the Twins play a few extra games against good teams at the end of the season.

Hoping the Twins will reimburse Eddie for the cost of the (non-mini) storage unit. And that it's not part of a chronic hoarding problem.

Colon is getting fatigued? Who knew a morbidly obese middle aged man might begin to tire halfway through a professional athletic event? In other Los Angeles news, Deputy Police Chief Dwayne T. Robinson is beginning to suspect that Sergeant Al Powell was right about the terrorists shooting at the lights... http://ejtangonan.weebly.com/uploads/1/8/5/1/18519042/970849313_orig.PNG

With any luck he left some graffiti in the Twins' clubhouse at Target Field to remind everyone in the future of those brief, glorious days when the Twins counted as one of their own the thief who stole the 2005 AL Cy Young award from Johan Santana. http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m20sjenlJQ1ql4teio1_500.jpg

Is it just me, or does Puig still run the bases like he's being radio-controlled by a pre-schooler with ADD?

I guess if you had your heart set on the Twins firmly committing to the "optics" of contention, then it's hard to see a better available move than picking up Garcia. But the trade comes with a much steeper commitment than a #20-ish prospect or a few million unspent dollars from the season's payroll budget. It comes with a commitment to the improved performance of the current youngsters on the MLB roster as almost the only meaningful source of improvement in the team for the foreseeable future. If you see them turning the Twins into contenders in 2018 and beyond with minimal outside help, then adding a fig leaf of contention like Garcia for 2017 and standing pat for the future makes a world of sense.

Staff it with people willing to correct the mistakes of histrionic millionaires.

What's the replay overturn rate in MLB? One percent? Less? Whatever it is, the rate of reversal in favor of poor plays like sending Grossman home has got to be less than half what it is for 'smart' plays. In other words, the replay guys either unconsciously or deliberately despise rewarding fundamentally poor baseball no matter what the replay shows.

Not only does the idea of a good trade for a starting pitcher not bother me at all, it now seems almost unavoidable to me if the Twins want to field a competitive rotation in 2018. But my concern is that a trade made at the deadline will come with the kind of high cost and limited selection that you usually expect from multiple trades that happen during a short timeframe in a seller's market. Trading away significantly more assets or settling for less of a pitcher than in an otherwise comparable offseason deal in order to 'get someone now' to help contend seems to me like it could be a step backward in the Twins' effort to play postseason baseball, even if that pitcher were signed through 2018. As for run differential, it looks like its predictive value at any given point in a season depends on who you believe. It seems like the majority of the BProp/Fangraphs/etc stuff tends to lean towards 70 games or so as a tipping point at which run differential becomes a good predictive tool for the W/L performance of a team over the rest of the season. At 90 games it takes a lot to break free of the wins & losses trajectory that previous run differential has put a team on for the rest of the way. On the other hand, if FalLeviney are smarter than run differential about the Twins' competitiveness the rest of the way and can get a '2018 or beyond' guy that they really like, before the deadline and without overpaying significantly for the last two months of his 2017, well, have at it, boys, and let's go kick some third order win percentage butt!

Look at the bright side. As often as I'm wrong about the Twins, about baseball in general, and frankly about everything else in life as well, I'm probably reverse-jinxing the Twins right into the postseason by predicting they won't/can't make the kind of trades required to have a shot at contention.

I get it, we don't want a continuous rebuilding project, and anything can happen in the playoffs. In theory. And a guy like Neshek shouldn't cost us a guy like Gordon. But the thing is, you can't trade for just Neshek. You absolutely need to also go get a 3-ish starting pitcher to be relevant in the American League in September. And that will most definitely cost you a Nick Gordon or the like. If the Twins had fought their opponents so far this season to a draw in run differential, it might be easier for me to fathom the Twins converting their minor league talent 'surplus' (*shudder*) into MLB pitching with the idea that it would make them a serious contender. As it stands, I've seen a Twins team that's been much more fun to watch than I expected, and yet not really much better than I expected. And what I expected was a team clearly improved from what it was last year, but just as clearly not ready to contend. That's still how they look to me, despite the W/L record.

Love Neshek. But if the Twins burn a prospect on a two month reliever rental in an effort to reach the coin flip game with a team that currently ranks second from the bottom of the A.L in third order win percentage, then my 'let's give it a couple of years' phase of the FaLeveyine era will end instantly, because I'll know pretty much everything I need to about their odds of bringing meaningful success to the Twins.

So will the guys who pitch for the Winnipeg Goldeyes, when they hit the bars after the game and then Tim Horton's drive thru on the way home.