LaBombo

I blame Doumit's framing and The Curse of Eric Gregg...

Good outcome of Duensing vs. Justin Upton = GWRBI xbh. Bad outcome = thermonuclear explosion.

Well, it beats giving up the homer to Uggla. Sort of.

Fair enough. Clearly there are intangibles and subjective elements to consider when a GM pulls the Godfather strings on stuff like this. It's probably difficult to take measure of those events even for the people who live through them. That being said, it's really hard for me to believe that the Minnesota Twins somehow became obligated to start Aaron Hicks in center field and bat leadoff on opening day because of a few good AB's in spring training which made him indispensable to one of the (predictably) worst teams in baseball. And it's even harder for me to believe that if they didn't anoint Hicksie the next incarnation of Kirby , Joshua Willingham might lose faith in the supposed 'win or die' mantra of the franchise and become so distraught that he might put up a crazy, zombie horror movie .197/.359/.393 line in the first quarter of the season. Which he has.

FSN post-game wrapup: 'Kevin Correia struggles with turning back into Kevin Correia'. Which is the more powerful and inevitable force... gravity, or the rise of Correia's ERA toward five? Oh well, at least Caleb Thielbar's parents and the other citizens of Randolph, MN enjoined the game.

'Pssst! The clock keeps running if you don't run out of bounds, Robert Smith! Keep it quiet though, we don't want them to know we're running the clock out.'

It seems to me there was a doctor once who did hard time for 'helping' people deal with medical conditions like this.

http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/30653238.jpg

I envy even that hope, since mine ended in a steaming pile of Nick Blackburn.

Had an uncle who tried that, but my aunt made him stay at a special hotel that helps sleepy people wake up. Proceed with caution, if at all.

Yes, and Smalley dinged him for it by speculating that he might have been safe if he'd run through the bag. So that was good. Nice job by Cy Correia to hang in there after the bad first inning.

Sensory issue. There's therapy for that.

I think I saw that on a bumper sticker in Forrest Gump.

And when the difference between 'nearly unprecedented' and 'unprecedented' makes the top 20 active player list on BBRef's Hall of Fame monitor, it makes the 'nearly' even nearer.

Yes, numerous references were made in the offseason and spring training about an open audition for center field, by both baseball writers and Twins managerial types, and nothing I quoted or inferred was inconsistent with that. But it doesn't change the fact that spring training was the deciding factor. If you need more evidence, I'll keep chipping away. Here's another one: Hicks, ranked as the No. 98 overall prospect by MLB.com, also knows that nothing will be handed to him this year, especially as a rookie. He's making the jump from Double-A right to the big leagues after a Spring Training performance that impressed general manager Terry Ryan. "He certainly earned the trip north for us," Ryan said. "He did a lot of nice things for us in Spring Training. He played well to earn that. If he struggled, it might be a different story, but he didn't struggle much down there at all." From the previous Ryan quote about the Span and Revere trades, it seems pretty clear that based on Hicks' 2012 season, the Twins were expecting and hoping to make him the opening day CF. But it's equally clear that they relied on what they thought they saw in spring training to make the final decision about where to put him. Whatever stock Ryan put into Hicks' 2012 season, it wouldn't have been enough to override a spring training line resembling either his dreadful .113/.229/.127 April or even his widely acclaimed .176/.250/.431 breakthrough May. Believe whatever you want, but there's plenty of press to support the depressing conclusion that the Twins mistakenly believe that a few nice exhibition AB's support their scheme to rush Hicksie.

By addressing service time exclusively regarding the decision to rush Hicks to the majors, Ryan disdained any other arguments by default. Also, isn't there at least some conflict in your appraisal of the situation? Which appears to be this... Ryan believed so strongly in Hicks that he asked him to make a level jump so difficult that only one Twins hitter, a likely future Hall of Famer, has managed to make it successfully in the past 20 years. And yet Ryan was so down on Hicksie's ceiling that he didn't give a hoot about how much his continued presence will cost the team in the future? Doesn't sound right...

Curious because you're approaching the situation with an open mind, right? Lol j/k! Here's the first one: "The guy has earned it," Ryan said of the former 14th overall draft pick in 2008. "I find it almost humorous that people are talking about service time, starting the clock. We didn't trade Span and Revere to stall the next guy. Ryan indisputably contradicts himself here, revealing that through a handful of nearly meaningless exhibition games, Hicks somehow "earned" a job that was his by default the moment that Span and Revere were traded. And to ensure that he strips himself of any lingering credibility after his 'pretty darn good pitcher' comment, Ryan reveals that he considers the very concept of service time laughable. O... k. But there's more. "Are we trying to win, or what are we doing?" Ryan said. "Can you imagine if we sent somebody out that did what the kid did, and I had to look at (Josh) Willingham and (Justin) Morneau and (Glen) Perkins and (Joe) Mauer and those guys that are trying to win, and I'm going to stop that guy? I just don't believe in that. I hear this stuff. Not here." And now Ryan blazes past the absurdity of the flat earth service time denier bit, escalating to some sort of weird humanitarian zone where he is somehow morally, almost tearfully obligated to make a personnel decision that will let him socialize with highly compensated veterans who are apparently living in abject terror of losing 93 games instead of 83. By his own assertion (or at this point, admission), Terry Ryan is trying to win. By any standard that I can either observe or imagine, he's failing so far this season. So that tends to undermine his entire premise for any personnel decisions allegedly predicated on that goal. Ryan was good in his first incarnation as GM. The jury is still out on his second, which may turn out well. And obviously he feels obligated to help sell tickets by putting a positive spin on things, which is perfectly understandable. Good for him. That being said, Terry Ryan shot his credibility in the foot when he mocked any scepticism regarding the decision to rely on a double A player who is now undeniably one of the worst in the majors. My hope is that he earns that credibility back with a 'sell' trade like the one he managed with AJ.

Jose Canseco likes this.

Good, save it and enjoy it when the sting of today's loss has worn off.

Yep, it was a joke, on account of Dempster pitched yesterday... Y'all ain't laughin', though... http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_jekqQF9KRo/T6nbPMSAiEI/AAAAAAAAIUc/Rxwgl1IhRM8/s1600/will-smith-as-agent-j-in-men-in-black-3-2012_1.jpg

I'm not sayin' he's late on the heaters, but he K'ed on a Dempster fastball... today.

Wait, I left out snepp, who, despite his moderator status, appears surprisingly eager for a fight. Watch out, amateur Twins PR flacks, you don't want none o' that! http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/thumblarge_441/1254427996LvInKC.jpg

Done and done. Now bring the heat, FO apologists! Lev, jokin and I are ready for you to do your worst... http://jhupress.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/boys-wearing-ja-pot-hats.jpg

Outstanding, and it also frees up Buck 97 in case Hicksie goes on a tear and raises his average 60 points...

Nah, that one's out of the barn already, so citing him would just draw the ire of the 'hindsight 20/20; totally unforeseeable' mafia. Why not really poke the bear and throw in a negative medical staff comment?