Fire Dan Gladden

Players that sign with Boras do so because money is their primary motivation. As much sense as it would make to extend Jeffers (and as much as I would like to see him stay in Minnesota), it simply is not going to happen. I do think the Caratini signing was a precursor to a Jeffers exit at some point. If the Twins are truly out of contention before the deadline, they will move him.

The Twins have had their share of success stories of getting the most out of guys as well. MLB is littered with players that needed to go to a different organization to see success. We as fans tend to forget that baseball players are people and that humans can underperform for a thousand reasons that have nothing to do their ability or how they are being taught.

People forget effective pitching comes in all sorts of packages. The common adjective for non-power pitching is "guile". Here's hoping he can maintain it.

Matt Wallner is quickly becoming a "change of scenery" guy. He has enough skill and talent to get the job done, he just can't seem to put it all together in Minnesota. I am positive there are teams out there looking at him saying "we can fix that". They should seriously look at moving him now.

One quick Google search destroys most of the thunder off the article. Could the Twins do better with the international portion of their recruiting? Yes. I would bet all teams would tell you that. Are they abysmally bad? No. They are literally one player away from being middle of the pack.

Calling the Twins out for something then not providing any data to support your supposition doesn't make a lot of sense. Comparing them to other teams would be helpful. I also think a moment-in-time snapshot doesn't provide an accurate picture. You need to included year-by-year numbers both internally and in comparison to others. For all we-as-fans know, half the teams in MLB might have a similar ethnic breakdown. I am not saying the article is right or wrong. I am saying the article doesn't really tell me if it is a problem.

They have done studies on this. This is not a Twins-centric issue. Pitching injuries are up MLB-wide since the shift to max-effort velocity. That is also why you see so few SP going longer than 5-6 innings and RP going 1 inning at a time throwing max heat.

You do realize this is Minnesota, right? Expect Abel back next year some time...

I think the point here is the difference in approach. Had the Pohlad's aggressively made the overall situation better: stronger team, focus on fan experience including television access, the ability to sell the team for what they want would have improved. They chose the other approach: dump everything and tread water hoping someone will buy in. The saying "fortune favors the bold" is a mantra for a reason.

This. They say it takes about 40 games to really know what you have as a team. The Twins are exceeding expectations thus far. Hopefully they can continue, but for now, enjoy the ride.

I have long thought that the "Save" is one of the more useless stats in baseball. Starting the 9th inning with a 3-run lead and holding it is not exactly something that should be glorified with a stat. While I do understand the mental argument for "knowing your role" situational repetition, I have no problem with a weak BP that is trying to find the optimal usage of it's pitchers.

There is a lot of offensive similarity here between Martin and Luis Arraez (with a touch of Ben Revere) that no one talks about. Martin is a better defender and probably a better base-runner, but they both are low power, high OBP guys.

I am not arguing with you. MLB is way more concerned about pace-of-play than the NFL is. Any tinkering will not extend game time. Right now, it is black and white. It either is or is not a strike. I can definitely see MLB get to a point where a call does not get overturned if it is in the "margin of error". But that type of tinkering takes time and will happen in the offseason. But like I said, there will always be disagreement on the edges. Another point not really talked about is how this changes the interactions between managers and umpires. I saw video clip of the umpire turn to the dugout and say "If you don't like the call, challenge it!". I would be willing to bet that the number of ejections over pitch call arguments drops dramatically from last year. It also helps to keep certain umpires egos in check when everyone sees the horribly bad calls (looking at you Buckner).

I understand the point you are making, and you have a solid argument about overturning/confirming edge calls. However as every player and team is playing by the exact same strike zone rules (which was not the case before ABS), your issue doesn't bother me as much as it probably should. When you get to the ABS boundry, there is always going to be disagreement. At some point, you have to decide where you are going to draw the line (no pun intended) and how you are going to interpret the results. Keeping in mind this is the first year, I would not be surprised to see some tinkering with the edges over the coming years.

Eduardo Tait? Who is this guy? Somebody new? He is definitely not a highly touted catching prospect ranked in the Twins MiLB system that everyone and their grandma has heard about ad nauseum over the last 8 months that requires yet another article to be written about how he could be the Twins catcher of the future...