Riverbrian

A trade like this with the Reds doesn't make sense to me. Zach Cozart is the starting SS with the Reds. Didi isn't anything yet but is the only SS depth they have. Hamilton has been working towards a CF gig. Why would the Reds move a SS? That seems foolish to me. Personally I'd rather see Denard or Ben traded for Pitching and I don't have much interest in questionable infielders... We have questionable infielders already. We don't have a ton of trade chips. I sure hope we focus on pitching with the trade chips we have. Our SS situation is not good... Our Starting pitching is ten miles below our SS situation.

The Twins should be making phone calls and discussing almost every pitcher in baseball.

The Vikings will have a perfect regular season in 2016. Roll thru the playoffs with ease and matchup against an injury depleted Buffalo Bills who are down to a fourth string QB who was signed as insurance the last week of the season and didn't have enough time to know the play book yet. On the Saturday before Super Sunday... The Core of the sun collapses in the blink of an eye and explodes into a supernova. The commissioner with his last breath cancels the Superbowl. Drew Butera survives.

I'm Guessing that every team would love to have Span including the Twins. However, there will differences in opinion on how highly they value Span and differences in how much they need Span. I don't think it's far fetched to think that GM's differ in opinions on players much like we differ in opinions. Some might lock into Metrics and Some might lock into measureables and some may lock into potential and most probably use a combination of but they all have differences in valuation of every player ranging from big differences to small. This Trading stuff is tuff for that reason. It takes a lot of phone calls I guess. I'm hopeful that some GM values Denard Span highly and needs and wants him and I'm hopeful that whoever that GM is... I'm hopeful that he has a decent spare pitcher to make the deal.

Nick Punto... The Memories of Nick Punto...You could look at it this way... We won a lot of games when Punto was an active member of our Roster. We've lost a lot of games since he has left our roster. I'm not saying Punto is the reason. I'm saying he clearly didn't hurt our club during his stay. He gave it everything he had and came to play everyday. I refuse to hate him. As for Capps... Too expensive for the output. We can do better. We need a flamethower or two out of the pen who can get a strikeout with runners on 2nd and 3rd and nobody out.

Bingo... It's not the players we have lost and what they could be doing for us now. It's what we got in return and what those acquired players are NOT doing for us.

Keppinger over Youkilis for sure. You get your third base competition and MI infield competition if Plouffe keeps his job. Keppinger had a hell of a year at the plate in 2012. However... I wouldn't even consider either of them if it kept even one arm away. Pitching please and lots of it.

Old School... What does that mean? Is it possible that someone else in the organization he trusts understands SABR metrics. Problems turning on a computer... Could that be a joke? Does it mean the entire organizations is carving notes on to boulders stored in a real heavy duty filing cabinet? 1 lucky trade... How do you know it was luck? When you say that he lived on that for years... Are you saying that one lucky trade produced multiple AL central pennants. Never mind... For you... The above questions are rhetorical. Time for new blood in the organization? Maybe... I don't know... I'll give you that... That point isn't unreasonable... It's how you come to that conclusion that is unreasonable and your Larry, Curly and Moe routine makes you seem like someone not deep enough to understand the dialogue and plot lines of the actual three stooges. The Twins organization is staffed by a lot of people in various roles. I'm pretty sure that inside the walls... away from public view. You have differences of opinion on players and the price of hot dogs. Just like any other business across the world. Just like the difference of opinion on Twins Daily... A GM doesn't do it alone. He relies on his staff and he filters. You don't know where it comes from. Do you know the scouts by name? Have you sat down and discussed the talent of Dallas MacPherson with any of them? Is there a Johnny Dakota nameplate positioned at the table in the meeting room? Terry Ryan doesn't live inside a steel vault cut off from knowledgeable people who have been involved in professional baseball for years. There is no point in employing as many as they do without them having skills and input. If you can't accept anything I'm saying... At least accept this... If you want to blame someone and clearly you do because it comes bursting out of you like water rushing toward Johnstown. Blame the Owner. The owner hires the people who hire the people. At least get that straight!!! If the owner hired you for GM... It would be pointless to throw garbage on you. It was the owner who hired you for a job you couldn't do. It's great you have an opinion... I have one as well?

Declining the option was certainly expected. Picking up the option would have shocked everyone. Thrylos could still be right here. I'll be checking my Twinsdaily Daily in anticipation!

Honestly, I've always felt that Gardy doesn't play backups enough. It was painful to watch Parmelee rot on the bench. Casilla could have played more in my opinion(It's ok Chief... Just a little more). I thnk Hughes and Burroughs were thrown away(maybe they should have been) with no playing time to prove themselves while Danny V. Meekly played 3B every day. I don't want the same lineup everyday. Even star players slump. Even .220 hitters get hot. You miss out on Descalso while you wait for Granderson to turn it around. Over the course of 162 games... You have a roster of 25. Use them all. if Revere is going through a tough stretch. It's Ok to play Mastro for a while. Competition is created in such ways. Its an eye of the beholder thing. I honestly feel that Gardy needs to use his bench more and in different ways but still think he's a good manager overall. there you admiting you have a problem is your 1st step to recovery ,( now as you hum the 3 blind mice song) always remember and never forget , the 3 stooges are not good at what they do , larry gardenhire was a good coach for tom kelly , twins win dispite larry being the manager curly , ryan was a good cross checking scout , he made 1 lucky trade in aj and has done nothing sence moe st pete , a media major (not even a real bean counter) did well selling broken kirby pucket bats , while running the souviner shop untill you realise where we could be with quality people steering the ship you will stay in denile ... good luck with your recovery I'm Ok with the Kool-Aid. It took me awhile but I realized over time that other people have their own opinions. When it comes to the Twins... I'm wrong frequently but I like trying to play along like others. Some people are simply more informed than others. Some take solid information and use it well and some take solid information and use it badly. How does the Twins Brass use solid information... I don't know!!! The majority of us... Not blessed with a ton of inside information... Some of us take second hand information and incomplete information or no information and strongly toss half baked accusations as if they were an actual part of the machinery (which they are not). They find a few uninformed like minds and find a few others who take a different route and find similiar conclusions who use a different kind of uninformed math to arrive at the same or similiar conclusion. Others... use second hand information and incomplete information or no information and come back with a very uninformed supportive viewpoint and can be quite forceful with those conclusions as well. This is my side of the coin and I'm happy to drink the Kool Aid. There are some like me... Who feel a lot better about things assuming that someone has a job to do and is attempting to do it regardless of weather it fits my opinion and my opinion is different than other opinions. I can be forceful in my opinions but they are as half baked as anyone else. I do try to assume that the people in charge are not sitting around playing "Angry Birds" on their IPAD all day. I try to assume that they have scouts and they get reports and they read and filter them. I try to assume that a network of coaches are working to improve the club from the ground up every day and each of the coaches are more qualified than 99.9% of us. I try to assume that they are working with actual information and a gameplan. I also assume that you are nowhere close to this level on the informational food chain but yet you seem to be more cocksure than most on this site and even more cocksure than the ones with the actual information. Everyone is different. You can't please everyone. I realize that in this life... Some are better than others and some are worse and that will be true with the Twins brass as well... I don't have enough inside information to conclude where exactly Ryan, Gardenhire, St. Peter, Smith, Anderson, Pohlad, Brunansky, Mauer and the medical staff rank on the better or worse scale but I assume that they are spending more time on it than any of us... Including you... . I am assuming that your LARRY,MOE AND CURLY attacks are based in nothing of substance. I am also assuming that nothing I have typed here will make a bit of difference in your mind since you are already completely cooked. 29 teams do not win the World Series Every Single Year. I'm not sure what I need to recover from? The team has some work to do let's see what happens!

I was wrong on the Cards. They looked like they had it. You just never know in this game. It makes the game beautiful. Cabrera and Fielder didn't do much to help the Tigers but they sure helped get them there but even Cabrera can't win this game by himself. Balance... Everything in life is Balance. From baseball to what you eat. The Twins are unbalanced because of Pitching. They don't have to have the best staff in baseball. They just need a staff that can compete with options to replace the ones who are not competing or can't compete. Let's face it... The Twins can upgrade at every single position. The only player that is potentially best in class is Ben Revere with his speed. Everyone else has someone better across MLB at something that they do well. We don't need an overhaul... We need pitching to restore some balance to this club.

Seemingly... a majority of folks on Twinsdaily... (Wonderful people for the most part)... Plus a majority of people you will run into on the streets.... Will gloss over the makeup of the Giants... I also believe the majority will gloss over the seasons turned in by the Tigers, Rangers, Yankees, Red Sox and every other team while continuing to play the game on paper. The Game on paper according to their own mind's eye. Me included!!! The Giants sent forth a lineup with a couple of Superstars in Sandoval and Posey and a bunch of question marks. Scutaro and Pence were acquired at the trade deadline while the Dodgers added a bus load of bigger names. Brandon Belt was a Freshmen Bust who struggled to find playing time early this year. #7 #8 #9 in the order last night... Blanco... Theriot(AT DH) and Crawford... If those three were members of the Twins. A few of us on Twins Daily would be throwing garbage all over them. Melky who was performing at an out of this world level was busted and done for the stretch run and playoffs. They Shook it off like the team was bigger than he was. This will all soon be forgotten and everyone will continue or return to flat out concern over our Middle infield like they can't win with someone like Crawford holding down the position. The Giants have a pitching staff... So do the Tigers... So do the Nationals... So do other squads... Sometimes Pitchers have bad starts and sometimes they happen in the playoffs. Sometimes they pitch well in the playoffs and still get out pitched by a lesser pitcher on paper. Sometimes someone like Scutaro comes out of nowhere. Get in the playoff door and anything can happen. Build this team for reaching the playoffs. That means Pitching... Pitching Depth... Overall Depth... And players who compete and believe they can win.

The Twins could have had Inge last year when Detroit released him. The Twins passed and that was pre-Plouffe hot streak and Post Danny V. send down if I'm not mistaken. Despite needing a 3B they passed.

I really think Seattle is about to go into searching for offense mode. If not this year... Next year for sure. King Felix will be joined by that trio of starters Hultzen, Walker and Paxton and if they become what they can become... The Mariners will be a team to fear shortly down the road. It's a question of timing your offensive push to their devolopment. However, I seriously doubt that the Mariners will cough up any of those young pitchers or risk chasing it's tail like a dog. It seems it would make more sense for Seattle to wait for 2014 to try and sign Justin as a free agent. I could be wrong... I probably am.

I have no idea at all in regards to Slama. It's gotta be more complicated than what I know simply. Based on his numbers... He should have had his chance to see if it translates at the MLB level. If he isn't going to pitch in the Majors because of something that he doesn't do well. Cut him... Quit wasting his time... Let him go to a new club or into the next phase of his life. From a numbers standpoint. He's done the job. Obviously this is about something else and there is no way of knowing what that is exactly. It's wrong to assume MLB success and wrong to assume MLB Failure but I don't think it's wrong to expect MLB opportunity!!!

No point, it doesn't take into account differences in pitching, which when talking about the Twins rotation throws every park effect metric under the bus. Regardless of how good or bad a staff is, they pitch half their games in the home stadium and half on the road. When they give up 98 home runs at home and 100 on the road, what do you conclude about the stadium? That it is hard to hit home runs there? Or that it is similar to the other stadiums (on average)? It doesn't matter if they give up 30 home and away or 130. If the numbers are similar, the park is neutral, if there is a gap, the park is biased. I'm feeling you Curt... You bring good stuff... Keep bringing it. Like you said... These numbers fluctuate from year to year. You have to ask the question... Why the fluctuation? I do have a little knowledge in the wonderful world of statistical margin of error. 167 dingers combined over 81 games is going to carry a fairly large margin of error. Fluctuation will suggest unreliable conclusion. Consistent numbers from year to year is what you need to bang the gavel down. If you run into examples of stadiums that show consistent decrease or increase each year. You can start to safely say that it is a Hitters Park or Pitchers Park. With Target Field... It's too early to say but your numbers suggest that it may not be the stadium we all assume it is. I think Ball Park effects has to be factored in somehow. I have no data but I do think the park favors Righthanded Hitters. In my mind... The Plaza in RF is a possibility for knocking some balls down. That's just an assumption of mine with no basis whatsoever.

I'd say we need a left hander. Duensing can't be the only capable lefty. I'd say that is fairly important. Perkins could be that guy and if he is. We will need a closer and I'd say that is fairly important. Injuries and failure is always a real possibility with current staff. We also need an uptick in Gas. TR tried with Zumuya last year. He just might take another swing at someone with a live arm. If SP improves and the bullpen isn't addressed and Fein is cut in May with a 8.56 ERA. Twinsdaily will crucify TR for not addressing the pen. I have no problem with the #2 priority assessment of the pen.

How so? Wouldn't the better your rotation is, mean the more important the bullpen is? What's more important...holding onto a lead or tie, or coming into a game the starter has already lost? Nobody really cares all that much when Jeff Gray comes into a game the starter has already lost. If the Twins don't improve their starting pitching, then the bullpen isn't going to matter much. It'll lose games, but you can't finish lower than last. In any case, no matter if your team is good or bad, or your starters are good or bad, your bullpen is going to be the deciding factor in a lot of games. Most major league baseball games end up close, it's the nature of the beast. Continually getting outpitched in the last 3 innings of a game matters too, just as does getting outpitched in the first 6. You might argue that better starting pitching will throw more innings, and that's true, but the difference isn't as much as you'd think. Twins starters averaged 5.4 IP in 2012, worst in the AL. But the best only averaged 6.2, and half the teams were somewhere in the 5's, so most nights the Twins were asking their bullpen to get 1 or 2 more outs than their opponants. A good starting staff might eliminate those 1 or 2 outs, but every team in the league is asking their bullpen to pitch mulitiple innings almost evey night. You can't do that effectively with a 2 or 3 man bullpen. I do agree that I don't know if the infield or the bullpen is a higher priority, but I'd argue both need to be addressed, although neither will likely matter much if they don't get better starting pitching. The Twins have a decent pen already. Duensing, Burton, Duensing, and *maybe* Fien make up for a pretty solid 7-9 innings. Sure, the Twins could probably use another seventh inning guy but if you have four (maybe three) pitchers who can pitch, you're going to hold on to a lot of leads. The main problem was the rotation. If you didn't have guys like Blackburn folding after four innings, followed by Deduno pitching five good innings, followed by De Vries throwing another 4.2 innings, your good relievers wouldn't be so taxed and we wouldn't be forced to watch Jeff Gray pitch the seventh or eighth inning over and over and over again. Sure, a half inning doesn't seem like much but over the course of a season, that's an extra 80 innings your bullpen has to throw and most of those innings aren't going to the Duensings, Burtons, and Perkins of the team. They're going to the scrubs, the replacement guys. And as we saw with many Deduno/Liriano starts, going five innings or less doesn't automatically mean the game is a blowout. Many of those games were close but Gardy had to come up with four innings from the pen. Not an easy task in a close game, doubly so if the opposing starter goes seven innings and you only have to face the best of their bullpen because of it. Also, a better rotation means that Duensing actually get to pitch from the bullpen instead of being thrown into a starting role where he flounders. As I said, the Twins could use another guy in the pen but considering that their MI options are Escobar, Florimon, Carroll, and Dozier, I'm surprised that's not the #2 priority for the team. It seems to me that the most gains could be found by finding a shortstop or second baseman who isn't really bad at baseball. Brock I apologize for this but... Everything you typed here is just a bunch of words. A good rotation needs a bullpen... A bad rotation needs a bullpen. Your post seems to be a little A + B = C. Bullpen is fine therefore with better SP we don't need to improve the bullpen? Yeah... That's an easy concept to understand but terribly wrong. Runs can be scored in any inning. A bullpen pitching with a lead will be a different kind of important as opposed to last years staff that had to log serious innings down on the scoreboard. If the pitching isn't going to improve in 2013... I agree with you... Our bullpen is just fine. If the pitching improves and we have some leads to play with... You better keep an eye on who is available for bullpen help otherwise you risk giving up your gains. Goblin is right... We could use some flamethrowers.

You can smell the off season starting to cook now. The dinner bell will be ringing soon enough.

Lot of talk about it being a thin market for pitching... That may be true but it doesn't matter because nearly every FA pitcher is better than what we currently have for the two slot. Marcum would be a solid signing.

I don't think acquiring Castro is possible but I like the effort. I'll dream with ya on that one.

I don't have a problem with bullpen being #2 on the list and I like the assumption that the 2013 starters(whoever they may be) are going to pitch well enough that an improved bullpen is important. If #1 isn't addressed significantly #2 won't matter. I take this as a clue that TR is going to go for it in regards to #1. if pitching is going to be weak... Another path would be to load up on offense to bash your way past it. He isn't taking that approach according to what John says. Therefore... I think TR is making a move on pitching... Fasten your seat belts. This might be a fun off season.

I gotta agree with Shane here.... We have one pitcher in Diamond slotted for the 2013 rotation right now. We have money coming off the books. Not signing at least half way decent arms would be criminal. Any GM in the land can see this. Even if you throwing away 2013 for a 2014 or 2015 build. You still have to spend some FA dollars this year with contracts that roll into the years that follow. We all know the past history. It simply doesn't apply right now. If we don't make significant additions to the pitching staff in the off season. I swear to all... I will make Thrylos look pale when I personally assess Terrry Ryan. That should scare them... riverbrian will type nasty stuff.

Need... Of course not... I don't need it... However I like the concentric squares piling up. They get smaller while get larger at the same time. It's a beautiful thing!

Thick or thin... We can't sign them all... Mr. Ryan... Pick your favorites and bid aggressive.