Riverbrian

They can offer the QO but that still won’t remove the question marks on their foreheads. I have no expectation for Graterol or anyone’s arrival. Just working on the assumption based on ranking of the best player. The value he would return in comparison to similar ranked prospects. If we blow that value (Graterol) on a rental. We will have to blow Kiriloff or Lewis in the off season to replace the rental. You just doubled your price unnecessarily.

Yep a trade of Bumgarner for Graterol would be paying twice. If you are paying your third ranked prospect for a rental... What do you have left to spend in the off-season. Lewis? Kirilloff? Once the off-season hits and the team turns it attention to 2020. They will be looking at 4 SP Free Agents and they will have to pay again to fill those 4 slots or at least 3 of them. Pay a Graterol for a pitcher with an extra year of control. The same prospect traded and you only have 3 SP slots to fill in 2020 or at least 2 of them. Trading for Bumgarner would be almost irresponsible. And I would love to have Bumgarner.

Also if I'm the Giants... I think teams will cap the value of the prospects they are willing to give up in a single deal. I believe the Giants will get more in total if they package Bumgarner and Smith separately. .

I fully admit that I had no idea who Nick Anderson was last year but then again... it isn't my job to know. The front office should have known. I've now seen him throw with the Marlins and I believe that Nick Anderson was a pure hard to explain mistake. I'll forgive the front office for it and I still like the overall work of the front office. However, that roster spot given to Belisle last year clearly should have been given to Nick Anderson instead. It kinda bugs me that we are discussing taking on a large contract just to retrieve him.

If I'm the Giants... I take that deal before the Twins change their minds. If I'm the Twins... I say no. Both players are rentals. Any starting pitching acquisitions need to come with at least an extra year of control for the reasons that Brock lists above. The Twins really need to kill two birds with one stone here (Sorry Birdwatcher... I know you like Birds and are probably against stones used in that fashion). The Twins need starting pitching help this year and next. To trade with the Giants... I think you look at Smith by himself this trade deadline. The Twins should still target a starter in trade talks with other clubs but stay away from rentals. Rentals in the bullpen are fine this year. I disagree with Bowden.

This is a good illustration to show that money can still get a deal done. Not as efficiently as signing a FA directly but it is an example of how money can still get a deal done indirectly. My guess is that the Marlins would love to shed the Chen Money while hesitant to give up controllable talent. Which creates an inherent conflict of interest that could be overcome.

That train may have left the station.

SP - Franklin Perez was ranked 3rd in the Astros system in 2016. He was 19 years old in High A at the time of the trade. After the Trade... Perez became the 1st ranked player in the Tigers system. OF- Daz Cameron was ranked 9th in the Astros system in 2016. He was 20 years old playing in Low A at the time of the trade in 2017. After the Trade... Cameron became the 5th ranked player in the Tigers system. C - Jake Rogers was the 11th ranked player in the Astros system in 2016. He was 22 years old playing in High A at the time of the trade. After the trade... Rogers became the 7th ranked player in the Tigers system. Based solely on rankings and the assumption that the Astros system was better than the Twins system. A comparable deal for the Twins to acquire Verlander would have been: Gonsalves, Kiriloff and Diaz.

Gibson pitched great, Rogers is back. The Twins win. "Unfortunately" is the first word you type.

Great post and you hit the nail on the head. The bullpen had been sufficient for the needs at a time. The bullpen wasn’t being tested the way it MAY (probably) need to be tested. It’s like a company truck repair shop with two bays. Business was booming and the trucks regular maintenance was being handled and the freight was being delivered without interruption. All of a sudden the breakdowns started occurring in bunches. The trucks started stacking up because two bays were not enough and now the company is turning down freight and losing money as a result. The Twins have a choice. A. Carry on as normal and wait for things to stabilize dropping the occasional loss in the short term with the likely risk of things not stabilizing. B. Since business is good. Grow with the business and don’t let something that can be fixed slow you down. I choose B

The tube will get caught on the arm and give them a more effective change up. Actually... the bullpen is one guy collectively. Each member of the pen and rotation is a symptom. The doctor is going to recommend surgery. The Surgeon goes on a 3 month vacation to the Gobi desert on July 31st. The blood in the break room increases the urgency to schedule the surgery instead of fixing the issue with diet and exercise.

The performance of the bullpen is ultimately good news. At least the timing is. Think of it this way... If you are not getting much sleep night after night and you yawn a couple of times at work. You probably don't go to the doctor. Now, If you are not getting much sleep night after night and you pass out at work, bang your head on the danish cart on the way down, causing your boss to put everything down just to clean up the blood in the break room from your gushing head wound. You just might go to the doctor after that.

Thank You for getting out of bed each morning.

The very second we have an injury to the rotation, or end up with a larger number of short starts... the bullpen will have to pick up the slack. It works that way. This team is playoff bound, offensively this team is World Series possible. The front office HAS TO add depth on the mound... this means finding either starters or a complete bullpen full of talent to make up any quality innings loss from our current rotation. Plus, we have 3 free agents in our midst. I fully expect the front office to make a trade for a starter with at least another year of control and I expect a couple of high impact bullpen arms in addition. If the front office doesn't support this team with mound acquisitions... they should have their drivers license suspended.

EE auditioning for another team would be like you auditioning for a bowling team. You've rolled a ball or two in front of others.

This is how a team becomes bulletproof. The Dodgers and Cubs have been doing it this way for awhile now. I am so pleased that the Twins have followed that path and are doing even better with it at the moment. Now if the Twins can take the same approach on the mound... We might end up being used to this contention thing for a long long time.

I just wanted to mention that I appreciate your consistency of these posts.

If a runner is on third with less than two outs and we are tied or down by a run and it’s late in the game. When simple contact could tie the game or break a tie. I would consider pinch hitting for him based on his contact rate in that situation. That’s OK. We got a team full of guys who can hit. You can still play Sano tomorrow and it doesn’t mean he’s a waste of roster space. In all the other situations that OPS just might help us. Let Sano be a simple member of a good team. Don’t compare him to Cabrera until he hits comparably.

Buxton dropped his K rate. Sano could accomplish the same. If he does... when he does... the results will be stunning. Keep coaching and working with him. We have enough talent around him so he doesn’t have to carry us.

About a year ago, I was a passenger in a friends car. We were driving through a parking lot, we were laughing and joking about something. Without warning, a car started to back out into his path. The backing car nosed out maybe a foot but must have saw us, because the car stopped and waited for him to go by. Of course, the backing car did start to back out and this made my friend kinda apply the brakes a little and maybe slightly adjust the wheel to the left before straightening out and continuing on as normal. When this happened... my friend went from mid-sentence in the middle of an uncompleted joke to screaming, cussing, out of his mind angry at the idiot driver who started to back out. Twinsdaily can be that way sometimes.

If the umpire will consistently miss calls in the Twins favor, I will withdraw my request for automated balls and strikes. Last night was a step in that direction.

The bullpen needs to be attacked in the same fashion as the position players on our current roster. Find out who your guys will be and you can only find that through opportunity. Every member of the bullpen must be trusted... if you don't trust them and therefore don't use them as a result. Cut them, demote them and move on in search of a guy that you will trust and use. Rinse and repeat until you got a pen that is worthy of winning us a world series. This isn't as simple as trading for Ken Giles, Will Smith and Brad Hand, declaring your work done for the year and just letting it buck the rest of the way. We don't know who will be healthy and ready come playoff time October. Circumstances change all the time in baseball. Players get hurt or get the case of the struggles. You trade for Giles and you cut Magill to make room. You sign Will Smith and you cut Morin to make room... You trade for Hand and send Duffey down to AAA. The Twinsdaily forum posters will applaud and be very excited about the upgrades and I will join you all in the celebration because we need to acquire arms. but... sometime after the acquisitions... we can expect injury, poor performance or something. It happens all the time. Chalk it up to bad luck is the easy answer but that answer is a cop out. Trade for all 3... I encourage it but ignoring your depth is an excuse that I will pin right back on the management team if they try to use injury as an excuse. Bullpens are built by providing opportunity. Depth is important on the mound just like it's important on offense and defense. We are looking at a largely untested bullpen right now. The starting rotation has been primarily carrying the water. Look how quickly things changed for the Indians... Kluber hurt, Carrasco Hurt, Clevinger Hurt, Bauer struggling all of a sudden. Now imagine if our Twins went through something similar to that in the coming months. Chalk it up to bad luck, is the quick and easy answer as you just lay down and die. However, we just got done watching the Brewers, get by without a rotation by relying on the bullpen in the playoffs last year. We watched the Rays and A's do it last year. The team doesn't have to lay down and die. It can still compete if they get bullpen serious... right now. I'm not saying it's ideal but it isn't a death sentence unless you let it be one. You are right Doc... Terry Ryan found some good options over the years and he found almost all of them on the scrap heap... In my opinion, the reason he was seemingly good at finding cheap help was because he seemed to settle for scrap heap finds as a bullpen staffing philosophy and therefore provided them opportunity to become a good option by not pursuing better options and it worked out a good portion of the time. But again... Opportunity was the key component of finding them. We need to pursue all options and never stop searching for a bullpen full of talent. Pursue the top of the line, while simultaneously testing our in house options whenever we can. To do this... you need to expose them all to the opportunity. 25 players who can play is the only way to do it. We are all watching the offense do this right now. We lose Cruz and Garver and keep on... keeping on. They all take an occasional day off so others can play and we keep on... keeping on. We need depth and this is how you find and develop depth... You play it.

You are right! Same with the Brewers, Astros and Yankees. Using the Dodgers as an example... Check out the creative way they assembled that bullpen for the playoffs. 3 starters Maeda, Wood and Urias joining mainstays Jansen and Baez. Madson was a trade acquisition after the Nats placed him on waivers. Dylan Floro was reacquired in a trade with the Reds after the Dodgers waived him in 2018. Floro was previously waived by the Dodgers in 2018, The Cubs in 2017 and the Rays in 2017.

There will be a (impossible to determine) percentage of those 2999 washouts who were never given a chance due to predetermination. Those 1 out of 3,000 players all seem to be landing on the same rosters. IE Only Certain teams seem to be good at finding these 1 in a million players. You don't want the team to sift through 2999 washouts in search of that rare 1 out of 3000 player. I don't either... but I'm insistent that they sift through 25 players at a time. BTW Giving Eades or anyone a chance should not prevent a team from looking for better options. The team should constantly be looking for better options. However... Not giving Eades or anyone the chance to be a better option due to predetermination is the very definition of "stop looking for better options".

I'm using Morin as an example because we hadn't seen him in a week. During the week we didn't see him... The Bullpen was Bad that week. Magill and Parker were both lit up multiple times while Morin was on the beach. I'm saying... you either trust him or you don't. The bullpen is struggling and Morin is not being utilized with an 0.64 WHIP. Now I got others telling me that we can't use Eades either. If you don't plan to utilize a guy even while peers are being lit up. Neither have a place on the roster. It's we must play Morrison because we got nobody better all over again.