Riverbrian

You can't fool the fans twice. We are from Minnesota. Once they show up for La Tortuga night with no La Tortuga. They are not going to show up for "Reusable Tote Night" because they'll know you can only use that tote once. All trust is gone!!! .

I think it's funny. Dave St. Peter probably not so much. St. Peter will forgive him as long as the players keep hitting the ball like they are.

So far so good with Baldelli. Other than that La Tortuga night benching of La Tortuga... He's doing alright.

This is what I've been asking for. Depth, flexibility and a manager who use that depth and flexibility... Next step is to survive the injuries that will come and yes... down tick in production that will come. If pitchers can keep us in the games... this offense and defense can take it from there. Get some rentals in July to add more and yeah... the Twins are a dangerous team.

The Red Sox had an amazing year last year from wire to wire and they won with heart, clutch performances, team chemistry and a great clubhouse leader. However, can't the Rays win with heart, clutch performances, team chemistry and a great clubhouse leader. Does trying something different or using data to make decisions and not just evaluation... eliminate heart, clutch performance, team chemistry and clubhouse leaders?

Could have gotten a look at some of those guys like Anderson instead of paying millions for Belisle.

I don’t care much for HOF debates but as far as the Twins. He was big part of every summer I’ve had for the entire length of his career. Minnesota Born and bred and the Twins were the only team he played for. Add in some batting titles and it doesn’t get much more special. He is one of us and will always be. #7 should be retired and a statue should also be placed in the plaza. The statue should capture him taking a strike.

Maybe but nobody else was reading those history books for two or three decades.

None of these teams surprise me at all. The only teams that I believe have no chance at all are: Giants, Marlins, Angels, Royals, Tigers and Orioles. Everybody else at least has something that can be built upon to produce wins and be competitive.

I can only guess... Bumgarner hasn't been dealt yet, so I can only guess that the Giants are asking for quite a bit and teams are reluctant to pay the ask. With the other possibility being that the Giants are not going to deal him until their 2019 fate is absolutely sealed. The Giants need prospects to replenish a weak farm system. If I was the GM... I would be trying to deal him so if I had to guess... The ask is too high... whatever that ask is. Aside from whatever the ask is... The only clue about what teams might be willing to pay can only be based upon what teams recently paid for quality rentals. Last Year the Dodgers shipped 5 prospects to Baltimore for 2 months (And Playoffs) of Manny Machado. Yusniel Diaz (OF) - Currently Ranked 1st in the Orioles System - 61st overall (AA) Dean Kremer (SP) - Currently Ranked 9th in the Orioles System (AA) Rylan Bannon (2B/3B) - Currently Ranked 23rd in the Orioles System (AA) Zach Pop (RP) - Currently Ranked 20th in the Orioles System (AA) Breyvic Velera - Traded to the Giants for Cash after being DFA'd Using that deal as a comparable and also making an assumption that Machado is slightly more valuable than Bumgarner (Only because I personally feel that he is with not facts to back me up). And Also making the assumption that the Twins Farm system is better than the Orioles Farm System. My guess is that the Twins equivalent deal for Bumgarner would be. Brent Rooker - AAA Jhoan Duran - High A Travis Blankenhorn - AA Luis Rojo - Low A Ronald Torrreyes - AAA I don't know... just throwing stuff at the wall.

It's easy to focus on the surprising bad defense from Buxton and Cron because it clearly played a role in last night's result. Three unearned runs as the result of those two hard to explain errors. Not to mention how the errors kept a struggling Gibson on the mound longer than he should have been on the mound. However... I'd like to talk about the positive... Marwin defensively. For those who watched the game last night, I know you saw what I was talking about in an earlier thread. Marwin doesn't just play OF... He can play OF at Rosario/Kepler level... This is why I posed the question earlier... Why Astudillo in RF and Marwin at 3B if they are both in the lineup. There's another thread for that discussion... so for this thread... Hey Marwin made a couple of nice plays out in LF!!!

What an amazing job he did, describing the thought processes and emotions. You could think it and feel it. These are stories that we all need to listen to... when someone needs to tell it.

Exactly!!! Why do teams keep rotating 5 starters when they don't have 5 quality starters and the overwhelming number of team don't have 5 quality starters. That is forcing yourself into a failed system. Why not change the system to what you actually have?

They decided in the off-season that rolling the dice with Perez and keeping Royce Lewis (or whoever) was better than paying the price to acquire Bumgarner or Stroman or Whoever. Nothing has taken place to cause the Giants to lower the price and nothing has taken place to suggest that the guys they chose for the rotation won't work out. They decided in the off-season that the bullpen arms they chose were the bullpen arms they wanted. Nothing has taken place thus far to change that. Just because we are nervous about the talent assembled in the rotation and bullpen doesn't mean they are. Because if they are... they should have addressed that nervousness in the off-season. Anything else would be poor management. Going into the season with guys they didn't think would work out would be incompetence for a contending club.

We all think the Giants are out of it but please keep in mind that it's May and the Giants are not out of it yet. The Giants could have traded Bumgarner during the off-season... they didn't. That means they haven't gotten the high price they are asking or they hung on to him to help them compete. None of those things will be changed by the 1st week of May. The off-season is when you acquire your players. The sensible options have all been taken once the season starts. Leaving non-sensible options for awhile.

Winning Record in April - Check Do it again in May and we will be ready for June.

For the life of me... I don't understand the opposition to it either. It's just a change in sequencing. Fixating on the opener is like fixating on the yellow spokes on a unicycle and missing the bear that is juggling pineapples while riding the the same unicycle. Folks need to do themselves a favor and check out the innings allocation of the Rays last year. The bullpen games and subsequent winning of 90 games with only Blake Snell in a rotation... That's the bear on a unicycle they are missing, while fixating on the opener. Does everything have to remain the same, even if it doesn't work so they can remain comfortable. And to take the bait and address the comment that the opener concept is dead with Molitor gone. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense... Molitor was the guy who studied the Rays instead of looking over his own team information and said "Damn It... I'm the Manager... I'm going to implement this thing. Then he is replaced with a new manager FROM THE RAYS, the team who came up with the concept and he is the one who killed it. Doesn't sound even 1% plausible. The Twins this year just happen to have 5 starters who are doing alright so they don't need to throw bullpen games or utilize an opener. They don't YET. I'll willing to bet anyone that if that should change... you'll see some the Rays game plan come to life before your eyes. There are 1400 Plus innings to throw in a given season. How many do you want to waste with a guy with a 5 plus ERA? Just to keep that 5 man rotation thing going? Are people afraid that baseball will stop trying to develop pitchers who can gobble up innings like Scherzer does because Sergio Romo pitched the first inning? They still need quality pitchers to handle as many innings as they can... they got 1400 plus innings to manage. Even the Rays with their unquestioned success with 1 starter in a rotation... still went out and acquired Charlie Morton to be a traditional starter and are using Tyler Glasnow as a traditional starter along with Blake Snell and they still try to acquire high end starting prospects in almost every trade they make. If Madison Bumgarner and Trevor Bauer joined Snell, Morton and Glasnow... they wouldn't even consider the opener. They'd just rotate the 5 of them and eat as many of the 1400 innings. The Rays just can't afford to pay Chris Sale, Chris Sale money and then survive when he tosses a 6 plus ERA so they found a solution to that problem and it's the same problem that nearly every single baseball team has. Anyway... I just typed some extra paragraphs to say that I agree with you. I don't understand either why people act like the opener concept (which has been barely used to date--albeit successfully) is like Asian Carp invading the Illinois River.

We will not get 180 innings out of all 5 over the course of the season. We will be lucky to get 180 innings out of 3 of the 5. The season will depend on the AAA replacements keeping us in games and the same for all of our pitchers. Then Letting the offense do their thing. Stay in contention and high quality rentals should be available that don’t cost us Lewis or Kiriloff. We just need the pitching staff to keep us in ball games.

It’s up to Sano. The organization shouldn’t cut him... shouldn’t trade. He develops for us or he signs a minor league contract for someone else when he hits free agency. If he doesn’t produce during the time between now and free agency. The last option is used and he gets little playing time. A lot of the money is on the line for him. It’s up to him to get that big contract for himself. This isn’t on the Twins. It’s on him. It has nothing to do with playing RF ruining him. He’s been given more opportunity that most others get. It’s about hitting his pitch and playing baseball as a professional. It’s all up to Sano. I wish him the best because we could use what he was promised to be.

Phase One: Currently in Progress until June, See what you have and who you can count on. Don't lock in, Diversify. You don't know which players is going to fall apart and you don't who is going to get hurt. Based on results so far, the Front Office should be mentally preparing for the Phase Two moves that will be necessary if the team remains in contention. You need to use this time to see if your roster has a chance. It sure looks like they do. Phase Two: Starts in July, Determine if the club is in contention or if the club is not in attention and act accordingly but under no circumstance do you stand still. You are either a buyer or a seller but you are not going to sit still. Phase Two: Plan A: If you are a buyer, Use the performance data from April through June and fill any holes that you have. holes must be filled. Not only do you fill holes, You continue to strengthen depth, meaning if you can pick up a SS for a decent price, Don't let the .400 hitting Jorge Polanco stop you. You don't know if Polanco will be healthy come play off time. Bottom Line: If the the team is winning, you support them. Not supporting them would be bad roster management. Phase Two: Plan B: If you are a seller, you sell any expiring contract you can to keep feeding the pipeline and increase your odds in future years. Do Not Sit Still... You move one direction or the other in July but you must move a direction. Phase Three: September... Start locking in on the players who will be getting the bulk of the playing time for the playoffs, Prepare for all your eventual needs, Get Nelson Cruz some reps in the OF because you might need him to play OF in the national league city. If a starter is going to get bullpen work in the playoffs, get him into the bullpen and see how he does. Phase Four: Pick a parade route with wide streets so the fans will have enough room to get confetti in their hair.

That's a pretty apt description of what happened with me last year. I'm not opposed to coming back but I can't return to what the game threads became. I just can't... It isn't me. I'm too happy a guy to sift through page after page of "this sucks". In the end... it changed me... it changed my mood, my happiness and I had to put it down so I could stay me. I was going to bed angry and I am rarely angry and don't like being angry... ever. The whole thing became a load of bricks to carry that I had no choice but to set down immediately. I was simply over-run, the usual band of characters who could find the humor in bad baseball had either departed entirely over the years or slowed their contributions to the point where there were nights that I felt like Kevin Bacon in Animal House, trampled by the riot. I could not moderate it, I could not change it, it could not be stopped without the band getting back together to push the tide back. It reached the point where the most prolific posters were now negatively inclined. Nobody was doing anything wrong according to the rules... most of the negative reactions were actually understandable in consideration to what was happening on the field but the collective tone had changed drastically. There's a cycle to everything and what the game threads became was just the bad side of a cycle I assume. Kind of like the Carpenters, John Denver, and Anne Murray had to come around after Led Zeppelin and the Beatles. I don't know if the owners and mods of this site totally understood my decision but I do know that they gave me respect enough to give me the space I needed and for that I am grateful. It was hard work, leg irons attached type hard work, not just by me, but Carole who set time aside in her busy schedule each day to edit my nonsense when she didn't have to, Chief was working over time to keep the trains running on time with the scheduling. There was a team working together and I bailed on the team but I really had no choice. It was bail or let the people around me suffer my self inflicted mood change. It was like a dog you loved that all of sudden started biting you. Eventually, you got to get rid of the dog. Speaking for myself, there was an enjoyment in the work that justified it but, the key word is "Was". There was simply no longer justification for the effort while you are sifting through page after page of "this sucks". I haven't been back and I have no idea what the current state of the game threads are. I'd love to put down the depth/flexibility kick I've been on and go back to having serious, important, critical discussions on "How a Giraffe would make a great pet, if you had the right kind of house". But I can't go back to what it was last year. I just can't. In other words... I can't jump back in with both feet, it would have to be a toe dip and I would require the assistance of anyone who would like to see the game threads back to what they were before to turn the tide back. If it can be turned back? Anyway, I treasure this website. There is simply no website on earth that suits me, like this one.

It is a crazy game. That’s why I never pencil in losses.

All? Marwin has had over 500 PA's each of the past 3 years. He's been exposed. He ain't a getaway guy.

Or more importantly... DID THE TEAM PUT HIM ON THE D.L. because the hip injury was causing him to crash and burn? Listing an injury as an excuse for poor performance is worse than simple poor performance.

"You may think you hate it now but wait until you drive it".