Brandon

Prediction for an august trade: The A's need Fuld because their CFs are injured again. In a few weeks they will be fine (I am guessing) Fuld for Willingham after August 15th.

I don't think his salary is an impediment on anything we are trying to do as a team. We have more than enough salary cap space. If you want to clear space then we could deal Darnell instead so we can bring up the prospects. We will want veterans with the next wave of players and he may be one of the ones we want to keep. I am personally indifferent here as I like our bullpen and am not in a hurry to trade anyone from there.

Dozier /Suzuki tough to argue but I am going with Dozier. Starting pitcher is Hughes Relief pitcher is Deunsing as he is the pitcher most likely to not give up a run in his outings. Fein is a close 2nd as he has the most Holds on the team as everyone know the hold is the most important reliever stat. And Perkins is a close 3rd for the overrated K's rate which is incredibly high and over rated save total as his ERA is higher than these 2 as well. Rookie is Santana cause Gibson barely is not a rookie this year And Guerrier wins this seasons Play it again award. (I just made it up but feels appropriate since there were several contenders)

I think Carlos Silva walked 8 batters one year in 190 innings or something like that . He has the all time Major League Record I think or close to it.

I am happy with his development so far. He is young, getting rave reviews about his stuff, good control. I am not as concerned with strikeout rates. I think he can go more than 100 innings. Last season Berrios performance down the stretch dictated he was tired. I do not see that from Stewart. Also I think starting next year at Fort Myers is an option. I don't think he's ready for AA by any means but I think a full season at Fort Myers next year will do him some good.

Pressly was actually pretty solid for the Twins last year. He has options and was passed by other prospects.

Send him to AAA. if someone claims him, I think the claiming team would take on the rest of his contract. Also if he chooses FA instead of accepting an assignment to AAA then I don't think we would be responsible for the contract either. So he would likely go to AAA. We could bring up a pitcher, Johnson, or May or Darnell Logan. I don't think Meyer is on the 40 man roster yet so we probably wouldn't rush him up at this time.

We already have his slogan of playing Dougie baseball so who else has that going for them? I actually had this conversation with a bartender the other day and determined Mientkiewicz would be the obvious choice. Though I wouldn't mind seeing Gardenhire stick around and become one of the all-time winningest managers with 2500 or so career victories. Though he would be in his 70's at that time. In all realty though Mauer and Mienkiewicz has the leg up as they have managed most of our top prospects at this point.

I don't think he'll be up very long. I think most of us are hoping he gets atleast 1 or 2 starts this weekend before he goes back down when Plouffe comes off the DL on monday.

Paul, You and I have sparred about this on 2 different threads yesterday. I am going to agree that he should not be a long term solution. At this point he is the bullpens version of Kevin Corriea. the 5th starter or 6th man in the pen. For that roll he is fine. An ERA around 4 is passable and after the first month that's what he's been. If we can trade him we should. But yesterday I was pointing out that ERA for a reliever is a misleading stat because a few bad outings can give a misleading representation of the body of work. Burton has the same number of scoreless appearances as Perkins, whom he compares the most equally too. In terms of one game to the next He has been just as reliable as Perkins for games with no runs allowed and games with multiple runs allowed. Will this continue? probably not if his peripherals are correct. My question is how has Burton's stuff diminished? It appears to be a control issue from where I sit but I do not get to watch the games. So my question for you Paul is how has his stuff diminished to say he's done now? He is definitely not a long termer here because I get the feeling we would keep Guerrier over Burton next year. And we have a wave of relievers coming down the stream. Pressly, Achter, Zach Jones, Burdi, Tonkin, Melantokis. so the point is kind of moot anyway. There are teams looking for pitching depth and maybe we can package him with Corriea for something in July. But he is not ineffective and not done by any means.

I like that the first 24 or 25 are all real good prospects and there are more good prospects after that who are starting out but get a lower ranking here because of it.

Also for Promotions. I don't pretend to know all promotions needed but I am not in a hurry to promote Barrios to quickly. He just turned 20 and just became a dad. He has a lot going on without the added pressure. Though I would consider sending him up for a few starts at the end of the season unless fort myers is going to the play offs. I would like to find out if Tomshaw is this years Baxendale or if he can cut it at AA. AA and AAA are not that different in terms of promotion so I don't worry about that one too much. There are several pitchers on both staffs mostly AAA that deserve a promotion to the majors. So I am hoping we either go on a big tear with Corriea pitching and winning a bunch of games or we trade him and bring someone up who can get acclimated to pitching in Minnesota. My fear is Gibson is teetering on the line of being a 5th / AAAA starter and 3rd starter. I hope he takes the full step forward and becomes the number 3 we all hope he can be. Otherwise we do have other pitchers about ready to take his place.

Stuart was the best defensive C in the draft and should move quickly to be a back up if we go off of his defense. But his bat isn't that great. I think it's a little better than its been but not much. I don't know about the other C Garver other than he came out of know where and has been hitting.

15 strike outs in 31 innings is a little low. But he had a great month otherwise. I see Barrios is 4th n the league with 52k's.

The difference then is the increase in batting average. So we need to break that down. Whats his BABIP? is his average unsustainably high? Though I do agree that if he keeps this up he deserves a promotion. His bat I think has always been in the plans. as he has been compared to David Ortiz for a while. We'll probably release him after posting an .830 OPS so Boston can sign him and .....

Also Kubel is probably the one being cut when Fuld returns. Santana has earned his playing time so far.

It might be time for Kubel to learn Catching to be the 3rd string so Pinto can hit.

Seven starters is good depth. with Gilmartin and by 2015 Barrios can enter the equation too. We'll have the pitching depth = to the depth we had that allowed us to trade Garza and Slowey in the same year soon.

We are currently 1 of 9 teams within a game and a half of the 2nd wild card spot. Knowing our major weaknesses can we fill them enough to be a contender this season? Our SS position went hitless in April causing a huge whole in the lineup. Escobar is currently at .347 with around 100 plate appearances. if he even hits.275 its a huge upgrade at that position. CF appears to be a patchwork of Hicks, Fuld, and Santana until something gets figured out. Still a black hole. but one hole is ok. Colabello has been slipping along with Kubel and Plouffe. Parmelee seems to be this months Colabello. Willingham is about a week or 2 away from coming back and Arcia is a phone call away, so we have internal options for offense. So on offense we really only need a CF who can hit and maybe a back up IF who can too. On pitching, Deduno has moved into the rotation and has been ok. Hughes has been excellent, Gibson is inconsistent after a good start, Nolasco has come on after a terrible start, and Corriea is nearing his last chance. Luckily we have several candidates who can come up and start games in Meyer, May, Darnell, and Johnson. The bullpen is a strength with depth in the minors too. We even have surplus players we can use in a trade if the opportunity presents itself. I feel like we have the depth to compete minus CF everybody contributes and gets deployed properly.

I wish the Twins would go get someone like Juan Pierre to be a back up or AAA filler. He has no arm but can still run just good enough to fill in. and he probably hits better than Hicks right now.

The Twins were aggressive in trying to sign Raj Davis last offseason. Does this article get written if he signed here instead of Detroit? Didn't Davis sign before Pierzinski,who the Twins offered 16 million over 2 years vs 2.75 million for Suzuki? If Davis waited he may have received a higher offer from Minnesota. We'll never know. And here's the funny part. I wasn't thrilled with the idea of signing Raj Davis back then and I don't think it was considered a great idea here either but I bet if we did sign him we would have 2 or 3 more wins.

Yahoo has the Twins ranked 26th. Annoying yes, but when I go back and look at the standings there aren't many teams that are more than 2 games under .500 and the Twins still have one of the worst rotations. I don't think I would rank them higher than 20th at this point. but at the end of the season if the Twins remain at .500 then they should be ranked from 14th to 18th more than likely.

When I see the type of numbers Florimon ended up with last year I can't help but hope for a replacement. when I dig deeper I see he is not that far off from another long term SS who was at the time considered the fastest Twin and was near gold glove caliber. That SS was Greg Gagne. Gagne has a career batting average of .254 with averaging close to 10 HRs per season and 10-15 SBs too. while Florimon hit .221 with 9 HR and 15 SB. With just a little bit of improvement he could be a fine SS for the next 3-5 seasons as we can live with less offense in exchange for more defense which he does provide, just there is no margin for regression as we can not have a black hole hitting at SS since the rest of our lineup is not as strong. He could also end up like another Twin who is his 7th best comp through his current age on baseball-reference.com Ron Gardenhire...

Plus we have Kubel back in the fold too. The question is how many of our young players going to stay status quo or move forward? (Pinto, Dozier, Plouffe, Hicks, and Arcia) I expect a return to normal career numbers for Willingham, Mauer may improve a little, Florimon if we get a .250 average with 10HR and 10SB I am content. There are holes but there are also more reasonable remedies for the short term (Bartlett, Presley, Plouffe, Suzuki) then last year. I expect our offense to be ranked around 8th - 10th in the league with the potential to hit 6th or 7th if everything breaks right.

I think there is definitely the potential to match up for a trade if they do not sign Cano and don't trade for Phillips first.