Dantes929

Much like Scot Diamond back in the day, I think it is less a matter of the league figuring Duffey out and more a case of him just not pitching as well now as he did then.. Back then he was hitting corners with a tailing fastball and his curve ball was as good as anyone's. Since then his fastball has been erratic and his curve ball still breaks a lot but not quite as sharply or on as much of a downward plane according to my eye test. I think Busenitz deserves a spot. 28 appearances in the majors should trump 8 innings of ST ball. On the surface it looks like a lousy decision but all we see is the surface.

Pretty sure you would always rather have him on third but yes the reward vs risk should be considered. Of course you have to factor in his success rate and not the general success rate since if he can steal 3rd base 100% like he pretty much does with 2nd then he should.. I wonder how often he was on 2nd with less than two outs. They really should figure in stolen bases to OPS, since he is essentially getting the equivalent of doubles on singles and walks.

I'm still optimistic about the time line. What was said in the article that makes anyone less optimistic? How much time does he need once his hand feels good? 30-35 days? We are still 14 days or more from where that clock starts for an early May return. There is no context to this story. Maybe he's a week ahead of schedule because others that have had the surgery wouldn't have even been doing the hour of exercises yet. Progress each day might mean he is light throwing in 3 days and hard throwing in 10. Of course to be fair maybe others have had the swelling down after a month but who knows? Its kind of silly to draw any conclusions at this point.

Well, then based on ERA Straker would still have been our best reliever followed by Reardon at 4.48. Viola and Berenguer were the only guys on the entire team with an ERA below 4. Blyleven, Straker and Reardon were the only others below 4.5. Most of the rest of the stafff had ERA's over 6.00. Main point being Straker had the 4th best ERA on the entire team, starting or otherwise. If I kept memorabilia I would be pretty happy to have his signature on a homer hanky.

Third best starter, by far, on World Series team. That's not ruined in my book. Only autograph I ever got was on a baseball by Jim Perry. Nice get but the regrettable part is that it was the only baseball we had so we were already playing with it by the end of the day. No brainer at the time but now I kind of wish I still had it.

And I wonder how much guys throw in the month leading up to ST. You would think they work hard for at least a month before in preparing to win a spot but maybe they don't for contract reasons. If Hildenberger gets hurt throwing a week before ST he probably doesn't get paid. If he gets hurt throwing while in camp I think he gets the major league salary while on the DL. I am guessing it can be a pretty big factor in trying to build up your arm strength and endurance while in camp.

I have no problem with Gibson opening the season. Does Baltimore have an ace? Doesn't feel like it decreases our chances all that much and increases the chances of Berrios winning his first start by a like amount.

Back on my soapbox here. Your plan might be what the Twins are thinking and I hope it works out that way because it would mean we get some meaningful production out of him this year. Its the whole idea of shutting him down or limiting his innings that gets me. Any pitcher that has pain or fatigue should be given rest but the notion that a guy that has thrown 150 innings and is going strong should be shut down for 5 months and that rest somehow leads to accumulated ability to go another 20 innings the following year just doesn't make sense to me and has no real scientific backing that I have ever seen. I get trying to insure pitchers have the best chance of having a long career but I just don't think this does it. Blyleven along with others pitched 280 (at age 20) innings with no bad effect. Some guys blow out their arms 10 days into spring training. Just another case of managing out of fear. Get his form right. Try to keep him from over throwing and then monitor his health throughout the season.

Do you really think Berrios was rushed to the bigs early? I would guess that he could have been in the minors another 5 years and still would have gotten so amped up that he would have over thrown when he got up here. I say that because I think he still does sometimes. I think he might be farther along now if he had come up sooner, in fact. If when he came up he did the same things in the majors he did in the minors he would have been way more successful. It had less to do with his abilities and more to do with being human. Some can make the transition easy. For some it takes a while to calm the nerves and trust their stuff. Blyleven came up and was awesome right away at 19. Koufax came up and it took him 6 years to really get going. I don't know what the right course is for Romero. Its possible he is our best pitcher right now and that he is just wasting bullets pitching in the minors. Its possible there are things he should be working on without the pressures of the majors.

While I agree with this completely no one is suggesting the Twins go from excellent to poor on a consistent basis. While I would prefer to keep Granite as a 4th outfielder I suspect he will be in the minors as our 5th outfielder. If anyone gets hurt he will leap frog Grossman and become our 3rd outfielder. Grossman in one spot every 6 games is not going to have the effect on ERA stated above. Looks like John Mabry was Seattle's 4th outfielder in the 93 win season. He was primarily a 1st baseman in his career so I am thinking no great shakes in the outfield.

Baseball is fascinating this way. A .500 team has a couple guys play well or poorly with respect to their abilities, maybe a call here or there, maybe a reliever blowing a couple saves that sends a team into a tailspin or a couple walk off hits gets them in a groove. Maybe its a schedule that is favorable or just better or worse health than average makes 6 games in the entire schedule go one way or the other and you go 87-75 rather than 75-87. I will guess 88 but what I really want is meaningful games in September. We had about 160 of them last year which was awesome. We had maybe 9 at most in 2016 which blew since they were the first 9.

I give them an A as well. I don't really think Rodney is the guy and would rather have Cobb but otherwise I am pretty happy. Yet, I am not convinced the past front office would not have made these moves because lets face it, some of these appear to have fallen in our laps and the behavior of the other teams has not been anywhere near normal. We have gotten bargains which is what the prior group was always trying to get. They upped their ante back in the day with Pavano and Thome and others when trying to contend much like this group has. I could easily see them making every one of these moves. I think it is more a perfect storm. Any other year Lynn, Reed and Morrison would not have been available at these prices or this late. Twins would likely have made the Odorizzi move as well though this is probably the move for which I will give the current guys the most credit. They found a target and made an offer. That is to their credit. In the past the Twins would not have gotten Darvish either. Maybe its savvy and maybe its luck. Either way I will give them an A for being savvy and/or lucky.

I definitely didn't want a three year deal but resigned myself to the idea of a two year deal. One year deal at less than we thought a multiyear deal would get per year is really good. Would have preferred Cobb to a two year deal or Arrietta to a one year deal but this one is really solid. Rodney is the move I like least but all the others has to make this a top five off season in Twins history.

So not all the White Sox are named Garcia?

Rhett Bolinger from the Twins mlb page. "Hughes will get the longest look because he's owed $26.4 million over the next two seasons, while only $500,000 of Sanchez's $2.5 million deal is guaranteed." It may be just an assumption on his part. What is the difficulty in sending Hughes down? I know you are right but don't remember why. Just seems like based on the not so recent past Meija should be favored. Both Hughes and Sanchez have ERA's north of 5.87 over the last two years. Meija came in last year with a 4.5 ERA. Not great either but about league average. With him I believe there is a more reasonable expectation that he can either duplicate that or do better.

Yeah. I get it. The market value for Puljols in his best years was probably 40 or 50 mil and the contract was actually structured to pay him more each year until 41 which dovetails nicely with your position. I've kind of thought all along that these contracts really should be shorter and if it is for more money that is just fine. More money per year and maybe even a lot more money per year but fewer years. Of course then it affects how the salary cap comes into play. Just seems like there should be a better system.. Maybe leave the system as is but require all teams that are short of spending 52% (or whatever agreed upon %) of gross revenue pay the difference evenly to all its players. It would compensate those that are in the earlier years better and also motivate the owners to try to get better players for its 52%. On a related topic I really don't like at all that the Twins might favor Hughes for a spot possibly based solely on the fact that they are paying him a lot of money.

I would concede all that but how can anyone have a problem with the owners saying. "Wait, this is insanity. I'm not going to sign him to a contract that pays him 30 mil at age 41 because I've studied all the other long term contracts and the odds aren't good that he will be worth that over the term of his contract". I think every one can agree that in Puljols case if Puljols had demanded 30 million a year until he reaches 46 years old would have been pure nonsense. Assuming that is the case everyone would agree there is a point where too much money for too many years doesn't make sense. I think many of the contracts have already exceeded that point and apparently the owners finally agree with me. If the norm was for the players in free agency to be paid huge amounts of money for just their prime years and just now the players started negotiating for the huge amounts for their prime years and way beyond you would probably think they were being unreasonable and it would take you quite a few years before you started to accept that as the norm. I'm just positing that your first instincts would have been correct. I'm not defending the owners here. I think the money should be spent on the players and that stars should be paid. I feel some similarities to politics. You all are defending the right of those that have already made lottery money to make even larger lottery money for more years. Guys that have already made tens or hundreds of millions just don't get much consideration from me. Its the guys that admittedly make pretty good money already but should be getting lottery type money but don't that get more of my empathy. There should be more lottery winners rather than fewer guys winning larger lotteries.

Man, I really wish someone would insult me like that.

The Cards gave him a qualifying offer so if they thought he was actually bad then they should have been nervous he would accept it. 1.4 WAR? That's not so bad is it? Wouldn't a league average pitcher be an asset right now? I think I would feel a little better having him so this is a rare thing for me to be ok with a signing the rest of the board doesn't want. My preference has always been Cobb though.

And there have been hundreds of worse players than Doug that have fit in with contending teams. Doug M would probably have fit fine on that team also if he had stayed and if the twins didn't think they had a better option. If the Twins think they have another Justin Morneau that would be blocked by Mauer after this year then you are right that he probably doesn't have a place on this what we hope is a contending team. Saying a guy like Mauer has no place on a contending team as a stand alone statement is off the mark IMO.

You are right that there are not enough altruists. Not enough people thinking big picture and the common good. As far as baseball goes, I am a numbers guy but still have a hard time wrapping my mind around the sheer volume of the money being generated by baseball. How is it possible? Where does it all come from such that Mauer can be paid 40k every time he comes to bat and that is just one player and one at bat. I consider myself to be a big baseball fan but I only go Opening Day with my son and watch all the other games on TV. Big money on TV but how is that even possible? I consider myself to be immune to the commercials which pay for it. Its all just mind boggling. Sorry this is my last post on the topic. I barely have time to get a Dairy Queen before stopping at Target on my way to Treasure Island Casino.

Having a great defensive 1st baseman who gets on base 39% of the time. I can see where that can fit in on any contending team.

"I like the system the way it was... and I wish the owners would just pay the FA's... Consider it back pay if you have to." That's an argument for paying Mauer a lot of money to keep him but I don't think any owner wants to pay back pay for a guy that played for someone else. Its essentially what they are doing now and it is falling apart. Might work if there was a way to make the original team pony up for part of the contract as back pay but then why not just have them pay it to start with. "I agree completely... I can choose where I work. I've always had that choice." I don't know what you do except write kick ass blogs for the opening game of each Twins series so maybe its true for you but even a statement that simple is fraught with variables and trade offs for most people. You can't choose to work on Wall Street in Winona. You might want to work as a scout for the Twins but if they say we are sending you to Venezuela for 6 years you can say you have the choice not to go but then you might lose the choice on what you do. Add in another variable for how much you make and where you want to live and throw in family and you will find that most people don't have all the choices you think they do. Again, if you are talking established players you are talking about guys that make a huge amount of money presumably doing what they love doing and the trade off might be playing at beautiful Kaufman Stadium rather than beautiful Target Field for 81 days out of the year.

You are way more altruistic than I am. We are all controlled by various things. Family, work, etc. I guess I am not concerned at all with men playing baseball for a living, making millions of dollars having even more control over their lives. I am more attached to the team and like following the players as they come up and develop as it pertains to the Twins. More free agency just makes it more of a game of musical chairs and holds less interest for me.

I know I am dreaming here but in my framework where every team ponies up a percentage of gross revenue to a pot and the pot is then distributed based on production (WAR?) then there would be no point to free agency since you wouldn't get a pay raise anyway. I know its not going to happen but it would solve the problem of owners not paying enough overall and I really like the idea of teams keeping all their own players that they have developed. Bad teams still improve by better draft spots.