StormJH1

Yeah, that's the really sad part of this...this Baltimore team is BAD. And their starting rotation may be their biggest problem. My favorite thing the past few days (or, really, all of 2011 also) is reading fantasy players talking about whether or not they should go pick up _____________ pitcher who just went 8 innings with 7 strikeouts and 0 or 1 runs....against the Twins. Pitching statistics shouldn't even count against the Twins when they're like this...it should be like those games in the Grapefruit league against some Florida community college. Our upcoming schedule is BRUTAL. I'm sure we'll put together one surprising win against the pitchers on Los Angeles and Texas, but the overall picture won't be good. Then there's BOS and NYY later on...

Agree. There are really only two things that a right fielder has to be able to do, and Revere is terrible at both of them - (1) hit for some degree of power/run production and (2) Throw the ball well to cutoff/3rd base. It makes no sense to make Revere an everyday RF at this point in his development. If the "upside" of Revere's career is a Juan Pierre type player - he'll struggle to get everyday play as a LF, let alone in RF. These decisions cannot be viewed in a bubble. It's easy to sit here and make judgments out of context about Revere such as "I like his defense". We're talking about right field. People have slammed guys like James Loney and Andre Ethier as not having enough power for their positions, but those are guys capable of hitting around .300 with 15+ HR power (and probably a lot of doubles). Revere hit 5 HR's in 380 minor league games, and you can look at him physically trying to play the game and figure out that's never going to change. He is what he is, and it was a bad reach by the Twins to take a guy like that in the first round.

Calling Doumit a "super utility" player is kind of like using that term for Adam Dunn or Mat Gamel. He's actually a player without a position that has hit well enough in short bursts to allow him to pretend to play a variety of different positions. He's also a product of playing for a bad team in the NL where the DH isn't an option...they HAD to find a position for him to try and get some degree of help to his offense, that doesn't mean he can actually PLAY any of those positions. The defense sucked all weekend - and for all the talk about Carroll, his glove was actually quite good (the bat...not so much). Doumit is the opposite problem: He's going to suck in the field, but the problem isn't as much that as the fact that his bat isn't good enough to put up with this level of defense at any of these positions. When I said all winter that I didn't like the Doumit signing too much, that was under the assumption that Butera was on a "scholarship" and we were carrying 3 catchers for sure. With that not happening (at least for now...could change obviously), it's pretty terrifying to have Doumit catching any time Mauer is getting a break. The double steal yesterday was an example of that. The perception of a bad defensive catcher is almost as harmful as the bad defense itself. I think Parmalee and Plouffe would probably also suck in RF, but there's also the possibility of a full season with 20 HR's there, and Doumit isn't going to offer that. Like him fine as a pinch hitter and emergency fill-in at various positions, but that's about it. With Parmalee the everyday 1B now, we probably should be doing Plouffe, Joe Benson, or some type of platoon in RF.

That Rangers team is loaded. Nathan's second-half performance last year (after he got some time to get his arm back) was actually pretty good. Granted, the stakes weren't exactly that high, and the knock on Nathan (for me anyway) was that he tended to implode at the worst possible times in September pennant runs or in the ALDS. He was a dominant reliever for many years, but his success was inflated to a degree by the fact that he got to fan out wussy Indians and Royals lineups over and over again. And since he's only brought into the game against a team we're already beating, it's not like he even had that many opportunities to pitch in the 9th against the Yankees and Red Sox. Nathan can fail and they still have Mike Adams and Uehara. Or could shift Feliz back to the pen. The TWINS have far worse concerns with their bullpen, for sure.

It's almost as if people don't remember that third base was Miguel Cabrera's ORIGINAL position when he became a star with the Marlins. He played a lot of outfield in his early years, but that was much due to the fact that they had Mike Lowell at 3B from 2003-05. Cabrera started 157 games at 3B in 2006 and 153 in 2007. He never played a single inning at 1st base until Leyland moved him there in 2008. The number of errors he made at 3B those years was a little high, but roughly comparable to what A-Rod (another great hitter) was doing on the Yankees. When he came to the Tigers, it was perceived that he had gotten too heavy for other positions, yet his offensive production has actually improved over that same period of time. So it's not completely alien for Leyland to try him at 3B. I think the bigger concern is that they have Cabrera at 3rd, AND a bunch of other questionable defensive players all over the field (except for Austin Jackson in center, who is excellent). Still, Leyland is much like Gardenhire in that he'll eventually promote from within and fix defensive problems with utility players and younger players if the problems persist. That's what happened by the end of that disastrous 2008 season, where the Tigers were getting similar hype, but finished with 74 wins when it turned out they were old and slow in the field (and their pitching was terrible).

I don't know the answer to that for sure, but my understanding is "no". But if the diagnosis turns out to be "tendinitis" (as in, a negative MRI finding), what difference would the tests have made? The Twins are supervising him NOW and still don't seem to know exactly what's wrong with him. But your criticism of his preparation routine and "maintenance" could be 100% fair. The Mauer analogy is a good one, and Sidney Rice's hip problem on the Vikings also reminds me of this (though in Sidney's case, there were contract negotiations involved and reasons for him to purposefully delay treatment). And yet, I also believe that some guys are just constructed more poorly than others, and a guy like CC Sabathia can just roll out for Spring Training every year and ramp it up for 200 IP. Baker is not that guy.

Right. It probably isn't a true "health hazard" in an outdoor environment (unless you're right on top of a concentrated area with all the smokers), but that isn't the ONLY justification for this. Public opinion (as well as the laws governing bars and restaurants in Minneapolis, NYC, and many other cities) has shifted on this opinion. This isn't "Mad Men", we set rules to accommodate the greater good, not to appease a declining minority of the customer base who threaten to remove their sales if they can't make it through a 2-3 hr baseball game without a cigarette. It's funny that one of the biggest argument against the location of Target Field were the supposed fumes from the nearby trash incinerator, which I haven't heard anyone even mention in the last two years. Well, to a lot of people (not me, necessarily), cigarette smoke is the equivalent of smelling burning or rotting trash. It's a good move by the Twins and I don't even view it as particularly controversial, given the greater population at large.

Yeah, the whole pitching staff scares the crap out of me. With Baker "hurt", Liriano is the one guy with potential for a really good year, but he's extremely erratic from year-to-year, and last year was NOT good. There is not much else in the starting rotation. Yes, we have a pitcher's park, which aids the pitch to contact guys, but only to an extent. The bullpen is terrifying. I actually think that Capps will be fine (and that "closer" may be irrelevant most games anyway, if we're LOSING by the 9th). Perkins was very good last year. But that's about it. Even if one of these guys emerges as a dark horse, there's no depth at all, nobody who can really miss any bats, and these guys will have to throw a TON of innings. Yikes. I also cringed when I read Terry Ryan admitting that his bullpen "worries" him. Yes, he's being honest, which is appreciated as a fan...but it's OPENING DAY. Other than Zumaya, which was completely predictable, there's no injury or freak circumstance that results in the bullpen we have right now...it's the creation of the front office.

I'm giving Mauer every chance to redeem himself this year, and that guy is a special player when he has it together. But let's just call BS on that second quote above about his "communication problems". How many times did Mauer ACTUALLY allow a microphone to go in front of his face during the long stretches of 2011? For him to say that he didn't articulate his problems well enough or could have explained them better at the time....has he explained them NOW? I think the backlash that a lot of Phillies fans are directing at Chase Utley right now is similar to what this fanbase has had with Mauer for years. We understand that baseball is a very physically demanding sport that stresses the body over 162 games, and that many players (due to luck or their own "constitution") are going to have to miss time. Mauer didn't choose to get sick or hurt last year, but he did CHOOSE to make himself as invisible as possible. He does make make the CHOICE to accept a $184 million contract, spend his winters living in Florida, and then avoid as much contact with the media and public as possible from April to September. He's a private guy and a shy guy, and yes, if he were hitting .300 with 25 HR's and rarely missed time, we probably wouldn't care. When he's NOT doing that, people do care, and hopefully that quote was part of a realization that he needs to change, both on and off the field.

I don't even want to put in writing what my "predicitions" for him might be because I have no real basis for knowing, and if forced, my predictions would not be good. I would be extremely happy if he plays even 75 games this year with any stretch of productivity. That sounds extremely sad and pessimistic for a guy that was MVP caliber before July 2010, but much the same way I evaluated post-2006 Liriano, I don't view him as the same guy anymore. It's a very unfortunate situation to no fault of Morneau's, but we need to just take whatever we can get from him, and I'm reserving a level of hope that there's still something there.

I wasn't a fan of the Capps for Ramos deal, wasn't a fan of resigning him instead of signing multiple other relievers for the same price (and getting yet another pick), and generally am not a fan of Capps. BUT...let's keep this in perspective. People are talking about the guy like he's complete garbage, and he isn't. He's had 6 big-league full seasons, and four of them have been excellent. He rebounded from a terrible 2009 to close games for both the Nationals and Twins in 2010, and for what that job requires (which isn't much), he did pretty good. I refuse to believe there wasn't something wrong with him last year. Throughout his career, he's never been a "flamethrower", but he could strikeout 7.0+ per nine innings. Last year, that dipped to an abysmal 4.7 K/9. And yet, because he has excellent control for a loser, the end result was a 4.25 ERA and a still very good WHIP of 1.20. In fact, he has a career WHIP of 1.197, which basically means that he doesn't let many people on base. This is the direction we went. It's not the direction we wanted, but this bullpen is now very shallow and Capps and Perkins are really the only two guys I trust to any degree coming out of it. I understand that he's frustrating for the fans to watch, and he has seemed prone to a few dramatic blowups where everything goes wrong at once. But I'm also not prepared to completely abandon him as a Twins fan just because he had one bad year, which wasn't even that big of a disaster. If you believe at all in a track record, the odds are in favor of Capps bouncing back and being useful this year.

On your primary point, which was that the Twins were NEVER "equally matched" with the Yankees in terms of talent, you are absolutely right. I don't think even the most partisan Twins fans would ever actually admit that the Twins could be "expected" to beat the Yankees in any given year, be it '03, '04, '09, or '10. That being said however, you look at how badly we performed in ALL of those series put together, along with our regular season futility against them, and there was something more going on than simply them being the better team. I think the Yankees were better than Tigers in most years since 2006, also, yet the Tigers have beaten them in critical playoff series because they didn't look or play scared. I even felt like you could see a difference in the demeanor of "rental" Twins like Orlando Cabrera, Orlando Hudson, and Jon Rauch, who looked like they were able to go about their business, and didn't freak out when they saw pinstripes. Moreover, I think 2006 was the biggest disappointment of all because it showed that it's bigger than just a "Yankees" problem. That 2006 A's team SUCKED. I'm sorry. Marco Scutaro and Mark Kotsay kicked the crap out of us. Torii was diving 10 feet away from routine base hits in center, and I remember dumb plays in the field and on the basepaths (Bartlett) that looked nothing like the team we saw all year. This team has been great for its fans the past decade, but it could have been so much better. With the exception of Game 163 in 2009, they simply do not get up for big games. Virtually all of their signature wins/moments involved beating other teams from the AL Central (Royals in 2003; grabbing pennant from the Tigers in '06 and '09; repeatedly smoking the White Sox at home). To think of them beating an AL East or West team in a game of real significance is almost unthinkable, and that's sad for as good as they've been.

Two things that I do NOT think will be happening on a regular basis are Revere in RF or Hughes at 1B. Neither of those make any sense to me, defensively OR offensively. Something happened in the course of Spring Training regarding Morneau and Gardy's view of his situation. Gardy really seemed to believe that if Morneau was symptom-free (which, apparently he has been), that he would be the Opening Day 1B. I think Morneau's ST went about as well as could be expected, yet he's now the DH, which means Parmalee has to get a tryout at 1B. I think the situation they're hoping for is that Parmalee slides into that spot and puts up a Mark Trumbo-like season, though that's probably too much to expect of his power. Parmalee and Plouffe are probably the two best "upside" bats of the guys currently vying for those positions, however, so I think they could both get a tryout in RF. Doumit will break down if he's used everyday, and I do think that Gardy has an unrealistic fear of the whole "losing the DH" thing, so Doumit may be a reserve player more often because of this. I don't think he's a full-time option for 1B or RF anyway, though it was a decent pickup because he insures us at multiple positions.

Everybody's saying "Boring, he's 25, not a prospect", but how could you not like this move for THIS organization. We don't have enough of these guys. After 1/4 of the team is hurt in the dog days of summer, maybe it would be nice to see a "Jack Cust" clone swinging for the fences, instead of Rene Tosoni flailing away at the ball. Plus, Nelson Cruz was a "garbage 4A hitter"...every once in awhile the experts are wrong. This guy raked at every chance he was given, and there was no need to fast track him because they had Howard in the majors.

There are so many reasons to be concerned here. Baker and Liriano are the only two out of the 5 that even have the POTENTIAL to miss bats. Baker is already quasi-hurt, and Liriano was hittable and erratic again last year. Apart from Pavano, the 2 through 5 starters didn't make it to 150 innings last year, due to injury. In other words, even if you were satisfied with these 5 guys (I'm not), they're not going to all be available by June or July, maybe even earlier. And given that there's no up and coming stud in the entire upper levels of the organization ready to step in like we thought Gibson might last year (before his injury), those innings are going to end up going to batting practice guys like Hendricks, Swarzak, and Wimmers. Look out... @kevinlillie - That thought would frighten me more if we had 5 guys (or even 3) worth keeping. Baker and Liriano are intriguing, but guys off the waiver wire/trade heap could do roughly the same as the other guys we throw out there.

I am perpetually worried about Morneau (look at how well Sidney Crosby played in the NHL for a few games before going back on injured reserve), but not because of his numbers in Spring Training. So far, the spring has been more good than bad for Morneau, given that he's seeing game activity and not having problems. Who knows if his reaction time, concentration, and general physical health will get back to where they once were, but he has to stay concussion-free to even have a shot at that. While we're EXTREMELY early in that analysis, so far so good.

Sorry, but I just had to cringe when I read "upcoming rebuilding years", as if it has been an obvious foregone conclusion all along. Mauer will be 29 and Morneau will be 31 by mid-May. To me, if you can already predict that a rebuilding phase is coming, that means you messed up and you should already be rebuilding now. When they announced a $184 million deal for Mauer a few seasons ago, I think the expectation was that they were getting a star player for at least the first 5 years of that deal. I mean, it HAS to be the expectation for that kind of money, right? I think you have to view this whole thing as part of the bigger picture. I'll compare it to my other favorite team - the Detroit Red Wings. The Wings have made the NHL playoffs for 20+ straight years. Over that span they have won 4 championships (last in 2008). Suffice it to say, the fanbase has an expectation of excellence. In fact, that's the case to the point where they struggle to draw attendance for the less sexy regular season matchups, and even in the early rounds of the Playoffs. The Wings also play in comparatively crummy old arena, that wouldn't exactly qualify as "world class". But their ticket prices are crazy high because there's a good chance you're looking at a Cup contender from year to year. The Twins lost 99 games last year, but despite the fact that they've only won a single playoff series since 1992 (ouch), they also won a 5-team division 6 out of the last 10 years. And they do have a shiny new "world class" stadium to go with their product. So ticket prices are not going to go down, and this team really doesn't have the option of becoming a low budget, moderate profit model. (Oh, and the reason that teams like KC and Cleveland are able to survive in that manner is that they're just banking the luxury taxes from teams like New York and Boston and putting it towards the bottom line instead of investing in players). 5 teams had a payroll of less than $50 million in 2011. http://content.usatoday.com/sportsdata/baseball/mlb/salaries/team Which means that if Mauer had been on those teams, one guy would represent HALF of their entire salary. That can't be the case here.

Center field is one of the few areas of the team where I'm not particularly worried, which is good because a lot of teams need help in center. That's not to say that I'm no worried about Span, I'm VERY concerned that he's not over the "fog" of post-concussion syndrome, and he really hasn't sustained above average play in his career even before the concussion. But if he needs to miss time, or just isn't good anymore, Revere can handle the range aspect of the position extremely well, and if you had to live his arm in CF, he's still nothing less than an average or "decent" CF in aggregate. Plus, if Span is out, that means it could be Willingham AND Plouffe or Doumit at the corners, so you'd need someone "rangey" in the middle. Benson is also very intriguing, and apparently a good defensive outfielder, so I think we'll actually be okay at this position. CF and SS (and perhaps C) are positions where you live with little or no offensive production if you get solid defense - other positions, including LF, 3B and even 2B (I would argue) are not.

It's the Mauer one, and not just because it's Mauer, but because he subtly is making fun of himself for his total lack of charisma. I've said this to the native Minn-E-soh-tans many times, and it usually receives blank stares in response: This guy has to be the most "invisible" $180 million athlete ever. Not just because of his on-field problems and whether he's worth the money he's being paid, but his whole persona and the local media's total willingness to let this guy go and do whatever he wants in total privacy. He's a hometown hero, right? The guy winters in Florida. You never hear about Joe Mauer "sightings". There's no tabloid presence on him. He's not visible in charity works or the community (which isn't to say that he doesn't do stuff like that more privately). Heck, if he goes on the DL for two months, you're lucky if he gives a single interview while he's gone. And this is the age cameraphones, internet blogs, and Twitter. Compare that to Gretzky in 1988, where he was so big that he basically "outgrew" the city of Edmonton. Whatever, I guess it isn't necessarily good or bad, it's just amazing to me.

While Nishioka is obviously a failure of epic proportions, I really think that some aspects of it are so surprising that the Twins can't be blamed for the entirety of how bad it turned out. We've seen Japanese pitchers come over and be overmatched. We've seen hitters come over with promise big power numbers, only to find out that the larger ballparks and better talent actually does make it harder. I don't think anyone would've been stunned if Nishioka played a full season hitting .260 with 0 HR's and 35 RBI's. What was stunning to me was the horrible defense and fundamentals, which were the LAST things anyone would have expected out of a Japanese player who had been extremely successful overseas. There is something fundamentally broken about this guy's psyche. The game looks like it's moving at 150% speed to this guy, but that can't be true. I heard people last April saying things like he needs to "adjust to the speed of the game", but is that really true? Japanese hitters probably put the ball on the ground MORE often on artificial turf surfaces, and the average hitter is probably FASTER down the the first base line than in the MLB (smaller players, different style). There was no way to know that routine groundballs would eat this guy up with regularity. I think everyone knew there was a better than 50% chance this guy would be a bust or disappointment, but "bust" was defined as "Japanese version of Nick Punto". His defense is what has really run him out of the league so quickly, and I can't believe that even if they saw him play extensively in Japan that he was ever making mistakes there like he did here.

The fact that his wrist is bothering him doesn't improve the situation with his concussions whatsoever! I'm stating the obvious here, but we're only talking about the wrist because one of his many other injuries is temporarily superseding the PRIMARY concern, which is that he's basically wrecked from concussions. The concern isn't just that he's hitting in the .100's for Spring Training. It's that he's hitting in the .100's, and this is a trend continuing over from 2011, when he had a .618 OPS over 288 plate appearances. At some point, we need some evidence that he can drive the ball. However, if his wrist is bothering him, wrist and elbows are the types of injuries that sluggers can often play through, but which sap them of almost all their power, so that could be an alternative explanation.

I agree, and so do most fans, but Gardy is terrified of that. And the irony of it is that the 3rd catcher would be someone like Butera and the Twins have probably had pitchers (Santana comes to mind) that were better hitters than Butera is! It's an absurdly rare situation that isn't that big of a deal when it comes up, and the flip side of it is that there will be several times late in games this year when Gardy needs another pinch hitter, and instead of a Parmalee or Burroughs type guy, it will be Butera and they won't be able to use him.

Willingham - He has 15 MLB games as a catcher and none since 2006. I struggle to imagine the Twins asking the biggest free agent signing in their history and (by default) their most dangerous right handed bat to start catching games again at age 33, unless it's an absolute emergency (such as Doumit/Butera breaking his ankle and then Mauer getting Lyme Disease or something on the same night). Nishioka - Well, it had to be done, and I can't say I expected them to do it, but it basically frees up a roster spot that was just going to be a dead bench spot for weeks or months otherwise. Look, at the end of the day, there was a lot of reason to believe this guy could have worked out. People blast the Twins for screwing this up, but there's just no way of knowing if a guy is going to go "Irabu" or not. Heck, had Nishioka even been as serviceable as Kaz Matsui during his Mets years, he probably could've kept his starting job on this roster. (Matsui was actually pretty good for Colorado, later on, he was just ALWAYS injured). Other teams have tried and whiffed on international prospects, even the really good teams...it was just a much more pronounced failure for this organization b/c they don't usually even try things like this.

"At 23, I think he still has room to grow." We can only hope. But hey, anytime you can lock up a .619 OPS and about 30-40 RBI a season at a corner outfield spot with a 1st round draft pick...I think you gotta do it, right?!

Terrific. If you had to pick our most consistent pitcher in the post-Santana era, I think it's Baker over Liriano and Pavano, and it's probably not that close. But Baker also doesn't have a prayer of reaching 200 innings most years (only done it once). Rotation will really be hurting if he's out a lot this year again, and if someone else doesn't step up.