StormJH1

I really struggle with the weight issue when it comes to pitchers. With position players (unless they're DH's), yes, there are some clear-cut arguments as to how a slimmer player can be better in the field and quicker on the basepaths (it seemed to help 2010 Delmon Young). But I also think there's a lot of jealousy issues involved where regular fans get mad at baseball players who make thousands/millions of dollars to be professional athletes, yet appear to be in worse physical condition than the average dude with a treadmill at home. By and large, pitchers need to throw baseballs hard and accurately, and repeat their motion. That's about it. Taking off tons of weight could improve pitcher stamina, but it might also majorly screw up his mechanics and weight transfer. Boof Bonser is an example that comes to mind. He might have failed as a pitcher anyway, but he came back from a fairly successful year having shed a ton of weight and was never good again. Lance Lynn of the Cardinals was a terrific pitcher last year, and he reportedly lost 40 pounds in the offseason. Now, he's apparently have control issues he never had before because parts of his arm that might have been resting against something before are hanging free in the air, and things just feel different. The Vance Worley we acquired managed to make himself into a serviceable MLB pitcher at the weight he was at. Obviously I want him to be successful, but I can't say for a pitcher that losing weight necessarily makes things better. And it could actually make them worse.

Feel bad for Scott if it's something serious (and I did want him back for the money they got him for), but....dodged a bullet maybe? Scott Baker getting MRI on sore right elbow http://www.rotoworld.com/images/headshots/MLB/180.jpg Scott Baker woke up with elbow soreness Monday after his Cactus League debut and will undergo an MRI. Baker had Tommy John surgery last year and the Cubs want to be sure that he didn't aggravate anything. The right-hander is currently aiming to join Chicago's starting rotation in mid-April, but that could change.

I guess I'm kind of with Bonnes on this one. It's easy to say "he deserves a shot" and I'm not sure that he won't get a shot this year if we have injuries/poor performance in the pen. But while he's probably "earned" at least a look in the midst of two terrible MLB seasons, you can also look at his game and have serious questions as to whether that would actually work on big league hitters. I think the walks are a HUGE reason they might be concerned. It's one thing to have a BB/9 in the 4.0 range if you're a fireballer. But if your fastball is 88mph on a good day, and you can probably expect those walks to go UP, not down, with selective MLB hitters, that's a cause for concern. And it's the one area of his game that really hasn't improved, at least according to the numbers. One thing you can say about him in his two VERY brief callups is that while he didn't look great, he did strike guys out. So, yeah, if this ends up being another "lost" season for the Twins, I'd like to see him get at least 15-30 innings in the bigs. If he's terrible then as a 29-year old, we can consider it settled. But I guess I'm just not too riled up about it either, since I don't honestly believe we're sitting on the next great reliever.

Gonna try to keep this post about ticket sales, rather than Twins personnel decisions... I go to an average of about a game per month, so something like 5-10 games per year. Despite my wife not being a particularly huge sports fan, she enjoys live baseball and the ballpark experience. Through her company, we had put in for raffles for outfield seats and paid face value for them the first 3 years of the team. So, probably about $200 - $300 for the whole year (not to mention the absurd beer and food prices and parking), but even in retrospect, I feel that was good value for a great experience at the ballpark. I don't hunt or fish, and we aren't cabin people. While everyone and their grandpa uses summer weekends to get as far away from the Cities as possible, we view that as the time we want to be in the city going to a ballgame, eating/drinking outside, etc. But this year we finally wised up and did not get tickets in advance. (Well, except for the opener, which is cool to see any year). First, our seats were in the OF and were a lot of day games, and summer day games in LF can be fairly brutal, as hard as that is to conceptualize in mid-February. But given that this is probably about a 70-win team again, I'd really just like to try doing the same-day StubHub thing and seeing how cheap we can get in the park. It'd be more interesting to sit in different parts of the park anyway, and we can just walk around and get beer. Long story short - I'll still be there even if the team remains bad because I like the experience. But I'm done paying face value for those tickets. They make enough money off concessions as it is.

Yeah, true, but the problem with that logic is that you're calling for a team coming off 90 wins with a $112 million payroll in 201, in the 2nd year of a new ballpark, to suddenly come to the realization that they are in a rebuild, when they had to go through the actual EXPERIENCE of being terrible that would prove that out. 2011 was mostly explained away by Mauer, Morneau, and Span's injuries. I thought 2012 looked bleak, but there was at least an argument (before Pavano and Baker) went down that they hang around with the likes of Chicago and Cleveland with that lineup and the addition of Willingham and Doumit. Now, there is no question it's a rebuild, but what do you DO with that? Mauer will clearly be in the waning stages of his production by the time the kids are all ready to play in the bigs, yet he's both the biggest contract (by far) and the one guy you probably can't dump in a "blow it up" scenario. I think it's a been a good offseason for acquiring young talent, and I still like their 2012 draft strategy. But it had BETTER work because year after year, it's not just Detroit that does more than us in free agency - you could argue that all four of the other AL Central teams have done more through FA to improve themselves than the Twins. That's not sustainable unless you start hitting BIG time with homegrown talent.

I have very little confidence that he'll be "better" in 2013 because, folks, 2009 Joe Mauer is not walking through that door anytime soon. It seems more likely that he'll be "worse", but not for performance reasons - the likelihood of him going a whole season without an injury of more than 2 weeks in duration seem relatively low. But if he plays and puts up the usual .300 BA, .800+ OPS and 10 HR's, then so be it. The ink is dry on his contract, and it is what it is. His durability issues and inability to be impact power bat in the middle of the lineup were a tough realization for 2010-12, but by they should be increasingly accepted as fact. That's just his game.

This is a good signing. Minor league deal has very little risk attached to it. But I think he needs to become a reliever like Kerry Wood did. This guy was never really more than a 6 inning guy when "healthy", let alone now. But he has ALWAYS struck guys out. I'd rather have that kind of upside than the Correia/Pelfrey type, which is "Gee, this guy throws batting practice and seems like he should be getting torched, but his ERA is surprisingly good!"

I read the article when it came out. While it lost me by starting out with a big "WAR" argument, I think even a lot of the "haters" would concede some of the positive merits about Mauer's game. He is a rare talent, and he does have an elite level ability to make contact and get on base, things that reflect well in SABR stats. But the article felt a bit "off" to me when it came to the "bigger picture" items. Looking forward, I think the writer is missing out on a fact that most Minnesota fans pretty much already know - that Mauer's time as an above-average, full-or-near-full-time catcher has already come to an end. The Twins have realized (and rightly so) that forcing Mauer to squat 130 games behind the plate is not a particularly good idea, even if he could do it. And in the 72 games he did start at catcher this year, let's face it, his defense was not very good. That's going to tend to negate the whole "awesome for a catcher" angle. But even if the point of the article was just to look back on what Mauer has already done and appreciate, I think most fans here would struggle with that as well. The gigantic contract didn't even START until the 2011 year, and we know what happened there. The Mauer proponents would have you believe that he's an integral part of this team's success (and perhaps even a "quiet leader by example"), yet we've seen this team be absolutely terrible in back to back seasons - one where Mauer was a total non-factor, and one where Mauer was about as good as anyone (apparently) expects Mauer to be. My "expectations" for the Mauer contract were not limited just to Mauer, but were related to hopes that Mauer would be a part of some great postseason moments, be that as a table-setter or a mammoth power machine in the middle of the order. Look at significant postseason moments Buster Posey has been involved in multiple times in a much younger career. The overall failure of the Twins is NOT the sole responsibility of Mauer, but neither can you say that the new contract has done anything to make the team appreciably better. To the contrary, it's hard to imagine them being much worse.

I'll give Hendriks a semi-"pass" for last year, given that he couldn't survive Baltimore cuisine, let alone his first start. But, no, it isn't good when you excel at multiple levels of the minors, and your first impression in the bigs is THAT bad. Typically, pitchers who miss bats are still able to do that once they get to the majors, even if they also get shelled. Hendriks didn't really strike anyone out last year, AND he got shelled. You can say that his control might get better, but at 2.7 walks per 9, it's not like he was walking in runs last year. Baker walked 2.1 per 9 in his career, and Matt Cain walked 3.1 per 9 (though less in recent years). It'd be one thing if he was all over the place, but I just question whether his "stuff" is any good. But he still is quite young, so he'll get his chances.

Yeah, I feel the same way. I don't think a Joe Saunders signing is coming along with this one, I think they're just grabbing as many cheap short-term arms as they can. But given that Pelfrey's TJ surgery was in May AND you're switching him from NL to AL (with a bad outfield defense), I'm a little afraid for what the results may be. Look, at the end of the day, it's more important that they don't do anything to mess up 2014 and beyond than do anything that will dramatically improve us in 2013. But it is a weird dichotomy where they seem to have figured out what an "upside" arm looks like in the minor leaguers, yet their FA signings are still guys that have no real chance of catching on here long term.

Yeah I don't care what anyone else says, I've been here since 03 and never seen the Twins win a playoff series. This game was the worst. Retrosheet Boxscore: Oakland Athletics 5, Minnesota Twins 2 All of the losses to the Yankees could be chalked up to Piranha-ball - losing the second game at home to the Moneyball A's and knowing we were going down in Mauer and Morneau's breakout year (and with Santana) was the worst.

I HATE WAR. But I'm not going to sink the thread (again) by debating it here. I will say this about the AL Central - as positive as I've been about the Revere and Span trades, you do have to look at the Indians getting Bauer and the Royals getting Shields and recognize that the other teams in the Central have still done more to improve their SP in an immediate sense, and that is frustrating. Of course, the Royals trade was terrible, so I wouldn't have wanted the Twins to make that move. But when I heard the Indians flipped Choo, a struggling one-year rental with a DUI last year, for Trevor Bauer, I cringed at the thought that the Twins could have made that type of move with Morneau (or Willingham, I guess). Bauer is 21 and about as lights out as they come in the minors. Sure, he didn't look awesome this year, but Justin Verlander wasn't pitching effectively in the majors at that age either. Sigh.

Ok, might have misunderstood that part. In any event, if your idea was that we essentially "traded" Span's money for Correia, I'm not necessarily troubled by that. We needed SP, even mediocre SP, more than we needed Denard Span moving forward, as crazy as that sounds. And aside from Correia, moving Span and Revere directly resulted in ADDING three starting pitchers in their early and mid 20's who can miss some bats.

Denard Span is set to earn $11.25M the next two years - Washington pays that now. We were hoping this money would be applied to improving the starting pitching. Well, $10M has now been applied to Correia. If the payroll is a limiting factor, it's because of decisions made like this one. Denard Span was NOT traded to free up money - he was traded because he was an aging asset on a team going nowhere next year, and moving him for a 2011 first-rounder to address glaring depth issues in young pitching made a ton of sense. I frankly don't care what the salary number is for next season. With the exception of the CF situation (which is being rebuilt for the future anyway), it's not like this offense is going to be any worse "on paper" than it was last season. There's even some money left over to add a 2B or SS, though I'm not seeing a ton of indication that TR will actually do that. As for the pitching, a bunch of guys left that weren't factors by the end of 2012 anyway (Baker, Pavano, Liriano earlier). This team won 66 games last year, worst in the AL. There's beginning to be some hope for 2014 and beyond, so any long term commitments you make to medicore veterans at this point are only going to be an impediment following 2013. And frankly, it's not like 2013 can get much worse than 2012 anyway, no matter how much the payroll drops. As this team transitions into a more obvious rebuild situation, I don't think it does as much good to harp on how overpaid Mauer is. If this team is good in two or three years, it will be on the coattails of players on rookie contracts, much like the Rays have done for years. The fact that Mauer makes 20 times more than what they do will be symbolically frustrating, but ultimately pretty irrelevant to our success or failure. The team will have bottomed out enough to add free agents if they so choose, or start resigning young guys who are worth resigning.

Do you wish we had just traded Miguel Sano, Kyle Gibson, That Lefty LaVele Likes and the AFL surprise kid? Would that make you excited for James Shields? The KC deal is atrocious. It's pretty clear that Twins fans view free agent money like Monopoly money, and don't want to hear excuses as to why we shouldn't buy our way out of giant holes every year. But I extremely happy that TR was willing to trade two major league CF's for some decent upside, as opposed to identifying a "surplus" in minor league outfielders and shipping off someone like Hicks or Arcia for a 30-year old starter. Wil Myers may be twice as good as Sano will ever be. Who knows. To give him up in a deal like that just because they're bored with having blue chip prospects come up to the bigs and turn out to be more mediocre than expected (Gordon, Moustakas, Hosmer, etc.)...well, it's a joke.

How many starts do you suppose Shields will make for the Tigers this year? I think he was just making the point that the Tigers were willing to get Shields even though they have a pretty darn good rotation. Much like they spent $200 million+ on Prince to address a one-year need due to the loss of V-Mart, and required them to move Cabrera to 3B. I assume he knows that Shields was ultimately traded to KC.

Interesting. I do like getting out of the Minnesota Bubble for some outside perspective on our moves. On the other hand, I'm not sure the Pirates should be throwing stones, since they handed (at least) $15 million to Jose Tabata before they realized he doesn't even belong in the majors right now. I'm just not really sure what people expected to happen. If they were going to find someone to take only one year, it probably be in January or February after the market is REALLY picked over and the only guys left are even worse than Correia. I mean, some people liked Joe Blanton. I really liked Brandon McCarthy, but if you follow him (or his wife) on Twitter, these people are human beings. Not only are they driven by the most years and most money they can get (which probably wouldn't be the Twins), but they might value playing for a team that isn't one of the worst in the MLB. Or they may have family/personal reasons for preferring one market over another (McCarthy's wife was an Arizona grad). So just because the numbers weren't that far off doesn't mean any particular team was actually "close" to signing some other guy you wanted.

What this whole reminds me of is the mid-2000's when everyone was getting fed up with "piranha" baseball, and would just automatically rip every guy we were interested in that didn't have 30 HR power. Just because you have a general organizational problem (lack of power hitters, no power arms, etc.) doesn't mean that EVERY move you make needs to directly address that issue. What we found out last year was that in addition to not having elite #1 or #2 starting pitchers, we also had an alarming lack of even those guys that could fill out a rotation without getting absolutely slaughtered. There's this idea floating out there that the Twins just spent all their "Shaun Marcum money" on another scrub pitcher. That's absurd. We spent a modest amount of money on a guy who isn't all that good, but frankly, could have been a #2 starter on this team last year. Given the alternative between sitting on an extra $5 million next year, or adding "another guy" to take the place of DeVries, Walters, Blackburn, or Deduno...it's a net positive for me as a fan to add Correia. Just not much of a positive.

Really good writeup and I agree on virtually every assessment of Correia's pedestrian numbers and back-of-the-rotation stuff. But I just can't go all the way towards saying this is an "outrageous" contract. It isn't. For anyone to say that they're surprised the Twins would overpay for decidedly mediocre pitchers given what happened in 2012 is like missing the forest because of all the trees in the way. The Twins would have KILLED for a proven 4th or 5th starter midway through last season. Heck, that's exactly what Scott Diamond is, but fans here are so beaten down that they think he can be a legitimate "ace". Just because we had more money than we though did not suddenly mean TR was going to completely reverse the same philosophy he's had and been up-front about for over a decade - this team will NOT pay money for free agent pitching. Not even "Josh Willingham" money. And frankly, unless it's an opportunity to lock up a top starter, I'm not sure I blame them on this one. If Guthrie is a $25 million pitcher, Shaun Marcum is looking at closer to Anibal Sanchez money. Also, the argument that the Twins have "reverted" back to pitch-to-contact because they sign one filler SP is wrong. Just because you want power arms doesn't mean you go out and "buy high" on established ones in an open market. The fact that the Twins would even acquire guys like Meyer and May (with their potential control problems) to me signals a sea change by this organization. This is a two-year deal for really not all that much money. Yes, I'm having nightmares about fly balls dropping all over our terrible defensive outfield, but I wasn't under the illusion the Twins were in a position to be major players in the FA starting pitching market.

That's not really true with Liriano. Even as HORRIBLE as Liriano was last year, his strikeout numbers were elite. It's just the case that his control completely fell off the wagon to the point where he became Jonathan Sanchez. You also just get the sense that at 28, and without the crazy raw stuff he had pre-TJ surgery, he's back to being "thrower", as he never had to worry about the mental game of "pitching" when he could just blow everyone away. Even though Deduno probably was "better" than Liriano last year, he doesn't have the ultimate ability of Liriano to miss bats AND control pitches. Deduno struck more guys out in the minors than he did for the Twins, but he's never had MLB-worthy control at any point in his career.

From a broader sense, I get where you're coming from. But if you've been following any of the podcasts/discussions about free agents (as I'm sure you have)... (1) Saunders is exactly the type of FA starter I would've expected the Twins to target. Especially in light of the fact that they need more than one. (2) I was very negative on Liriano in another thread in terms of his likelihood of bouncing back, overall track record, and concern that some team will give him a speculative multi-year deal. But it really all depends. If it's one year for $5 to $7 million, yes it's a risk, but it's also at least a small ray of upside in a rotation that otherwise has NO chance for upside. If they were sign Saunders (or a Saunders-like FA), you have back-of-the-order free agents paired with Scott Diamond, who might just turn back into a pumpkin this year. There certainly was any track record to suggest he'd be even this good. There really is little hope for a one-year fix to the rotation. Even in a best a best-case scenario, where Gibson makes the team and starts fanning guys like crazy, followed my Meyer doing the same after a July callup, the innings from both of those guys combined would hardly add up to one starter. Some of the upper-mid-level names like Brandon McCarthy were my best hope for FA (or maybe another trade), but that's starting to seem a little less likely. I'm focusing more on long-term picture now than instant gratification, and the Span/Meyer trade seems to be a decent start.

I saw this and quickly ran to Twins Daily for some explanation. Haha. Interestingly, I think Revere actually is at an intriguing "sell high" point in his career. If the perception of him is that he's a switch hitting basestealer, "elite" defender, and potential .290/.300 hitter...that's probably something we should be capitalizing on. Because I still feel like there's years he may run into some bad luck, and suddenly .265 or .270 with ZERO power feels more like a weak #9 hitter, not a top-of-the-order guy. But it just would seem like a bizarre move if the return is anything other than pitching, and in light of the fact that we just traded Span too. Nothing in the Twins' September call-ups signaled anything close to the notion that the Twins were preparing for life without Span AND Revere. Hicks hasn't gotten a look yet, nor have guys like Arcia. They didn't even throw Joe Benson back into the fire.

"I'll believe it when I see it" is generally a good approach to any expected Twins FA activity, but the situation entering 2013 is notably worse than entering 2012. Nobody expected Baker and Pavano would be able to offer virtually nothing all year. Liriano was so awful early that he got yanked from the worst rotation in baseball. Guys who normally never would've sniffed the majors (like Walters and Devries) were suddenly rotation regulars. And Scott Diamond became our "ace". This year, we know all those problems going in. There is no possible formula whereby the Twins could have an effective starting rotation as they are currently constituted. Therefore, I actually do have some level of confidence that we will sign pitchers, though they may be low budget signings, and it may not happen at the Winter Meetings.

Good article, and I'm fine with the deal. It's too easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. People look at the MLB club and think that any trade for Span has to address that immediate need. It doesn't. It is equally important for the long-term health of this team to address setbacks with guys like Gibson and Wimmers who were recent draft picks and should have been contributing to the big league club. If Meyer gets hurt at some point, everyone will turn on this trade, and I think that's foolish. You need a critical mass of potential starters in different stages of development. The 2012 draft was a pretty good effort to stock guys under 20, like Berrios. They also tried a unique strategy of taking accomplished college RP's and making them into starters. Given the low likelihood of actually signing high school pitchers past the first few rounds under the new rules, I've actually come to think that's an intriguing approach. But guys as good as Mike Leake or any of the other middling starters we might have gotten for Span can be found on the FA market - prospects like Meyer cannot. Let's start getting a bunch of these guys whenever we can, and hope that a few of them pan out.

Great write-up, thanks! Especially enjoyed the GIFs of that fastball that breaks in on the hands of right handers. The Span deal reminds me a lot of the Garza/Delmon deal in that we were acquiring a young player with a good pedigree on the assumption that it made sense to trade a "surplus" item for something we couldn't produce on our own. In 2008, ironically, it was thought that the Twins had "too many" starting pitching prospects, yet couldn't produce power hitting outfielders. Now, almost exactly the opposite is true.