Doctor Gast

I really don't know what to think about Falvey. I don't know who to blame on the way they tried to transform Dobnak on the fly when they could have capitalized on his GP%with a top-notch infield. But FO should have stepped in and righted the ship on this and other matters. But my greatest complaints are their inability to make the necessary big trade, to correctly evaluate players and making silly decisions like deciding not to have an official assistant manager, when Baldelli really needed one. I'm not sure about Falvey yet but Levine needs to go if we want to take the next step. I was sad when Macphail left. Polhad needs to bring him back.

No, I'd rather have a glove at SS. Torres bat hasn't been good either , I don't care even if his bat improves. But trading for a SS isn't a bad idea if you can find a glove out there. I certainly wouldn't trade Kepler or any other player straight up.

Just the fact that he played a great SS which kept Polanco at 2B makes him a valuable acquisition. This provided Polanco to heal and find himself plus kept him from the damaging downward spiral they had him on. My main concern was his ankles and proved he was healthy. We all knew he was a light hitter. In the beginning he was hitting well with a few HRs. I believe those HRs went to his head as to change his swing. That plus that extra time off, his hitting was pathetic. I don't blame him I blame the hitting coaches. They are there to point out the wrong approach and constantly help hitters to stay in themselves. If you remove that pathetic rut, he'd be one of our best hitters. Plus take in consideration he didn't play last year which would effect his endurance. What would be the alternative? Keep Polanco at SS and totally wreck him and have a totally pathetic defense? That would really suck for years. I think Simmons has been an very wise acquisition. The problem is too many look at Simmons under a microscope with a negative filter.

Unfortunately, Twins FO shares your ideology. Cave had a terrible spring training and they still went with him, having nothing positive to go on. On the other hand unfortunately, Detroit didn't follow your ideology and went with Akil Baddo even though he had a good spring.

There's nothing wrong with Dobnak. It's the way they used him. They shouldn't have tried to transform him into a SO pitcher by forcing him to overload on sliders on the fly. He couldn't perfect the slider on the fly and hung too many and the hitters looked for them. For a team with post season ambition you don't do things on the fly. They did the same thing at CF. Putting inexperienced players there instead of initially going with our only MLB experienced true CF that was hot coming out of spring training.

This game is a good example of my argument for being all in for long relief. With a short season last year and many pitchers not even pitching., coupled with the fact that our starters have difficulty going 5 and our short relievers stunk coming out of spring training. Instead of going with the winning combination of relying on long relief. They went with over extending our skaky starters and playing chess with our incompetent short relief. Switching Polanco to 2B is the best move the FO did. Hope they don't have a relapse.

Agree with you that hind sight is 20/20 and that our pitching free agent signings were terrible from the start. Although we had hope that Wes Johnson could work his magic on the relief pitchers like in the past but that didn't happen. Even so I don't put a lot of stock in free agency except players like Nelson Cruz. That being said I believe the best route is trading our redundant players and any over rated players to obtain great valued players that fit our needs. I suggested going after under valued pitchers from PIT, Musgrove, Tailon and closer Rodriguez. If we had traded for them instead of the free agents that we signed , we would have been in much better situation, record, financial and 40 man roster (where we lost Akil Baddo and in danger of losing more) Simmons to me was a success. He kept Polanco at 2B, so he could recover and be the great player that he is. Simmons covers a lot of ground, his ankles were healthy and his hitting was better than I expected. Yes, he looked terrible after his bout with covid but I blame that on too much layoff and the home run he hit. Many players have problems after they hit home runs because it goes to their heads. Coaches need to help keep hitters on track. I also think our problems are deeper than players.

Great article Tom. Polanco has blossomed at 2B. Arraez is a great contact hitter but has very little range (which is probably because of his knees) so makes him a better 3B than 2B. Agree with Mike that Arraez should be considered as part time DH to keep his bat in the lineup. If Gordon can prove that he can hit MLB on a steady basis, he could be considered 2B backup. I like what jmlease mentioned about Palcios. I'm interested in what could pan out. With all these 2B options we should consider trade possibilities.

Cave isn't and has never been an centerfielder. Management has been disillusioned to think that he is. This bad mindset has kept us from getting a decent CF back up and cost us a ton of games. Cave is an ok 4th OF that's it. We have a ton of them who are younger. He takes up space on the 40 man who's better

Polanco is great now that the stress of SS is not plaguing him. Maeda is a very good pitcher as long as he's not pitching much more than 90 innings.

I'm with you Tom, this FO is great on sitting back and receiving offers. But I'm too very disappointed that we weren't buyers and we should've been. To be an competing club we need to be good buyers and get the club in that position to do so. They had not.

I like TB philosophy. Trade overvalued players but I wouldn't trade for a bunch of prospects, that would be counter productive. In our case it should be a one to one trade. None of these players mentioned are overvalued, it would have to a sweet heart deal. If they get one for Berrios, I can see it happen

As long as Polanco is kept at 2B he will continue to shine. If they become disillusioned and put him back at SS he'll continue to have ankle problems much like his extended time he had when Simmons was out this year.

I concede to you Tom that you know more about the pitching development. I've tried to give the FO as much leeway as possible but like you I've lost faith with them. Their mindsets don't seem to change and they're not able to make the trades to take us to the next level the way that Macphail had

I like Donaldson but the smart thing is to unload his salary. To unload Donaldson, they'll have to eat a portion of his salary and what we get back won't be much. Unloading Donaldson will mean a down grade at 3rd. To be half way respectable we'll need a decent SS, it'll be a terrible mistake to put Polanco back there. As I stated before our only option is retooling not rebuilding. Our 40 man roster dilemma wouldn't handle the flood of incoming prospects coming from trading off core players