Doctor Gast

This is a immediate response to an immediate need, Graterol could`ve been groomed to start possible to some extent at the end of this year if not ready can be used in BP. Graterol has great opportunity to be a future ace. Where we desperately in need to progress in the PS this season & seasons to come. We are blessed w/ great positional player that are set for years to come & have a great glut of positional prospects where we have a future problem of keeping of them all on the 40 man roster. We need to trade from areas of excess not from areas of lack. This trade is a band-aid which is fine if hadn`t traded away possibly a part of the cure. LA loves to keep their pitching prospects, therefore keeping their stables full & cullings those which are inferior. My hope is that MN copies that philosophy.

I was trying to write in Portuguese but it would translate in part to English

Feel sad for him too. Wish him well & a speedy recovery.

Muito Obrigado, e ben vindo para TD! Eu tambem ficei passionate com Johan Santana or primeiro tempo eu assistir ele. Ele e` meu lancedor favorito do o historia do Twins

Always thought Graterol was a good fireballer that had some good stuff but not until I saw him pitched against the Yankees that I saw greatness (which I don`t throw out very often). This young 21 yr. old poised against the NY monsters, I figured we had something special that we should hold on to. A true impact pitcher that could come in under any circumstances & get the job done. Twins lost patience w/ him, for goodness sake, he`s only 21 not 32. He should have been given every chance to start in his time not to fill in at BP in the beginning of this season, we have a few desperate pitchers that would love to fill in that role. Work w/ him sometime during the season he`d be ready to start if not he could put in some innings at the end of the season in BP. I still can`t understand why they traded him & not a positional player. If LA was so determined to trade Maeda for Graterol & not a positional prospect, FO should have walked away. We could have done better else where w/o trading Graterol. I saw greatness in David Ortiz when he was w/ the Twins, it hurt me tremendously when they let go. Likewise I was hurt when they traded Graterol. I`ll miss the great moments & career he should have had in MN PS- "impact" is a word that`s thrown around a lot lately incorrectly " valuable that fits a certain need" is more acurate

Great article! I`m amazed that there are Twins fans all over the world

Muito Obrigado!

Hope Morrison`s post gets more publicity & expose them especially if involves MN PS. Baseball talk shows should pick up on it & the commissioner should fine them also. Any suspicion should be allowed to scan any suspect for devises.

Cleveland too is a low market team, I believe I saw their payroll is under $100,000 around $90,000 I think but yet they always seems to compete. I believe it`s because they focus on pitching & defense. Like I said before they have an ace factory which always cranks them out regularly. I believe Romero needs to get his confidence back, hopefully this year he`ll find it & get the chance to prove himself. We have some hope w/ a great stock of pitching prospects for a bright future. MN has very good coaches to develop pitchers so far they have done wonders. Maeda is a good pitcher but I wish people would stop drinking LA & MN FO Kool-Aid. LA has a great pitching organization they need someone like Maeda to be a great SP/RP to help anchor a lacking BP & fill in as SP when needed. So why were they so determined to trade him for "damage goods" LA had Graterol records & sure he was he was extentively scouted? It`s because they could see 21 yrs.old Graterol as an impact pitcher for many years to come on the cheap instead a 32 yrs. old. Why didn`t MN wisely offer a positional player instead which wouldn`t have hurt? It`s because they started to drink their own Kool-Aid. I wish the Twins rotation well & they should w/ better line up, defense, BP to support them & a deader ball

May has found himself, bring him back Cruz, keep him as long as possible Odorizzi hope the best for him & he stays Gonzalez, if Gordon is our best replacement we have to keep him but I believe Astudillo & Lewis will find themselves when that happens Gonzalez is gone Hill, is a crap shoot hope to get something from him come this Oct. that`s it Bailey. waste of time & $.

The future pitching have looked pretty good, hope for the best!

Duran sure made a big jump! He zoomed past Balazovic. He deserves that but what did they base that on?

One thing I don`t like about it which someone had beat me to in another thread is that towards the end of the deadline most teams will believe they`re still in it & hold on their player instead of trading them. It`s bad enough the way that it is.

Does my heart good to see these sacrifices to maintain this wonderful & wholesome culture into the family community. Many times they are under-valued & ignored then society suffers

There`s a lot of variables but these projections give us a good estimation. Is there a stat that shows a pitcher`s era w/ each time thru the batting order? or where can I find that?

To me he`s our real diamond in the rough left. Diamonds are very rare (very hard to come by) & precious so we need to take good care of them & hold onto them. Only a year older than Graterol he has many years to develop into an ace we desperately need. His talent we need to keep him as a starter & make every attempt to do so. Not make the same mistake the 3X. The small temporary gain of having him in an already full BP is not worth the cost of not grooming him as our future ace.

It`s all common knowledge & the Commissioner didn`t want to do anything until someone let it slip in an interview & it became public & the Astros got caught. The same thing about the buzzers. I believe Boston & NYY were given a warning but nothing was done, they still probably did it last year. I wish some "remorseful" players from all the team which practiced this would come forward so those teams could be punished & all the victims could be justified. Gonzalez probably advised the Twins when they played the Astros to change their signs more frequently because the Twins had good results against them last year

I want to make something very clear. I`m not against obtaining Maeda, he`s an definitely upgrade from Bailey. But I`d like to point out some things #1 LA used him as a substitute starter & if we use him as LA did limiting his inning we`ll be fine but if we depend on him for constantly pitch 7 innings we`re in trouble. In the beginning of last year our pitching rotation was fantastic & our BP was pretty good. Perez was our best pitcher & even Blake was pitching pretty good (I was surprised because I was totally against getting him) but our pitching was a house of cards. Blake was pitching over himself, when he folded the whole BP folded & when the BP folded we had to try to milk every inning out of Perez & Gibson (they pitched much more than even Odorizzi) which proved disastrous. Maeda is like Perez & should be treated as such. #2 I don`t know if anyone here is a stock market investor but rule #1 is don`t sell when your stock hits bottom. PIT has a good eye for pitching talent but don`t know how to develop it. Case study #1 Cole, when he left PIT for Houston his stock took off. #2 Chris Archer has a lot of upside potential that PIT couldn`t utilize, last year his #s were terrible . Archer`s stock was very low if PIT wanted to trade he could have been had for a low prospect but intelligently didn`t, now with hope of new coaching his stock I believe has 3X (which is still a bargain) That said I contest that MN obligated Graterol to the BP thus lowering his trade value that being done they shouldn`t have even considered trading him. & w/ the Boston fiasco that made it more ridiculous to trade him. LA was determined to trade Maeda if they thought Graterol was damaged goods, they would have suggested a different prospect. But the fact is LA has an eye for impact pitching & knew Graterol true value drooled over the opportunity to get him at bargain basement. LA came off looking pretty good for taking this "damage goods" from us but the truth is that they pulled a fast one over a desperate FO wanting to appease an angry fan base for not signing a impact pitcher. Maeda is a more valuable pitcher than Graterol for the beginning of this season but he`s not an impact pitcher & in the longer run he won`t be more valuable than Graterol. If FO really wanted Maeda they should have offered a appropriate positional prospect which we have in abundance & stand patt!!! #3 LA is an established pitching organization, they develop their pitchers. W/ Maeda what you see is what you get so there is no hope of him improving much more than where he`s at right now. PIT on the other hand is notorious for not being able to develop their pitchers as stated before & now they are in a rebuilding mode so they are desperate for good prospects. Musgrove & Archer could be had reasonably to very reasonably w/o trading away our most valuable prospects where we at our weakest & both have more room to develop. I`m saying we could do better #4 We have Berrios who is motivated to make Graterol his mentee. This relationship is much like Cruz-Sano a condition which inspires both of them to excel. Graterol is a hook to keep Berrios here. W/o him I don`t know if Berrios would want to stay w/o an ridiculous offer. So when we lost Graterol I believe we lost lot more than just him

I remember when people started to talk about trade deal sturrounding the need of an impact pitching. Jeffers name came up & I rebuked them, they came back with we don`t need him we have Garver. Yes we need impact pitching but we need to trade with where have an abundance not where we could lack. We must always need to eye the future, we need him as a future catcher & shortly back up. We don`t have an abundance of great catching prospects. He`s worth holding onto!

Garvers mind set will make him better. Most definitely on defensive, it`ll be hard to match his #s offensively w/ the less lively ball but comparatively he should maintain aproximately the same level. I prefer Astudillo as the extra bench because of his versatility. Him as an extra catcher is a big advantage. If he can show he can improve his plate discipline while playing in the bigs he stays if not he goes down to begin with

I`ve never been in Florianopolis but I`d like to some day. Heard it`s very beautiful

I heard that there`d be a lot of 1st class college pitchers in this draft. If that`s the case it`d be nice to have another shot at one

I`ve heard that there`ll be a lot of high quality college pitchers in this draft. If that`s true, it`d be nice to have another shot one

Great article & interesting insight! This trade has open my eyes too. As long as I can remember MN has never drafted a pitcher that ever amounted much of anything. Berrios is the only one that comes to mind. Is it because we are insecure in our pitchers scouting to draft a high draftee? It seems almost all pitchers come from other teams rejects or traded prospects. What it seems to me is that they put more value on positional players than pitchers. Through drafting positional player & tendency to horde them, we have glut of positional players which fills our 40 man roster. Many teams have approached us to trade pitchers for an OF but what holds it up is the other team say we are asking too much. Now after their stunt of obliging Graterol to become a BP reducing his value LA seeing an opportunity for a bargain steps in & offers a very dispensable pitcher Maeda. MN`s FO being pressured to fill in our pitching inadequacy so instead of addressing our positional prospects glut we are willing to take their offer of our #1 pitching prospect ML ready, Graterol. After Boston tore down Graterol degrading his value even more making him bargain basement, Twins should have pulled out right there (knowing we`d never obtain true value for Graterol) & stopped that circus & if they wanted a trade demand a positional prospect instead but they didn`t. LA knowing full well & never questioned Graterol`s value remain steady in keeping him in the deal. So in all that shows me that FO doesn`t give proper value for pitching. 1 more thing, it`s common knowledge that Baldelli went to visit Sano & Buxton about potential problems. Has he ever went to visit Berrios to discuss some his issues? Did they ask Berrios about how he felt about this Graterol trade? Is it important? Yes, if we want to keep Berrios

Graterol going to LA instead of Boston is a small consolation. At LA, I know Graterol will be evaluated properly & handled right. I feel Graterol will do great there & make us regret trading him. LA & Cleveland have a great pitching staff. They know how to scout, draft, develop, handle, evaluate, trade for promising young talent & dump those which are inferior. I can only hope one day MN can come close.