ThejacKmp

Aren't you glad he isn't selling out to win now??? I enjoy that the Twins trusted Buxton to try MLB and were smart enough to send him to AAA when he needed it. He's not a delicate flower and can handle it. The Twins have made (or not made) moves this offseason and season with the next 5-6 years in mind, not the next two weeks in mind. That's the right thing to do. Expectations were ridiculously high for this season. We need to tamp it down and enjoy the good things - Oswaldo's late inning heroics, Joe being Joe, Dozier starting to heat up. This is supposed to be fun and unless you get joy out of endlessly critiquing the front office, we've lost sight of this!

Within the next few days they will know if (A) Santana is headed to the DL or ( Santana can pitch and thus Duffey can go back down. In either case, someone (likely Mastrioni) will be up with the Twins within a day or two. They're not in NL parks anymore so really, the two man bench is not a big deal. Much ado about nothing. These things happen due to injuries and a 16 inning game.

1) Rumor is that Berrios is moving up. I'm very comfortable losing the eminently replaceable Hicks if it means getting Berrios on the 40 man. Also, has there ever been a player more feted on TD than Hicks over the past few days? He's a 3rd catcher and by definition eminently replaceable. I mean, I don't love losing him but it's not the apocalypse. He almost certainly was never going to play for the Twins in any meaningful way this year and Juan Centeno is perfectly capable of being Hicks. I can buy that Pat Dean should have been the one on waivers but to argue there is some massive gulf between Hicks and Dean is laughable as is the idea that the Twins AAA catcher is some precious gem. Perhaps we should learn to wait a day or two before throwing stones next time?? 2) Two man bench is a very temporary thing which happened due to a very long extra inning game at the same time a starter got banged up (but hasn't hit the DL). These things happen. If TR was planning on doing this for a week, then we can get upset. Until then, let's chill. 3) Arcia and Sano have hit enough to get to play in the field. That's not a terrible thing. And Mastro is the 25th guy for a few weeks. Again, let's chill, that's not some huge deal. He's a useful piece as a pinch runner and late inning defensive sub. 4) No one should make plans to win a posting system bid, that would be foolish. Not having a set plan isn't the same as not thinking it through. They said "Hey, getting another good player is a good problem to have." I agree with them and think you can easily defend their actions since (saving Plouffe for depth/to wait out a better trade market). 5) They didn't like the market for relief pitchers because they didn't want a 3 year deal because of guys coming up. I can see both sides but trusting youth is not a sign of bad judgement. And Abad has been fantastic so far and we should give them some credit for that. We just need to calm down the relentless negativity. Sometimes teams lose games. Sometimes plans don't work out. The Twins future is as bright as it ever was and I congratulate the front office for not doing anything too monumentally stupid chasing immediate results.

Is Billy Beane a bad GM because the A's lose in the playoffs a lot? The playoffs are a crapshoot (see the Royals, Kansas City). Blaming GMs for a lack of postseason success is kind of bogus. You build a team to get to the playoffs and TR has proven capable of doing that in the past (which isn't to say there aren't things wrong with his actions from time to time but let's stop treating him like he's incompetent.)

Man, people are so negative. It's April 26th. The season hasn't gone well but the Twins have lost a lot of close games and we're only 12% of the way through the season. Tons of baseball left and the Twins' season is certainly not lost. If the Twins rebound, you better not try to enjoy it.

"And the Padres continue to try to rebuild by draft and free agency and fail miserably. Terry Ryan is a Golden God!" We can all do the unfair one team to one team comparison.

Houston won three more games than the Twins to win the second wild card. It wasn't that much better of a season, they just got a shot at the postseason.!

Woah woah woah woah woah. It's April 26th. Yes 12% of the year is gone but that leaves another 88% still to play. 9 of the Twins 14 losses have been by 2 runs or less. The Twins have played more games on the road than at home and have played series against the teams with the three best records in the AL (maybe they have good records because they played the Twins but that's a negative thought! Banish it!). Yeah it doesn't look pretty right now but we're one hot two-week stretch away from being back around .500 and from there anything can happen. There's no reason to think about "blowing things up" for at least another month. And even then, let's not call it "blowing things up". Blowing up is a full rebuild - the Twins would be readjusting. If they're really out of it June 1st, they can look to deal a few veteran players (Plouffe, Dozier, maybe one of the veteran starters) and still prepare for next year (which was probably the first realistic year anyways with all of the Twins youth). It really feels like the negativity train has gone off the tracks. Yeah the Twins aren't playing well now. But none of the problems are unfixable. Bullpen performance is variable and the Twins have lots of internal candidates to improve the pen; the starters have not been dominant but have been fairly good and we have Duffey, Meyer and Berrios in the wings; and the hitters have been strikeout prone but are young and should improve at the same time that guys like Dozier and Plouffe get rolling. And there's always Joe Mauer being the Joe Mauer of Yore. Let's try to keep some optimism huh?

Before I go any further, I want to emphasize that in no way am I saying Paul Molitor should be fired or will be fired. I like that the Twins keep managers around through hard times (it's rarely the manager/coach's fault that the team underperformed) and appreciate the continuity of three managers since 1986. But I do think it's worth asking what Molitor would have to do to get fired. For this, I'm assuming there's no scandal - he isn't caught with blow and a whizzinator by TSA and he doesn't drunk drive his car into a preschool during nap time. This would have to be entirely on performance. I'd say that there's no chance Molitor would be fired this year unless something catastrophic happened in the clubhouse where he lost the team (and I think that's unlikely to happen with the Twins who have a young team that seems to get along and a management which doesn't put up with malcontents - see Garza, Matt). But if the team finishes last or next-to-last in the AL this year and starts out slowly next year, I could see the water getting warm for Molitor by mid-June. I think they'd still wait til September of that year before maybe giving Dougie an interim try? I know the Twins like Molitor and like continuity but there hasn't been a Twins team with these kinds of expectations in at least a decade (and maybe ever). If enough of the young guys stall out, pressure could build to make a change. What do other people think? When does Molly have to start worrying? P.S. The coaching staff could be impacted just by this year. I like Bruno and am of the opinion that the Twins hitting problems are a result of young guys swinging for the fences and not taking great at-bats but he's an easy scapegoat.

Yeah. 15 inning games have a way of getting guys out of their comfort zones - O'Rourke really isn't a long inning guy. Milone would be kind of perfect for the role since the Twins all-righty lineup would bring out more left-handed lineups. A left-handed long reliever has a good shot for favorable matchups and then Milone can be stretched out for spot starts and if someone hits the DL.

Agreed they were wrong if they were sneaking him through. Though if they always knew he was the guy who would come off the 40 and suspected he'd be taken maybe this was the best time and they got unlucky? That would be less on them. I think the bigger failure is not using Pat Dean as that guy. Hicks was a nice 3rd catcher. You can trade a guy on the DL so Plouffe is tradable. I imagine it doesn't happen much though because teams would likely rather wait til a guy is healthy. The other issue with the Plouffe theory is I can't think of a team that suddenly has a glaring need at 3B. That's what it would take for a Plouffe deal this early.

It does make tonight's game a win-win. If Milone pitches well, the Twins have a good shot to win. If he doesn't, it might be better long-term.

I'm confused as to why everyone is so certain that it has to do with Murphy. It seems to me that if they were doing it for that reason, Murphy being added would happen in conjunction or they would have waited to make the Hicks move until they were ready to move Murphy up. Some other ideas: (1) Maybe they just thought they had a nice window to sneak Hicks through and were mistaken. They were always going to have to do something like this at some point anyway and maybe they thought this was the sneaky good time. This involves an assumption that there are aspects of this process that involve gamesmanship. I wish someone would write a book on it, it would be fascinating. (2) Berrios is always a possibility. With Santana and Duffey banged up, the Twins pen stretched and Milone not doing well, this could very well be the move. Milone to the pen, Berrios to the rotation. (3) Trade? The Twins could have something heating up with Plouffe or Arcia or Nolasco that makes getting an extra 40 man roster spot advisable. It's a bit farfetched since you can't really see the Twins trading any of those guys and getting back two guys worthy of the 40 man roster but I'm just thinking outside the box. God I hope they traded Ricky - every start I wait for the wheels to fall off. I will say I agree that Dean should have been the guy. I enjoy me some Pat Dean as much as the next guy (and likely more) but it's hard to see him being anything but a lottery ticket at this point. He's a poor man's Taylor Rogers.

I gotta think that Milone is one horrendous start or two "not good" starts away from being sent to the pen/designated for assignment. Berrios has made it past the extra year of control deadline and Milone makes sense as a long reliever (instead of O'Rourke).

I don't disagree with what you're saying overall (though I think that Tommy Milone is sharkbait with one or maybe two more starts so I think we should show a small bit of patience before we start throwing the lifeboats overboard) but this made me laugh. That is an opinion, not a fact. And I'm not sure that you'd be able to even defend it as true. There are undoubtedly many other front offices that make terrible decisions as well, the Twins are not unique in making decisions that the casual fan doesn't understand. (The Phillies? The Marlins? The Padres?) Enjoyable hyperbole but worth noting what is and is not a fact.

They believe in Gibson long-term. Barring some injury to him, I think Tommy Milone is the guy out for Berrios by mid-May.

That's a lot of hindsight too though, which has the benefit of being 20/20. To varying degrees those are all justifiable. In order of justifiableness: (1) Milone was cheap and is a decent back of the rotation starter. The Twins weren’t going to use that money for anything else (they were not going to sign a 3 year reliever for other reasons – right or wrong – and there’s nowhere else you would see them obviously spending that money) so it’s not a waste of money. The Twins have a lot of pitching now but that wasn’t a given – Duffey and Berrios were young, the Twins wanted May in the pen and Nolasco is Rick Freaking Nolasco. It wasn’t crazy to spend so little to bring back another option. The mistake will come if the Twins aren’t ready to move on from Milone in the next few weeks if he continues to not be the best option. And there’s where Milone makes the most sense: as a lefty starter he is easily traded for a low level prospect whenever you want out or he could fit in as a lefty long reliever (especially nice for a team with all right handed starters). (2) I also don’t think we should judge the Twins too harshly (yet) on Plouffe and Sano. The Twins had so many unknowns coming into this year: was Park a major leaguer? was Arcia the 2014 version or the 2015 version? was Rosario’s 2015 a mirage? would Buxton be unplayable a the ML level? was Kepler ready for the bigs? would Mauer force himself out of the lineup? For that reason, Plouffe represented some decent foresight actually. He was stability in case several of those questions went the wrong way – especially because there wasn’t a good offseason trade offer for him. Weirdly, though the Twins season has been disappointing thus far, all of those questions above have more-or-less worked out positively. Park, Buxton and Rosario all seem like major leaguers (if not prospering ones in all cases), Arcia has put himself back on the map, Joe has found the Fountain of Youth and even Kepler looks good. I think you can get mad at the Twins if they haven’t figured out the log jam by the deadline but I think getting upset about Plouffe/Sano and the logjam is the benefit of hindsight – it wasn’t a given that things would work out so well and Plouffe could get a much better haul at the deadline. (3) Jepsen has not been as good this year but he was a fine addition at the deadline last year - they didn't give up an insane amount to get him and they had another year of control. The fair criticism might be not getting another reliever last year for the pennant run or not signing a 3 year reliever this year. Though on that last part, I think we need to give it some time. If Chargois and some of the other younger guys come up and are great, we’re going to be glad there was an extra spot for them. So I get this one but I don’t think it qualifies as awful foresight. (4) Sano and Arcia in the OF. They have looked not good but I think the Twins never expected to be playing the two of them together quite as much as they have. Buxton’s injury and Rosario’s results not demanding everyday playing time have contributed to this happening. It’s not ideal but I also don’t think it’s a long term solution and certainly wasn’t something the Twins were planning on relying on so much. (5) Most defendable foresight criticism is Perkins. I’ve been wishing they'd traded Perkins for years now but I get why they haven’t. He's a hometown guy and was a big draw when the Twins were terrible. It's easy (and likely correct?) to think that decisions should be made purely with business in mind but in reality, Perk is a hometown guy loved by fans and it's hard to trade him. The same thing will be true of Dozier if Polanco looks good, for better or for worse. So I agree on the lack of foresight but I think it’s worthwhile to understand the human aspect of things here. And to start hoping the Twins learn their lesson if Polanco keeps hitting.

Quoting myself. Bored at work. All right. This was the reason I loved his first contract so much. He signed for an amount where he would be an acceptable luxury in the pen even if he didn't pan out as a starter. It seemed like such a good move for a team with payroll to spend because of young players. Second contract not so good though I think it's pretty defensible, just didn't work out very well. Hughes for closer!

I was kind of assuming that he'd pitch again - just maybe not well and then there would be surgery? Kills me they didn't trade him two to three years ago when they were awful and he was very good. I know everyone can look back but I feel like "Bad Team Trades Good Closer at Deadline" is so commonplace and obvious that we can do some "I knew this would happen" complaining.

I assume that O'Rourke's place will be taken when Glen Perkins comes back - hopefully/likely before we make any starting rotation changes. So you're talking about Fien/Tonkin etc.

I'd like us to also consider the concept of moving Phil Hughes to the pen. I know he's got a big contract but the bullpen could more readily use a righty than a lefty and Hughes has had success pitching out of the pen earlier in his career. He hasn't pitched particularly well this year (though his FIP is low, SSS acknowledged) and is likely the starter who is most useful out of the pen. Just a thought.

I think the main issue here is that you want a formal debate and this is a discussion website. Of course discussion evolves and changes, that's a good thing for it to do. People reacted to the 3+ months from the poster by saying "Hey, there was a season break in between and there have only been 50 PAs this year, let's not be overly worried! This year is a SSS and there were some extenuating circumstances last year with a lack of rest. Plus, we've got a much larger sample that makes some of those concerns fade!" You’re right, that’s not exactly what the original poster was talking about but his point continued to be talked about in conjunction with several other points. By the time this thing gets to Page 3, there are four related discussions going on - which is kind of the point of the internet. Some of them were really fun - is Brian Dozier getting pitched to differently? How long does it take pitchers to adjust to a hitter? When can we date Dozier’s struggles to? Some of them are likely less interesting but that’s the price you pay. Yeah we don't exactly solve the original question in the shortest path possible but we aren’t a think tank, we’re people who bring up all kinds of interesting information that enriches and expands the narrow post that was originally put up. So no, that's not a strawman argument because this isn't a formal debate and the argument has a pretty clear connection to what the poster was talking about. He might not have wanted to talk about it but it’s relevant and other people did want to discuss it and how it pertains to Dozier’s 3+ months. People were providing a new perspective on what the poster said, bringing in new information to further a discussion. If no one can add in any other information, this is more like people screaming from soapboxes at each other than actually discussing something. If we live in a world under your rules, we only can discuss things in very narrow parameters. In fact, we're likely going to need each poster to clearly outline the thing they are talking about and the nine things they are not talking about and don't want anyone to mention. The only problem will be that no one will care because it will stop being fun. Finally: "The point is not only invalid, it's completely ridiculous and deliberately ignores what was said." This is where you rub me wrong and it sounds like some others as well. You can't declare other people's opinions ridiculous and invalid unless you back that up with information. You want to have your feelings but not have other people have different ones. No one controls the discussion and if people want to talk about something related within the thread that they think has bearing on understanding Brian Dozier and his struggles, they have every right to do so without The Leviathon telling them they are ridiculous and invalid.

A) The start of a new season is not arbitrary, it has well-considered reasons for being a good dividing line. Guys have four months off to rest and recuperate. Teams and lineups change. Guys get a chance to try new offseason workout regimes. You don’t have to agree with those reasons and we can discuss how important they are but they are reasons that keep it from being arbitrary. We really need to make sure everyone understands the word arbitrary – it means picking a date for no reason, just at random. The All-Star Break is one of those because it is just a random day schedule makers use to divide the season in two. The start of a season or July 21st is not – there are reasons for making that choice, agree or disagree. The ongoing discussion has highlighted that this is a new season – who cares what the original post was, the discussion evolved along well-reasoned lines. Again, you can disagree with that and I think you should note that people have been willing to talk about the parameters you believe in while you do not extend them the courtesy of talking on their well-reasoned (but of course, maybe wrong) parameters. Saying that people’s view is irrelevant or “a straw man” is pretty bogus. If you want to discuss reasons why we should include last season or why the offseason break is overrated as a dividing line, by all means do so. But don’t just shut down people by calling their arguments irrelevant. C) A great stretch? It was 2 years! It’s three times longer than your sample! His 2014 was a full season of dominance. If a full season (plus the end of 2013 plus the first half+ of 2015) isn’t a “considerable length of time” I don’t know what would satisfy that criteria. D) You’re "looking at a larger context and sample" – kind of. You’re perfectly comfortable ignoring the previous success (we don’t want context and sample to get too large I guess?) while honing in on a bad stretch that isn't as long as you make it out to be. You still need to explain to us why you can isolate about half a season from the two years preceding it but we’re not allowed to separate 2.5 months last year from 58 PAs this year. E) The big thing you need is evidence. Find some stats that show that Dozier is facing different pitches (he isn’t BTW, see above). Show that his GB% has jumped (it hasn’t). Look into whether he’s seeing more shifts (no one has done this yet, it seems hard). Find something because “400 PAs matters while season breaks and prior success don’t because I said so” is more of a rant than a reasoned argument.

Ummm, no. 1) A month is an arbitrary dividing line. Again, let’s avoid those and find reasoned ones. But we’ll work with July if you want to stay arbitrary. 2) If you’re going to disagree with where I draw the line, at least address the time frame I chose. I picked 7/21 as the dividing line but instead of actually addressing that line, you cherry-picked two random samples to try to show inconsistency. That’s pretty sneaky. I get why you included July 17 in justifying your “he finished stronger” argument – he hit well from 7/17 to 7/19 which swells your super small sample size. A more accurate way to use that swell would be to do what I did and include it in the “Good Dozier” period while moving the rest of that abysmal period to the “Bad Dozier” era. You then doubled down by highlighting 7/1 to 7/12 because it was a lull that allowed you to ignore his mid-month prowess. Sneaky work with numbers but let’s address the actual dividing date I selected. 3) Bogus Use Of Numbers II: You’re challenging an argument based on OPS with batting average and walks. That conveniently ignores slugging which many would consider a really important part of both OPS and understanding how a player is doing. Before 7/21 (my reasoned dividing line), Dozier hit 4 HR and 3 doubles. For the rest of the month, he hit 1 HR and 1 double. If we want to lose arbitrary July designations, in all of August he hit 4 doubles and 5 HR and in September/October he hit 6 doubles and 2 home runs. I picked 7/21 as the first game of the Bad Dozier era because that’s where his power disappeared and his OPS started to plummet. Address that, not batting average and raw numbers of walks. I still hold that 7/21 is the most reasonable day to start looking at Dozier’s 2015 swoon because it’s where the power slackens. If you have another idea, I’m more than interested in looking at it – there are candidates but his 4 HR in eight game stretch in the mid-July boom makes earlier ones hard to defend. But those stats you quoted are bogus. Address my argument, don’t cherry pick stats which have nothing to do with what I was talking about.

Nunez did that on Tuesday too. The Twins have the depth to bench guys who do that, Molly needs to get on that.