ericchri

Semi-random question: Would you rather see the future Buxton for Minnesota hit 20 triples and 10 HR in a season, or 20 HR and 10 triples? Myself, I think I'd rather the guy who hits more triples. Mostly a personal preference thing, but I think triples might be about the most exciting individual play in baseball. For me, anyway.

I think Stewart inevitably suffers some in a ranking due to less to judge him on. A year ago at this time people were hopeful but still unsure about Berrios, just like we are now with Stewart. He looks really promising, the scouts like him, but we have only one full season of non-rookie ball to really judge him by. I'm no scout, I've not watched any of these guys pitch, I don't dig through everybody's scouting reports on the internet, so I'm not even remotely qualified to judge. My gut feeling from stuff mostly read on this site is Berrios is the most likely to reach his potential due to "makeup" or "work ethic" or whatever you want to call it. That being said, he probably has the lowest ceiling of the three. My gut tells me Meyer has the most upside if he gets everything under control. My gut (yep, it's growing and taking control of my life as I get older) tells me Stewart is the sleeper of the three we just don't know as much about yet. I think in the end my gut is going to predict that the best career in the majors will be Stewart, followed by Berrios, and then Meyer. And my gut also suspects Meyer will have a decent career (though not a similar pitching style, somewhere along the lines of how Scott Baker did for us, maybe a hair better), meaning Stewart will hopefully be really, really good. This is going to be such an interesting season in the minors again. Do we have this same conversation again next year, only having "graduated" Meyer and Berrios, is it about Stewart, Thorpe, and Gonsalves (or maybe even Hu)? Nice to finally have so many high-potential arms to watch, we only need a few to work out even if others flame out, we don't have to pin all hopes on the one guy to save our rotation.

Something looks wrong there. All five of those guys have a 20 hitting rating on a 20-80 scale? There's just no way that's the case. Or is that some other scale that's being used?

Barry Bonds Roger Clemens Mike Piazza Jeff Bagwell Craig Biggio Pedro Martinez Randy Johnson Tim Raines John Smoltz Eddie Guardado (okay, actually Mike Mussina)

Any similarities between our current farm system and the crop that was breaking into the majors in the early 80's that eventually turned into World Champs?

I don't want to derail this too much, but I find this interesting. Of all the guys mentioned in this thread so far I consider Walker the most likely (barring injury) candidate to play in the majors. Not the guy most likely to be a good major league player, but the guy most likely to at least play in the majors. Guys who hit the ball that hard (without completely sucking in every other way, which Walker obviously doesn't) will get a chance at some point. He could be the next Colabello-type (I think he'll be better than that) who doesn't have what it takes to hit consistently enough to turn that into a meaningful career, but he'll play in the majors. To try and stay on topic, I think Engelb Vielma is the potentially really interesting name next year. He's moving up to high enough levels now that he's not just some "low-rookie level potential defensive-wiz." Hopefully he can solidify himself as an A+ level defensive-wiz with just enough stick.

With the rate at which salaries are skyrocketing I'd sign that deal as the Twins FO in a heartbeat. I'm not sure if Dozier would, though. I agree with someone earlier though, I'd probably try and shift a little of the money forwards on the contract if possible. Wouldn't have to be a lot necessarily, but take a million each off the last couple years and divide it up among the first four, but it makes him a little more valuable later if we decide to move him.

I used to think the same thing about Nick Punto, though. I ranted with the guy in the cube next to me about why any pitcher would ever worry about Nick Punto enough to throw him anything but strikes, but year after year Punto drew large numbers of walks. I don't know why this is, but the lesson I learned from Punto was that pitchers are stubborn imbeciles who refuse to change their pitching approach for obviously inferior hitters... Not that I'm generalizing. Hicks has always stuck me as a similar hitter to Punto in that oftentimes you can see they're up there looking to walk, not to hit. He's got more tools to work with than Punto did, so you want Hicks to be a better hitter, but when your hitting philosophy often regresses to staring at pitches til you strike out or walk, the results will oftentimes end up similar.

For the layman who is a little baffled at the -0.4 inches dropped on a "sinker", that means that his pitches rise at the beginning after release before sinking later, yet still ends up crossing the plate a touch higher than it was released? I imagine that's what I'm supposed to see in the gif but I'm not really adept at spotting that kind of thing.

I'd be shocked if Gilmartin wasn't picked if he wasn't added. It'd be so easy to slot him in as a lefty-reliever if nothing else to keep him on the team. So the question is does he warrant that roster spot versus losing him? He seems like he has some potential as a back-end starter, but I don't know if his upside is high enough for me to worry about it. There've been worse guys taking up 40-man spots over these last few years, though. I'd probably put him on this year. Makes Duensing even more expendable as he starts getting a little more expensive for his fairly average production. Wheeler seems a good candidate for the same reason. Left-handed pitchers with some potential are the easiest to keep on the team in some relief capacity for the season so you don't have to send them back. I can't see much chance of any of the others getting picked. It's possible certainly, but Michael's been injured too often with no track record in the upper minors, Goodrum is too far away, Adam is a giant question mark who I can't see losing sleep over if somebody should happen to take him.

Nerd time: Um, you do realize that Luke used the Force to hit his target, not his eyes, right? :-)

He would make perfect sense for the team assuming they (Red Sox) would trade him for somebody of middling prospect status. A Danny Ortiz type. Since I assume they would want better than that, I would say pass, see how the OF shakes out and if he makes sense as a FA in a year.

When are we bringing back the CF trees?

Bring them up (if they're healthy). I can't agree with the premise more. I thought they would and should both be up this year so I'm not going to look at an injury-filled season as any reason to change that thought. If they spend a couple months in the minors fine, but they need to play in the majors to understand playing in the majors. Both have proved in their time in the minors they're better than the other guys they're playing with/against, let them figure out what it's like playing with others their skill level. I get it, there are "obvious" reasons to not start in the majors, but I think (hope) Buxton and Sano are just plain good enough to not worry about it. They need these guys on the team to really understand the team's dynamic anyway, since their presence has a massive effect on who else plays and where. I say the sooner the better.

You couldn't really take only a hitter's specific results with a certain catcher behind the plate into account when a hitter has a "feeling" about the catcher, though. He's watching how his whole team is doing against that guy, and if he's watching from on-deck, or the dugout and seeing close pitches go for lots of strikes in those games he's taking that into his at-bat later knowing extra strikes are getting called. I think that would somewhat explain why he hates hitting with Molina behind the plate, but actually has decent results overall.

Luckily for Steinbach he was the bench coach for Gardy, meaning he got plenty of experience "pulling the trigger" due to Gardy getting kicked out so often...

I think Martinez would be my first choice. Working for Maddon for a few years is a great place to start with for a new Twins manager. I would be OK with Mientkiewicz. Others on the list seem fine as well. I don't want Steinbach. That seems like perpetuating the "Twins Way" to me, nothing about him indicates anything but old school and same old same old. Ozzie seems like a disaster waiting to happen. He had that little bromance going with Twins fans for a while which made him seem charming, but his personality seemed to get out of control eventually. Once upon a time he would've seemed like the obvious choice, but that was probably 10 years ago. I don't doubt Jake Mauer would theoretically make a great candidate and manager, but I think it would be a PR disaster for this team right now. Joe is massively polarizing already, why would you want to double down on that? It might not be fair to Jake, but we all know life isn't always fair.

I think he'd be good at the color commentary eventually, but I also think he might still be a little too close to this team to be able to talk freely and openly. In a couple years maybe, but I think next year might be too soon. Can't see him on ESPN, that would just be weird. My guess is he takes the year off while he and his wife figure out what they want to do at this point.

Four guys kept this season from being absolutely horrific to watch instead of just lousy. Hughes, Dozier, Suzuki, and Santana. Plouffe had a nice season as well but it was so understated that I'm not quite sure how to view it. I wouldn't object to picking anyone from that list, they all had their moments of practically carrying the Twins when almost everybody else was flopping.

To add to the Santana love: WIll Leitch at Sports On Earth named Danny Santana the MVP of the Twins in his article picking each team's MVP. http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/96172120/mlb-2014-team-mvp It's been mentioned before, but the thing I noticed one night when he hit a homerun, which is probably par for the course and not particularly insightful, is that he just effortlessly whips his bat through the zone incredibly fast (-appearing). I've not the time/patience/motivation and whatnot to go analyze a bunch of video and situational hitting statistics, but it definitely caught my eye. You can see Arcia swinging out of his shoes, but Santana just calmly lashes the ball sharply, and occasionally it leaves the park. Not claiming he'll ever be a homerun hitter per se, but I can easily see him being in the low double-digits a few times in his career, which is decent for someone his size.

As long as Santana plays, I'm not bothered by what position it is. Ideally he'd have a set position, and I'm sure he would rather that too, and that would preferably be SS. But if he has to bounce around a little to make the strongest team we can put out on the field (next year), so be it. The arrival of more guys from the minors is going to shake things up some more, but I like his versatility for the benefit of the team, and I suspect he prefers a major league paycheck to playing SS at AAA.

I think one question I'm not sure about yet is who's going to be the better hitter, Pinto or Vargas? Vargas looks to have a higher upside, his power is ridiculous, but Pinto's no slouch and at the moment we're still on SSS for both. There's probably only room for one of them unless someone else gets hurt/traded. If Pinto hits well and Vargas fades Pinto could still DH, but I have my doubts he's ever going to be considered a catcher for this team again. I can't see how Pinto works his way into the lineup at this point, and I don't know that a new manager changes that, so I'd probably trade Pinto. I'd probably let Gardy go as well, but I'm not sure all of this is Gardy specific (it seems fairly systemic in that everyone seems to be down on Pinto's catching ability, pitchers, coaches, front office) even if I'm disappointed in Pinto's lack of playing time. Like many I've just reached the point where I don't think Gardenhire suits the team as we move forward, the Pinto situation is only one small part of that feeling. I tend to believe sports teams are way too quick to make coaching changes, but I don't think that could be said in this case, Gardy's had a pretty long run now.

I'll choose to disagree with you on this statement. It may be appreciated by the Royals, but that doesn't make it "right." He has a responsibility to do what's right for the Twins also, not just upholding the integrity of other teams' playoff push. I'm not up in arms over it (it's pretty hard to get me up in arms over anything beyond padding closers' save statistics) but I think it's not the right choice for what the Twins need right now. Admirable? Sure. Right? Not in my opinion.

In a vacuum I'd like to see Santana playing SS. With the current roster I'm not sure we see that any more than we did this year, though. Mostly depends on how Escobar plays, really, since right now Santana in CF and Escobar at SS is our "best" lineup, even if it's not ideal. I still think there's a decent possibility Santana ends up as our LF for the next few years once Buxton is up. I don't know if that's in 2015, though.

This notion continues to puzzle me. I don't disagree that on paper Mauer looks athletic enough to be an adequate outfielder. But reality says that could very well not be the case. Mauer is 31 with some injury history and 6'5" tall. He's played one emergency game in the outfield in his career? I would expect a steady dose of Mauer in the outfield to be someone who can't read the ball well off the bat, doesn't take good routes to the ball, and then struggles to pick the ball up off the ground well when he's chasing it around because he's so big and likely losing his athleticism rapidly due to age and injury history. And I really don't want to see him crashing into any walls risking another concussion. He's not on my list of options to improve the outfield defense. It's not a long-term solution and if you're making that move it has to be done right away so he spends the entire offseason preparing for it. I'd be incredibly surprised if they made that move after indicating he was our 1B moving forward. I'm sure Mauer could play the outfield, I just doubt he'd actually make the defense any better. I think I've even advocated for him in the OF in the past, but at this point I don't find it a good idea.