ashbury

What do you think they were offered for Josh? No doubt less than they were offered for either Span or Revere, exactly because of their relative youth. If the plan was to restock the minors with higher-ceiling pitchers, using their oversupply of young outfielders coming up as the bait, the trades the Twins pulled the trigger on are consistent with that. Actually, keeping Willingham as part of the bridge to 2015 suits me fine - he's more valuable to the Twins than he would be to a contender, since on just about no other team would his 35 home runs be marketed as "the most since [Killebrew] in 1970" or whatever the exact mark of distinction is. The Twins lineup was already overpopulated with table-setters, and trading Willingham instead of Revere or Span would have accentuated it further.

I guess you haven't seen the other thread where PocketPig is trying to debug the inability to see comments on articles appearing on the front page. There may be a reason when some of us don't quite follow protocol.

It would figure. His splits according to baseball-reference.com indicate he has had more sustained success against the Twins than against anyone else, holding the Twins' stellar cadre of sluggers to a .547 OPS versus .687 for all opponents combined. He's better than average (pre-injury) but against the Twins he's looked like Nolan Mathewson and Walter Seaver combined.

If done on gameday this could add a few MPH to his fastball, as a bonus.

Still happens for me too. The Rafael Perez article today shows only 1 comment,when I click to the article from the front page. I use Firefox 17.0.2, but it also shows up the same if I switch to Internet Explorer 8.0, 32-bit and 64-bit alike. If I click to it via the forum link on the left, all is well. It's intermittent, in terms of seeing it happen over past weeks or months, but it's very reproducible once I notice it happening on a given article. The fact that you can't reproduce it suggests caching is involved, but I don't see the behavior correct itself if I flush the cache so maybe it's not a factor. I don't have any other ideas. [Edit: just noticed I responded in this thread a few weeks ago. Give me credit for consistency, at least.]

I find it hard to embrace the hope that he can be what he once was. But I don't know any of the fundamentals about what it takes for a pitcher to come back from his injuries. I attended his first home start when he was with the A's in 2003 and his changeup was absolutely killer - the Indians stood there unable to pull the trigger, time after time after time. But if he's lost something off the fastball, permanently, can he replicate the old magic? Could be that batters now can say that if it looks like a fastball, treat it like a change up and try to pull it, and if it happens to be a fastball then you may end up going the other way for a base hit instead. As I said, I need someone with better grasp of hitting than I have, to tell me. And if he tries to win with something else than a changeup, then he's not the same pitcher and the previous track record wouldn't count for a lot.

I'm on board with this. OTOH, it's yet another signing of a player that another team has given up on via a non-tender due to injury. I guess this means the front office thinks they have a medical staff better than these other teams'. At some point, pitchers are going to look around themselves in Fort Myers in late February and mutter "what am I doing here with all these guys in arm-slings and leg-casts and neck-braces and eye-patches? They must think I'm a reclamation project too. Ugh. Maybe this full-body cast and hook-hand aren't such good fashion statements after all."

Although the jury is still out, my (real-life) brother remains two years behind me still, despite his heart attack years ago. But you're right, short of resorting to way-out ideas like Peano's Axioms I don't think an air-tight proof is possible. I withdraw the claim, my brother.

Came here to edit my previous reply in this thread to say that I had forgotten all about Joe B, and a .750 OPS from him looks achievable, and would be awesome if they decide not to start the clock on Hicks as it has the ripple effect of letting Mastroianni shine as a 4th OF instead of being mediocre at best as a starting CF. Found that everyone else was already on board regarding Benson. Good.

It's possible he always will be.

Me too. "Hi, call me Buck." "Yeah, sure, Foureyes."

I'll be repeating myself to say more than just "yes". But, yes.

Some headlines, or even entire articles, just about write themselves this time of year, don't they. It isn't until late May when the team is in a 11-37 slump after starting so promisingly at 1-1 that the headlines start to read "So and So hopes for more time on DL, less on mound".

I know, bro, I was just funnin' ya. It was a chance to use the emoticon I had recently said was my new favorite.

Since the city of any size nearest to me is Reno NV, I have to go for Signor Bertoia. When they brought a AAA team to town I thought "the Bertoias" would be a better nickname than the Aces but I got overruled. Care to guess which city should call their team the Cepedas?

Parmelee/Dozier/Plouffe. I think you've named the three guys capable of a breakout year, unless Jamey Carroll has been taking steroids in the off-season. I guess Gibson is the only candidate on the pitching side, and I don't see him doing it to that extent.

A lot of people prefer to draft the best available player in the first round (particularly a high pick) rather than draft for need, but after that first pick or two you can draft for need without too much compromise. If the GM feels the system overall is short on pitching, he will want the strategy to address that in the early to middle rounds. Maybe this will be obvious to the scouting director as well, but I would expect the GM would make sure everyone is one the same (namely, HIS) page on this. I think that's what we saw with the Twins in 2012. Maybe I'm a little too fanciful in guessing about body language from the big guy on draft day; I was drawing a contrast to the Bill Smith years when I would bet he had zero impact on the dynamics of draft day itself. The scouting team admires and trusts Terry Ryan and vice versa, and I can't help believing it matters on draft day.

Man, now I wish I was going to Fort Myers this year instead of last; I would definitely take you up on your offer of hospitality around the minor league fields.

Geico probably has an ad in the works that covers this.

Basically you are asking for mind-reading. Here's my take, essentially what I have offered before. I believe one of Terry Ryan's stated core principles is that multi-year contracts for pitchers are usually a bad risk. Two years, tops, if the guy is really pretty good; anything longer requires it to be a certified ace like Johan where you accept that the risk in year two and beyond simply must be taken on. An exception (not seen in practice with the Twins, but which I believe he would make) might be made if you need to get one pitcher to put you over the top *this* year - but 2013 is not the year for doing that. He knew at the start that Grienke, probably Jackson and Sanchez, were simply not going to accept a two-year deal, and he was not prepared to go more. He was hoping some good pitchers at a lower tier from those would accept, particularly as one or two inevitably began to feel a bit of pressure as the off-season progressed and they still didn't have a deal with anyone; if this was the hope, it did not pan out. He signed Correia early, precisely to remove that kind of pressure from himself, ditto for the "low-risk high-reward" deals he loves such as (this year) Harden and Pelfrey, to avoid having to accept another pitcher's inflated demand as time grew short in January if Ryan didn't have anyone yet. He probably views Joe Saunders as less of an upgrade over Correia than do the sabrmetically-inclined with their fancy space-age tools like ERA+ and WAR, so he's not heartbroken that his lowball offer was rejected in favor of another team's one-year deal. I think that's all the tea-leaves I am prepared to try to read.

In light of > but substitute the words "my brother" for "retard", idiot" and whatever else you may really be thinking you can be sure I will take your praise in the spirit it was no doubt intended. My brother. http://www.forumsextreme.com/images2/sFi_slapfight.gif

For the price of the ticket, and considering the quality of the team they may be putting on the field, a lap dance for each patron who wants one should not be taken completely off the table for discussion. At least, install stripper poles at various locations in the stands.

Brethren(*), in honor of this peace initiative I have installed a new avatar for my account. Enjoy. * and cistern

You've also got a third-string catcher with a live arm who'd love to get into games...

And that he did not play in any of the final 8 games due to a bum shoulder. That's more than just a day-to-day situation, and he might have been DL'ed if it wasn't September. If I'm another team's GM I wait-and-see until mid-March at earliest.