ashbury

In all fairness, if I were being paid for my words of wit and wisdom I might phrase any number of things differently.

If we're in apparent agreement that, given a chance for a do-over, Carlos perhaps should take it, I'm having a hard time seeing the need to defend his choice of words. There's honest, and then there's brutally honest as you term it, and to me the latter fits a description of tactlessness pretty much to a T. Brutal honesty is for example when a boss has to correct an underling's behavior; not to enhance the value of the "product", as Carlos fashions himself. Brutal honesty is what Sheldon Cooper or Mister Spock or Mister Data or Mister Worf *use when they fictionally misunderstand human conventions. A saying, attributed variously to Dear Abby and the Buddha and others, is, when considering whether to say something, ask is it true? is it necessary? is it kind? We're all in agreement that what Carlos said is true. In the upcoming off-season negotiations, he holds most if not all the cards as regards the Twins. Was it necessary for him to spell it out, to a reporter asking what seemed like a random softball question? I can't see a reason, no. Was it kind? To imply to a broad listening audience that he's a big shot who shops at Dior and can afford to pay asking prices? I don't see how it qualifies. There are other true things to say instead, such as "I hope something can be worked out". Few people value hearing brutal honesty, to be brutally honest, so why should a person in the public eye go there? * Man, Star Trek sure liked using that particular trope

Great way of looking at it. In an injury-riddled year, he provided above-average play (disguised for many by a league-wide decline in offense), and did it by appearing in the second most games on the team, barely behind Arraez, which made him a relative beacon of stability. Fix other problems first. $10M will make him only the third highest paid player, behind Buxton and Gray, and it's the cost of doing business unless you are so confident in the younger low-paid players (and their return to health) that you can afford to jettison the guy who ranks fourth in Runs and third in RBIs. No such thing as a bad one-year contract, and if he does turn out to be the worst player on your roster in 2023, then barring injury it means some things have gone very, very well and thus becomes the proverbial "nice problem to have."

He's got as strong a case as anyone and I'm not sure why I didn't include him in my comment. Leading in ERA but with fewer starts is a strong but not decisive case to be made, while the W-L (albeit for a strong team) may be what pulls him across the finish line. In fact now that I think again he may win in a landslide, but I personally see it as a lot closer than that. Cease may be more impressive to me because that Chicago defense almost certainly did him no favors over the course of the season, while Houston's defense is pretty good. Verlander'll be a worthy winner, if he gets it.

Players with heart don't land on the 60-day, and they revert to their high-octane days if brought back to their old team. You've given a pretty good synopsis of your view. It coincides closely with magical thinking, and I'm uninterested in pursuing a blind alley once I see it.

Wait, "I hold all the cards here" ISN'T good PR?

They just might. Is our FO interested in acquiring Tyler Mahle 2.0, with shoulder IL time in both 2021 and 2022 plus a 60-day stint for a lat ailment? Sound like just the sort of sweet opportunity our guys would jump at.

He's a better than average player. That's what you have to have in order to contend, even if he isn't the superstar that is also required. Absolutely keep him for 2023, at the arbitration price. Go from there; a short duration contract extension through 2025 probably wouldn't kill anything even if he slips.

If the roster spot is that valuable to them, they can get something in trade (part of a package perhaps). Opinions will vary as to whether they sold low if they do that, with proof either way coming in two years or under. My inclination is to keep him on the 40, but it comes down to who gets left off as the 41st guy.

Well sure, but no such offers are going to be forthcoming from another front office, not even if we throw in Brian Duensing as a sweetener. Turn the perspective around: would you have traded 2004 Johan Santana for, um, Marcus Giles, who hit .311 that year?

How to honor Ohtani is a dilemma, because the Cy possibly is destined for Dylan Cease (with Alek Manoah as a dark horse coming on strong down the stretch), and best hitter is Judge by far. If there were more guys like Ohtani they'd have to devise something different, possibly 3 awards, where MVP (call it the Babe Ruth Award) really does give pitchers and hitters equal footing, and you have a Ted Williams Award to go with a Cy Young for the best position player and best pitcher. As it is, someone is getting a significant snub in the 2022 AL, but unavoidably as I see it.

Completely agree. Where some are seeing clear-headed understanding of the market for elite players, I saw arrogance. And I'm far from the camp that berates players for demanding their slice of the pie. But he has to use common sense in defining his "brand", if he really has a grasp of the market. This is one of the reasons players hire agents, to say the things that may need to be said. Oh, that wicked, greedy Scott Boras, except no, he's just the mouthpiece. Part of the agent's commission is for being The Heel in each little drama. Carlos may not have severely damaged his value in the coming free agent market, but he didn't do it any good either. This was a moment when he should have answered the reporter's question with platitudes. "I love it here, I hope we can work something out." Let Boras spell out the Dior analogy, or that the player has to feed his family, if it's needed.

No matter how much heart in a player, Father Time has final say. And they do have metrics for that: Eddie hit .219 this year with little power, and Nelson hit .234 with little power. Carlos would like a contract that will have some team paying him tens of millions of dollars for multiple seasons where he may be hitting like that. The team doesn't move on, the skills do, and the front office has no way of reversing that. What the front office can do is try to anticipate it. Sure, I'd like 2018 Eddie back, or 2019 Nelson, but those guys don't exist today. If I'm wishing, I'll wish for 1969 Harmon, 1977 Rod and 2009 Joe while I'm at it.

I expected him to be a little more tactful than that.

Been a while since our Twins scored in double digits. Good teams, like NY and Houston, do that - 4 times in September, each. Zilch for us in September.

Crap, the site software tricked me into double posting yet again.

The "kid" turns 31 in a couple weeks.

The thrust of the commentary is "poor decision making," "really haven't done a great job at building a pitching staff," et cetera, but the conclusion is "one more year to see how they respond." Personally I have lost all curiosity about that.

To denote Missouri, or Mississippi, or Montana? Milwaukee, or Missoula, or Muncie?

The majority of runners in the Boston Marathon, or similar, do not train by running a practice marathon alone. They condition to distances much shorter, and then push themselves on race day.

I feel like the FO's analytics aren't all they are cracked up to be, and I haven't really discussed their approach to relievers. They basically seem to subscribe to the most basic analytic view that armchair analytics fans such as my self have absorbed: Closers Are Overrated. But they seem to have taken it further, and treat arms that look elite as easily replaceable. They traded away Pressly. They traded away Rogers. They traded away Graterol. In each case they got something back of value; I saw Rogers as becoming a chronic injury risk and thought he would be a good trade chip (whom they flipped for didn't work out so great, though). But they don't seem to follow up these moves with anything but belief that the Pitching Pipeline™ will spit out another similar arm at will. Other teams don't seem to undervalue good relief arms, and offer value in return, and I wish our FO would stop and think harder about why that is.

We all get the logic, but it's a dead end. Keep going and you'll reach it. The ultimate MVP by this view is to pick the lowest-seeded team that barely made it as a wild card (usually a close race, maybe just one game in the standings), pick an average guy who played full time for them (Gio Urshela, say, had we been so lucky), and boom, he's your league MVP - he provided a couple of wins that a AAAA replacement wouldn't have. Without Gio, or his clone on that team, the team misses the post-season. Actually, he's co-MVP with presumably several players on the same team better than him - lose any one of them and they miss the playoffs - but none of them is more valuable than Gio. Dead heat for MVP. Okay, let's look at what you specifically suggested. Imagine the Yankees calling up Cleveland's FO and says, "hey, we really like Clase. We'll give you Judge for him." Ignoring contract considerations (which MVP voting certainly does), can you imagine the Guardians saying no? Trading away an MVP to get someone even better makes no sense. And New York wouldn't offer that trade anyway. Historically, MVP votes count heavily in the arguments for a player eventually making the Hall of Fame. The MVP is shorthand for future generations to know: "this guy was as good as it got, that year." If MVP were done your way, you'd have a Hall full of players who earned Brownie points with the voters through freak arithmetic where they were on teams that were good, but not too good. For folks who dislike cultural relativism, this is just another example: demonstrable worth taking a back seat to outside factors. Being the best is mainly what the award is all about, plus some sentiment as a tie breaker. To do otherwise gets you lost in a corn maze of faulty conclusions.

As a fan, I can state with some assurance that I'm not to blame.

Kinda nice to come to the box score late in the game and find this kind of pitching gem in progress. Get the RISP numbers a little higher on offense and this could have been a laugher.

The Twins have a decision to make after the end of the World Series. Buy out his 2023 contract for $2.75M, or let the $14M contract vest and thus bank on a comeback season. My guess is the former. I don't see him as a net $11.25M gamble.