ashbury

I'll take that bet! What are the stakes?

Maybe we'll find out he's the great great grandnephew of the Irish Cream guy R.A. Bailey, and we'll be writing Drinking Games in his honor by midseason.

I didn't have a deep meaning to my comment - no "jinx" or "woe is us" or anything like that. Just, "anything can happen" was an odd argument to make, when addressing fans of this particular team. I do believe a lot of random stuff happens during the post-season - and I wouldn't like a sport whose post-season was simply a coronation march. But, you have to have a team that is above a certain threshold of talent in all phases of the game, to take advantage of those dice-shakes. Our strong offense got a little snake-bit this past post-season, and with a pitching staff like ours there wasn't much scope to withstand a body blow like that; but if the anomalies had gone against the Yankees instead, they still had enough in reserve that they might well have won the series against the Twins. Despite a 101-win regular season, the Twins came into the post-season as a decided underdog, and the smart money proved right. "Anything can happen" only if you've reached at least approximate parity.

I missed that Hill had surgery after the season. I saw that he had come back and pitched in September, and thought he'd be good to go. That leaves Opening Day still a mess for the rotation, even adding Bailey as a stopgap. I see the point for signing Bailey, I really don't for Hill.

I like the analytical approach baseballtradevalues.com brings, as they are looking at an aspect that mirrors how a front office must think when considering a trade. However, exclusive focus on "excess value" doesn't tell the whole story. The Red Sox are not in fire-sale mode and are not simply disposing of players - they intend to compete in 2020. David Price remains an above-average pitcher, based on recent performance, especially if you believe in FIP moreso than ERA. Injury risk, yes. But he can contribute, to them or to another team if he's traded. The Sox want to get under the luxury tax but that doesn't mean they will give him away, as there would be multiple teams with a bit of payroll space who would take him. Is he worth the committed salary? No. But they have him, and other teams don't. That's worth something to another contender, whereas if his established performance had declined to below-average, it wouldn't be. Now, a really creative thing would have been the day after the World Series, for a bottom feeder team to have done the Red Sox a favor by taking on Dustin Pedroia's and Rusney Castillo's dead money, maybe Eovaldi's, perhaps even Price's contract, in exchange for... I don't know, every significant prospect in the Red Sox farm system? About $76M in salary for 2020, and less than that in future years. The Orioles or Marlins get something to market to ticket buyers, plus they load up with prospects. The Red Sox get a do-over on reloading for another pennant run via free-agency or other uses for payroll room. Too late for that now. (And when I glanced at the Red Sox farm system a while back, they really don't have that many prospects worth coveting. Perhaps not enough to swing that trade, anyway.) Back in November, if they had disposed of Price and his contract, they could have gone after a similarly salaried FA they happened to like better, to replace him. But now? I don't believe they are looking to simply remove his expected contributions from their roster, unless they have a replacement in mind. Payroll is a constraining factor, even for the BoSox. But so is available talent.

When's the last time "anything" happened, come playoff time? For the Twins I mean?

For a while I thought Levine must be using at least one of the words "window", "opened", or "striking" differently than I do. Now, I think the word might be "is".

The Roaring Twenties are back in another week. This Twenties will last 10 years, just like the last one did. The arrival of the Third Decade Of The Twenty-First Century in 2021 will be less noteworthy to most people.

Zach Moen will flip the new pitcher for cash to a team with World Series aspirations and pocket the windfall.

Option 1, Starter, developing in Rochester. He turned 21 last August, and has already gotten a taste of the majors, so no one's dragging their feet on his promotions. He showed flashes in 9 innings (plus an impressive post-season inning) but didn't dominate at the major league level, which is totally understandable. He has only 5 innings at AAA. So let him hone his craft some more, there, and when he's not just knocking on the door but kicking it in, bring him up. With the innings he's had in the majors, maybe the advice he gets, on what works in AAA but won't in the majors, will have better context for him - that seems to be conventional wisdom for why to give a young guy a cup of coffee. Worst motivation would be to let Pineda's unavailability on Opening Day drive the decision. That's a panic move.

Oh little town of Rochester Please send a starting ace! Merry Christmas to all!

I want a shutdown bullpen. But when you look at the costs, it's not a relative bargain. An elite reliever will command $10M+ a season if on the open market. Get three of them, and you're paying Ace money, to cover around the same number of innings. Relievers below the elite level cost less, but then in the post-season you're taking your chances that they will be exposed. It's always best to acquire relievers without resorting to the open market, of course. That's true of every spot on the roster. But an apples-to-apples comparison of building a strong bullpen versus finding an Ace starter seems close.

"Passionate fans", to summarize, though Joe phrases it differently. I wonder what FalVine's counter-argument to that is; they surely aren't unprepared.

That's a 20-minute video. Can you point out where the remark is?

To roll out the old cliche, I don't care about left handed pitchers. I care about pitchers who can get left handed batters out. Clippard has the track record.

He was with the Rangers organization in 2017 only, so that would make him 32 in that photo. Blessed/cursed with a baby face, even with the facial hair. The good news is that when he's in his 80s, he might still be able to run with the 65-year old crowd. Hope he's got the eye for what makes players successful.

I'm with the voices who are saying "other". I can't expect steps forward from pitchers in their 30s (Pineda is there, Odorizzi turns 30 one day after Opening Day) - maintaining their established peaks would be enough to ask because they are pretty good. The Twins have assembled a cohort of pitchers who will be in their age-24 seasons (Alcala, Thorpe, Littell, Smeltzer), age-25 (Dobnak, Romero), or age-26 (Poppen, Stashak, Berrios). The other 10 on our 40-man are either older than this or else so young (and/or unaccomplished) that 2020 will be a year of maintaining/tweaking or else developing at AAA, respectively. Our front office seems to be banking on these nine to take another major step forward. I'm not nearly as optimistic, so I find it hard to pinpoint one of these, thus I'm hoping for "two or three of them". Among the hitters, I am also with the ones hoping for "health" as the means for stepping forward. A full season of healthy production from Buxton, Sano, and Rosaio (the latter of whom I believe was nursing a nagging injury or two) would make up for possible regression from some others who may have enjoyed their career year in 2019.

This is for me a completely unacceptable starting point for analysis (by the front office, no fault of this article's author). Missing from any discussion I've seen so far in this thread is "what about injuries". A lingering pulled hammy for Berrios or Odorizzi makes this already-shaky scenario a full-fledged disaster. If it's how the off-season plays out, and I was in charge of anything, I'd be telling my FO that their jobs are on the line if 2020 results in anything less than the post-season.* I can accept not making the post-season, but not if Opening Day has just two established starting pitchers on the active roster, and the rest of our innings are going to be covered by hopes and wishful thinking, plus one more established starter making his grand entrance later on. Failure to win due to insufficient resources from the start, to cover a grueling season, is not a valid excuse. If I counted correctly there are 19 pitchers on the 40-man (18 position players), and way too many of those bodies are not to be counted on to contribute in 2020. We were barely able to scrape together a representative 25-man roster, for the post-season series against the Yankees, and this has not really been corrected yet. The off-season is not over. Our head honchos have two months to get this straightened out. I hope they do. * Of course, they just got their contract extended, but I'm not in charge.

If I still wanted to submit to annual performance reviews, I probably wouldn't have retired.

Ok, but to be actually helpful ... b-r.com shows his career rate at 30%, and for the past several years he's been close to that value, except that this past season he threw out 11 of 21 attempts for 52%. That's your Small Sample Size for ya. NL average in 2019 was 26%, so he seems at least average in this regard. As always, pitchers have a lot to say about whether a catcher can throw anybody out.

Yes.

Don't you think Penn State fans are saying something similar, from their perspective? I took a look at a site called Lions24/7 - here's a thread the day after that game: https://247sports.com/college/penn-state/board/18/Contents/report-card-penn-stateminnesota-138249612/ "I'm tough on some of these, but I'll bet the players and coaches are going to be even tougher on themselves when they go over things tomorrow." "We came out flat and paid for it. Minny played like it was their super bowl" "Look at our talent vs their talent. Should we have lost? Horrible coaching as usual." Same thing as we're saying about Iowa, pretty much. Every team has their coulda/woulda/shouldas.

Not really. They still pay the $100M he's worth to them. They just add a $25M Stupidity Tax for not having developed their own Wheeler themselves. Free Agency is all about paying the Stupidity Tax.