ashbury

The Twins just hired an ex-jock, a pitcher, from a liberal arts college in Hartford, who eked out an economics degree. The Pohlad organization will be comfortable with this kindred spirit from the east coast variety of the country club. No threatening Ivy League MBAs or law degrees to shake things up or anything. Or maybe I just described Jed Hoyer. No, Hoyer's degree was in History. Never mind.

I used to be hip like that too. That got old after a few months and I moved on.

I choose to believe this one gets walked back, as needed. Mollie gets promoted to VP of Strategic Acumen and Advanced Baseball Thinkology, and the GM's choice is thereupon ushered into the dugout.

Old Air Force sergeants never die, they just go to a higher plane.

Click on image for solution to puzzle.

ISWYDT http://www.reactiongifs.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/obama_iswydt.gif

It's the manager's job to pick a role each pitcher can succeed in. It's the pitching coach's job to help the pitcher succeed in the role he's been assigned. Even if the role isn't quite ideal, adjustments might be possible. It's the pitcher's job to succeed, obviously. I'm wondering if a different coach could have helped Tonkin adjust better, though. I'm willing to roll the dice with a different coach next season, as I've said probably too frequently by now.

He's not a number. He is a free man. "Who is number 1?"

Came here to do that, discovered it to be unnecessary.

We're currently sitting at 55 wins, not 70. I don't think it's smart business for a PBO/GM to flirt with consecutive 100 loss seasons, with a downside risk of 110. There seems to be an unstated assumption that once in the neighborhood of 100, it's all the same, or that it's impossible for a team ERA to get worse than the 5.11 we currently have; run enough Pat Deans out there for lack of anything better to try, and you can have ERA 6.00. Being the go-to laugh-getter for Jimmy Kimmel every night is not where you want to be. It takes a long time to re-fill the ballpark even after the team starts winning, once you let that happen. Houston, now an attractive team in a large enough market, still is drawing just above 2M attendance. It may already be too late for the Twins to avoid long term damage like that, but waving the white flag even before Opening Day would be a compounding mistake. I can envision offers where trading ESan makes sense, but it's far less likely we receive one than for Dozier because of the ready replacement at 2B.

Yes, and more the point, we have someone to step in for Dozier if he is traded (Polanco, with Escobar returning to starter's duty at SS). Debatable dropoff, unless you believe Dozier is at a new permanent plateau in performance (in which case Polanco is the trade bait), in return for some appreciable help at a position of need. Who is the equivalent, ready to step in with minimal dropoff, if Santana is traded? That's the crux. A team would need to knock me over with an offer for Santana, and no GM is going to do that.

You can do that to fill four of the spots I named in my so-called plan. I applaud Ryan's ability to do that. It can't be plan A, for the three critical spots on the relief staff. And that's how it's worked out, too many years. We've had Perk, and then, uh, er, ummm... guys.

An ideal pennant winning pitching staff these days needs three guys who can shut down the opposition in innings 7, 8, and 9. You then want a Loogy and a Roogy for tactical purposes - guys who might not be effective against all batters but have their uses, including mopup. And you need a couple of guys who can go for longer stints and hopefully keep it close - if your starter makes it through the fifth, you can use one in the sixth if need be. With 5 starters, that's a 12-man staff; sometimes teams dabble with 13 but I'm not going to plan on that. Based on that, I'd assign roles as follows Closer - (we don't have anybody) 8th - Chargois 7th - Duffey ROOGY - (I don't know) LOOGY - O'Rourke Long man 1 - Rogers (could be the LOOGY too, but he is a recent starter) Long man 2 - (I don't know) And that's it. The cupboard is pretty bare for the new PBO/GM, unless or until the new wave of prospects is ready. Notes: I have May in my starting rotation so that's why he's not here.I'm not counting one iota on Perk and Hughesie.Kintzler is just a guy - his ERA is good but his peripherals aren't, and for a righty he isn't that good against righties, so I have trouble saying what his role is on a good team.Pressly has the same issue against righties, and he's just basically so hittable, that at this point in his career he's becoming roster filler.Tonkin is a disappointment.I can't see a role for Milone either as a starter or a reliever.Boshers, Darnell, Dean, Albers, all are filler, or less.I'm assuming Light has minor league options, and I'd stash him at AAA. (Edit: ditto Wimmers, Melotakis - and Landa and Rosario somewhere below.) None of the guys currently not yet on the 40-man strike me as ready to kick the door in for entry, quite yet. Again, I'm talking about a staff for a good team. The 2017 Twins won't be good, so I don't basically care if any of these current pitchers I'm dismissing are retained for another year - and relievers are always capable of putting together a surprise season and looking good, so let them try, and we can reevaluate a year from now. I'm frustrated, borderline depressed on this topic, and like I said, the new PBO/GM really have their work cut out for them to make anything out of this shambles. Nobody but Chargois and maybe Duffey would be worth anything in trade, and for good reason, so it's not like a wheeler-dealer could make something happen from the existing pieces. Maaaaybe, a different pitching coach can make something out of a couple of the pieces I am dismissing, such as Pressly or Tonkin. If this is a classroom, I get an Incomplete. I realize this isn't a plan. It's a surrender.

My assumption when the trade was made was that we would benefit by non-tendering him in the off-season. Combine that money with other funds from other releases and non-signings. Now, I'm less sure. Where can the money be better deployed this off-season?

I think the main constraint is that when you send a guy down, you can't recall him for a certain number of days. Ten, maybe? Not every pitcher has minor league options remaining, either. If you factor in injuries as well, it means you need a very lengthy list of MLB ready pitchers on the 40-man, and the additional padding will be even more Albers types than we have now. (If you had someone better, you wouldn't be in this pickle in the first place.) The GM will find the roster-juggling a very great challenge, and you'll have even more innings in which pitchers are overmatched by major league hitters. I am all for outside the box thinking. Good luck to the GM who attempts this one, though.

Or, he's a damaged player, who bounced back to have his career year in 2015 and will not reach even that level of averageness again. I'm no doctor, but his good-Gibby bad-Gibby track record suggests to me he has lingering intermittent finger numbness, post-TJ surgery, even after all this time (or more acute again through further wear and tear). Or pick a different theory, but the good-Gibby bad-Gibby pattern has me no longer ready to count on him whatsoever, and I doubt you could get anything decent in trade so I really don't know what to do with him except keep him in the mix as a fifth starter candidate. The entire 2017 plan for the rotation laid out in this thread frustrates the heck out of me, with the state that our pitching options have come down to. May and Santana, and pray for mañana. I really hope the new PBO and GM have some magic up their sleeves that will make the present discussion so moot that we'll all be laughing six months from now. Yep. I'm down to hoping for magic.

Bad game. I may need to depart soon to take part in something more pleasant, such as filing down my own teeth.

Sorry if I was being a bit of an ash about it.

And please don't hector Santiago while he's pitching, while we're at it.

Even with his 2B-only time at Rochester this season, Polanco has far more innings at SS than 2B in his minor league career.

Turns out, the secret was price. I had been paying too little, and mistakenly thought it was just an aversion.

What, your life?

I recently discovered, to my pleasant surprise, that I finally can again.

The word is Bidet, spelled just like it's pronounced, and I have no idea why you think Brian would want one.

My three grown children totally surprised me on my birthday a couple years ago, by coming up from their individual distant starting points, and we "ran into them" at a certain turn on a familiar trail at Tahoe, which my usually-non-hiking wife (she's more of a distance bicyclist) talked me into going with her as a birthday outing for the two of us. I totally did not catch on what was going on, even as one of the kids got delayed and my wife started stalling about when we would leave the house.