ashbury

He's at .370 after Wednesday night. At this rate, if you wait a couple more weeks before taking him off, he'll be batting 1.162.

My guy Mastroianni is hitting .304 at AAA, after a slow start in AA New Britain. That ought to be enough to get him off the not-hot list.

Regarding the discussion of whom to pick with the #2 choice in the upcoming draft, there is also the group of supplemental picks the Twins will get. Even if the team believes pitching is their sorest need, it's one reasonable strategy to pick a stud position player at #2 and then load up with pitching prospects a little further down in the draft, if you think pitchers are inherently riskier to develop. However, those supplemental draft picks aren't quite the slam-dunk that some people were thinking when the question was whether to re-sign free agents after last season. Here is a lightly-edited excerpt from a posting I made to alt.sports.baseball.mn-twins last December. I'd be interested in people's reactions: ...Supplemental draft picks are of varying value. I prowled around baseball-reference.com's record of drafts, going back far enough to evaluate full careers, and if you look at the second round of the 1994 June draft, i.e. picks 35-63 (about equivalent to current supplemental rounds), the only players who made any significant major league contribution were Troy Glaus and Matt LeCroy. That was admittedly a weak year (1995 had several luminaries like Carlos Beltran and Sean Casey), but LeCroy as the second best player out of all 29 picks after the real first round??? Pretty much the definition of a crapshoot unless your team is awarded all the picks, not just two or three. BTW, I saw a suggestion, probably tongue-in-cheek, that the Twins should sign Willingham and the A's sign Cuddyer, at the same price. Then each team collects the draft pick(s), and trades the two players back for each other.

Regarding the discussion of whom to pick with the #2 choice in the upcoming draft, there is also the group of supplemental picks the Twins will get. Even if the team believes pitching is their sorest need, it's one reasonable strategy to pick a stud position player at #2 and then load up with pitching prospects a little further down in the draft, if you think pitchers are inherently riskier to develop. However, those supplemental draft picks aren't quite the slam-dunk that some people were thinking when the question was whether to re-sign free agents after last season. Here is a lightly-edited excerpt from a posting I made to alt.sports.baseball.mn-twins last December. I'd be interested in people's reactions: ...Supplemental draft picks are of varying value. I prowled around baseball-reference.com's record of drafts, going back far enough to evaluate full careers, and if you look at the second round of the 1994 June draft, i.e. picks 35-63 (about equivalent to current supplemental rounds), the only players who made any significant major league contribution were Troy Glaus and Matt LeCroy. That was admittedly a weak year (1995 had several luminaries like Carlos Beltran and Sean Casey), but LeCroy as the second best player out of all 29 picks after the real first round??? Pretty much the definition of a crapshoot unless your team is awarded all the picks, not just two or three. BTW, I saw a suggestion, probably tongue-in-cheek, that the Twins should sign Willingham and the A's sign Cuddyer, at the same price. Then each team collects the draft pick(s), and trades the two players back for each other.

> Sometimes a different coaching staff has success with a guy with a strong head. I just wish I could come up with a nice list of pitchers where the reverse has worked in the Twins favor. Maaaaaybe Pavano counts? Santana as a Rule 5 draftee, which somewhat changes the subject. Don't know of too many others, off the top of my head.

For now, Liriano can mop up for Jeff Gray, as far as I'm concerned. After 10 days, re-evaluate.

On Sunday morning in Tampa, tell Liriano that he’s going to throw 7 innings. He can do it in 90 pitches or 150, but he’s not coming out of there until he gets at least 21 outs. One caveat to this. You can't bluff, and you have to have a Plan B just in case. If you are at the point of putting him into the bullpen with one more failure, then this strategem is as good a shot as any. If he has to come out after 4.1 innings anyway, then he's banished to the bullpen; if that wouldn't be your move, then you can't try this ultimatum. Since I'm ready to put him in the pen, I like your idea.

These all sounded to me, at the time, like rumors planted by the Twins, trying to goose the market a bit and get the most for Santana that they could. Note the Think Factory item says the source was the Twins and the Dodgers were "considering". It's very unclear that the Dodgers were actually interested even in Kemp (plus lower-grade prospects) alone for Santana, much less throwing in Kershaw. If Kemp had actually been dangled, Smith would have jumped on the deal. Ditto for the speculative offers from the Red Sox and Yankees - they were all trial balloons, no concrete offer was ever on the table from these other teams. Just my opinion, of course.