nathanaakre

Nailed it.

Derek Jeter

http://www.baseballamerica.com/international/power-hitting-yasmani-tomas-leaves-cuba/ Anybody know anything about this guy? I'm guessing it's highly unlikely, but it's always fun to dream of a guy like this defying the odds and signing with the Twins. Might be a good way to use some of that extra money as the young prospects start making their way to the bigs in the next few years?

Sooooooo, which "ace" are you thinking is available? And which prospects are you wanting to give up to get said ace? Known commodity "aces" are still susceptible to injury/decline, so I'd be hesitant to just start throwing away top prospects (Buxton/Sano/Rosario/etc) and thinking that acquiring an ace will win us the World Series.

Ahh, you lost me there...

Love the move - if you can hang around toward the All-Star Break, it probably means Morales is making an impact. If the Twins struggle to get back to .500 or better in the next month or so, he's a veteran that many teams would like to have for a playoff run and we can then turn it into some kind of prospect. I'd say it was a win-win signing for the Twins!

I've always been a baseball fan, but ESPN's (and other outlets really) oversaturation of the NFL and NBA have actually turned me into an NHL fan - despite my novice level knowledge of the sport.

Haven't seen it in a while either, but we get ESPN at work and it seems like no matter what time of day you turn that channel on, it's just retired players bantering about issues. They don't show actual game footage anymore, and everything's mostly centered on the NFL anyway - even in June.

Does anyone know when Hicks STARTED switch hitting? He's getting destroyed for dropping the left side after working at switch hitting "since he was a young child". But, I feel like he didn't even start switch hitting until like high school? Can anyone verify this?

Also, your assessment on the split cards from different teams is spot on. How are you supposed to sort those when the two players are either on different teams, play different positions, etc? Dumb.

We need more chucklehead rants like that. Less chuckleheads, and more chucklehead rants!

Through 7 games last year, Mauer had 7 K's, was hitting .267, and had 0 RBI. I think he'll be ok! Otherwise I'm with you, these guys have given me a little hope of competitiveness still this year so far.

Great stuff Jim! Thank you for your level headedness. I'm actually very interested to see how our mix of young guys and rebounding (hopefully) vets do when real games start.

I'm relatively new to Twins Daily, so maybe this has been discussed in depth previously; but I have two topics I've wondered about this spring. 1. Has there ever been talk about Mauer moving to 3B rather than 1B to better use his athleticism? Plouffe hasn't taken advantage of the chances he's had it seems, and I know Sano is coming up but with his TJ he could easily move over to 1B right? It just seems if Mauer was going to play a new position, 3B seemed like a good fit for his abilities. 2. Obviously there's contract stuff involved, but why was it just assumed that Hughes, Pelfrey, Correia, and Nolasco automatically got 4 spots in the rotation? In my mind Gibson and Deduno are both deserving members of the rotation over at least one of those other 4.

Not saying he's going to be representing the American League at Target Field in July, but give the guy a chance in real games. He's hardly played in two years. I hope the same people that blew off Hicks' hot spring last year as "only spring training" (you were right by the way) aren't the same people destroying Kubel and Bartlett for their springs this year. Maybe they won't come around, but they were both very good hitters before - let's see if they can do it again!