mlhouse

I am a resident of Ft Myers and oppose such ridiculous spending on a SPRING TRAINING AND MINOR LEAGUE BASEBALL FACILITY. I love baseball, I am going to a Miracle game on Tuesday, but this is just an example of how the concept of professional sports has put our economic prioriies completely out of reality. IT IS A SPRING TRAING AND MINOR LEAGUE BASEBALL FACILITY. IF the improvements are so important and necessary, the users of the facility can make the improvement by themselves and then pass these costs back to their customers just like every other business. I tell you what, the new Boston Red Sox facility is nice, but not that much nicer than Hammonds Field, and the cost to get in is exorbitant. And, in the end, for all that money, you get to watch scrubs play about 4 innings of the game. That is what Spring Training really is and frankly, I can't see how the Twins and Red Sox get away with charging so much for the tickets. But, in the end, Jet Blue stadium is only used for spring training and then sits empty for te rest of the year.

Your rankings are incredibly optimistic. Of the players on the bottom half of your ratings, the odds of any of them reaching the majors in any capacity is limited at best. TO even have a 40 ranking is "Extreme".

A #2 pitcher gets us to a team taht is worth following. Simple, Done, End of Argument. Pushing the "upside" 6 years down the road does not. By the time the postion players are ready, then a pitcher like Gausman will have been pitching in the majors for a couple of years and, hopefully, developed.

14th in the MLB....wow. How many wins does that translate to? As far as pitchers with "tons of upside", that is really a crock. Gausman, Appel, and Zimmer amy not project to being #1 starters (whatever that term means) but they clearly project into #2 starters (whatever that means) that have all the pitches and could be major inning eaters in the MLB. Looking at our rotation we don't have a #1, or a #2, or a #3, or a 4 or 5 either. Gausman, who would have been my pick, could easily be in the starting rotation for this team the day he signs. If we could have concentrated on college arms we could have potentially got 2 starters to the big leagues within 2 years and let them develop at that level. Then if we could have got lucky with another pitcher currently int he minors like Hendricks, Gibson, Wimmer, Hermesen we could have 60% of a rotation up and getting experience. THere is nothing the matter with acknowledging we are a terrible team that is in a rebuilding mode. Pretending otherwise just adds to the misery as a bad team creates bad results with little to show for the losses. Do what the Twins did in 1982 and get the younger talent up, take your lumps, and let them develop at the major league level.

Saying the criticism of the Buxton pick is "short sighted" is actually short sighted. HEre are the facts. The Twins are a rebuilding team and most of their minor league talent is concentrated in the low minors. Based on the Twins methodology (not mine), Sano and Rosario are still several years away from the big leagues. Drafting Buxton essentially means that all of the talent is 4-5 years away from just BEGINNING their major league careers. THe problem is that we have very little talent in the upper end of the organization and this pick dooms the major league team to many years of terrible play. Taking the "upside is great", but taking the best college starting pitcher means that within 2 years we could have a guy getting innings at the major league level. The "Twins Way" always was an obsolete notion and despite its press clippings was not the most successful way of running an organization. We had decent seasons and made some playoffs, but if we would not have been in the weakest division in MLB, we would have missed the playoffs almost every year, and much of the success we had was from players who really did not play the "Twins Way". We are now in a rebuilding mode, and the step by step process of moving prospects really needs to be discarded. The coaching staff needs to be replaced by a manager that can work and develop young talent, because this staff clearly does not have the ability to do so. As long as they pretend that we are "contenders", the longer this process is going to drag on.

So, if we sign him (and I assume we do), it is GCL. Then extended Spring Training and Elizabethton. Then Beloit, and maybe a promotion to Ft Myers. Then Ft Myers. Then New Britain. At a minimum this guy will help us in four fn years. WHO IS GOING TO PITCH FOR THIS TEAM IN THOSE FOUR YEARS? Nick Blackburn, Cole DeVries, Scott Diamond, PJ Walter, and Liam Hendricks, with absolutely zero quality bullpen pitchers? Compounding the problem is then selecting another HS player with the first comp selection. THeir one college arm is coming off an injury, Luke Bard, projects as a setup man in the majors. We do need quality relief pitchers, but not getting an established college starting pitcher is just ridiculous. Sorry, this is extremely poor management and the team is being run "The Twins Way" even though that model is past its expiration date.

Correa and Buxton are no sure shots even if they have the highest "upside". But the Twins organization simply cannot wait 6 years for them to develop. THey need pitching help now, and that means a college arm.

1.2 Kevin Gausman RHP LSU 6-4 185 Hard to pass over Correa or Buxton if they are available, but the Twins need pitching in a desperate way. If they draft a college arm they can get him into the rotation within two years and let him finish his development at the major league level. Gausman is now my #1 rated college pitcher, and although he does nto project as a sure #1 starter, he should become a solid #2 guy in the rotation and a solid inning eater. Since the Twins need pitching 1-5, that is a big start. 1.32 (Comp) Brian Johnson LHP Florida 6-3 235 Left hander with above average off speed and curve balls to go along with an average fastball. He has command of his offspeed stuff and should be ready to pitch in the big leagues very quickly. 1.42 (Comp) Mitchell Brown RHP Rochester-Century 6-2 210 College arms are in short supply, so restock the lower minors with Minnesota's best prospect. Brown has a plus curveball and is already big league sized. 2.63 Brenden Kline RHP Virginia 6-3 195 Kline has experience as a starter and a reliever, and has a good fastball, curve and slider. 2.72 Patrick Wisdon 3B St. Mary's 6-2 210 Wisdom has good power potential as a 3B and good approach at the plate if he can put it all together and remain consistent. 3.97 Damien Magnifico RHP Oklahoma 6-2 195 Flame thrower that needs to develop a slider, but could become major league closer if he did.

So, if we passed on Appel or Gausman, where is the pitching going to come from for this team while we wait 6 years for Correa or Buxton to move up the minors? Taking the high upside guy pretty much means we are going to be a 100+ loss team for quite some time. THe problem with Buxton and Correa is that they are not sure things either. So, we really should focus on the college starters all through this draft and hope we can quickly move a couple of them up to the big leagues. Appel may not project to be a #1 starter, but it isn't as if we have a lot of those options on the team or in the minors. Having a solid #2 guy that can pitch 200+ innings and win 15 games would be a major step forward for us.

Fun game, glad I stayed to the end. The Twins pitchers could not throw strikes. Cole did a pretty good job of working out of some jams, but the main problem he has is that he simply does not have an out pitch. Hitters can really work him over at the plate, and seemingly could foul 2-strike pitches off at will, until they worked out a walk. It was good to see him battle though and if he could just improve his 2-strike pitch 5% he could become a bottom of the rotation starter in the MLB. But, that elusie 5% is really hard to find. Further, the Oakland A's had about the most impotent lineup I have ever seen. Their hitters, at least in this game, were worse than every Twins hitter 1-9. Their top hitter was hitting .274, and most of them were .220 hitters or below.

At a minimum, the hitting coach needs to go. HIs approach is obviously not working with young players who come up to the majors, completely struggle, and then go back to AAA worse than they ever were. In the end, the entire coaching staff probably needs to go because they are a veteran's coaching staff, not a developmental/rebuilding staff. THey have not shown any patience with young players and want to pretend that we are competing for a divisional title, rather than giving young players experience in the majors. THe next step, the entire way the organization looks at minor league development needs to change to match the current strategy. Before, when we were at least playoff contenders, we could hang onto our prospects and move them deliberately up the minor league ladder. But, it is now 1982 again. We need to bring the prospects up in a hurry and let them develop at the major league level. THe critics of this idea can talk all they want, but Kent Hrbek, Gary Gaetti, and many others demonstrate that this is a legitimate way of developing players in a rebuilding mode, as long as you have the staff at the major league level that is willing to lose 100 games and work with the young players. RIght now, we have a staff that is NOT willing to work with the young players, and prefer to play 38 year old players, and lose 100 games or more. That is not getting us anywhere. The next step in the process is coming up within 2 weeks, the draft. THe Twins need to look to rapidly rebuild their pitching staff, particularly the starting rotation. THey have 4 picks in the top 100, and I believe each and every one of those four picks should be college starters. Depending on what Houston does, I would take whatever is left between Appel and Gausman, and once he is signed he would be in the Twins rotation. I don't care if his initial ERA is 6.00 as long as he is showing stuff and the major league staff is working with him. Frank Viola's ERAs in his first couple of years were not very impressive either, but I guess he turned out ok. From the other three picks, and considering former college starters Gibson and WImmer in the mix, I would hope we could get 2 guys up into the rotation in the next 2 years. IF we can get one of our previous HS draft selections, like BJ Hermsen or David Bromberg to reach the majors in addition to the college guys, that would be the beginning. We may be passig up "potential" and maybe some of the college arms do not have true #1 starting stuff, but we need starters #1-#5. So getting an adequate/above adequate #2, #3, and #5 starter from the draft would be a huge improvement over what we have. Then, there is always next year. IT is pretty apparent that we will have the #1 pick next year and then maybe a true #1 arm is available. IF that is the case and he can get to the majors quickly, our rebuilding will be that much further along. THere are severel players that need to be evaluated that the Twins seem to be reluctant to. I would make Anthony Slama the closer, at least the co-closer. We are getting no where with Matt Capps, why not find out if this guy can do it in the majors. If he can't, he can't. And, other veteran players need to be traded in a firesale. Doumit, Carrol, and even Justin Mourneau. I would listen to offers for Joe Mauer and the only reason why he would not be the first to be dumped is his ticket sale value in his hometown. I would like to keep Willingham as our veteran player to work around our rookies/youngsters. It is going to be a long year, probably a longer next year, and then we should see some light. BUT, if we continue the road we are on, pretending that we are not a rebuilding team, it will be even longer.

The Twins need to take college arms with their first 3-4 picks and hope that they can get 2 pitchers from that draft group and Gibson/Wimmers in the starting rotation within 2 years. Appel or Gausman should be the top pick and they should just give him a Twins jersey on day one (I am sure the Twins will send him to Beloit or something). The minor league system has decent young positional players at the lower levels. They used a top pick on a HS pitcher and 3B, and Sano, Hicks, Rosario, and a couple of other hitters are still decent prospects. But we need pitching, and pitching quickly. It is bad luck that Appel and Gausman, etc do not project to be #1 starters, but that is the breaks. We can draft one with the first overall pick NEXT year, and fit the other guy as a #2.

The problem with your concept is that you pretended it was a 50-50 coin flip, when the odds were always stacked to the tails side. If you pretend that all of these factors were a coin flip, then it is disappointing that almost all of them have come up tails. But, if you had more realistic odds then you should not be surprised that Pavono continued to decline, Liriano is struggling even more with consistency, Scott Baker continues to have arm problems, and Jason Marquis isn't that good. And, I think that this was also the outlook of the Twins management. It was all a coin flip, and now we have the real results. We should have been looking at this season as a rebuilding year from day 1. Instead, we played the middle road, hoping beyond hope that all of those coin flips would come our way. I am not saying it was catastrophic, but it just delays the overall rebuilding process.

THe Twins need to take either Gausman or Appel at #2. Then at #32 hope a guy like Chris Stratton or Brian Johnson falls to that pick. At #42 maybe Alex Wood or Cory Jones. Three college arms in the top 42 is the way to go. Not one of them, even Gasman or Appel, seems to project as a #1 starter, but that is what the draft has to offer. If Gausman or Appel can get to the majors quickly as a #2 type of guy, and one of the other two becomes similar to Scott Baker, and does so fairly quickly, the Twins can rebuild their pitching staff. IF they get lucky, they get 2 starters from this draft and another starter from Gibson/Wimmers within two years (if I ran the team the #1 guy would be in the starting rotation the day he signs, why not?). I understand the "upside" appeal of Buxton, and that is hard to pass up. But he is a HS player and even if he is rushed will take 3-4 years to get to the majors. We have other similar prospects (Hicks) and they simply need to rebuild the staff right now, not 5 years from now.

I will essentially repeat my other post here. The problem with the Twins organization right now is that they refuse to recognize they are in complete rebuild mode. They wanted to pretend that they could contend, so they signed guys like Jamey Carroll, Jason Marquis, Jeff Gray, and Matt Maloney. The only difference between Anthony Slama and these guys is that they had some major league experience. The top management just seems to be reluctant to give inexperienced and/or unproven players a chance, and even more troubling, they seem to be unwilling to work with players that need some development or refinement. One of my points I have made is that if a player is not ready to contribute to a "divisional championship" team, the coaching staff at the major league level does not seem to have any interest in them. The Twins should have committed themselves to rebuilding from day 1. Joe Benson, Chris Parmalee, Ben Revere, and Brian Dozier should have been in the starting lineup from day 1. It really can't get any worse, and even if you lose, giving a MLB at bat to these guys can pay off in the long run.

Totally disagree. The Twins organization and Twins fans need to realize that sending a player down to AAA or prolonged minor league progress is not the only way to develop a player. Players can and at times should, develop at the major leagues. The problem with the Twins is that right now they do not have that type of organization. They need to FINALLY accept that this is a rebuilding team. I have said it from the beginning of the season: this team is not good enough to even come close to competing and they need to start the rebuilding process NOW. Adding a Jamey Carroll is not the solution to this team's woes, and we have seen the downside of that. That is, instead of letting Brian Dozier start the season from the beginning and even hitting .220, instead we had a 38 year old player signed to a $3.5 million 2 year deal hitting under .220. We should have had Joe Benson, Ben Revere, Chris Parmalee, and several other players playing everyday in the major league lineup. We also need to have a coaching staff designed to develop these players at the major league level. Our current major league coaching staff is too impatient and expects all of the players to be ready to win the division crown again. They simply are not adequate to rebuild this team. In fact, and I have already said it it in this forum as perhaps the first to make the statement, the Twins really need to consider promoting our lower level phenoms like Sano and Rosario up to the majors. So what if they strike out 150 times. The experience will make them that much better, and in the long run the team gains value from the at bats, rather than waste them on the likes of Clete Thomas. The claim that this will "taint" a prospect is just pure BS. Frank Viola was in the major leagues with just 8 AAA games of experience. His rookie year ERA was 5.21 followed by an ERA of 5.49 in his first full season with the Twins. Yet, the Twins sent him out there for 210 innings and eventually he worked out ok. The time is now. If these prospects are worth anything, they should be in the major leagues. If they are not with a major league team that is on pace to lose 100+ games, they are not prospects. All of the TwinsCentric writers "top 40" prospect lists are invalid if they think that each of them should move up the minors one rung at a time with the major league team at the level it is. "Rushing" worked with Greg Gagne, Kent Hrbek, Frank Viola, Gary Gaetti, Tom Brunansky, Randy Bush, and Kirby Pucket. The proof is in the World Series championships.

If you remove the obvious outliers like Clemons and Mussina, you can see the correlation between draft positon and value. Another factor you might want to control for is "signing bonus" because historically in the MLB draft some of the higher end prospects were pushed down the draft list because of signability. For the Twins, it is obvious at #2 that they should take the best college pitcher.

The Twins should move Mauer to the leadoff spot. Span should hit 2nd. By moving Mauer to the leadoff spot, you are putting the player with the highest OBP at the top of the order. Mauer has enough pop in his bat that he can drive mistake pitches and I think he could hit 6-10 leadoff home runs every year because pitchers like to get that first pitch over the plate. As the leadoff hitter Mauer is going to get the most plate appearances in the lineup, and because he is the best at working the pitchers in the lineup, that will add several pitches per game to the opponents starting pitcher. Generating the pitch count is the most effective way of getting to high end pitchers. The traditional lineup that the Twins use just does not make any sense. The concept that the #2 hitter in the lineup should be some sort of contact hitter is even more ridiculous than the concept that the lead off hitter should be your fastest player. Our #2 hitter should be the the batter with the 3rd best OBP on the team. The concept is to get the most players on base for the power hitters in the lineup you can, not wasting outs with hit and runs. The 3rd hitter should not be the "best" hitter on the team. That should be the leadoff hitter and the cleanup hitter. So, the healthy Justin Morneau should bat 4th. In the 3rd slot, the best kind of hitters are guys that have lower batting averages but above average OBP and power. They may strike out a lot. But, batting in front of the best hitter on the team they should get better pitches to hit. I would bat Parmelee as the #3 hitter or Doumit depending on the pitcher. Morneau would bat 4th, and Willingham 5th. Morneau has a very high OBP, and will often lead off an inning. Getting him on base to start an inning should lead to more runs. Parmelee or Doumit would hit 6th. Valencia 7th. The worst hitter on the team should hit 8th, rather than 9th because you want to get a better OBP guy to hit before the top of the lineup. So, Casillas would hit 8th and Carrol 9th.

Waiver wire? I guess it could lead to marginal improvement but that clearly is not the answer. Here is the problem. We simply do not have a very good team and we need to rebuild. The run from 2002-2009 is over. The Twins need to get Joe Benson and Brian Dozier up, along with Chris Parmalee and Ben Revere. I would not be adverse to seeing them bring up Sano and Rosario either. The concept of moving these prospects up station by station essentially ends in a full scale rebuild. Players can be developed at the major league level without extended, one level per year minor league experience. Two World Series proves that. AS I have stated before, in 1984 Kent Hrbek was the American League MVP runner up. Using the one step at a time approach that the current Twins management use with high school signees, he would have been in AA ball instead. Greg Gagne, Kirby Puckett, Tim Laudner, Gary Gaetti, Frank Viola, Randy Bush, and Kent Hrbek all essentially jumped from A or AA ball into the big leagues after one or two years in the minors. IT took time to win championships, but they were reasonably competitive relatively quickly. Now is the time to follow a new approach and rebuild the team.