DaveW

Feel free to PM me and I will give you access to my account. Normally I would feel bad about "stealing" in cases like this, but I don't watch many of these dumpster fire games anyways these days, and IMO the Twins owe us all.

Much like the on field product/staff, the marketing/business side of the business clearly are behind the times as well and don't come up with any real good ideas to benefit the fan base as a whole (DSP I'm looking at you) I get putting in a bar to create a "gathering space" but why on earth did they need to open TWO huge new bars in Target Field this year anyways? (The one in CF, and the one in LF). Were their not enough bars already? Opening one, I can sort of understand, especially if the operator is paying big bucks, but two is just overkill as that space could be made significantly more family friendly. Put in a fun picnic area for families to hang out and enjoy the game (with plenty of overprice vendors nearby to sell $8 hot dogs and the like) Even in NYC, the money hungry capital of the world you don't see that many ridiculous bars, the Mets for instance realized that one major "bar" area was enough, and added in a bunch of things for your families and everything else. This is all also coming from the "prime" target of these new bars anyways: early 30's, no kids, love beer, disposable income. If I think it's a bad idea and overkill, I can't imagine what folks with actually families and non social drinkers think. Sure, you may get a few younger (20-35) people to come out for a game or two a year, but it's not like they are gonna pay the price of a ticket, and $10-$14 a beer to make the bar in Target field their "goto" hangout. They can goto any of the nearby 100+ bars with patios etc that have better prices, better product and a better atmosphere.

Only blaming MLB for the blackout rules is letting off the greedy/terrible networks and cable/satellite providers off the hook. They are the backwards thinking greedy idiots who are making MLB put in those blackout zones. The good news is, this will all work itself out soon enough.

Sounds like the best thing the Twins have done all year for their fans, let them spend some time with friends and family instead of wasting 3 hours watching the same old dumpster fire.

The Twins will sweep this series, because that is how baseball works.

Good article Nick. This team is in trouble and won't compete until 2018 at the earliest now. The silver lining is that it will free up about 900 hours of my spring/summer time the rest of this year and all of next year.

That and wood bats break a lot/cost a lot. While this isn't a concern for D-1 or even a lot of D-2 and larger high schools, it would be a concern for a huge chunk of high schools who don't have sponsors or money to pay the $60-$120 every time a bat breaks. I played (poorly) in a wood bat league up until 2 years ago, and there is nothing more annoying then breaking a bat and flushing another $60+ down the drain. Now times that by 15+ guys on a high school team over the course of a full season (plus practices and scrimmages) and it would add up very quickly.

I don't think that's how it works...I'm pretty sure the Twins have 7 days to place him on waivers, they can try to trade him in the meantime.

FYI: Arcia doesn't need to become Ortiz 2.0 to render this a boneheaded decision. If he out produces Danny Santana or Pat Dean from here on forward it cements it as a boneheaded decision.

Ugh, this is a bummer, I really hope this isn't the last we have seen of Perkins.

Honestly, as long as they don't give Plouffe, Suzuki, or Jepsen an extension I will consider that a massive win. That's how low expectations have fallen, I will be freaking excited if they actually are competent enough to get rid of overpaid mediocre players (where we have better, younger and cheaper guys behind them) at the end of the year. If they can manage to trade one, two or all three for some PTBNL I might throw a parade in their honor.

"Was it the right decision by the Twins? Probably." Come on Seth, you can't honestly believe this. If the Twins were in the playoff hunt, then maybe the argument can be made to get rid of Arcia, but a team that is on pace for 120+ losses, there is absolutely zero reason to cut loose a young player with 30 HR, .800+ OPS upside. Arcia wasn't tearing it up this year, but he had a higher OPS thus far then the following players: Escobar Plouffe Kepler Santana Buxton Every catcher the Twins have had play for them this year. I don't get the fascination with Santana at this point, Arica has 30 HR upside as mentioned above, Santana's upside is clearly that of a utility player at best. He doesn't particularly field well enough up the middle to be above average off the bench as a util INF, and he doesn't hit nearly enough to be valuable in the OF. Or of course they could have just trade Plouffe in the first place instead of forcing Sano into a crowded OF, and getting him more or less potentially injured as well by playing him in RF. Now we are stuck with Santana, a guy who very likely wouldn't be on another single major league roster, and Plouffe, a guy that under no scenario should be on this ball club in 2017. Maybe he regains a tiny bit of value, but he isn't going to bring back anything of real note at this stage certainly. What will make this 100x more frustrating is that we just know that they will send down Kepler in a couple weeks if he has a 5-6 game bad stretch anyways. Ugh. Terry Ryan and the entire front office needs to go NOW. 2016 is toast and now they are making things even worse for 2017....2018....etc. Good luck to Arcia, I hope for his sake he becomes a poor mans Ortiz somewhere and can hit 25-30HR a year for the next several years. I wouldn't be shocked if a playoff caliber team like the Cardinals or the Mariners (would make a solid platoon partner with F Guit) claim him ASAP.

I read the article, (see my edited response) and had seen it before. Of course the Angels and Yankees are gonna say he was #2 on the board several years after the fact, ditto with all the teams that "barely" passed on him. Every team wants to act like they and their scouts knew he was a special player....in hindsight.

Not highly regarded enough to get drafted until the end of the first round.... All that other talk is just random hindsight and a lot is full of half truths. The Angels having trout as the #2 player in the draft is highly, highly suspicious....

Trout was never that highly regarded as a draft prospect, there is a reason why he went so low in the first round, of course the Angels caught lightning in a bottle and the rest is history. Gibson was a potential top 5 pick before his injury in college IIRC, he was absolutely the right pick at the time for the Twins and nearly everyone (back on the BYTO boards) was absolutely pumped with the pick.

I'm pretty sure every single team in the draft would easily say "yeah we should have taken trout" just like every team in football says "hey we should have taken that Tom Brady kid with one of our 5-6 picks in our draft" as well. In fact, I think most people were happy with most of the Twins picks at the time, the two players had issues with were Revere (picked about 30 slots too high, but hey, he has actually had a solid MLB career) and Whimmers (not enough "upside") This sort of hindsight/redraft stuff can be done for literally every team in baseball/sports in general, and only serves to paint a unfair negative light on a teams drafting prowess.

Instantly becomes our best catching prospect by a long ways.

I think he was referring to Nunez and his production in 2016 thus far.

He had a .500 slugging percentage and 20 HR in 400 AB his last season in Minnesota. He wasn't exactly "flying below the radar" IMO. The power and talent were there.

This 100% I hated it at the time, and hate it even more now. Ortiz was my favorite player on those teams, super fun, down to earth guy and he could hit the ball a mile. My Ortiz signed jersey is still a favorite of mine.

It's hard to give the braintrust the benefit of the doubt after the results thus far to be honest. I still like the move though.

I agree 100% My nearest ballpark is Citi Field, and they have done a much better job overall then the Twins, not only in the adult/food/drink game, but in the kid/family friendly "game" as well.

I think bringing him up is a great move. You should reward guys for playing well in AAA, especially guys who are the future of this team. Hopefully this third time is a charm for Byron and he sticks in the majors for the next 15+ years

DSP never should have been kept around after the Cordova/Cancer Kid/Twins stadium TV commercial that he green lit. That is truly disgusting and an embarrassment to Twins fans everywhere. Suffice to say, I think he is long overdue to leave. I know his job isn't "baseball operations", but I'm not impressed with his work as a whole anyways. It seems like every new "Target Field" initiative, is just another lazy white labeled bar. The fan "experience" at TF is great if you have disposable money and like to drink (which is fine by me personally) but I don't think it's a great place to take a family of 5. Other than TC and the Target Mascot race I don't see a whole lot of reasons to take a kid under the age of 6. They could certainly do a much better job in this regard, instead of building another 2-3 bars each year.