DaveW

Awesome to see Hicks, Arcia and Sano all have nice days as they are currently are best three (healthy) prospects in the system. Anything from Boer at this point is just a bonus.

How to tell if you are a true baseball fan: Do you: A. Boo Mauer B. Don't Boo Mauer. If you answered B congrats, you are a real baseball fan. If you answered A, then I plead that you consider never breeding.

The funny thing is, if the Twins trade Span for a young ML ready pitcher(#2 upside) it could actually make the 2012 team quite a bit better (along with the 2013, 2014 etc)

Off Topic: I still think they should move Mauer up in the lineup to give him more at bats. Span Mauer Willingham Plouffe Morneau Doumit Revere That is a pretty damn solid 1-7.

All the final vote people this year for the AL are pitchers. Darvish is on the list, which means he will win by a landslide.

He didn't make it, and isn't on the final vote. The OF/DH that made it over him were Butler, Trout, Trumbo and Adam Jones. Hard to really argue with any of those to be honest. And I think Jones might have been the O's sole rep?

So I point out statistical evidence stating that Mauer is one of the best 5 players in the history of the franchise, and that if he stays healthy he will be a hall of famer, you rebuttal with calling me Sid Hartman and claim since Mauer is not a home run hitter he is not a good ball player and I am the simpleton? Neat.

Did you really bring RBI's and Runs into this conversation? "Runs scored" is not valued by stat hounds because it is mostly dependent on what your teammates do, just like RBIs. you might be thinking of weighted runs created (or wRC+) in that case Mauer in fact leads Puckett with a 133 to 122 score.

I'd rather trade Santana for Kemp+Kershaw+Billingsley+Loney.

Mauer also has a 44 point advantage over Puckett in career OBP, and for people that claim that Mauer is only a singles hitter it should be noted that his .470 career slugging percentage is almost equal to Puckett's .477 career slugging. Mauer's OPS+ also happens to be 11 points higher then Puckett as well. Both were elite fielders, but I think Mauer gets the slight edge on defensive value since catcher is generally considered the toughest position in baseball followed by SS, 2B and CF. Though some people switch 2B and CF which is fine. Also it should be noted that I am one of the biggest Kirby Puckett fans/defenders out there.

If Joe Mauer can stay relatively healthy for the next 7 or so years he will goto the hall of fame. Since he already doesn't rely on home runs or speed to obtain his very good .874 Career OPS there is no reason why he can't continue to put up .860-.900 OPS seasons until he is 35 or so. Just take a look at his top 10 similarity scores through age 28 on Baseball Reference: 1. Mickey Cochrane (Hall of Famer) 2. Bill Dickey (Hall of Famer) 3. Jason Kendall (Kendall was quite good for his first 5-6 years) 4. Yoggi Berra (Hall of Famer) 5. Victor Martinez 6. Jose Vidro 7. Gary Carter (Hall of Famer) 8. Derek Jeter (Future hall of famer) 9. Nomar (Was on his way to a HOF career before he broke down) 10. Charlie Gehringer (hall of famer) Also, Mauer is putting up very similar numbers as Rod Carew did while he was a Twin (higher OPS, slightly lower OPS+), and he has done all of this playing the most demanding position on the field (the majority of the time), oh and he plays that position extremely well often being cited as one of the best defensive catchers in the game. Mauer has already placed him self somewhere in the top 5 Twins of all time (I place him above Olivia, and close to equal to Puckett and Carew) and an argument could be made that he will end up the 2nd best Twin of all time by the end of this contract. So what does all of this suggest? If you hate Mauer, you are basically a fair weather fan/brain dead moron. Yes, 23MM is a lot of money, it would have been nice if they could have gotten him on board for 18MM-20MM a season, but for hall of fame production I will take that contract any day.

Feel free to make an offer, though the asking price will be pretty high, would need a good SP + Great prospect or two great prospects back.

Traded Dem Grinders for him. I sent over Phil Hughes and Coco Crisp and got back Hamilton, LeCure and Alex Torres. It was orginally gonna be Hughes for Hamilton straight up but I wanted Torres as well for some reason. Either way should provide to be a nice trade. Do you guys think Trumbo will get two more games at 3rd this year? Really would like him to gain 3B elig for 2013 as well. Though his bat certainly plays at OF/1B Username best of luck at 4-0 this week.

Billy Hamilton: Still mashing the ball with a .869 OPS and has 96 SB in 75 games!! This kid is going to be a fantasy dream in this league.

huh? Are we talking about the same guy?

Love seeing Sano heating back up and Goodrum hitting well.

5/90 would be a decent get for a guy like Grienke IMO.Most likely he will be looking at a Cain type deal around 6 years/120-130 mil.

Not to make excuses for the rotation, but heading into the off-season Ryan didn't exactly have a ton of money to play with. Also Baker, Pavano and Blackburn have all been effected quite a bit due to injury and they were counting on a rebound season from Liriano. I would have preffered an Eric Bedard over a Marquis, but let's not pretend the Twins would be in any better shape if they had done that. With Baker lost for the season, Liriano playig awful the first 10 starts and Pavano being hurt the whole year as well the Twins didn't stand much of a shot. You can't take away many teams 1-2-3 and expect them to have a good staff. Capps has been solid before the injury, everyone hates Capps because of the Ramos trade but in reality Capps is a solid but not great closer. If he was healthy 5 mil or so would be fair market value.

Yeah, also it should be pointed out that finding a capable RF on the FA/trade market is prob the easiest position to find. But any of Benson, Parmelee, Doumit, Hicks, Arcia or even Plouffe (if Valencia starts playing well again) could man RF in 2013. The FA market has a few guys you could prob bring in on a cheap enough deal like Tori Hunter, Cody Ross, Andruw Jones or Scott Hariston.

To be fair though, Butera only started 5 games this month and that is most likely because Doumit was banged up and unavailable for 4 games or so. Also Mauer has had a few injuries this year as well that have kept him out for 3-4 days. If Mauer and Doumit were consistently healthy I doubt we would roster 3 catchers at this point. Also, Butera's batting line .241/.305/.333 is actually close to acceptable for a back up catcher (though I think that is more SSS than anything else) but it's not like Butera has been killing this team, and for whatever reason he seems to have found a niche with Liriano (I'm not a huge believer in personal catchers, but Liriano is such a head case at times I am willling to do anything to keep him effective on the mound) Ideally down the road you find a replacement for Butera, but at this point it's not exactly like the Twins have any better options, nor is he clogging up a bench spot when you already have Parmelee wasting away on the bench and a masher like Mastrionni.

Seth mentioned him in his report yesterday and I was curious to know more about him, from first glance I notice he actually has a good strike out rate and they just turned him into a starter, he apparently throws close to 95 so that is encouraging as well, however at 24 it would be nice to see him moved a bit more aggressively up to AA sooner rather than later. Any chance he can become a solid starter for us in the future?

Some things never change.

I'd have no problem holding onto Span, and honestly will be sad if he is traded. However if a team offers you a true high ceiling pitcher or like Kab said a high ceiling prospect of any position then you have to think seriously about trading him. I'd prefer its a major league ready or close to major league ready #2 pitcher, but that's (think Gio Gonzalez prior to this year) but that is just my preference. Revere appears to at least be a serviceable stop gap at CF until one of Hicks, Arcia, Buxton or Benson pushes the issue.

Could you imagine how good defensively an outfield containing both Hicks and Revere would be? Chances are we could see that sometime next summer.

I could understand this statement if the deal was 3 years/18 million or something like that, but its pretty hard to find anything to hate about a 2/7 deal.