JB_Iowa

There have only been 6 games in July -- against the Yankees & the Blue Jays. What is the OPS for the rest of the team in July? He made significant progress from April to May, leveled off in June and was injured and is just now getting back to it. I'd wait awhile before leaping to any conclusions on whether he has truly leveled off or whether he continues to progress.

Nice list. And congrats to Mauer & Perkins. Story I saw on mlb.com said Perk was a replacement for Crain.

As long as it looks like he is making progress, its great that they keep him up. He's definitely fun to watch in the field (even if his routes are pretty interesting sometimes). He had an abysmal April but it really has been looking up since then.

YEAH! Definitely one for the youngsters!

I would also rate him pretty well on the way he has built the minor league system BUT, please do not forget that the international signings started during his hiatus; and that the Twins have had the benefit of high draft picks because the MLB team has been so horrific. He has done a good job of beefing up the minors through trades but has also missed some opportunities. As for the major league club, its a mess. And a mess that is not attributable just to bringing up young kids. Go and take a look at the rest of the schedule for a year. It's pretty likely that this is a 90+ loss team again and it would not be surprising if their record was worse than last year. I really felt that the entire organization needed a new direction not the "back to the future" move of rehiring Terry Ryan. Nothing I've seen at the Major League level has changed that opinion. Last off-season we read a lot of people speculating on the money Ryan could (and in some of their opinions), WOULD, spend on starting pitching. It didn't happen. And I strongly doubt that it will happen in the future. As has been said elsewhere on these forums, you cannot build a championship team through the draft alone. You need good drafts, good trades, a good international program AND a willingness to spend in free agency. I can't see Terry Ryan embracing that philosophy. When he retired the first time, he acknowledged that he didn't want to deal with the looming free agencies of Hunter and Santana and that someone else might be better at dealing with contractual situations. If anything, those "deals" have just gotten tougher while he was on hiatus. Why would anyone think that he will now embrace dealing with free agents and other contractual issues?

They get tired of never getting home.

"Loosing" would bother most women. Most women are pretty tight.

In a perfect world, I'd put the $20 million (or whatever) in a pool (of money) toward buying a starting pitcher (realizing that they have to find one to buy). I like Morneau but I still don't trust his health. I really hope they can find a trade that returns something but otherwise, I'd probably let him walk. (Now, if he wants to talk about a real discount because of all the money he collected when he didn't play, that's another story).

Since I'm not a Minnesotan, I remember being fairly bummed out about the trade. Thanks for the reminder.

I suspect they will sneak in and steal a game or two on the road in the next 10 days but I don't look for them to win more than 7 or 8 altogether in July (and that may be optimistic). But I also wouldn't be shocked if they didn't win again until after the All-Star break. The schedule is pretty brutal.

Watching the Twins play the Blue Jays>Watching the Twins play the Yankees (PLEASE, Twins --- convince me this is true).

1st half of July shapes up as a disaster Then there's a West Coast road trip. While the Twins have played pretty well against the Angels and Mariners, that was early in the year ... and the road is not a good thing for the Twins. The Twins will be fortunate to win 7 or 8 games in July. August should be a little better (including 3 games against the Astros) but the days of beating up on everyone else in the division are gone. But they did come close to .500 against the division last year. So maybe they could get 15 wins in August (about 12 against the division and 3 more against the Astros, Rangers, Mets). So that would leave 9 or 10 wins to get in September. And it is a tough haul....another 3 against the Astros (a good thing) plus a lot of games against Oakland plus Toronto, Detroit, Cleveland and the White Sox. I think it may be tough going to get those 32 wins.

Well that's just my take on why 2011 was surprising -- Not sure if that is what Willihammer meant. But I think that in general the preseason projections for the Twins in 2011 were a lot better than the results.

Thanks! Your series of interviews with the Cedar Rapids players and staff have been superb. Keep 'em coming!

In a BAD way. I was very unhappy in October 2010 and thought they needed to take a new direction. It was one of the reasons I wasn't overly unhappy with the JJ Harding/Nishioka swap (okay not literally a swap but trading out one for the other). I still believed that the Twins knew what they were doing and were trying to do something to take themselves beyond making the playoffs to really contending in the playoffs. (Although I still thought they needed to do something with pitching beyond or instead of a 2 year deal with Pavano). But despite taking their payroll to the highest level that year, 2011 was an unmitigated disaster -- and it wasn't all due to injuries. And Kwak, we'll all have to see what he does with his large budgets over the next few years. But I think that being conservative and keeping payroll low is in Terry Ryan's DNA.

Problem is that I don't think he wants one.

His OPS in June was .849 -- so it was below his career average (as were his OBP and BA). Not a big concern but I'd like to see it go up instead of down in July.

Well, since the Blue Jays are next up and the Twins are 8-27 against them the last 5 years, I'm not holding my breath for anything to look up in the near future. June seems to have been a bright spot for the Twins the last 3 years ... unfortunately it doesn't last.

Thought I'd take a look just at OPS for April, May, June (not definitive, I know but I wanted to see how players are trending). Arcia -- upward each month Carroll -- down badly each month Doumit -- upward each month (although June was just slightly better than May) Dozier -- down slightly in May from April but a BIG upward jump in June Escobar -- good April; horrible May; bounce back in June (but not far enough) Florimon -- acceptable April & May; Horrible June (has got to do it with the glove cuz the bat isn't there) Hicks -- horrible April; better May and June (but June inconclusive due to injury) Mauer -- mediocre April; great May; fall off in June but above April Morneau -- .5 to .75 upward trend each month Parmelee -- nice improvement from April to May but then a slight drop off in June Willingham -- off significantly in May from April and then another slight decline in June So, I guess I'd say I'm happy with the trends for Arcia; Dozier; Doumit; Morneau and thought Hicks was headed in the right direction before his injury I'm okay with the trends for Mauer & Parmelee but would hope they bounce back from downward trending Junes Disappointed but hoping it comes back some more for Escobar And do not like the way things are going for Willingham & Florimon & Carroll Obviously this looks at a player's performance only with regard to himself not compared to other players and does not look at defense at all. But at least some of the younger players are showing some improvement the more pitching they see. That's a positive sign for me.

Undoubtedly be in the top 5 (oops bottom 5) by July 14 (yeah, I know it is a long way from then until the end of the season)

Totally off the point except that it comes from the Souhan article: On Tuesday afternoon, the Twins honored the pending retirement of legendary Yankees closer Mariano Rivera by giving him a rocking chair made of broken bats, calling it the “Chair of Broken Dreams.” WHY would you give it to him on TUESDAY afternoon when you still had 2 more games AT HOME with the Yankees (plus another series in New York)? I get that they wanted to give it to him in Minny. I guess I would have waited until Thursday. In some undefined way, this says something to me about the Twins competitiveness with the Yankees.

14-38 from 2006-2012 (Worse than their record against the Spank-mees over that time period).

Add in the fact that the players knew (or had to strongly suspect) that it was their last year together -- Santana or Hunter or both were likely to be gone. (Although I always thought from what he said that Ryan retired because he just didn't want to deal with those situations).

While I agree that the Yankees are in the Twins heads. It looks like the Blue Jays are, too. From 2006-2012, the Twins were actually worse against the Jays (14-38) than against the Yankees (16-35). They had a good year against the Rays in 2006 (6-1) but were 16-27 against the Rays from 2007-2012. It's gonna be a LLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGG 2 weeks.

LOL. I thought the same thing when I read that. But I thought his summary of where the Twins were at was pretty good other than that.