jokin

The Kimbrel trade shows what all you can get for a top closer, and they got rid of enormous salary overhead, both with Kimbrel and BJ Upton. Makes you wonder what the Twins could have gotten for shipping Perkins and some other dead weight in 2013- sure, not as much as Kimbrel, but still, lots in return, for a superfluous closer on a rebuilding team. Being a hometown hero isn't all that, Terry.

Different uses of pitchers in the bullpen- including Perkins not always closing out the 9th. Turning Eduardo Escobar into Tony Phillips. Committing to Santana at SS before Spring Training. A commitment to more manufactured runs on the base paths. Installing proven mentors to encourage the youngsters to do things the Twins Way, Hunter and Santana. Oops. OK, it's not really all that much, is it? Mauer is still batting third, still no high OBP hitter leading off, the rotation is actually being praised for their "minimizing"*** talents, a bullpen that will likely have worse K/9 numbers than previously, the corner OF is still manned by DHs of the aging or defensive-butcher varieties and CF by below-replacement level, aging cut-outs *** Is this just a variation on Gardy's "gettin after it"?'n't

Finally, some good news on the pitching front. It seems like we haven't heard much, if anything, on Kohl Stewart's development this spring. No news on negative health issues or imposed pitching restrictions is good news. His blossoming "Moxie" is even better news, he seems like a guy who has set his sights high and is going to demand to take the ball, much like Berrios. I'd like to see a two-level jump over the summer to AA eventually- which could position him to be knocking on the door a year ahead of schedule- some time in 2016.

Looking at the every-day lineup, Hunter's insertion into the lineup is offset largely by Escobar's removal and couple that with the strong possibility that Santana is likely to be a defensive downgrade at SS, at least initially . Plus, there are too many negative offensive regression candidates that should more than offset the possible breakout and positive regression candidates- and regarding health, we still don't know how long Plouffe's wrist issues might linger, he didn't exactly indicate that his swing was healthy in ST. Overall, too many negatives about the 2014 and previous teams that were either woefully ignored or at best, just inadequately addressed by the GM. The pen looks to be worse than 2014, possibly much worse if Graham turns into a roster boat anchor- the hardest thrower save Perkins has never pitched above AA, and was ineffective at that level, while 3/5ths of the starting rotation has a good chance of repeating the early exits of 2014 followed by a series of musical chair replacements for 3/5s of the rotation- haven't we seen this bad movie before? The loss of probably 100+ innings not delivered by Santana, even at around a major league average level, will be crushing- given the proposed replacements at hand. We were all disappointed that May wasn't coming onboard as the 5th starter, as of now, this team now needs to look to replace two 5th starters- who may both turn out to be more like 7th- or 8th-level depth starters, May is likely to get the early call, perhaps as soon as May 1st, and that might help some.... but they appear forever-hesitant to be willing to throw Meyer into the rotation any time soon. The early season emphasis on intra-division ALC rivals in the schedule (28 of the first 35 games) by May 14, could mean that the Twins might be already deeply buried at the bottom of the division before major personnel moves are even contemplated. By the time the kiddie "cavalry" is summoned from the minors, the die will have likely been cast, and then comes the various learning curves of the rookies, how many will start off their MLB careers like Santana did last year? How many will struggle like May and Hicks did, and for how long? Just the fact that you mentioned that Aaron Hicks is a potential source of hope and rescue in CF shows what a long-shot for success this season has in store. Notwithstanding your glass half full prediction, which I admire and certainly hope comes to fruition- I've now lowered my own 2015 Twins W-L prediction to 68-72 wins, and I fear I may be a tad optimistic.

Actually, this is not absurd, it's what investigators do. Street-side trash has stood multiple court tests over the years as fair game and available to the general public for perusal in multiple munincipalities. You stated the problem well in the part I bolded, but with that reality, the dangers of going into this type of deal for a small-market team have to come into that very caveat. The risk and chances for getting burned for individual cheating are exteremely skewed toward the teams- who are not allowed to terminate contracts, fine or suspend, and they can't even authorize PED testing of their own players, or apparently, prospective players- shoiuldn't a medical screening exam for prospective employment, as well as continuing employment, contain a drug test, as it does for key employees in many industries for jobs that are so highly performance-related? And I did allow for the fact that Santana may have just started taking the PEDs, but the Twins still are prohibited as the club, individually, from protecting their investment (gamble) from the perpetration of fraud. This certainly does deflect the blame away from the Twins. But this built-in doubt for a bullet-proof clean player, thanks largely to the CBA, must be taken into account when taking on the risk of a 4-year deal when there are other red flags surrounding the deal, as well. (As Spycake put it so well just above in #186, "sorta playing with fire" by targeting these types of players). And if you had read my prevous two posts contained in this thread on this matter- I have twice accounted for the previous teams that Santana has played for- though they are not any less culpable- they are all not the team left holding the bag, either. (The MLB system is set up such that it rewards abusers to continue going undetected- and to its employers to ignore the issue- which corrupts the clubs' incentives for doing "the right thing." How many clubs to this date have self-reported discovered PED abuse? And it goes even farther than that. The book, Bloodsport, pointed out that Alex Rodriguez in 2007, along with at least 110 others, were allowed by MLB to use steroids through legal exemptions. And that as a direct result, A-Rod won the AL MVP award in that year.)

25 year old Pirate RHP Stolmy Pimentel certainly seems worth kicking the tires on.

Erghhh, I can't decide for sure... Is this good news or bad news??

It's all about the remaining options...

Well then, I guess Nick Nelson's article must strike you both as silly and driving you up a wall, as well. Nick asks a lot of questions, admittedly ex post facto, but still, questions that might have been more fleshed out when a team is considering its largest ever FA signing and committing at least $55M. First, you obviously haven't read up on the beneficial effects of stanozolol- this is easily obtainable with one mouse click- and doesn't involve outsized freak-muscles developed overnight. "No friggin way"? Nick certainly shows a way that the deal might have been questioned, and how the pieces of suspicion were there... and even though it's all admittedly speculation, there were and are red flags all over this deal. --- Due to his delicate elbow situation, the pressures and temptations to prolong his career in any way possible over the last two seasons- pitching on the thin margin of here-today/gone tomorrow one-year deals- must have been enormous. Much of the best detective work in getting to the truth in cases is greatly aided by going through people's garbage. And the "detectives" employing this technique runs the gamut- from archaeologists to insurance investigators to workmen's comp lawyers to law enforcement officers to private investigators- "Why Garbage Can Be A Goldmine" Hiring an investigative firm to do thorough background checks is a pretty inexpensive means at ensuring the viability of a $55M deal. I'm sure the Twins did something along these lines, obviously it wasn't thorough enough if Santana has been a user in years past, and given the current CBA agreement, there's practically nothing they could have done about it if he only started PED usage after he signed the new contract- but that seems unlikely. Yes, this is on Santana, and it appears he, and likely, his agent, perpetrated a fraud on the Twins. But given the bilker's built-in advantages in negotiating guaranteed contracts despite the fraud, the onus is even more on the Twins to avoid being suckered.

Thanks for posting, that post you responded to bothered me a lot. A lot of PEDs are on the WADA no-no list, but they aren't all created equal.

There are times to ignore Reusse, but this is a time for the muckraker to tell it like it is, starting with the headline and sub-headline and he kept piling up the scorn and derision within the body of the article: Santana's half-season ban puts Twins in deep troubleArticle by: PATRICK REUSSE , Star TribuneUpdated: April 4, 2015 - 12:57 AMVeteran free-agent shows he’s a lying fraud

I haven't followed Santana's career closely. Do you, or anyone else, know if he's ever been linked in the media, even innuendo or rumor, to PEDs previous to this event? It's been reported that Ervin's PED of choice doesn't have a known masking agent and is detectable in the bloodstream for months after injections (Rafael Palmiero was one of 11 players caught using stanozolol in 2005)-- so then, I'm wondering how he was able to hide his PED usage for all of these years as a professional? Why is he playing on his 4th team in four seasons? Are the one year deals offered by his previous two employers possible red flags that a typical GM must take into account for potential PED issues when considering long-term contract offers? It would seem that having an informational buddy network of drug spies on potential FA and trading targets would be a good use of a relatively small amount of funds in order to mitigate the risks from signing or inheriting long-term contract liabilities. I'm not trying to second-guess Twins management here, I'm just wondering how and why the League, with this new draconian policy for first-offense suspensions, has in effect, put the small and medium market teams especially, in a more precarious financial position than the players. It would seem with the half-year penalty, this type of long-term signing for a Starting Pitcher especially, entails far more risk- from PED suspensions, known/unknown injury, non-performance- than the expected derived benefits would warrant.

Both of them.

In the real world, this seems like a pretty straighforward case of fraud, but since A-Rod is still getting paid after a career filled with perpetrating one fraud after another, MLB obviously isn't... the real world.

Man, it's like you've been saving up your inspirations via images for just such an event...

If I may Nick, can I expand on your cogent comments...? In the business world they also call it failure to perform due diligence In the underground gambling world, they also call it crapping out.... and man, did Terry ever throw a deuce on this one!

Yep, I withheld my prediction until we REALLY got to opening day. Having already been in the process of lowering my horizons WITH Santana... let me just say, anyone who took the 68 UNDER in Vegas is looking pretty good with his wager right about now....

34-year old RHRP Wil Ledezma was sent packing today after 4 walk 9th inning yesterday vs. the Red Sox.

If you found that interesting, you must be preparing the all-time thread-winning "I told you so" post on the latest news. But seriously, what a great story, just goes to show, even if you're down in baseball, you're not necessarily out. http://savannahnow.com/sports/2015-04-02/braves-add-outfielder-joe-benson Your fellow Benson acolytes breathlessly await your take...

For me, SS Eric Aybar sets the low bar for Santana with his 2014 numbers: .278/.321/.379/(.700) BABIP .297 It's entirely reasonable to see Santana come close or even likely exceed these numbers- the power number by quite a bit more. I think it's somewhat significant to note, that Santana's BABIP numbers jumped from previous minor league seasons in both AA and AAA. In some 700 PAs over two seasons, his combined BABIP was ~.360. Even a drop down to a .330 OBP would still mean that Santana could still OPS in the .730-.750 range which would place Santana among the top 4 SS at the plate.

Folks from the little Dutch kingdom have known for 100s of years that in order to do business with all of its much bigger neighboring countries, it's requisite to have the ability to effectively communicate in multiple foreign languages. after reading this "prospects'" autobiographical account of himself,my guess would be that the Netherlands have extended that custom to their former colonies. A 16 year old kid, and budding economist, who can use the word "ascertain" correctly in a foreign language, is indeed, very impressive, but alas, this was also the "tell' in this fine tale that brought me back down to earth.... since, of course... you published this on April Fools Day, and since we're the long-suffering followers of the MN Twins, we don't deserve the next Curacaoian wunderkind, so this is obviously all an elaborate, yet elegant practical joke. Well played, Jeremy.

The notion that Ryan has done successful due diligence on presenting and selling to the fans of Minnesota- over five seasons running and counting- an honest to goodness, top-to-bottom major league pitching staff, coupled with a solid evaluation and development plan to have the best prospects up to to the major league level at a rate commensurate within oh, say a light year of the league's best teams, is well past farcical. Why do we keep ignoring the clearly expressed concerns of the former manager who actually wanted the best arms up to help him in some capacity, not the cast of cast offs and other minor league minions that were provided for him, and instead were fed a litany of excuses vaguely related to health and readiness?

Yeah, the pitching situation has been a disappointment, but knowing and not being much surprised by the Twins to come to the personnel conclusions they did, it kept me from making a final W-L prediction until we knew the final roster coming out of ST. I am lowering my expectations from my preliminary assessment more towards the Vegas oddsmakers over/under of 68. Even though last years' experiment with "more veteraniness" can only be considered a failure, they took that concept to the next level, spent more on the premium end of veteran continuum- but without the other commensurate upgrade in the other areas of weakness to make that big investment have a better chance of bringing in dividends. The bullpen, as currently constructed, projects to somehow be worse than last season. Besides all of the regression candidates in the positional lineup, Escobar's emergingly-decent bat (wRC+ of 102 in 2014- tied for 5th among all MLB qualifying SS) has essentially been semi-benched in favor of three guys (counting Hicks) that are in the bottom ten in wRC+ for all MLB OFers from 2012-14- Robinson 76 Schafer 75 Hicks 71 It's pretty universally agreed that the other teams in the division made more improvements in their roster. With the ALC-heavy schedule going well into the second week of May, the Twins could very well already be out of first place by double-digits come May 15.

But they all were slow-balled in what should have been a May debut for each in their "I've proved I'm ready and I'm coming up" years. Non-entity after non-entity were routinely promoted in front of each of them.

I'm fully embracing exclamatory brevity as the Spirit of the Age