jokin

I campaigned to acquire Borbon, a perfect placeholder option. It's amazing how threadbare the Twins are willing to make out of their once-defensive-rich CF depth chart.

Or Arcia comes back when Plouffe comes back and Dozier gets demoted?

And yet you take up the very same, cracked, discredited cudgel that the Twins have used?---which has been shown to be the exact excuse they completely ignore with their entire starting pitching staff or their rookie CF?

And yet, the entire major league Twins rotation provides overwhelming clear-cut counter-evidence about how important "consistency" actually is valued, which belies the entire whiff of "legitimacy" of the FO in holding said position on Gibson.

Is the Dozier experiment winding down right quick? I wonder if, when Plouffe returns that Arcia gets the call-back and "Dozsh" gets to go down and resume his fight for playing time with Eric Farris and Doug Bernier.

I have been on board with Big Train Walters and have been his earliest and biggest advocate for call-up. And yet with the odd/even situation, Gibson still stands out in the entire I-League, he has a 2.72 FIP (4th), a 1.07 WHIP (4th), 0.30 HR/9 (5th) 22.5 % K% (9th), OBA of .219 (10th). He's not been prone to wildness, he has a very respectable BB rate of 2.52, coupled with a K/BB rate that is virtually Top Ten at 3.12 (w/in .03 of #10), he hasn't hit a batter and has 1 WP in 60.2 IP. These are strong pitching numbers and would lead one to submit that Gibson has also pitched great- No, check that, these are Freaking. Great. Numbers., and this is with half his games supposedly in the "I need help!" range??? Up until the game last night, his BABIP was around .330. While some of his alleged struggles can be attributed to rust and restoring the muscle memory necessary in relearning how to pitch, I have to attribute at least some of his odd/even slash differential to luck and playing in minor league parks with a minor league defense, that includes Jeff Clement, Chris Colabello, Oswaldo Arcia and some of the other suspect journeyman. I'd also like to see who the catcher was for the majority of his "bad" outings.

Nope. As documented elsewhere. Nate McLouth was a steal who signed for $2M. Reed Johnson, Andres Torres, Scott Podsednik would all have been serviceable placeholders in a Plan B situation. They possibly could have worked out a trade for Borbon in April. Or they could have signed a high-priced guy with the possible intention of flipping him, while waiting for Hicks to be more ready for his debut.

Yep, so now we're down to about 7 big league starts. Still in search of that elusive consistency.

But wait! I thought the organization is somewhat obligated to "rewarding" the farm teams, and the player himself, by keeping the best talent down through through the All-Star games? "Consistency"

What? And have to endure this endless roster-culling-gnashing-of-teeth yet again?

Yup! Perfect rotation slot pairing- which puts Gibson on pace for a Friday home start. That is of course, if the FO has seen enough "consistency" in the fact that 3 of his last 4 games have consisted of 26 shutout innings and one being a near-no-hitter....

I concur on many of your sentiments. Perhaps if this was 1984 and it was quite obvious that that group was heading towards something special- acceptance of the .500 seasons would be more acceptable. The difference I see for the current team has been the complete reset on fan and management expectations- it seemed "both sides of the table" in this transaction were as one on the same side of said table. Finishing out the last decade and heading into a state-of-the-art ballpark, signing 2 MVPs to long-term, major media market-equivalent salaries, the Twins appeared to be putting their foot down and not letting them walk away for crumbs, like Santana, or nothing, like Hunter. They created the mirage of a franchise in a state of perpetual "competitiveness"- the recalibration downward of the expectations has been jarring, and the club has been less than truthful and forthcoming to the fanbase, I think they still don't know what hit them in 2011.

Since the team is mostly bereft of players who allegedly can play CF, "take charge" Ramirez simply has to be on the roster. Anyone notice, besides the Willingham collision, the horrendous route he took on Hunter's "double"?

Just a real-time update; Gibson has thrown 8 innings of shutout ball again tonight on 111 pitches thrown- 2 hits/3BB/7K- I assume he's done for the night. "Consistency" anyone?

I get how Seth's argument might go with a couple on his list (even though I disagree), but I still haven't heard back on how Rob Antony deserves a 99% confidence rating.

Agree about Molitor. Actually, I hope Paul and a Latin retired vet of HOFer in the Twins employ can get down to Ft Myers pronto and get in Roasario's head and redirect him on the path to fully realizing his ceiling level of potential.

Agreed, but you don't want Arcia to get on a laughable run of an extended string like Hicks did to start off the season. I would bet he quickly gets his groove back playing everyday, not getting yanked in and out of LF and RF, and in and out of the lineup for days on end, as is inevitable with Gardy filling out the lineup card. No reason he can't be back in 2 weeks or so if the roster and pitching issues resolve themselves properly.

To be fair, the CF play has contributed to the high BABIP, as well.

Yup. That's why teams with serious intent plan their position depth much more comprehensively than having literally NO ONE on your depth chart with CF-starting major league experience. Again, as I and others have illustrated, there were outside options in the offseason and we did note as such leading up to, and during, Spring Training. A proven major leaguer- signed on the cheap or with the intent of flipping a better player for prospect talent- who was brought in to play at the start of the season with the intent of either starting Hicks til he proved he wasn't ready, or working Hicks in slowly until he showed he was ready, would certainly have been doable and not an unreasonable fan expectation.

The oblique references in print to "ego problems" by Gardy, apparently in response to some static he got from Arcia over his lack of PT, sealed Arcia's fate as the "demotee" by default. To be fair, he had been struggling mightily, of late- hopefully he can make the necessary adjustments in AAA. Once they normalize the CF istuation, the disabled list, and return back to 12 pitchers when they decide on the new rotation, he should be right back up, possibly in conjunction with a trade. I am assuming that Colabello will be back down on Wednesday when Plouffe returns- let him play out the full week

Yup.

No, the Twins haven't reached the bottom in terms of wins-losses, and that dubious distinction still seems very unlikely for the Twins to obtain, given the existence of the Marlins and Astros, but as many astute TD observers have been noting via the disturbing statistical indications, the Twins starting pitching staff has now supplanted the lowly Astros as having the worst ERA in baseball, 5.77 to 5.72. The Twins PTC-intense OBA has already been baseball's worst for some time, and currently sits at .335, some 34 points ahead of Houston, which sits at .301. As I recently noted, the Twins SP's "average batter" is having a better year than Joe Mauer- with a collective OPS of .891. It's been a long-developing trend over the month of May, and it has really accelerated during the current 10-game losing streak. Meanwhile, the Twins FO is scrambling to send replacement Starting Pitchers to the front-line.... on a staff that appears to be suffering from mass shell shock, or PTSD. Correia, in a true profile in courage, has been moved back 2 days to face the lowly Brewers----and Pelfrey is now publicly stating that he has arm soreness---- a prelude to a rehab assignment? This is what happens when you have a 6.77 ERA in the month of May, to go with the worst OBA (.350) and WHIP (1.79), K% (9.8%) and K/9 (4.08). The good news?--- Rock bottom has to be close at hand. Like last year, there are anxious arms in abundance, eager to prove they either deserve one last chance, or in some notable cases, deserve their first chance. Bottom line, I get the strong feeling that the opening day rotation will bear little resemblance to the rotation in September.

If not calling up a guy who is clearly better than a series of broken-down arms, including Hendriks, who it turned out was also pitching injured--- and Pedro Hernandez---for heaven's sake---- isn't "slow-playing" than I don't know what is. This was an issue that was dealt with by the media in the "Twins Notes" type of reporting as part of Twins updates at the ends of articles throughout 2011 in explanation of his poor performances leading up to his shutdown.

In a previous post I said that Porcello has turned out to be a #5 starter, yet he has still hung in there in the Tigers rotation, something I'd like for the Twins to do with Gibson to find out what they have, instead of putting it off for contrived reasons.

Not bashing PJ here. I was the one who was all by myself saying that PJ has virtually matched Gibson's stats and would be the one that the Twins would call up. I'm just saying that Gibson should have been in the rotation before now. With this dreadful pitching staff in a lost year, there's really no reason to hold him back, except financial.