jokin

Man, do I ever agree with that. On the game thread when Span took his tumble, I posted the real-time thought that we all probably were contemplating- "10 days with Delmon day-to-day, and then a "setback", followed by Parmelee getting the call-up".

Optimistic? While I hope this comes about, how much would the Twins push a (soon to be 19 year old) this quickly through the system?

Promote him. He also had no walks, he must be approaching 15 Ks/9 on the year. Needs the next challenge.

Except both he and Florimon are starting tonight...?

Wow, what a shocker- the usual suspect Pollyanna's were typically pollyanish and the Realists were starkly being...realistic... about the dreary, ugly reality of the chances for success, given the Twins appalling SP situation- but criticized for it.

This simply is untrue. Hardy is most certainly not having a great year at the plate, in large part due to the luck factor involved with his numbers being pulled down by a low BABIP (.235), but his fielding has stayed at a near elite level. But the WAR numbers completely contradict what you state: Hardy WAR 1.1 Value $5M FLD 5.6 (Baseball Reference WAR: 1.5/RAR 16) Dozier WAR 0.0 Value -$0.1M FLD -0.9 (Baseball Reference WAR: 0.4/RAR 5) As a true Gardy guy, Dozier will get plenty more chances at SS or 2B, I agree that he has shown enough flashes to have earned those extra second chances.

Leyland must be expecting some extra control problems from Sherzer?

I think you can insert Nathan Hanson's name in there, too, there's MI mediocrity in the Twins system as far as the eye can see. (Although he has shown a live bat for the first time in his career at New Britain since the AS break- .321/.824OPS)

Go back and check multiple sites. The unwashed masses, of which I am a proud member were for the most part on top of the rickety state of the SP staff and were in general agreement in calling for the acquisition of one or more ( I wanted 3) quality to above-replacement-level FA starting arms and removal of the detritus from the rotation for whatever the market would bring.

Gene Lamont

The RBI statistic is still useless, it's what leads to them that possesses meaning. That hasn't changed. Theyre both important. When they start adding up how many reached first base at the end of the game rather than how many crossed home plate, I'll change my opinion. They already do. They reside in Fantasyland/leagues...Rotoworld.

And here I thought Ramon Santiago was bad. It's amazing how well Detroit does at finding good-hit/no-field position players (Jackson excluded).

Ok, maybe not.....atta way Hammer! Duensing better pick this one up after Willingham saved his sorry ass. The braintrust were better men than I, they were counting on the Tigers defense to help bail Duensing out.

Try convincing the braintrust here of that. Dunce's SP ERA is in Blackie territory. What a horrible decision to put him in the rotation. This is embarassing, OK, not Nishi-embarassing, just Blackie-level ineptitude embarassing. Did anyone read Gardy's lips there after Jackson's AB? Not fit for family viewing.

What he said was harmless, free of ill intentions and noticed by almost nobody. Delmon Young directly accosted a man on a public street and spewed racial epithets at him. That you could even compare the two proves that your attempts to take a position as being sensitive to racial issues is a complete joke. I think you should just drop this one. Nothing good is going to come from your futile attempts to demonstrate that a passing, banal remark in a TV broadcast is somehow evidence of Dick Bremer's deep-seeded racism. http://articles.chicagotribune.com/images/pixel.gif Is it deep-seeded or deep-seated? Deep-seated, according to Webster's Dictionary, means "deeply entrenched: ingrained." Deep-seeded has no dictionary entry. From the Language Log website, an article entitled, Deep-Seeded Ignorance, at the University of Pennsylvania (http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001815.html): "The established phrase is "deep-seated", which is listed in any good dictionary and has 590,000 Google hits, while "deep-seeded" is not listed in any dictionary (at least as far as I've checked), and has only 24,800 Google hits, so that the public vote is 96% for seated, 4% for seeded. The fact that roughly 4% of the population has the wrong idea about this phrase is a perfect example of the forces that lead to the formation of eggcorns." The substitution sounds the same, and it means something plausible. Both similar sound and sensible meaning are essential -- no one is likely to make the mistake of writing "seated rolls" in place of "seeded rolls", or "deep-chaired ignorance" in place of "deep-seated ignorance". " Archie Bunker used to invent a new eggcorn just about every week on All in the Family. The point from all of this is that language changes as the culture changes and the concept of humans as property has become colloquial and even offensive to many - on the way to obsolescence- on the way to ultimate demise and extinction- and more culturally-, and actually-descriptive terms evolved, just as at some point, two-word descriptive phrases such as deep-seated could likely fade into something else that becomes more commonly accepted, perhaps even something like deep-seeded. The use of words contained inside these terms: NAACP, United Negro College Fund, the song, "Ten Little Indians" and La Raza (Fascist Franco coined it for propaganda purposes, the Latino Radical Left uses it today) are all deemed offensive, depending on who uses the word and in which setting, even though they were all once widespread in common usage. Compared to these now-electrically-charged words, Bremer's "offense" is a trifle of a trifle, there is no doubt that Dick Bremer is just the Halsey Hall of his generation, innocent of the charges being thrown around and it's up to the offendee to accept him as a product of his culture and language boundaries.

Add Nick Nelson to the list of whiners who missed the fair and balanced memo and apparently now another new-found questioner of alleged Twins Prowess: "The signing of Nishioka and the corresponding roster maneuvering – namely, trading J.J. Hardy for what amounted to nothing – were puzzling at the time and far worse in hindsight. It's not that the moves themselves have set the organization back irreversibly, as Nishioka's $3 million salary is hardly a massive burden and Hardy has come hurdling back to earth in year one of his new contract (though I'd argue he's still a decent value at $7 million). It's more that the thought process behind the decisions – the misplaced priorities, the awful player evaluation, the lack of long-term foresight – represented everything wrong with the front office under Smith. These weaknesses were also on display in moves like the Nick Blackburn extension, the Carl Pavano re-signing and the Matt Capps trade. Mixed in with a good hint of bad luck, this shaky leadership sent a thriving and annually competitive franchise to the very bottom. The Twins lost 99 games last year and they're on pace to lose 92 this year. If it pans out that way, it will be the worst two-year stretch for the club since the early '80s. "

Somehow the citation of 'Twins management "prowess demonstration"' in the last 6 years seems more oxymoronic than standard-issue concepts like: "government worker", "Microsoft Works" and "honest broker".

Everything is relative, but some things are more relative than others Funny stuff from the spoiled Yankees fans. I think the Twins fans complaints are slightly more justified. I'd take any of their "#5 starters" in a heartbeat (except Freddy Garcia, of course). The ubiquitous injury thing throughout baseball probably needs a lot more study. What's changed, if anything, in the last few years? 40 years ago 4-man rotations were common. New types of pitches that arms aren't meant to throw? Kids throwing too much too soon at the developmental levels and college? Lack of arm strength from not throwing enough? Flawed mechanics development? Yankees SP stats: ERA 4.10/K-9 7.90/WHIP 1.29/OBA .262 Twins SP stats: ERA 5.48/K-9 5.62/WHIP 1.48/OBA .292

Filed for new entry under- Faint Praise, damning with (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=damn%20with%20faint%20praise)

OK. I just did. Given the succession of- poor trades of pitchers moved from, or acquired by, the Twins, the outright release of arms left with value and outright misses on now-MLB-successful lower round pitching draft picks on other teams, the current wretched state of the pitching staff up and down the upper levels of the system, an apparently flawed training and developmental regimen and, an apparently less-than-competent medical evaluation process- I found myself more than acceptant to a pipeline slighly below average as a reasonable expectation. The Twins failed even at a bar set that low.

Agreed. The team, though was in the "compete-now" phase of the payroll cycle and if the Twins had felt confident enough about the anomalous nature of 2011, could have made a run in 2012 by trading or buying out some more high-dollar guys (like Liriano and Nishi) in the off-season, made a run at the one-year FA pitchers available and still come in at slightly above $100M. Again without doing any long-term damage or heightened risk with more dead-weight contracts. They didn't, which implies that it is going to take some more time to right this ship, perhaps 2014.

Didn't he play for Team Netherlands in one of the WBCs when Bert was the pitching coach? He does make sense And I hope they do not sign Pavano for anything. I actually won't be surprised if he is retired. At this point, I'd rather see them pitch BJ Hermsen/Liam Hendriks/insert-name-of-less-than-25-minor-leaguer-here than Pavano. Agreed, and the 3 other minor leaguers I proposed previously. Get them up for an extended audition in the low-pressure environment of the dog days in a soon-forgotten and lost season. Don't worry for one second about creating 40-man roster space on this ship's manifest, get the ballast and bilge pumps in full gear, virtually no DFA candidate-lead weight thrown overboard will be picked up by another boat anyways. Let Duensing resume the role he does competently, Blackie to long relief and stop pretending that Pavano should return and anchor the SP staff, time to move on.

Yes, but given the logjam, where?

Because of Joe Mauer and Ryan Doumit, it's likely that Herrmann will be a backup catcher for the Twins. But I don't at all see that as his ceiling. I think he can play for the Twins in that same Doumit role, where he is the #2/#3 catcher, but he is also a very good defensive outfielder. He's a catcher prospect who gives versatility, can hit .270ish, get on base a lot, hit 10-12 homers, hit doubles, and even steal a dozen bases. There's a lot of value in that. He's barely doing what you describe as a 24 year-old in AA (over 200 games at that level)- how can he be expected to do that as a Major Leaguer? He is nowhere near the same caliber of hitter as Doumit... when he was the same age, Doumit hit .345/.415/.630 in AAA and then held his own with the Pirates. A .743 OPS at age 24 in AA just isn't any good at all. And Doumit himself was cheap to acquire and re-sign, so a homeless man's version of Doumit just isn't worth much. I think you missed the part about Hermann being a very good defensive catcher.