jokin

About right... but for the Boras factor working behind the scenes... (he is always a presence at Angels games- in his own suite)... can't help but thinking Meyer gets much "healthier" in very short order...

Just read your post, noticed the exact same info... who knows what this kid can do if he really is 6 feet with 45 more pounds of muscle!?!

When you say Del Rosario needs to grow some more, I reflect on his BR page- which lists him at 6' and all of 145 #s- which brings up 2 important questions... 1) Is he legitimately 6 feet tall?, and 2) When are they going to start stuffing this kid with a daily dose of cheeseburgers?

And also comparing a guy who may or may not have reached his baseball experiential zenith among Patrick Henry HS's finest, vs. an actual, honest-to-goodness 1st Round MLB draft pick.

Because Rob is trying to ease into things, and is totally focused on possible deadline deals? (Probably not a lot of real-time multi-tasking skills...)

Dear Rob- Isn't there anybody on the roster that the Orioles might want to leave town with tonight?

Don't you think there's at least a Small Chance that the roster gets a bit of a shake-up by Monday?

I do know that heads will explode if that's the best the Twins' braintrust can come up with. Sure there's always a possibility that Antony might work out, but to suggest that, in the most objective of analyses, that there aren't multiple better, more highly qualified candidates for GM is a major stretch.

LLOL funny

That certainly oesn't sound you're too confident in the Twins ongoing GM search and selection process...

Shades of Altuve? (without the athleticism)

Are we all just skimming and glossing right over these 2 major indictments of the current Twins' situation??

Yup. Why Nunie wasn't on the first plane out of San Diego to... whereever? is beyond me. It would have been a nice parting gift by Terry to both Nunez and Twins fans.

He's really good at digging holes with that sinker- and you've hit on the exact reason that he was only able to sign a minor league contract to start out the season. And to add to the odds stacked up against him0 he's definitely not a strikeout pitcher... Just a gut-it-out pitcher.

Heh. Absolutely right. Any team out there with a Hu-like player in AA that they're willing to trade to us?

No cherry picking on Park- the numbers are easily discernible with a quick check of Baseball Reference- which is pretty established as an objective source of data. (And if you watched the Twins on a daily basis, it was apparent where Park's deficiencies lie relative to pitching style.) On the matter of Desmond- there obviously was at least one good scout watching him play in the 2nd half of 2015- a Texas Ranger scout. They obviously thought they were getting a bargain and taking very low risk on a buy low, one-year deal. Again, this was not hindsight- and I have been entirely "intellectually honest" on the matter, posting in this space since November. Please find my article on just this subject matter- and all of the "evidence" that I presented in full. And note that back during the Free Agency period, myself and others were pounding the table here on TD for Desmond on the cheap, low-risk, one-year deal, as an obvious choice to upgrade a key position on the field where the Twins could really use an upgrade, plus the veteran leadership to help fill the void left by Hunter's retirement. If you're going to commit to improving the team through Free Agency, always go for proven talent, higher upside and an athlete's own incentivizations.

Gibson was masterful tonight. And I think I'm the Twins biggest critic for ultimately being forced into looking to Kintzler as their closer, seemingly by default. But I have to give Kintzler all the credit in the world- up against one of the hottest teams in baseball, and the guy gutted it out in a game that by all rights should have been lost- the very definition of a pitcher "battling". One of the most enjoyable games all year- Kudos to Kintzler for Bearing down in Boston with Balls of Brass. If anything- his trade stock went up huge tonight.

From the results, it sounds like the Twins need more conceptual thinking like Jon Daniels. Of course it takes guts to buy low on a guy who had a down season. As I previously stated, Desmond bet on himself, turning down a 7 year deal- As A SS- and temporarily lost. But let's see how many offers he has this offseason- and let's see if he gets some interest in FA as a SS.

we can only hope at this point

1) He's only playing OF for Texas because there were no other openings around the League at SS. Of course he's still a SS. There's no way the Nats would have offered Desmond 7/$107 to play a new position for the same team with no obvious heir apparent 2) Was anyone predicting that Nunez was going to have a career year and be the Twins best player? Certainly Terry Ryan, Rob Antony and Paul Molitor made no such utterances- Nunez started the season as the man most likely to be the first DFA. OTOH,. Desmond on a highly incentivized one-year deal at SS (which he sought in order to get a better offer than the Nats 7/$107) would have made a huge difference solidifying the MI as a proven veteran (picking up some of the leadership void left by Hunter's departure)- who has a career .300 BA and OPS+ of 111 hitting in the 2-hole in the batting order. (Nunez still could have proven himself with regular starts, what with Dozier's horrible start and Plouffe's horrible start, plus his injuries.) 3) The beauty of signing a proven, incentivized veteran in a premier position is the high likelihood of positive ROI. If the Twins had fallen out of contention- Desmond could have netted a nice package of prospects before the deadline. If the Twins had been in the hunt, the Twins would have received a nice compensatory 1st rd. pick after making a QO. If Desmond had fallen on his face, the Twins could have just walked away, after 2016, or even signed him to another lower-cost one-year deal. Isn't it a little too soon to assume that a guy just starting out in rookie ball shapes the Twins' destiny? I'm not buying the notion that Park was bought cheap. The first-year cost including the $12.85M posting fee puts the cost for Park at close to $16M. That money should have been focused more efficiently by filling the greater need in the Bullpen. I get that some remain optimistic about Park, but there are/were multiple 1B/DH/RF options stacked up iwithin the organization- and all are, or will be, playing at the minimum for quite some time. I'm in complete agreement regarding Plouffe and Mauer, but adding Park into this mix was an unforced error that only served to further complicate things, as Park was an impediment to proper roster/lineup construction this year, needlessly risked permanent injury to their best offensive hope in 2 generations. The fact is, Park only becomes more of an albatross, albeit a less expensive one, over the next THREE years.

Darn right. That up-front money to Park in first-year salary plus the KBL posting fee (~$16M) should have been properly allocated on specific areas of need- needs that Ryan himself had identified as top offseason priorities. The Park signing was head-scratching then, it's head-scratching now. (I still think that DSP and the marketing department helped push/not discourage TR from making the original bid to KBL to get the negotiating rights)- (thus forcing Terry to follow up that bad move and then make the ill-conceived decision to move Sano to RF- one disastrous decision compounded into another).

Yes. While with the Twins he had an OPS+ of 58 and an OPS of .528 against power pitchers. Park was signed nearing the age of 30 to a team chock full of lower-to-mid 20s DH/1B types who will play for the minimum for years to come. If Ryan wanted to make a splash in the offseason, why didn't he fill the actual need at SS and sign Desmond? If he wanted to go international, why didn't he sign Abreu when the Twins needed a DH/1B, or Aldemys Diaz, much younger guys with talent from a league that translates well to MLB level of play. Let's face facts, Ryan screwed the pooch on this one.

Heh... I've never seen Seth as anxious as the rest of us about putting the pedal to the promotion metal..

"How quickly?" This organization has been riding on the rims for 6 years now. The Pohlads didn't care too much about the condition of the vehicle and the great loss in horse power over this decade while they were collecting the big bucks from the Target Field cash cow. But now, what with US Bank Stadium now becoming the center of the Twins Cities sports universe, the season ticket/suite base is drying up for the Twins. Time to do something significant to make the product relevant again.

Yeah, but what;s his slash line on 92+ MPH FBs? Park had an OPS+ of 56 and OPS of .528 vs. Power Pitchers when he was with the Twins. It's not clear how hitting against AAAA retreads every night is ever going to help him overcome his inability to turn on MLB hard stuff.