jokin

Yeah, because the Twins certainly have apparently failed miserably in those endeavors and once again have nothing to show for all the wasted time, $$$ and effort in building value in tremendous raw talent. Keep trying to defend, as time goes by it's continually ever easier to knock down the feeble and stale lines of defense of this organization.

Uhh, the Twins probably have more than one reason... given that they were so impressed with Chagois' no-pressure first outing, that they quickly shuffled him back to Rochester and claimed a recently twice-cut guy, Neil Ramirez, who's at a major crossroads in his career to take Shag-Wa's place on the roster- IOW, a guy who looks like all roads left in his career track lead to dead ends is preferable to giving Chagois an immediate second chance. Chagois certainly has lofty MiLB numbers, but it doesn't appear that he has as yet impressed the Twins brass enough to assume that he is the automatic heir apparent as the Twins' closer any time soon.... perhaps he will acquit himself better in his next recall... but there's no doubt he's dug himself a big hole to dig out of in order for the Twins to feel comfortable to hand him the closer role. My guess would be that assuming all things go very well, this would not transpire until mid-2017, at the earliest.

Does Mike Berardino know something he's not fully sharing yet? Wha...? Has it really come to this? I get the fact that there really aren't any obvious solutions on the current 25-man- Tonkin has good AAA closing credentials, but what is there to suggest that his straight-line trajectories have translated to the majors in a closing role? OK.... maybe as a temporary caretaker assignment, but I really don't see this ending well. Alternative??? (From worst to "best") 1) How about Hughes, presuming that he comes back with a fully healthy shoulder, might there be an outside chance that he could regain some semblance of his 2014 form- pitching one inning at a time? 2) Pressly. He's been regularly touching 98 MPH a few times in each of his recent outings. At times he looks like he's put it all together, and then, just as fast, he loses it again... he will remain intriguing... certainly worth a tryout in a lost season. 3) Berrios- he could temporarily change his SP successful career path that we've all envisioned for him- by starting over coming throgh via the Twins pen- he certainly projects maturity and fearlessness on the mound... and in the process, he could elevate his velocity and MLB pitchability in more bite-size pieces. 4) Tyler Duffey- co-closer at Rice with Chagois, assuming the closer role is already imprinted in his DNA, he could quickly and comfortably take on the assignment in this lost season, his velocity and K% are sure to rise. Struggling mightily to maintain consistency this year as a starter- it's still worth noting that he has improved his overall control- lowering his BB/9 YOY by nearly 1 walk/9 innings- a switch to the pen might help him get back to basics and regain some focus on his pitching strengths early in the count and then dropping that hammer slider to rack up the Ks. And you get the added benefit of eliminating him getting exposed the second and third time through a lineup. Either of the latter two moving to closer will obviously require the other to quickly elevate their current MLB starter status in order to bolster and solidify the rotation. Let's face it, as of today, June 17, it doesn't appear that there is going to be any immediate, or even an intermediate, time frame scenario when help in filling the closer role in the form of May, Meyer, Burdi, Chargois is going to manifest itself.

Actually, he ended up starting about 40% of the Twins' games. And the only fair way for him, and best means of the Twins to both ascertain and maximize the Twins previous investment in him, as well as accentuate his potential value, was to set up the roster in such a way in ST as to give him the opportunity of an extended look. Obviously, it was clear early on that was never going to happen- the OF/DH roster construction made zero sense with respect in giving Arcia any shot at a legit half-season look. Arcia got less and less playing time- and ultimately grew stale, even as other established vets and guys younger than him, all played instead of him- and mostly trotted out, day-in and day-out giving pretty awful performances themselves. At the very least, Arcia should have been inserted in the late innings to PH in just about every game, just to keep his timing and batting eye sharp- instead he got all of 4 PH opportunities, and we got to see Suzuki, Murphy, Mastro, et al, futilely flail away, instead. And yes, we're in agreement... there're more than enough steel spikes in the FO coffin, already... I've certainly never been a big fan of Arcia, but like most of us, appreciated the raw power potential... and appreciated the obvious diligent effort that Arcia made in the offseason to get his career back on track. He appeared to have done everything the team asked of him in getting ready for 2016, yet there's really no evidence that the Twins reciprocated and gave him a fair chance in overcoming the setback of his nightmarish 2015 season. I wonder how that makes some of his former teammates feel, especially considering that Sano seems to have done little of what the club asked him to work on last winter.? This latest gaffe was just one more glaring example of the inability of this bunch to manage, anticipate, derive and act upon value from its set of both existing as well as expiring assets.

Arcia only started in 12 of the Twins 24 games in April. In his first 3 games, Arcia went 0-9, so he didn't start out hot, but for the month, he had an OPS of .724 in 12 starts. which was 5th best on the team. Arcia started 11 of 28 Twins games in May. It's pretty hard to argue that Arcia got any sort of extended look. And even with irregular play, his offensive output was much better than many established regulars and some metrics indicate that he had made strides in improving his plate approach. People keep bringing up Arcia's struggles vs. LHPs. In point of fact, Arcia has done extremely well against lefties relative to his career numbers against southpaws- in a small sample size, he actually significantly outperformed his 2016 numbers vs. RHPs . .702 OPS 115 OPS+ As I said above, It's hard to maintain that Arcia got a fair shot as a starter and blew it. It was extremely strange roster construction on Terry Ryan's part to start the season with Arcia as a 4th or platoon OFer, as well as the # 4/5 option on the DH depth chart (Arcia DH'd one game this season). There was no way that he should have been in LF in the first place- where he had little experience, what with RF meanwhile manned by a guy who had NO OF experience- and centered by Buxton, who most of us agreed in the offseason was not going to be major league ready on April 1.

"Arguably?" Who's your attorney? Johnny Cochran? (He's the only one off the top of my head who got clean away from defending the indefensible.)

Predicted on Tuesday, fulfilled on Thursday. Thanks alot for making me look good Terry, but let's face it, the joke's on you. Terrible roster management, personnel development along with both piss-poor asset utilization and maximization. Just another in a string of fireable offenses

Predicted on Tuesday, fulfilled on Thursday. Thanks alot for making me look good Terry, but let's face it, the joke's on you. Terrible roster management, personnel development and both asset utilization and maximization. Just another in a string of fireable offenses.

Or how about Zero Return?

Three years, it seems to me you're a tad generous to the Twins FO.

Rortvedt doesn't even turn 18 until a week from now. Don't know anything about his physical maturity, but it wouldn't really be that surprising if, as a full-time catcher, he didn't debut as a permanent roster inhabitant until he was age 24. Anyone know if he is a multi-sport guy or a baseball specialist? And the history of success for a catcher coming out of Wisconsin prep level play?

Yep. People have a blanket perception of Arkansas, and Fayetteville is geographically, educationally and culturally far removed from much of the rest of the state stereotype.

Perhaps I've missed it... but any reason why La Monte Wade has only played once since last Friday?

The Twins cut the Pickle Man? Say it ain't so... He attended the same school in San Francisco that no one has ever heard of as Brandon Poulson- who also moved on before the season started.

I swear, I just went back and found this post. LOL funny. And then I checked out Twitter: Old Neil had a 40-pitch adventure vs. the Angels and basically succeeded in taking a snail-and-turtle-moving-inevitability-of-outcome-event into complete-standstill-status. If his arm is still attached to his body when the Twins get back to Minneapolis, I greatly look forward to more mop-up-pulse-pounding-pitch-filled-pointlessness from our latest waiver-wire-wonder... until he goes on the 60-day DL some time in July...

To make that work I think some of the AA guys will probably need to be thrown into the mix, as well. (FYI, just some quick back-of-the-napkin math- the Twins starters are averaging about 5.1 Innings/Start. With 97 games left to play, and adding, let's say, maybe a dozen more extra-inning games, that would mean that an 8-man bullpen will need to average ~50 innings apiece total from June 16 to the end of the season... somehow, and just using one guy as an example, and who was seemingly brought in as one of the panacea reinforcements to meet that lofty bullpen goal, I don't think Neil Ramirez has the arm left in him to fulfill his share of the load...)

I hear tell that Fangraphs has taken the leap on the Simmons-@-SS-effect and made those 1/10ths of an ER a formal unit of measure and after some Ozzie-Smith-back-testing and number-crunching of past Cardinal pitches... are now officially quantified, with the aid of a smoothing constant, as, "Andreltons +".

Yep... it seemed like we were "Waiting for Deolis" for 7 years to finally break through and bring some small token of justificationary reward to the Johan trade... leave it to the Pirates, and now the Angels, to make the necessary tweaks from that Twins' 7-year investment in Guerra to reap the rewards.

Ortiz?

I said just this in Spring Training. I can't begin to count how many times in the 8th and 9th innings there has been an "obvious" situation for Arcia to hit in, only to see Suzuki, et al, get another shot. Arcia has only PH 4 times this year. Arcia is so low on the Twins totem pole that Mauer has recently been pinch hit for in several late-game situations- against RH pitchers- only to see Escobar or someone else get the PH gig over Arcia.

Before spring training, I argued that Arcia's roles should be on a daily basis, either playing in RF, platooning PT @ DH and Pinch HItting, every single day, at least through the ASB, in order to really give the guy one last decent shot to show if he's made any progress towards fulfilling his major league potential. Even in limited playing time, it's obvious that his plate approach, based on: the #1-ranked LD% you previously mentioned and, a nice increase in BB%, plus, a big improvement vs. LHP (OPS+ of 104 vs career OPS+ of 69) nice improvement in YOY zone contact rate, nice improvement reductions in both swing rate and out of zone swing rate... has improved overall. at least somewhat significantly. (It appears that he did the offseason work to better prepare himself for the season, offensively) I don't think it's arguable that he can ever make enough improvement in the OF to satisfy anyone, but the Twins didn't do him any favors moving him back and forth between LF and RF. He was a RF throughout most of his time in the minors (310 games vs. 38 in LF)- he definitely seems more comfortable there. This was the year the Twins needed to make a fully informed, and final, decision on Arcia. For all intents and purposes, that decision seems to have been made by April 15, instead of by July 15. He's absolutely spinning his wheels and wasting a roster space. But give him some credit, it doesn't appear that this uncomfortable situation has negatively affected his attitude in the dugout. Meanwhile, in tyypical fashion, the Twins will get absolutely ZERO for Arcia when he finally is officially Designated for Assignment

Ramirez has lost nearly 3 MPH off his FB velocity from 2014. And given his penchant for wildness, he's sure to add about 10-15 minutes of game length for each of his outings. In light of both the Cubs and the Brewers completely giving up on him in a span of about three weeks, I'd say the chances of him somehow regaining his 2014 form seem to be slim and none. Granted, it doesn't cost anything to have a look- and there is the possibility of team control of Ramirez to the year 2021 should he miraculously resurrect his career;, but I'd prefer they pursue a two-track solution- 1) keep shuttling in all of the "vaunted" internal options for extended tryouts, and 2) since they have first chance- keep on top of the waiver wire for better options (which are sure to manifest themselves over the next month or so)..

For starters, the Cubs found Jake Arrieta in exchange for a rental #5 SP.

Why? Perhaps this is the very thing that motivates him every morning when he wakes up.

I want names!