PseudoSABR

What happened?

We were mean. We made cracks about the guys capacity to be a parent. He was foolish to share so much of his personal life, but many of us were unnecessarily cruel.

Seems perfectly reasonable to me.

Sure, it's not great for Lohse. What I hope is that players and their agents rethink declining the qualifying offer--and that teams can better retain their high profile free agents. That's a good thing.

I doubt Gardy is actually the one making the decisions on the 25 man roster...

Boras knew the rules when he and Lohse declined the qualifying offer (or arbitration or whatever)--they misjudged the market. Quit crying.

I think Lebron James would make an excellent thirdbaseman....

You know, it's entirely possible for me to accept that our pitching staff will suck, be mediocre across aboard, and also assert that the same pitching staff will be much better than last year's staff. Look, we don't have much to root for but varying degrees of suck; but I'm still interested in precision or at least prudent prognosis. Taking the transitions-to-the-AL don't work, the twins don't develop pitchers, injured pitchers never heal stance for each and every case is unreasonable, silly.

I don't think we really can make much of veteran pitchers spring training performances especially those returning from injury. Honestly, I hope our pitchers are working on technique rather than trying to get statistical results, but that probably goes without saying. The younger guys, Hendricks in particular, the statistical outcome of spring training is probably more determinate to making the roster, but not for the likes of Worley, Pelfrey, and Correia. We won't really know what we have with the National league bunch until the season starts. Also, if any of the relievers (Wood, Presley, Roenicke) don't make the roster, a spot easily opens for Deduno.

A matter of circumstance mostly. Unhealthy pitchers should get healthier, prospects should develop, the butt-ends of our depth should learn from their experience. Whether the 'shoulds' make due will be the tale of the season. But I'm not seeing any swaying evidence whether our rotation will be mostly Pollyannas or Candides. Again, don't get me wrong we'll suck. But our starting pitching should improve as the season moves along; given the low bar, I'm not really sure how much that actually means.

I don't mean to mock you, but I feel this post is indicative of my point about rationalizing the negative outcome. There's a perfectly reasonable line of thinking that suggests a Twins disaster, but that reason isn't necessarily probable. We can justify our negative (or positive) outlook with any number of pieces of evidence--but the average probable outcome is still the average probable outcome; taking the downside is by definition unreasonable. That said, I believe that the Twins can get 180 innings of mediocrity from all of Pelfry, Corriea, Diamond, and Worley, which is FAR more than they got last year. Moreover, I think it's probablistically likely that one (or more) of the pitchers with health concerns or one (or more) of the prospects will emerge to eat positive innings this year. While all of Diamond, Worley, Correia, and Pelfry might digress from there career norms--the thing is--it is still a boon to the rotation given how horrible it was last year. Moreover, I think it's silly to think that all four will digress, and more silly that some other starting pitching won't emerge. We may scoff at the notion that our pitching depth is significantly better than last year, but it just is. While we might still have the seventh and eighth starting option in play, the Twins know significantly more about such pitchers than they did last year, and that's a boon. The Twins won't be in the position of blindly promoting the able arm in line--they will be in a much better position to use their pitching depth, because they know far more about such pitchers having seen them a year ago. Again, we are looking at a baseline of mediocrity, but that baseline, that safety net, is held significantly higher than last year. There should be no pitcher starting a game this year that we've never heard of--that says something. Yes, we suck, but really, not as bad as last year, guys; I'm not sure why that is so hard to admit. I'll also add, that no, the Twins didn't do everything within their payroll power or their roster means to improve the rotation, so we have every right to be bitter--but that bitterness shouldn't make us opaque to improved starting rotation depth, how thread-barren it might seem.

I'll give you the standard run deferential between the leagues and score that as an improvement from last year's rotation. From development to regression to changing leagues, it seems to me you view the negative outcome as the likely one--which might even be the case. However it's just very unlikely that the collection of independent events will all turn out negative.

I just don't think this is really fair. The Twins aren't relying on Deduno and Devries, so much as they are using them as stop gaps for either injured guys like Diamond and Pelfrey or young guys like Hendricks and Gibson. Unlike last year, as the season progresses the Twins depth should get better; and I think it's pretty good bet to make.

Everything went wrong last year. If Pelfrey, Correa, Worley pitch their career norms at 180 innings, that's something we didn't have last year. Diamond likely will digress but it's also possible that just one or two others (say Gibson and Hendricks) emerge as even league average pitchers. Sure, the pitchers the Twins acquired might fail pitch their career norms, the injured pitchers may fail to return to health, Diamond, Deduno, and De Vries may all regress to irrelevance, and the young pitchers might all fail to develop. But that's an awful lot of pessimism.

As the season moves on the rotation should only improve with help from the minor leagues, and the improving health of players like Pelfry, Diamond, Gibson, and even Harden and Perez. That Deduno, Hendricks, and De Vries have some seasoning should be an advantage, as well. While we might look more favorably at the rotation that emerged from ST in 2012, the fact is Pavano, Baker, Liriano, Blackburn and Marquis were ALL busts. I just don't think its at all reasonable that we can expect the same kind of results in 2013. Yes, the rotation will be a carousel of mediocrity, but I doubt well see the depths of ineptitude of 2012.

Perkins had never heard of selecting pitches based on a hitter's expectation?

That Morneau is somehow an unknown quantity is fascinating, isn't it? The truth is he's not really that old, and he really does have the capacity to just put up monster numbers. Doesn't he seem okay, now?--even including our scumbag neurologist assessments (from video, from hearsay, from interview)? Maybe he's ****ed, but maybe the guy is just who he's been, which might be awesome.

Unfortunately, money and reason don't go hand and hand.

Having the same problem w the ad. Btw, cleared the cache, etc. and still just weird white space to the right...

Nick Blackburn and Jason Marquis say hello.

I'm actually hyped to watch this game. The whole Mexico-Canada fiasco energized my interest in the WBC. I guess David Wright is out with a sore back.

I'm curious about Parm's play of robbing a 'home run'. Was it just happenstance or can the kid actually field the position?

Hey Brock, I dig you guys, I've turned off adblock, and I'm still getting like 1/2 of my possible viewing space. I suppose there's some column of ads to the right, but it's just some wasted white space for now. And even then, the site seems restricted by two to four inches of unnecessary bounds; I'm not sure if it's my browser (chrome), this site literally only uses sixty percent of my monitor width (and I'm a classic at 4:3), which is annoying for any thread with a good deal of text. It's like I have this narrow eight to ten inch area within which threads can be read, which just seems silly, as large as all monitors are. I'm happy see your ads, but with reboot, I get the option of less posts per page (30 max v 50 max), and seemingly I get less text per horizontal line (I ain't got the data for that!). All and all, it makes it more work for me to participate. And I'm one of the willing ones...

The only way Parmalee is traded any time soon is 1) if he establishes value at the MLB level (he hasn't) 2) he is blocking one or more near-ready prospects (he's not). Maybe as Parm approaches arbitration...

Good to know. I didn't know you had interest, because there was some openings this offseason. I might give your guys' email to the commish for reference. PM your email, Ben?