PseudoSABR

Especially, that last endzone set. It was a strange game that was inconsistently entertaining. Ravens go up big, blackout, 9ers comes back. I was pretty over it by the black out, honestly. I'm happy Bert gets his MVP though.

Maybe this is my own misperception, but Twins prospects the past decade or so have generally taken at least one or two years to develop; beyond Mauer, I'm having trouble thinking of one player who produced really well in his rookie year or at a young age.

He did underline for clarity, to be fair.

They aren't Twins yet, as soon as they graduate to the major league club, his tune will change.

The better question is why would Huntsman want to be the nominee of a party whose base doesn't think at all like him. Huntsman would have a better chance surviving the Democratic primaries than the Republican primaries.

I think this poster lives out of country, fyi...

That's only true if the wingnuts vote for Huntsman. Huntsman as the Republican nominee opens the possibility of a third party right winger. Huntsman might appeal to the middle more than Obama, but that's pretty debatable. But Obama is more palatable to his base, than Huntsman is to his, and that matters.

Made another trade today with the roster crunch in mind and trying to deal from a position of relative strength. I get a bit older, but we'll see. BJ Upton and Darwin Barney for Brandon Phillips and Jeurys Familia. How'd I do?

I agree with Nick's but I think we'll see either Mastroianni or Benson in CF to open the season.

I'm going to look into this, but to be fair, I've got all kinds of problems with the DSM IV, disordered diagnosis in general. I'm so out of the loop these days, I didn't even know they were updating their central text.

Because the contract tells us something that we didn't know before.

I was being sarcastic. I think it's completely unreasonable to restrict the conversation to free agency when we are speaking about things as grand as the Twins pitching philosophy and their motives in regards to 2013. I prefer looking at a broader context when wanting to make evaluations about the FO's competence. Last years offseason, this years draft, this years trades, the acquisitions of Pelfry and Harden all undermine the notion of the Twins being risk adverse. But if you prefer to limit your frame of reference to signing Corriea, not signing Marcum, and pursuing Saunders (?), I suppose you've really been right all along.

Sorry, Captain Discourse. It was wrong of me to suggest you were overreacting to the Marcum signing.

Saying that someone's logic seems faulty to me is not derogatory, distasteful, nor contemptible. We're allowed to disagree with each other's reasoning. You're being ridiculous. When I called you 'asinine,' that was a perjorative, 'specious,' is not.

You're right. I'm surprised by the tone of the current discourse, but I guess no more surprised when tea party took out 2010. Well, some of them are. It's just how do the Republicans reach to the margins without disenfranchising and empowering the base. I just think the primaries will make any step toward moderation very difficult. Not that the political climate couldn't make a tea-party candidate palatable nationally (say an Iran conflict that goes poorly/another unexpected economic crash).

I'm not dismissing. I'm saying that upside probably doesn't outweigh the risk, I'm basing this on the surprisingly low guaranteed money he got BASED on what I know his upside to be. I'm totally waffling on it, because I haven't seen the medicals. That's not going to change, so I see no point in trying to pin me down here. So what? The Twins are being cheap, perhaps, but their other pitching acquisitions seem to undermine the notion that the Twins philosophy prevented them from signing him. Why are they choosing Saunders over Marcum? Oh, I don't know. Maybe, health. Snarkiness aside, I really don't feel we are all that far a part, my problem is where people use this non-signing as an extension of the Blackburn-Twins, and I'm actually happy to see that the Twins are making tangible pitching acquisitions that says otherwise. It's just hard for me to get worked up about. You know, maybe's because I don't live in the Twin Cities, that the product on the field means less to me, and that's something I really haven't been thinking about.

'Specious' is a criticism not a perjorative. I'm saying that the facts don't meet the conclusion (definitions vary). I'm not intending to disparage, though I'm intending to criticize. There's a difference. I see you took the high road with the rest of your post, congrats on your restraint, precision, and talent. Really, cheers.

I'm not dismissing it. If Marcum's actually healthy, he has upside.However, at what point can we discount upside when the chances of succeeding it are very remote? The contract that he received suggests to me (this is my reading of it) that the chances of Marcum meeting his potential is very remote, surprisingly remote, so remote that his upside might be foolhardy to invest in. That's not disingenuous. This reading seems stuck in the past. How do explain Harden? I'm sure you'll dismiss him, but Ryan did take risks on injury-concern arms the past couple years, along with Pelfry and Zumaya. It's not true that the Twins don't take chances. Except that their aren't the injury concerns with Saunders.... And really I'm not listing excuses, I'm providing context. If you choose to believe that the Twins are willfully set against high upside pitchers, I guess go ahead, but I think that flies in the face of a number of other offseason moves. I don't need to know the other 28 teams' reasons for not taking the risk, to know that they didn't take the risk. The conclusion I can draw from that is that a potential number 2 starter is too risky at four million dollars for 29 teams. I'm not going to analyze this contract in isolation; that's just silly.

Feel better? Honestly, Smerf, it's hard for me to get worked up about this Marcum or Correia or Pelfry. When the Twins traded Span and Revere for Meyer, Mays, and Worley. That's ****ing LIGHT YEARS of progress to prior off-seasons. However distasteful lamely treading water is in 2013 and how cheap it is for management, I see a real legitimate shift in their pitching the philosophy. In some ways, this is an extension of what we saw in the draft, with more high-risk and high-velocity arms (maybe they'll even turn one of the bullpen arms into a starter, at least the approach is somewhat novel). The tone of your post just seems to miss the forest for the trees and unreasonably harsh.

Only going on the information we have. Yes. But more information is out there, that would give us more complete picture of the likelihood of his continued health. If the guys arm is hanging by a thread, it might start throwing pitches in ST, but it doesn't mean we can't earnestly predict the arm falling off when looking at the medicals. The possibility of potential actually has a ceiling by the health of Marcum's arm. It's just hard for me to go even that far without knowing more about why so many team shyed away. I don't think that's disingenuous, I think that's smart. I don't disagree with this. And I also think timing was in affect here, that the Twins weren't willing to wait out a 'health risk' guy. So when Pelfry and Harden signed, Marcum's price might have been much higher than what he signed for. The Twins might also prefer Pelfry form May to Sept. than starting with Marcum and waiting for his arm to fall off. There's nuance here, for sure. It's hard to assert either way. I'm not suggesting that Marcum is healthy or not. I don't know. I'm suggesting given the context of Marcum's contract, it's hard to assert that the Twins have any explaining to do. Something made Marcum so cheap. (And IRCC, the Twins did have contact with Marcum, just no contract offer (unless that was just made up stuff to throw the fans off the real scent of the Twins intent)). You're completely guessing that it was the Twins philosophy that made it impossible to sign Marcum (and really that's the kind of stretch that seems rampant throughout this thread). Does Harden fit our pitching philosophy? Meyer? Mays? Even Worley? I'm not willing to separate our minor league acquisitions because such acquisitions speak to what our pitching philosophy actually is, not what it used to be. You can poo-poo the 28 other teams, but that's 29 pitching philosophies not taking the risk on Marcum. Again, the Marcum contract seems to mean to you (evidently) A) the Twins philosophy prevents signing such high-risk pitchers rather than that medical records on Marcum don't even warrant four million dollars of risk. That seems like a weird conclusion to draw.

And we all know how good the Twins pitching was last year. It's difficult to measure the effect because there's always one pitching staff and one lineup that stays constant at every stadium. It'd take years of data to get around that, methinks.

He also mishandled younger players Garza, Bartlett, and Young. If it wasn't for the international signings we'd all be singing a different tune.

I was making a joke about Jindal whose said some pretty bat**** crazy stuff himself. I think David Brooks was suggesting that actual conservatives need to suck it up, and form a new party of not necessarily moderates, but non-tea party conservatives which can compete in the southwest, northeast and midwest. I don't see how the Republicans can win the Whitehouse or even maintain Congress without a concerted effort to gerrymander. What's interesting and rather machivilian to me, is that Democrats and Tea-Partiers have worked together to undermine classic conservative candidates in the primary (see Missouri and Indiana). Given the results of the last Senate elections, expect Democrats and their backers to throw a lot money behind tea party primary candidates.

There is no upside, if it's obvious that he's not healthy. That's a distinct possibility, maybe even a likely one considering the contract. But we don't know, so there's no real way to measure the risk, other than the contract he actually received. We're all surprised that Marcum signed so cheaply, but rather than read that contract as meaning A) that there is near universal concern about Marcum's health, that indeed his medical prognosis is just that bad, we choose that it means the Twins were derelict in their diligence. The second option seems totally unreasonable to me, especially when the Twins have signed a pitcher like Harden for far less risk.

1) They risked 4 million. 2) You're point is proof to the contrary--that no other team would even risk four million. 3) Yes, TJS is well known, recovery from TJS surgery might be a better bet than troubling medicals on an arm--in any case, we can't make that decision without the medicals. That's what's specious, is that some people are determining risk without really having tangible evidence. Again, I'm willing to admit that Pelfry won't work out, but that doesn't mean that Marcum isn't even riskier. I really can't make the determination if Pelfry's recovery from TJS is more or less risky than Marcum's current health. Nor can anyone else. Which is my point. Everyone understands this. Yet. Yet, 29 other teams wouldn't take that risk. That seems to belie something pretty troubling in the medicals (and yes, I'm making an inference here). And flowery perjoratives? I didn't use any pejorative language in the last post whatsoever, and I think I've been pretty careful to attack ideas and reasoning rather than trying to discredit people. But whatever.