PseudoSABR

Right, but deals like these don't help the Indians long term chances and perhaps even hinder them, which, along with what KC had done this winter, makes me feel pretty good about our next competitive window around 2015. As hard as that may be to stomach now, the Twins aren't handcuffing their future what so ever.

How about a deal centered around Pineda?

That largely depends on whether or not the Swisher contract turns into an albatross, unless you think they'll compete in 2013.

Nick Swisher, face of the Cleveland Indians.

Not at all interested. I have three closers...

Ugh. You are impossibly snide. I'm sure I'm not the only one who remembers the discussion surrounding Columbine being more than about bullying. This point in particular is a petty one; just drop it. It's like your own pet straw man. And for the record, again, bullying probably is an important part of the mental health issues that face adolescents--but that's certainly not my take from Columbine. Jesus.

Honestly, who cares about being right about the central motivation of the mass-murderer of the month; rather we need to look at all the possible motivators as well as the ease with which these murderers carried out their plans and the mental health issues that may have prevented such an act. It's a tall order, but asking people to clam up--as if any discussion about preventive measures is necessarily emotionally motivated and dismissable--doesn't help.

On trading Timmy, I'm not selling low on him, and I'm not actively looking to deal him. I don't expect to get what I traded for him, but I'm going to need a rich deal if I'm going to move him. Make me quality (not quantity) offers and maybe we can work something out.

After Columbine we sympathized with the shooters? What alternative reality are you living in? Once we've cooled off, our desire to make difficult changes and face powerful special interests might be mitigated...

He mea-culpa-ed, Dave. No need to continue to pile it on....

A reasonable one.

Yes, the media is sensationalizing this discussion in an unhelpful way. Stunning. But what's different is some in the media are actually trying to be thoughtful and are willing to table their ideology to have a serious discussion. Example: Joe Scarborough (Totally worth checking out.)

Champions of the status quo call for quiet (as the NRA does and righteously relishes in). Bullying? Oh the irreparable harm we've caused by suggesting bullying in school might lead to violence! How can we let ourselves be so maniacal in our discussions! The mental health issue and bullying issue are problem more related than one might think at first blush, so your poo-pooing it seems odd to me. No one doubts the seriousness to address policy, but public discourse actual needs to hit a fever pitch (even some hyperbole) before the pols will listen and even act reasonably. I know you can totally be reasonable on these issues, but your role as discourse police seems like a misstep to me. Look whether its bullying, mental health, magazine and assault weapon bans, the emotional disconnect between teachers and students, etc., let's tackle this problem and talk about it in as many ways as we can. There's plenty of reasonable people that are charged with sorting through the muck to get to some real solutions. I'm going to be curious as to what the Biden task force comes up with...

Jesus, Levi, you sound like the NRA: “Out of respect for the families, and until the facts are known, the NRA has refrained from commenting. While some have tried to exploit the tragedy for political gain, we have remained respectably silent." That's ****ing rich.Having the conversation can do no harm, and despite your admonishments, it seems to be happening pretty sensibly in public.

You're never going to convince anyone with asinine hyperbole like this.

The Twolves might be good, even if they aren't sexy

ugh

Little kids? Wtf?

5/125

Petty sounds funny considering how aggressively you wanted to shame my take on things before. I made three simple points: 1) Baker at 5.5M was not an overpayment. 2) The Cubs were not wildly overspending 3) The Twins were not going to fix the 2013 rotation in one offseason All three of those things were 100% correct. You, and others, decided to call Baker's contract "Excessive" and a variety of other adjectives to justify the Twins not matching. You called out the Cubs for signing meh talents for more money than you thought they deserved. And you kept saying..."wait and see" about the offseason. Well, now we've waited and now we see. Baker looks like a god damn bargain at 5.5 million even if his arm was half attached compared to Kevin "I'm pitch to contact personified, barely a 4th starter in the NL, and making TRIPLE what Marquis was paid last year for basically being his clone" Correia. The same guy you posted was signed to a deal that was "not that bad". This after arguing Baker was overpaid. How anyone can feel that 5.5M for Baker is excessive overpayment and 2 years 10M for Correia is "not that bad" is insane. Those positions cannot be rectified sanely. Second, this offseason we have made two very nice deals that have restocked our 2015 rotation well and added one nice arm for 2013. We're out of trade chips unless we want to completely destroy the offense in the process. We now have roughly 20-25M to spend in FA and promptly kicked 20-25% of it on a horsecrap pitcher who should make us recall the days of Blackburn not Santana. Exactly what you and others complained the fatal problem with signing Baker was for 5.5. Now we not only anchored 5M to this year's budget, but next years as well for a key that, at best, provides more veteran presence then the guys we already had. Leaving us with exactly one choice: Spending the rest of the budget on one arm. Which, I don't know about you, but my confidence is pretty shaken on that happening considering this contract. And third, in the context of free agency, what the Cubs did was read the market early and sign players to deals better than they would have likely got a month later. FA contracts are always higher than we like to stomach, but if you get in exceptionally early and exceptionally late with the right factors, you can sometimes dodge the ugliest bullets. Last night we took one ugly friggin bullet. No matter how much you want to paint it as "not that bad" It's ugly. Baker for less total dollars with much more upside is a no-brainer. Your aggressive approach to shaming me for that position earlier gives me every right to remind you of what it looks like now. Feel better?

You can keep twisting your own words around to make it sound better, but you called 5.5M excessive. You then came on this thread and said 2 years and 10M (guaranteed, not an option year! Which HURTS trade value, not helps it!) is "not that bad". Those opinions together are stupid. There is no twisting this into "not that bad" in any world, but certainly not when you called a 1 year 5.5M deal "excessive". All the hand wringing and laughing about that looks mighty stupid now. Just to recap a third time for you, they just paid a player who is bad at baseball as much money as the Cubs did for one meh guy and one guy who, if healthy, is pretty darn good. If you asked anyone before the offseason which of those two scenarios you would rather be in (bad player vs. two players) they'd have said the two players with meh ability and upside/health concerns 100 out of 100 times. It's a no brainer. You, Nick, and many others shouted across this forum what silly moves those were by the Cubs. They look pretty damn sharp to me as we sit and look at a 10M dollar turd today. Look, you're strawmanning. How many times do I have to say I don't like the deal. I'm holding out hope he can establish some trade value. That you want to have the Baker argument again strikes me as petty.

No reason. I don't believe in creationism but there's no reason it can't exist alongside evolution because evolution doesn't even try to explain the formation of life, just what happens to it afterward. Unless you're a crazy person and believe the earth to be 6,000 years old, like my brother does. He's an idiot. I can't believe we share genetic code. I agree with both of you that they can co-exist. But I would note that the main evidence for creationism is the Old Testament, and no one seems to know exactly who came up with the concept. The problem in creationism arise from the literal interpretation of the Bible, that insists in seven days. for the Creation. Once you remove that, and take 7 days as seven (and seven in the Biblical sense, as many) as seven periods, there is plenty of room for evolution to fin into the Biblical story. That is why Catholicism, that does not interpret the Bible literally, has no major problems with evolution. But the Churches that take the Bible literally (certain Evangelical Churches, for example) they do. Regarding on how Biochemistry started, there are certain explanations. Under the primitive earth conditions, it is possible to synthesize urea and a few aminoacids from inorganic forms of nitrogen. Once you have nitrogen in organic molecules (like aminoacids, and urea), provided there is some water, it can go from there. Mind that we are talking here of periods of hundred of millions of years. How did we get from baseball to here? The thing is that a very vocal minority of those who believe in creation actually believe in a literal 7 days. Many of those who believe in creation do not believe in an Earth that is only aged ~10,000 years. It's akin to politics (to bring it back to the original topic of the thread), where you see extremists on the liberal and conservative sides that make a heck of a lot of noise, but the large majority of the country sits between those extremes, not in them. I certainly don't believe every liberal wants to take away my hunting rifle, and I don't believe every conservative wants to have 3,408 automatic weapons per household (to pick one particular issue), but that's the word we hear because those are the loudest talkers. How small is the bible-as-literal minority in your view? I think you're making a false equivalency between religious extremism and liberal extremism. We can't equate the rejection of science with some hippies taking away your guns. Both are extreme, but beyond that the equivalency falls away.

It's 12/11 and you've declared the offseason over? Keep up the negativity. Right. Signing Corriea makes little different in terms of future competitiveness or our actually capacity to sign star pitching.

This context shows what? You gave just as much billing to plugging that Baker was payed "excessively" (is this somehow different than overpaying?) as you did the option year. How that paragraph proves you didn't argue Baker was overpaid is baffling. I'll repeat it: The Twins just guaranteed Kevin Correia as much money as the Cubs did for Feldman and Baker combined. After much laughing at the Cubs early on. I know who should be laughing now. Baker is coming off injury, and part of the incentive of signing him was that he would regain more value in future years. Five and half million is fine if there's some incentive to paying him that much; I thought it was excessive, given his injury and no option year (that's not crazy, even if you think otherwise). Feldman is a swing man with a worse track record than Correia. Again, the only silver lining is if Correia pitches himself into tradeability. Both deals are bucket loads of Meh, and trying characterize my opinion otherwise misrepresents it. You're trying to drive a wedge when our opinions probably aren't very far apart. That said, I'd rather pay that 5.5 million more over two years to McCarthy, though there might be legitimate health concerns.

I think you might be onto something, given the similar narrative coming out of Cleveland.