Thrylos

Hate to say this, but other than the 2 who are playing in the AFL right now (Buxton & Rosario,) the other high ranked Twins OF prospects (Harrison, Kepler, Walker) run about as well as Delmon Young.

A couple of things on that: You can play the optimist, but you got to do something pretty drastic to transform a horrible team. Have a plan while you are doing it. Be transparent. Hold people accountable. Walk the talk. When Ryan was optimistic, he did not do the other things. I think that any leader who goes out and gives the message "we will not be competitive, we know it and we will not do anything to be about it but wait for Sano, Buxton and Godot to make us competitive", should have given his last message as a leader. I'd love to see someone of the Twins' Front Office and ownership say: 1. We really sucked the last 4 years and maybe more, because we haven't won a World Series since 1991. 2. You fans who supported us on building one of the best ballparks in the majors should be mad about it and we are mad about it as well 3. Our goal is not only to be competitive but to win the World Series every year. Losing is unacceptable 4 We are working on it: We decided that the teams' field management was not optimal and we made a change. 5., 6. (Describe other weaknesses and ways to address them.) 7. Act on them Not sure about optimistic or pessimistic. How about realistic. And setting goals. And being transparent and communicative.

FWIW, Souhan is doing a bit of revisionist history here: in 1991 Jack Morris was the highest paid pitcher in baseball. Souhan should know that... In spirit I agree: If you develop players well, have balance and a plan on building a competitive team, you don't need a whole bunch of money but there is the other side of that coin: If you don't do that, and the Twins' FO has not done that recently, spending $ can fix it sometimes. Ask the Marlins and the Yankees dynasty.

Couple of generic pet peeves here: 1. Referring to authors as the medium they published. That would be "Fangraphs says", as if any thread here would be "Twins Daily says". The person who wrote this is Kiley McDaniel 2. How many times has Ms (?) Kiley McDaniel have watched any of the people mentioned in that post play? Or followed their careers. Got to take things with a huge grain of salt there...

I was really responding to the "obvious" and "ALWAYS" of your initial post with just one example showing that it is not always. I can go back from '87 on and look at the bullpen numbers and I suspect that we will find out that the Twins had a worse than AL average or average pen about 1/2-2/3s of those seasons, better than average pen (aka "solid/good") about 3-4 seasons and a much better than average pen, top 3 pens in the league (aka "great") two to three seasons. Few Kelly teams had "good" pens. In '87 the pen had a 5.11 ERA and a 1.51 WHIP and was awful. '91 was better (3.53 ERA, 1.302 WHIP, vs 3.77/1.352 AL average pen, so you can call that "good" or "solid".) Interesting exercise to do, and I suspect that at least half of he Twins' pens since Kelly were below average...

Got to love those statements. What is the official street address of the Minnesota Twins, again? And I am sure that it was the City of Minneapolis that renamed that road and nothing to do with the Twins' marketing Department. And here is what St. Peter himself said what that steet was renamed (from here) Something's got to give... I just cannot believe that there any Twins' fan out there that they can believe what they are saying any more.

There are analytics, and there are analytics. Here is an example: Last season Pelfrey had a 2 mph velocity drop in his pitches vs 2013 and his release point was all over the place. That spells trouble and trouble happened. Either the Twins do not get into this type of stuff or instead of shorting RBI or ERA columns, they look into "matchup" and situational analytics, which are based on non-significant sample sizes. Or something. Pretty sure that Andy was more interested in his clicker than at this pitchers release points, velocities and mechanics. Ask the Vanimal. Hope the next Twins' manager and coaches are aware of those data points and seek them.

The answer is pretty easy for me too, but I have seen Santana play shortstop for 4-5 years now... Escobar should be the Twins starting shortstop. He is a better fielder than Santana and, other than second base, he is average or below average fielder. Gardenhire liked to play him at this worst IF defensive position (third.) Santana can handle the middle IF positions ok plus handle the OF ok. Despite what you saw this half season, Escobar is a better hitter anyways. It is kind of a 2015 only argument in my mind, because starting 2016, if not 2015, Polanco better be the Twins starting SS...

I think the above is a misconception that seems to be propagated by announcers and the press. Here are 2014 numbers: 2014 AL Average RP ERA: 3.63, FIP 3.68, SIERA 3.38, K% 21.8, WHIP 1.28 2014 Twins RP ERA: 3.73, FIP: 3.88, SIERA 3.84, K% 17.3, WHIP 1.32 Not not great, not good, not solid. Not even average. The Twins' 2014 bullpen was below average.

Team number 2. Team number 1 is fantasy and team number 3 is same-old-shtuff

Beg to differ. Sano will probably put up numbers similar to Vargas this year, with an increase in the power and contact parts (BA & SLG)

I agree, in principle, but you also have to sell high on your aging veterans (which is something that the Twins do not do.) As far as a WS team with $125M goes (and hindsight is 20/20), how about: SP Hughes SP Masahiro Tanaka SP Edinson Volquez SP Scott Kazmir SP Gibson RP Perkins RP Pat Neshek RP Duensing RP Joba Chamberlain RP Swarzak RP May LHRP JP Howell C - Pinto 1B - Mauer 2B - Dozier SS - Escobar 3B - Plouffe LF - David DeJesus/Rajai Davis CF Jacoby Ellsbury RF Oswaldo Arcia DH Nelson Cruz B-C Suzuki B-OF David DeJesus/Rajai Davis B-UT D. Santana B-UT Mark Reynolds And I suspect that this would had not cost the full $125M, if you subtract the salaries of the unmentioned (Willingham, Correia, etc.)

Is Vargas a better player than Plouffe? Yes. Sano is a better player than Vargas and more MLB-ready. Thus, Sano is better than Plouffe. Logic.

Apples and Pineapples. Totally different circumstances: The Twins had the new ballpark going on, Mauer was 27 when he was extended and he is from the Twin Cities. The Cardinals had no community $ investment, Pujols was 31 when he left for the Angels and he is from the Dominican. I do not defend the Twins' front office by any means, but they absolutely had to extend Mauer. No other options.

3.5 fWAR not 4. The point is that Sano is better than Plouffe. You cannot not play the better guy, Sano makes the Twins more likely to win than Plouffe. If Plouffe is so great, the Twins should get a couple of good prospects for him, or at least a Centerfielder, no? Trade him. But you got to start the better player who is not always the "proven veteran".

What exactly is the "right thing" when we are talking about a convicted PED guy?

When you do not draft well, you go after other teams' young talent by trading veterans on top of their value before they enter their decline phases, like Willingham 3 off-seasons ago, Perkins this off-season etc. Also, do not re-sign players through their decline years. The Cardinals have done plenty of both trading and not re-signing aging veterans.

A Randy Bush/Gene Larkin type or role, for which he is better suited. Plouffe is not a starting third baseman in a world series team. .750 OPS just does not cut it. He would be a great role player in a good team. The Twins need those instead of the marginal bench bats and gloves

I would not put Buxton and Sano in the same sentence as far as MLB-readiness goes. Sano is ready. He should be the Twins' starting third baseman in 2015. Buxton is a question mark. If he dominates the AFL (and I mean dominates) and has a good spring training, then he should go north. If his OPS is sitting around .700-.750, he needs more time.

That sucks. So young. My condolences to Caleb and his family.

Simple question: Ask him why would any fan have any confidence that he is the guy who would lead the Twins to a World Championship, since he had 20 years to do it and he didn't.

I'd rather see how the existing Twins pitchers will do without the magic touch of Andy, before they go out and get another bunch of starters on top of the 8 or so they already have under contract for 2015

Showalter has a reputation for being a curmudgeon. As far as "success" goes, the Yankees started their WS run the year after he left and the 100-62 AZ team he managed went belly up in the post-season. Not that much success.

It's doable (esp if you look and see that they should had been 5 games better based on their run diff - aka their Pythagorean record.) Also, at the first half they were 44-50 (which projects to a full season of 76-86, 6 games better than they finished) with the likes of Kubel, Bartlett, Colabello, Morales, Deduno as a starter, Pelfrey & Co. So we are looking at about 10 games more and the wheels not falling off in August and September. I think that the latter part was a symptom for a team that was not well managed and gave up and I think that the managerial change has the potential to help alleviate that (if it doesn't then they chose the wrong manager.) When I look at things like a projected record, I look at the games they won and lost and their splits. The 2014 Twins had a record of 26-28 against teams <.500 and 44-64 against teams >.500. Can they win 8 games more against each of those groups of teams? They should. If anyone thinks that playing shortstops, first basemen, catchers and DHs at the outfield did not hurt the Twins, here is a pretty astonishing set of numbers allowed to us by the new technology that tracks hit balls. I am just showing the significant departures from league averages: Up the Middle RHB: Twins: PA against: 1339 Slash line: .336/.330/.498 AL: PA against: 19461 Slash line: .308/.303/.439 Opposite field RHB (i.e hit at the Twins RF): Twins: PA against: 404 Slash line: .332/.326/.532 AL: PA against: 6191 Slash line: .279/.274/.408 That is a huge difference (from average and not from league best too). I hope that someone at the Twins looks at that and adjusts accordingly. If you are a defensive stats minded person, here are plus/minuses (which is actually appropriate for the sample size; devised by B James and indicates runs saved from average) and UZR/150 (which is not appropriate for numerical calculation, but the direction gives a sense of what is going on.) Santana (CF) plus/minus: -2, UZR/150: -12.2 Mastroianni (OF) plus/minus: -3, UZR/150: -9.2 Hicks (OF) plus/minus: -6, UZR/150: -8.2 Schafer (OF) plus/minus: -3, UZR/150: 1.2 Herrmann (OF) plus/minus: -4, UZR/150: -21.9 Kubel (RF) plus/minus: -7, UZR/150: -29.1 Parmelee (OF) plus/minus: -7, UZR/150: -7.4 Colabello (RF) plus/minus: -6, UZR/150: -73.8 Bartlett (OF) plus/minus: -2, UZR/150: -293.1 Arcia (OF) plus/minus: -12, UZR/150: -6.9 Willingham (LF) plus/minus: -5, UZR/150: -6.6 and Escobar (OF) plus/minus: -1, UZR/150: -27.2 Nunez (OF) plus/minus: -1, UZR/150: 19.9 Adding those plus/minuses is 57. Which means that the Twins' outfield gave up 57 more runs than an average outfield. And I really cannot believe that anyone sould use the adjective "solid" to describe any of the above players - maybe with the exception of Schafer - as outfielders. Some of them are young enough and they can learn and improve, but "solid" they are not. Yes, starting pitching beyond Hughes and Gibson was a problem, but it was not the only problem in opponent scoring.

Oops! Geno