TheLeviathan

I can envision that being the case, but that doesn't make it prudent or likely. I also don't think trading Santana and Dozier qualifies as a total rebuild. Hell, if that were the case I think Dozier is the key to that argument, I'm not sure Santana really moves the needle all that much. And look, I get where you're coming from and I'm not willing to hand Ervin away, but if I can move him for good value (just like Dozier) - then I do it. I don't worry about public perception as a new GM because I can justify everything I do as being my vision for rebuilding the club. And we can't know what his value is if we aren't actively shopping him. At the end of the day I won't kick up a fuss if Dozier and Santana are retained because of underwhelming offers, but you better shop the bejesus out of them before you come to that conclusion. (Guys like Suzuki or Willingham or Abad are different - I'll take a slightly used bag of peanuts for guys like that)

Is trading Santana and Dozier a blowout rebuild? I guess I sort of take exception to that portrayal. I think it's just a natural part of a rebuild. We're selling high on two players with limited ability to help this team in even two years much less 4 or 5 when they are likely at peak value. And really, those are the only two players I'm actively shopping this offseason. No one else really has the value worthy of moving them. Also, by the logic you have here Nick, wouldn't the real answer to our problems be to put these players on the block: Buxton, Sano, Berrios, and Polanco? We might fetch 2-3 good MLB players to surround Dozier and Santan if we did. Wouldn't that be the fast track? I'd offer this up: are Twins fans jaded and losing interest? Yes, but at the same time we are almost guaranteed to have a totally new front office. You know what that buys? Time. Time to do things right. Sports fans get that new regimes need time to clean out the old mistakes. So we have time to do this right and the right thing to do is deal Santana for more help.

I don't deny it is defeatist. Part of my pessimism about this year was the fact that people are underselling the lumps young players sometimes have to take to show their best in the big leagues. Too many of you were predicting MVP campaigns and all that jazz for guys that still clearly had work to do. I think this year we saw a lot of the offensive players take their lumps, but we are nowhere close to seeing the pitching staff do the same. Meaning, we aren't that much further along for letting our guys adjust. We'll have the husk of Phil Hughes, the decidedly bleh Gibson, and a bunch of guys still trying to prove they are starters. I don't think, even optimistically, that we can field a good enough staff to contend next year. But what I would like to do is invest a lot of innings in Mejia, May, Berrios, and whomever we get for Santana and Dozier. Not to mention the young bullpen arms. Then, ideally, 2018 is a time we can start to actually hope. But retaining Santana does nothing to improve us, while dealing him may gave us more bullets in the chamber to improve over the long haul. I get that people want to say things like "don't give up on next year!", but sometimes that's just being a realist. Charlie Brown shouldn't continue to live his life believing he's going to some day kick field goals in the NFL. At some point he should just accept who he is and quit living the lie. Retaining Santana is living a lie about next year. Same with Dozier. I don't give them away, but I actively seek ways to move them for value. Anything else is just too detached from reality for my liking.

Or in the case of Doumit and Bartlett - totally inexplicably stupid.

Trade him. It's not illegal to get a guy that is ready to slot in his place. Given our pitching options in the short term, we've already given up on next year. It's going to take that long just to sort stuff out. Why make Ervin go down with the ship when you can trade him for a couple life boats?

North was trying to give your post credit for having something to say. So you just stated that we put catchers in the outfield....for fun? Maddon's point was that if a guy has figured out hitting but not fielding, move him around to find a spot that he can field passably so he can ascend the ranks quicker. Again, your article did nothing to suggest these moves are working or successful, only that they are being attempted more often. We could attempt to field a lineup entirely out of pitchers too, wouldn't make it cutting edge or wise to try. Sure, it'd be new, but I'm not interested in new. I'm interested in doing things that have a good chance of succeeding. Playing guys in the field based on what appears to be a "throw a dart at a picture of a defensive alignment and go with it" doesn't lead me to think we'll have much success. Merely being an infielder does not make one capable of being an outfielder.

I listed utility infielders. Who had rarely played outfield until years after their time in development. And all of them sucked in the outfield. Your link, while citing that more teams are doing it, fails to argue they are doing it successfully. We could play Suzuki in CF and call it progressive too, but it only makes sense if the guys can actually play it. Maddon was talking about cultivating it in the minors - that I can agree with. At the major league level? Terrible. And I'm guessing many of these experiments will end sooner rather than later. As Schwarber and Sano have.

I think this just proves you can measure our defense by any means you want and it still turns out as The Suck.

I never said it can't be done, I think it's a dumb idea to take career infielders and convert them at the major league level. We tried with Escobar, Nunez, Bartlett, Sano, and Santana and they all stunk. I may be missing people too. It's a terrible idea with a very low success rate. In other words - a stupid plan. And did you just argue the two problems with throwing more innings included throwing more innings? I think that's my cue to just walk away. I won't get anywhere here.

Any time you stick your neck out you risk being wrong, I was surprised the gaps weren't as large on some players. Buxton has managed to live down all expectations, I think that's one thing we can all agree on: none of us were even close to being right about him. And you didn't even have to be bullish, even rooting for competence was too bullish.

True, but a competent defense might make our horrible pitching at least look "bad" rather than "I think I'll watch paint dry instead".

Sure, Tonkin may not be the top of the list, but in order to look at the larger issues/patterns we need to identify the data points that are creating the trend. Tonkin or even Sano, in and of themselves, might just be mistakes, but when all those mistakes are taken as a whole then we can start to formulate opinions about the larger causes. Will we ever know with 100% certainty what the inner workings were? No, but if we're waiting on that kind of certainty we might as well shut this puppy down. Hell, even on what you assert as a fact we can all agree on (the pitching) I could make a pretty valid argument that we can't really judge our pitching all that clearly given the defense we've put behind them this year. Or, at the very least, they are only part of the problem but are receiving full blame. But parsing out those differences and arguing our case one way or the other is what the message board is for. Including developing theories and opinions about what is going on that is leading to so many mistakes.

Um, Nick provided data in his original post. Where's yours? No, you don't have to list every player, but when you're going to cite Michael Cuddyer from almost a decade ago, perhaps you should consider what that says about the strength of your argument.

It looks to me like facts are being used to support opinions. You disagree with one fraction of the opinion (Tonkin) and have chosen to die on that sword here. I'd argue the person you're really talking to about glazing over the forest for the trees is yourself. No one on a message board filled with opinions is going to be able to post anything that will reach universal agreement. There will always be those that feel there were "unnecessary attacks" somewhere in the post. You don't like the point on Tonkin. Ok, state your case with facts that counter the point. I don't think I've seen you do that.

Believe what exactly? If you want to plant your flag in the "Dammit, Tonkin is just plain bad"...fine. Care to explain the other, much bigger bone-headed decisions?

Nick made the argument about pitch total. He's not wrong. And your list is a good way of showing how the exceptions prove the rule. Not to mention your point does nothing to explain away how bad the Twins attempts have been for the last few years.

Which puzzling corollaries would those be? He was made the long man and kept there regardless of performance in that role or past success in various roles. (Granted, in the minors, but that's what he had been groomed to do for many years) Maybe he would've been terrible in more of a one inning role....but how the hell are we going to know when we burned him out throwing more pitches than he was used to in mop up duty?

It's not that Tonkin earned some more prominent role, it's that you thrust him into a role he had never done, that didn't suit his skills, and expected him to succeed at it. You know, like we did with CF the last 6 years. And Sano. And the (what seems like) dozens of infielders we've thrown in the outfield. Oh, and Trevor May. Mayhap I'm missing some more? This team seems to think the failures are the result of something other than their own decision making. They have continued to play guys in ways that don't suit their strengths and marveled that things fell apart.

You're right, there is a lot of hypocrisy on those issues. People would be well served to consider their opinions more carefully because I agree that there are a lot of posters that talk out of both sides of their mouth on things like this. It's an issue I try to comment on very rarely myself. My motto, and i've said it before a few times, is do what's right for the kid. I don't know all the ins and outs of that for each kid so I try not to comment directly on any one action. I will comment on overall trends and things that seem out of place, but there are too many things we don't know because we're not directly working with the players ourselves to go too far expressing those opinions. At the same time, given the magnitude and frequency of the blunders the last few years....is there really surprise at the bitterness? I mean, we finally get a glimpse of a real star talent in Sano and it seems like the organization has done everything short of deliberately physically injuring him to derail a promising start to a career. On the larger scale things are a total mess. Hell, not only is there a bad plan, but there was effusive praise and confidence from the organization that everything was fine and things are rock solid as we were steering directly into an iceberg. Terry Ryan is a nice guy, but every time i heard him say something that sounded like "There are plenty of life rafts" or "We saw that iceberg coming a mile away, no worries!" only made me more bitter. When people care they will feel hurt, betrayed, angry, and bitter. What you really need to watch out for is people not caring. A point Nick deliberately made in his post and is spot on: people are starting to largely not care. I'll take pages and pages of criticism imploring change every day and twice on Sunday because i know those people at least care and they want the rest of the populace to care with them.

Man I hate these faux positive vs. negative discussions. Most of the time they are rooted in someone's own preferences and perceptions and rarely in fact. Are there some here that rip and piss and moan constantly with no redeemable posting traits? Yes, I largely ignore them. Are there some here that do nothing but paint every mistake as a positive and put the team and it's decision makers on undeserved pedestals? Yes, I largely ignore them too. The vast majority of us, and Nick is definitely included, post criticism and praise we feel warranted. And most of us argue/defend those stances fairly. I've disagreed many times with Nick (hell, this whole offseason pretty much) but at no point did I feel his optimism should change because it didn't jive with me. He's entitled to his stance, so long as he is prepared to defend it honestly and fairly. And he does. If I felt at any point this site was intentionally posting fluff and other nonsense in some misguided effort to have a "balance" of positivity and negativity I'd bail in a heartbeat. I want to read honest, thoughtful opinions. When we're 30 some games under 500, I expect most of those opinions to be critical. They should be. If they weren't, I'd start to question the honesty and integrity of the person giving the opinion. This team has earned criticism. I'm hoping this offseason they start finding a way to earn some praise. I'll be watching, listening, and reading everything on this board and I hope the opinions continue to be espoused based on the merit of the opinion, not some token effort to appease the audience.

So, Aaron Hicks still the stud some of you thought? No?

I think they've done perfectly fine with Garver. And that's good, because I like to think this team could find a way to order at Chick-fil-a and wind up with a 5 day old Big Mac at this point.

If nothing else, there were times this seemed like it was laughable to imagine happening. So good for him.

I know where we can find one! In the bullpen. Where we demoted him in the name of Mike freaking Pelfrey. Maybe the damage is already too heavy, but for god's sake try.

Playing elite defense at 1B doesn't enamor me enough to wedge a 33 year old into that position come hell or high water. I don't want him benched either, but for god's sake let's un-entrench him from playing every day.