TheLeviathan

Those gentleman are not "functional". They are "prayers". If you want to check in on Hedges or Plawecki - sure. But those guys will cost a ransom of near ready young players. Wieters only costs cash and a lottery ticket of a pick. If you're so worried about the cash, charge an extra dollar for every crummy Budweiser you buy at one of the 17,000 bars at Target Field. Call it Waterholes for Wieters. It's just money. We have plenty, why waste time dumpster diving?

His combination of offense and defense is considerably better than anyone else. If your hang-up about catchers is durability...we may want to petition major league baseball for a robot catcher. That's about the only way that concern is going to be avoided.

Who are we trading for? Outside of Norris and (30 year old) Lucroy...who are we acquiring for the "long term" I think people have a completely misguided notion on the availability of functional catchers in baseball.

C'mon Nick, there is a case to be made against Wieters but this isn't it. In every healthy season Wieters has had since his professional start he's been about a .750 OPS player. Soto has done that once and hasn't been a full-time catcher in 5 years. Navarro has only done it twice and only been a full-time catcher twice in his 12 year career. These guys aren't comparable. That's while you'll pay pennies on the dollar compared to Wieters.

AJ isn't even in the same universe as Wieters defensively. We're talking about a high end defensive catcher with a solid bat and all we have to give up is some money and a mid round draft pick? The evidence is abundant that later first round draft picks are more than a bit unreliable for future value. Signing Wieters means we get an immediate upgrade and we give up nothing that will be helping this team in the near future. (As it would to acquire Lucroy) I would be thrilled if we signed him. Thrilled.

Justify? No. My gut tells me they over thought it. The sneak should've been the first down play on a quick count. Then bust out the bag of tricks for a passing try after a tonight.

Snatched defeat from the jaws of victory....

Seemed like a good, down to earth guy. Sad he had to walk away from his dream job on terms that weren't his own. I hope he finds a healthy way to be around what he loves.

Good thing one belief or opinion being stupid isn't a bar we use here at TD to dismiss people or we'd all have no one to talk to.

You can hate an opinion without hating the person. Hell, its important to do that so you can work to change their mind. Fiercely defining a person by one mistake or one belief is a dangerous, and more than a bit preposterous, stance.

I will greatly miss the Funkadelic, it actually relit my interest in the Wolves a bit purely by how likable Flip Saunders was. He and Barreiro made for some excellent radio and that segment will be sorely missed. Barreiro's tribute show was excellent, it's another reminder how spoiled we are by that program and we rarely celebrate it for what it is.

It was a very good career and I hope retirement serves him just as well.

Well, that wasn't my argument at all. My argument (and it was stated pretty clearly) was that the best thing you can do is upgrade your 25 man roster and you should do that however the availability of talent allows you to do that. Don't fall over yourself for one position, but do what adds the most for the money you have. So no, that entire middle paragraph is a strawman. And I don't "think" this is true. The stats say it's true. Pull up the playoff stats for pitchers and see for yourself. Here are the three best starters from the last few years: 2015 - Estrda, Kuechel, Kershaw (Worst: Hammel, Cueto, Price) 2014 - Bumgarner, Lynn, Ventura (Worst: Shields, Kershaw, Peavy) 2013 - Lester, Lackey, Verlander (Worst: Buchholz, Lynn, Peavy) 2012 - Vogelsong, Fister, Sanchez (Worst: Bumgarner, Wainwright, Gonzalez) 2011 - Carpenter, Colby Lewis, Gallardo (Worst: Grienke, Verlander, Scherzer) 2010 - Lewis, Bumgarner, Lincecum (Worst: Sabathia, Hunter, Sanchez) It's all over the map. (Approximations) Guys go back and forth, in and out, every year. Colby Lewis twice kicked the crap out of the playoffs. Ryan Vogelsong pretty much won a World Series himself. Guys who are good often suck terribly. Sometimes they're as great as advertised, sometimes not. The same goes with hitters for that matter. The point is that there is no silver bullet. The best thing you can do is field the best 25 man roster you can and not worry about how many aces you have. Spend what you have available to make as robust a team as you can, you never know who is going to step up and be the hero if you have enough capable dudes on your team.

Oh? You have some evidence of that? I see plenty of variation. There are plenty of aces that struggle and lots of the Ryan Vogelsongs of the world. If you have some sort of mass study on it I'd love to see it. Otherwise it's easy to see just from pulling up this playoff year (and it's true for most you look at) that being the "ace" of your staff doesn't mean you won't be outperformed badly by dudes like Marco Estrada. Every postseason is littered with dud performances by aces and surprising #3 guys that carry their team. And it shouldn't be a surprise. The playoffs are just a grandiose small sample themselves.

I look at this: Hicks-Mauer-Dozier-Davis-Sano-Rosario-Catcher-Escobar-Buxton and see a lot of upside in that lineup. Very solid defensively, good power, good speed, good balance and it manages to have some serious upside too. That, to me, is where to invest the money. And we have plenty of money to do it.

It helps the odds to add better players, that's for sure. The problem is that people believe that having an ace is a prerequisite for even being considered a contender. The Twins need a better 25 man roster and there are many ways to skin that cat. Personally, right now, I don't think all in on an ace is the way to go. Ride the excellent fielding outfield, pay up for Chris Davis, and find a way to upgrade the catching spot. Let the kids play.

And Price is one of many "aces" you'll find out there with horrific post-season success. People seem to forget we had one of the best pitchers in baseball for much of our last run and it guaranteed nothing. I'd rather have one than not, but I'm not going to fall over myself in FA to get one if my dollar could go farther on, say, Chris Davis or Matt Wieters.

All that matters is that you get good performances. Who that comes from varies wildly. Just ask David Price. Or San Fran's other big hero: Ryan Vogelsong. It's a cute phrasing, but all you have to do is go look at actual box scores to see it isn't that simple.

I really hope this doesn't go down the "you have to have an ace to win in the playoffs" path. It's totally incorrect and massively overrated. But having an ace for the regular season grind is beneficial and the team should be on the hunt for one. Personally, I'd rather invest our trade assets and money into offensive players at this stage in the rebuild.

I think you're looking too hard to find alternates to the easiest explanation: the Twins targeted high control pitchers for a long time. In part it was a smart strategy: those pitchers could be had more readily and were more generally undervalued. Plus, if you emphasized a good defense behind them you could squeeze out really nice results. It was a Beane-like move that paid off for the team. The problem (much like with Beane) is that if you go too far in on only one kind of player you can get yourself in trouble. For too long we seemed like we only wanted that kind of arm, rather than just targeting the market's inefficiency.

I'm not sure how picking out a few guys makes your case here. It seems clear that high velocity correlates very well with effectiveness - a few counter examples hardly makes that claim a myth. You seem to be taking the stance that people have said ONLY high velocity arms can be effective and I'm not sure I've ever heard that argued by anyone. Only that it sure helps a helluva lot at the thing that DOES matter. (K Rate)

There is a correlation with velocity and strikeouts and with strikeouts and effectiveness. While it's true not everyone has to have velocity to get strikeouts, it's just rare. It's important to note that high velocity doesn't equal high strikeouts necessarily, I think the notion that we've busted some sort of myth is overstated.

Maybe this will get the running game going enough for the offense to start moving things. They looked really good handing it off and opening up holes.

10/200 for Jason Heyward? Good god no, he's the poster child for how WAR can overinflate value. He just hasn't been good enough or consistent enough at the plate to deserve that. Let some other team make that mistake.

Unwritten rules are the worst precisely because they are unwritten. They're left that way to give a lot of room for butt-hurt jerks to employ them at their own discretion. Written rules are written precisely to avoid that same latitude of interpretation. That's what makes them effective and not jerk emboldening.