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TheLeviathan

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Everything posted by TheLeviathan

  1. TheLeviathan
    You should not do that, trust me.
  2. TheLeviathan
    Relief pitchers are some of the most rigid and fragile employees in the world is what I've learned from the last few days. I understand having a role helps you prepare, but these roles aren't all that radically different. It'd be nice to start breaking this mentality in the minors so that a bullpen can be maximized to the fullest.
  3. TheLeviathan
    I wish we would've gotten in on relievers that weren't Bastardo. Part of the reason we have to contemplate signing a lemon is that we didn't do anything sooner.
  4. TheLeviathan
    I agree, don't give Plouffe up for nothing. But it seems to me it was never even explored or an option even on the table. Like it or not, his presence is part of the outfield problem.
  5. TheLeviathan
    The issue with my idea is that I think it's a pipedream that Plouffe gets traded. If Sano is in the outfield we end up with either a really crap option in CF (Rosario) or Arcia is on the outside looking in again. But something like Fowler-Dozier-Mauer-Sano-Arcia-Park-Rosario-Murphy-Escobar looks a lot better to me than swapping Fowler for Plouffe and having some hideous outfield configuration.
  6. TheLeviathan
    Look, Santana and Arcia could bounce back - I'm actually all-in on giving Arcia that chance in fact. But you can't play Arcia and Sano in the outfield without trading a lot of defense for the hope of offense. Even more so if Buxton is better left to develop in AAA and you are playing either Sano-Santana-Arcia or Sano-Rosario-Arcia. If that doesn't make you cringe....well then I don't know what to tell you. Next, you don't have to trade anything but money for Fowler. Something the Twins still have plenty of, by the way. Adding him and trading Plouffe is a wash offensively, but Fowler would be a legit top of the order hitter and would allow the team to play Sano at third and leave the other corner spot for Arcia. Or, if Buxton is ready, then Fowler can play RF for a few months. But planning on Buxton, Sano, Arcia, Rosario, and Santana as the outfield looks like a disaster waiting to happen if there is any kind of stumble. And, as a group, is likely to be subpar defensively.
  7. TheLeviathan
    I fear the choices we make in March are going to all but assure that by July we are sellers. While depth is nice to have, it's better to actually field the best possible lineup you can from the get go. This team only contended because of how it played the first two months, putting a group of outfielders like Sano-Rosario-Arcia could be an outright disaster. And if they keep Buxton for defense alone then you are altering what you think is best for him as a hitter because of the corner you backed yourself into over the winter. Trade Plouffe and go sign Fowler to a one year deal. Bring up Buxton when he's ready and then move Fowler to the corner. Or call up Kepler. Or trade Fowler. Do whatever, but give yourself some real options rather than this cobbled mess.
  8. TheLeviathan
    I don't really have an opinion apart from the facts show that the team has had a pretty good bullpen. So I conclude they've had a pretty good bullpen. If you choose to look away from those facts, that's fine. That's your call. The contention that Ryan is bad at fielding a bullpen is demonstrably false. So, yeah, I guess I just side with the demonstrably true part. You take whatever stance you want. The stance, by the way, that they've been historically pretty good at it does not entail that they always make the right decisions or are currently making the right decisions, but if you're going to side with the meme that the team hasn't been very good at it and this is a continuation of that failure - know that it's a demonstrably false meme. And the best part? You can accept that Ryan has been pretty good and still falling short recently. The two aren't mutually exclusive.
  9. TheLeviathan
    Since 1994 the team is 4th in RE24, so let's just stop. Are you so convinced of your narrative that facts be damned? Look, the truth is that over the large majority of Ryan's time the team has had a pretty good bullpen. Yeah, they could have and should have done more last year. I have no problems criticizing Ryan when it's fair. The fact that you continue to pound a point that is demonstrably false or overstated may show you don't have much interest in the fairness part. Otherwise you'd accept the facts and move on.
  10. TheLeviathan
    I'll be more critical of his bullpen management going forward as we mount up a contending effort for sure. I'm not sure I put a lot of stock in the last few years any more than I put stock into the Stahoviak days. This offseason has been a disappointment as far as the bullpen goes, I'm hoping the results don't reflect the effort. Historically speaking, however, his results have been quite good.
  11. TheLeviathan
    Made a small error in my sorting, they were 4th best in FIP, 6th in xFIP. As for inherited runners, from 2003-2010 the team lead all of baseball in RE24, which fangraphs like to think is the best model for measuring this sort of thing. Or one of the best. So yeah, every measure. Sorry the facts don't fit the narrative.
  12. TheLeviathan
    From 2003-2010 the Twins had the 5th best xFIP in all of baseball. 2nd best in FIP. 8th best in WAR. So you go ahead and pick the stat, tell me which one is the make or break and I'm almost guaranteeing you it will still suggest the Twins had some pretty damn good bullpens.
  13. TheLeviathan
    More than some of it is noise, most of it is. Many of those runs and losses came from guys that would not fit the "build the bullpen on the cheap" criticism. Unless somehow Nathan, Rincon, Jesse Crain, or mop-up starters giving up runs count as part of it.
  14. TheLeviathan
    Way I've always seen it is, unless otherwise specified as "AL or NL" - it's an MLB total ranking. If that's different for you, ok, but it was pretty easy to infer.
  15. TheLeviathan
    Your post took the context of that discussion and seemed to utterly ignore it to twist the point being made. You can always strive for more but no team is great at everything. The Royals won a World Series with a group of starters that ranked 22nd in the league in ERA. You could go back to any winner and find elements of their team that were less than great to a downright liability. Expecting everything to be top 8 great is unrealistic. What you have to strive for is as many strengths as possible with as few liabilities as you can. So, yes, the team should've been looking for more than Abad and should still be looking. But Ryan has generally been pretty good at constructing bullpens for his team.
  16. TheLeviathan
    So you have to be in the top 8 of everything or you're bad at it? That's preposterous, but putting that aside - take some of the context of the point being argued here in your reply: It was stated Ryan is bad at constructing bullpens and it cost us winning world series. I'd say finishing in the "above average" category pretty much every year shoots down that assertion. No one is stating he is god's gift to bullpens, but it hasn't been much of an issue. He's been pretty good at constructing bullpens and the numbers back that up. It certainly hasn't been our World Series achilles heel as suggested.
  17. TheLeviathan
    Um, anythign above 15 is definitionally "above average". So you can see what you want, but you're wrong and your point was still absurd. Unless you think the 1996 Twins' World Series chances were doomed by the bullpen, in which case your opinion may not be sufficiently described as absurd.
  18. TheLeviathan
    Right, I definitely should have included 94-00 for "years the bullpen cost a world series". I'd suggest the problems were pretty much everything from those years, so I'm not sure why they matter for the absurd point he was making.
  19. TheLeviathan
    I was responding to the absurd contention that Ryan's bullpens had been our issue winning a world series. That blame would fall on utterly choking time and time again. But Ryan's bullpens have rarely been the team's weak point.
  20. TheLeviathan
    Their bullpens were actually pretty good back then. From 2002-2008 they ranked: 9, 10, 12, 4, 1, 11, and 12th in ERA. Hardly a track record of failure.
  21. TheLeviathan
    I think Ryan does a pretty good job dumpster diving on bullpen pieces. He's pretty good at that. He also overly relies on that strategy, the two aren't mutually exclusive.
  22. TheLeviathan
    Absolutely - which is why he should still be pitching where he can do the most good.
  23. TheLeviathan
    They need 3? May is somehow equal to three other people? You've been cheerleading May there for awhile, the truth is tht you've decided you saw enough in 25 starts.
  24. TheLeviathan
    You seem to be in the camp unfairly expecting May to be gods gift to pitching in his first 25 starts. So May is a rotation equal now to Milone and likely to get better with seasoning, so you lose nothing now and help your team long term. The only issue? A bullpen you could fix with money. Then you have Milone and another quality arm in the pen. You seem to be defending an answer to a "problem" the Twins created themselves by a refusal to spend money in FA.
  25. TheLeviathan
    The answer is that we probably have no freaking clue. Perhaps throwing 90 with his changeup makes him devastating. Perhaps he gets no bump. Some guys seem to just transform themselves in ways their numbers give no indication. I don't want to project anything because, to me, it's not the valuable distinction. What matters is how you help this team now and going forward and that is almost certainly investing starts in a kid who flashed real promise.
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