TheLeviathan

The two biggest factors for me are these: 1) I've got a group of people here I've known for almost half my life. Brock, Chitown, Psuedo, Smerf, both Nicks, snepp, Chief, and probably a few others that i'm forgetting (and will rip me horribly for and deservedly so) so some of the feel here is simply like going to your favorite sports bar and talking with your buddies. Along the way a bunch of other voices I respect have added themselves to that group, people I agree and disagree with from time to time. So it feels like this is partly my community. I'm not sure Vikes Journal will ever have that, but it certainly doesn't now. 2) And that sort of leads into the second point, I find the average poster here is just so much more thoughtful, knowledgeable, interesting, and intelligent than many over there. That sort of burns my desire to post too.

Also because I actually appreciate some of the insights shared here and those same posters sharing on that site would be nice. I'm rooting for it as well. And obviously I wasn't talking about you Vanimal.

http://i.imgur.com/LzPHe.jpg?fb

I have sympathy for what you're trying to do Funky. You want there to continue to be topics and fodder for discussion and doing so single-handedly probably does lend to twitter being useful. You're in an unenviable spot, one I don't have any grand ideas to help you out of. The problem is that there isn't a large enough posting base. Losing some really great article writers didn't help either. I also won't lie, the way it's constituted now just doesn't drive me to show up and contribute. Along with a few other factors.

Now you guys went and did it. This thread is going to jinx us. Watch Pat Dean become Cy Young the last month now......

What's stupid is to prize flexibility in and of itself without qualifications. I'll pitch every day, play any position on the field, come out of the bullpen, do the laundry, and answer questions from Sid Hartmann for the major league minimum. I'll be the most flexible player in major league baseball history. Of course, I'll also be terrible. Like, get the Benny Hill music ready terrible. But dammit - I'll be flexible! So, maybe just maybe, we should ask that flexibility also comes with, I don't know, competence?

Merlin?

You're right that going younger doesn't mean getting better. In fact, like i argued earlier, often it means getting worse before you get better....but Ervin isn't going to be good forever. Hell, just in May and June he was 2-6 with an ERA around 5. And we've seen Dozier go from Babe Ruth to Babe the Pig like some kind of Jeckyl and Hyde routine. This is the time to shop these guys. Or, and mark my words, at some point in the next two years we'll look back on this as a lost opportunity. We'll have accomplished nothing more as a team with them and we'll wonder what else we could have gotten for them when the time was right. How many times have we done that lately?

Bingo. And let's not pretend Ervin doesn't eventually start wandering down the question mark path himself as he ages. I'm not scared of people thinking this is a deeper rebuild. And even if I was afraid of public perception, I wouldn't let it guide my actions. How do you lose nearly 100 games and not say "Hey, there's still a lot to fix here!". Anyone who thinks we are just a few good breaks from being back to hoping for 85 wins is missing the deeper issues here. Any fan that can't understand that isn't someone I would feel beholden to either. In the long run for fans, management, and the team you need to get the deeper issues fixed. That takes time. Spin it any way you want for PR, but at the end of the day we want to be a good team again. Not just appease a grumbling fan base temporarily by pointing out how our shiny bandaid (Santana) is keeping the damage from the iceberg at bay.

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?

I agree with you, shows shouldn't get stuck into any certain number of episodes. Tell your story in the time it takes to tell your story. The Night Of definitely could have been 5 episodes, 6 maybe. True Detective may have actually benefited from being longer. (the first season, not the second. More of the second would have been a crime against humanity) Maybe if we had a little bit more of Rust and Marty we wouldn't have had that cute, easy mystery solve with the green paint and spaghetti monster. It could have felt, I don't know, like a real thing.

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 have a hard time disagreeing with you, that show was absolutely phenomenal. And I'm also a big fan of Tennant. He was brilliant in Jessica Jones too.

Broadchurch was outstanding, it felt like what the Night Of was trying to be and didn't match. Love Thrones and season one of TD was very good, but the ending sucked horribly for me. Total let down. But seriously, I hate The Killing, worst pile of Red Herrings ever.

We agree on a lot jimmer, but your taste in these shows couldn't be any more opposite mine. The Killing is easily the largest waste of time I've ever invested in television. I thought The Night Of was pretty "meh". Some strong acting performances, but nothing particularly inspiring about the show.

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.

Yeah, I like the Wild guys too, but it does feel insular. But that's probably because the posting base is so small. The Vikings page tends to make my brain bleed internally. Plus, I really hate walls of reposted twitter comments. It's like reading bleacher report in forum form.

It's apparently way more painful to be Teddy Bridgewater today.

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.