crapforks

It seems lucky that the Twins signed two free-agent starters who have worked with several different catchers throughout their careers. Nolasco and Hughes will probably have a say in who is starting behind the plate for the Twins. At least initially.

Davis and...?

I think that Gardner is what the Presley's and Mastro's of the world aspire to become. The argument that is being made about Gardner not being a huge upgrade over Presley could have been made by Yankees fans about Ellsbury over Gardner to some extent. Unless the Yankees are selling Gardner for peanuts the Twins aren't in on him anyways, its just fun to dream of an outfield with some ability to cover ground. TF has a lot of ground!

Continuing in the theme of creating a thread about every available player mentioned on mlbtr, I was thinking about Brett Gardner. The Twins probably don't have what the Yanks want in trade much, but he might be a good fit here. If they didn't have such a full outfield, they seem like they might have been interested in buying low on Willingham. If the Twins do find a taker for Willingham, Doumit, or one of the Chrises (who obviously have no real value) it would be fun to bring Gardner into the fold. I don't necessarily believe a deal will be done, but I shudder to think about all the fly balls dropping in for hits with the current outfield arrangement. Willingham and/or Doumit should be moved for next to nothing, IMO, and having Gardner alongside Presley (or even Hicks) would be a huge defensive upgrade. I know it seems very piranha-esque, but it's not like Willingham, Doumit, Parmelee, or Collabello have defined the offense. Let Arcia be the least capable out there, at least he's young enough to dream on. If the outfield defense is improved, can the team be respectable offensively with only Mauer, Dozier, Arcia and to a lesser extent Plouffe and maybe Pinto as XBH threats?

He's a pinch hitter/DH/emergency outfielder with a pedestrian bat. Not much room on many 25-man rosters for that. Maybe he tears up spring and someone is willing to trade a 28-yr old AA soft tosser. Otherwise, he should be released.

Can someone explain the want to sign an extension? I think having him for $8M and a $12M team option is perfect. How stupid would his new team look if they insisted on an extension and he pitches <100 innings? That, and no player in their right mind would sign a multi-year extension based on incentives. Two full years of BA (one if he is injured again, fluke or not) should be exactly the gamble the Twins should take. I wouldn't have a problem starting with a ML bullpen piece and Kepler/Thorpe or some combination of prospects in that range. Both teams are taking a risk and the Twins can, for the first time in a while, afford a gamble such as this.

Not terribly encouraging, but the three year split (via espn) has Diamond worse against lefties and Duenseng better. FWIW. scary stuff. http://espn.go.com/mlb/player/splits/_/id/30985/type/pitching3/scott-diamond http://espn.go.com/mlb/player/splits/_/id/28960/type/pitching3/brian-duensing

To those who want Diamond as a LH reliever, lefties have hit him better than righties. Just throwing that out there.

July is pretty early to count on Buxton. And Hicks getting north of a .200 BA would help a great deal. I liked watching him in CF. I think we all agree that the current depth chart for OF starters doesn't look too good for our fly-ball staff. If Hicks can't hit enough to play CF on a pretty awful team, I have a hard time imagining him hitting enough to play a corner in '15, when the team might have expectations. That projected outfield sure could be fun though.

I'm in the 'I'm not wielding a pitchfork because Eric Fryer signed a split contract' club. I wish he batted left handed and I wish he had a little better track record. That's all.

I haven't blogged for TD, or anywhere else, but this topic will be too long for a simple thread post. The Twins signed Ricky Nolasco and Phil Hughes and the world is shocked. As much as the Twins community has turned the 'pitch to contact' theme into a punchline, the philosophy of the team remains. It has always appeared that the Twins were fond of pitchers who could go deep into games by limiting their P/PA. While that theory had brought them success in the early 2000s, the staff had trended so extremely to PTC that they had nobody starting who was anywhere near league average for K/9. That topic has been well documented among Twins fans, but getting two starters who are near league average in K/9 feels somewhat like the entire complexion of the rotation- nay, the team philosophy has been remade. In a way that is true. But let's keep in mind who these pitchers are. Ricky Nolasco is a solid big league pitcher whose stats have bounced around a bit. The most uniform statistic throughout his career has been his BB/9: always hovering right around 2.0. His G/F ratio of .77 doesn't make him an extreme fly-ball pitcher, he is almost league average. Phil Hughes, on the other hand, is a fly-ball artist. There will be many words typed about how, in theory, his move to TF from YS will help all of his numbers; he'll walk less batters in a spacious park, his HR/FB ratio will mellow which will result in his BB/9 dropping as he gets comfortable in the PTC mold, his P/PA will go down, and his K/9 will stay the same. All of these are positive things and there is some reason to be excited about them. Taking this thought down for a moment, Phil Hughes gets major league hitters out via the fly-ball. Hypothetically, having a staff that induces ground balls requires a sure handed infield defense. The Twins are a pitch to contact team that got away from having defense in mind. The Twins are not a ground-ball-centric team, they are a put-the-ball-in-play-centric team. As exciting as these additions to the rotation are for me, my excitement is tempered when I think of the possibility of Alex Presley patrolling center adequately surrounded by the likes of Willingham, Arcia, Parmelee, Colabello, and Doumit chasing down that many fly-balls. The solutions to this perceived problem aren't simple. In a perfect world, some team would offer a 20yr. old, nice looking A-ball shortstop prospect for Doumit or Willingham. Hicks would hit enough to be a major league CF. Arcia would display the same passion and aggressiveness that he shows at the plate in the field, and the outfield would be a rotating cast of Hicks and Presley in CF, (with Presley seeing time at the corners,) Arcia playing whichever corner he prefers, and Willingham/Colabello/Parmelee splitting OF time with DH, if they all must be on the roster. Basically, I worry that the Twins are ignoring a huge aspect of their game. If ~40-45% of your outs are coming in the air, Willingham, Doumit, Parmelee, and Colabello aren't going to help you much without being all-world at the plate. If this rotation featured a bunch of actual ground-ball pitchers, the infield defense would be staffed accordingly, i.e. Plouffe wouldn't be at third despite the offensive potential. This rotation will be depending on the outfield running around and catching the contact they are instructed to try and induce. I hope the people behind it's staffing are aware of that.

I thought Kazmir's handedness and (probably) one year commitment would have been a better move, but its hard not to be excited. I think it's important for the Twins to shore up the outfield defense now. They have no pitcher who can really claim to be a 'ground-ball-type' pitcher trotting out there. Nobody want Colabello/Parmalee/Willingham/Arcia combined with a decent decent CF shagging all the fly balls

SSS=small sample size. It's a term from statistics that lets the reader know that the slice of information isn't large enough to extrapolate much meaningful information.

Ranking the Top 10 Prospects in the Minnesota Twins' Farm System | Bleacher Report Nothing groundbreaking here, but a nice reference point for those of us not too familiar with all of the prospects.

Is Top Gun a bot?

How can you spin that to the casual fan? It makes sense, but I can't think of a time that happened.

Toronto Blue Jays Depth Chart | MLB Baseball at CBSSports.com They certainly have some players I wish my team had. They really don't have many glaring needs that I see. Maybe they have use for Morneau (EE at DH, Lind trade bait?) or Willingham (trade Davis, or Rasmus?) I really don't know much about the team, who they prefer, who's expendable, etc. But they are as win-now as a team can possibly be, right? JW and JM both offer potential upgrades. I'm sure it's just a pipe-dream, but some of those arms would sure be nice.

I wouldn't fault the team for going 3 @16-17/yr.

Doesn't this remind anyone of a Twins trade, but backwards?

I agree, but after the 2 CF moves, you would expect to get big leaguers, maybe even ones owed money, for Morneau and Willingham. While many of us would like to see both moved for more pitching prospects, the casual fans would need to see something immediately tangible to be able to swallow a trade of those two. Especially Morneau.

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/phillies/Why-Vance-Worley-for-Justin-Upton-might-make-more-sense.html Speculation that those two (Worley-May) plus one piece (Brown or a catcher) was maybe getting them Justin Upton

MI could be the disaster point, but with no clear CF, two penciled-in SP (out of 5) and no lineup presence out of the 1,2,7,8 and 9 spots (assuming one of Doumit and Plouffe hits, but not both), I think 13 is shaping up to be a rough year. And a season I will spend much more time watching than last.

Get 'em gone. Find an all glove CF and an all glove SS along with some decent pitching prospects. If the only vets on the team come opening day are Doumit, Mauer and Carroll, I think we have to believe JR reads this message board.

Would anyone freak out over a Carroll-Mauer-Willingham-Morneau top of the order?

Span to WAS, Revere to PHI. Who do you got as the regular CF to start the season? Who bats 1 and 2?