drjim

And the Bill Smith looked so respectable up until the 6th inning of game 1 of the 2010 divisional series... Firing Terry Ryan less than two years into his cleanup job seems a little rash.

Second after Houston.

I'm not sure they often agree but Gardy would never be too public in his disagreements. He will drop subtle hints though.

I agree with this take completely. I actually think barring a .500 record he's gone. Molitor is the logical successor. He should have been added to the staff this offseason but they probably wanted to avoid in-season speculation and to keep Molitor free of the taint if another mediocre season. They brought new coaches in to begin the transition and will finish it next offseason.

Isn't Pelfrey the only signing that this applies? And if he is good and healthy midseason I would guess an extension would be more likely than a trade.

I don't know - I have him penciled in as the starter in Game 7 of the Series this year.

You're probably right, but on the current list only Bogaerts and (probably) Cole rank ahead of them and will still be on the list next year. As I said, outside chance.

I admit this is a little unclear as I tried to limit the length of my responses. I am talking about blocking position players moreso than starting pitchers. I would generally subscribe to the theory that you can never have enough starting pitching. I think the following position players should have significant playing time this year - Parmelee, Dozier, Plouffe, Hicks, Benson, and then Arcia and perhaps Herrmann and Santana later in the year. I do not think the Twins should have signed a free agent at any position except for possibly SS and maybe the right CF on a one year deal. With these limitations there were few (if any) position players that would have made sense to sign. So what I was trying to say, that as the Twins were looking to make improvements this offseason, it was limited what could happen on the position player side to avoid blocking any of the young players listed. There were some MIs that were suggested, but I'm not sure they were any better than Carroll at this point. Brignac would have been a nice guy to take a flier on but I wouldn't have given anything of much value for him. For pitching, they did fill three slots and could have easily filled a fourth, perhaps they should have. As has been pointed out, this is especially true because most of the pitchers are coming off surgeries in the past year and Gibson has an innings limitation. However, if all the new pitchers stay healthy through spring training and are ready to go (and that is a big if right now), and if the Twins had signed a fourth new starter (say Saunders or Marcum), both Gibson and Hendriks would have started in the minors, so in essence they would have been blocked. This would have been fine, but I am also of the opinion that Gibson should probably just start the season in the rotation so I'm not especially devastated by the fact that the Twins didn't sign another pitcher. I hope this would also answer the question from edavis. I would sign anyone that improves the win total so long as the signing falls within the following parameters. The signing would have to not block a younger player and it would have to not be a contract that could be a potential hindrance in 2015. That would leave the following possibilities for the Twins as currently constructed: 1. Another starter on a 1-2 year deal or Greinke (which wasn't going to happen). The Twins failed at this but we don't have all the information. Quite frankly the only three guys that I felt got away were McCarthy, Marcum and Saunders. McCarthy seemed to want to stay west, it was reported that Saunders pretty much didn't want to come to Minnesota, and the Marcum situation is a mystery that has been speculated on to death. 2. A one year deal for a stopgap CF - I don't know if this type of player was really on the market 3. A SS - same as the CF, didn't really exist on the market 4. Another RP - this would have been fine with me, but I wouldn't go more than a year and I generally think the bullpen is currently in acceptable condition

Trust me on one thing - you don't have to convince me the Correia contract was a bad one or that the Twins had better options they could have signed. Our fundamental disagreement stems from my position that if instead of Correia the Twins signed one of the other guys advocated for on this board (ie Saunders and/or Marcum) it would only be a marginal upgrade (1-2 wins, maybe 3 if everything breaks right). This is not nothing but hardly a reason for the weeping and gnashing of teeth that has overtaken this board. Also, as it pertains to this article/thread specifically - even if Terry Ryan did everything you advocated it would have done very little (if anything) to reverse the trend on ticket sales for reasons I have already laid out.

Acgually I want to edit my statement slightly. When the Twins missed on Saunders I think I wrote that he would have blocked Gibson and that might have been undesirable. I would walk back that posting to the point that I would be in favor of another representative starter in camp right now. I would still be skeptical that an extra starter in camp would lead to a higher ticket demand right now.

Nice rant but I have never suggested they don't sign another starting pitcher. Ever. In fact my previous post said they had failed in this endeavor. There are more positions than starting pitcher were the Twins actually have young guys worthy of getting a shot (especially Plouffe, Parmelee, Dozier, Hicks, Arcia)

He was the top prospect for BA heading into the draft and had a representative debut. Seems about right. There is an outside chance the Twins could have the top two prospects next year. That would be fun.

I did the same thing with Liriano and Santana. I don't think Saunders or Marcum would inspire a similar following had they signed.

I listened to it and don't remember it that way. What was the exact quote and question?

A good beat writer would report the first quote and then add accurate statistics or additional quotes to provide context without making editorial statements. I'm pretty sure you made up the second quote. That is the opposite of what St. Peter would assert. Not sure what you want a beat reporter to do with that.

This post is all kinds of awesome.

Fair point, but I am still skeptical that the moves that have been talked about would be clearly better pitchers. I know people disagree with this. It would have been nice to bring in another representative arm that could start the year in the rotation but for a variety of reasons the Twins failed to do so.

I don't know if they have said it explicitly but all the comments of St. Peter and Ryan suggest they are well below budget (as in payroll is not at 50% of projected revenues). I don't think they are trying to hide it.

Outside of signing Greinke or a huge overpay I unfortunately think this is true. Only two things will really excite a fan base -success or a young core. The first wouldn't happen this year even with all the moves suggested on this site and the second is (hopefully) a year away. You can say with other moves the team would be significantly more successful. I disagree. It made sense for a couple of signings to bridge the next wave and you can nitpick said signings but it does little to change the underlying reality of the state of the team. They are a year or two from relevancy so they want to avoid bad contracts and not block younger players.

Fair enough but as you can probably tell I'm a little skeptical of the conventional wisdom on this site of how big an upgrade these guys would represent.

You say pretty much nil I say three starters and a couple other intriguing arms on minor league deals.

I disagree. I think the bigger point is there was very little Terry Ryan and the front office could have done this offseason to change fan enthusiasm and the overall ticket sales trend. The names I "cherry picked" were the very guys we have been talking about all offseason.

If you think adding three new starters to the opening day rotation is nothing I don't know what to say. I agree that the upgrade could have been marginally better with McCarthy or Marcum but to virtually all fans that difference really wouldn't register and certainly wouldn't impact decisions to buy tickets.

They did bring in three new starters and a couple of bullpen arms. I think they are trying to get better while also balancing against avoiding bad contracts and not blocking young players. I understand people don't like the Correia signing - I don't either! But to take a decrease in season tickets sales and to suggest the reason is because of some pet signing they didn't do is absurd.

I bet there wasn't 10 games last year that had this order. Revere played rf and batted second most the season.