Willihammer

They should have planned better, no question. But who wants to throw away 2017 so we can cry over spilled milk? We're in first place, now! Take the few coins they saved last winter and roll it into a big FA acquisition this winter. In the meantime pay the deadline premium for a multi-year piece that will help in 2017 and 2018 (or longer). Worst case it goes tits up next year and they can flip Robertson for something very close to whatever it takes to get him now!

- Sano is a beast - the outfield defense is on par with the 2016 Cubbies and 2015 Royals - the lineup takes a lot of walks and has good OBP - this club is due for positive regression, hard Go for it. Why the hell not? Dozier's still here. Santana's having a career year. Don't wait for the deadline. Push the chips in, let's do this already!

That's why they should go get Robertson! Also, they are tied for first atm. Its certainly "possible" they'll still be in first in a couple months.

I get the concern with velocity and agree to an extent. If McKay slides in the next few weeks then an Addell or even R. Lewis type would be just fine with me.

Maybe that's not a requirement though. Severino wasn't on any of the top 100 lists. Of course that deal was just a rumor so who knows. We know that Robertson, while very good, is also expensive and a bit old. Remember it was the Nats who supposedly walked away from a Severino for Robertson trade. According to the rumor they wanted to trade Norris instead.

Its not that farfetched to think the Twins could ride the current trio of outfielders for the next 4-5 years, making Granite, Wade, Palka (am I forgetting anyone?) redundant. Wade for Robertson. Who says no first?

Berrios is too talented not to succeed. This is going to be fun to a boon for the rotation.

The lineup is very exciting. They have come a long way since the record setting strikeout days of 2013. I don't know who deserves credit for the turnaround (Rowson?) but give that guy a raise! The dingers are nice too. Heard on the radio that the Twins had homered in 12 straight games, longest streak since 2002. (Now its 13 games obviously).

I don't think Gordon is a great fit here. In a vacuum that's probably a fair price (maybe even an overpay) but CWS just locked in Tim Anderson for the forseeable future. Also the Twins don't really have another legit SS in the system unless you are really high on Polanco's defense. Would Garver alone get it done? He looks every bit as good as Severino to me. Similar timeline. Also fits with the Twins medium term outlook having locked in Castro.

In this thread we are operating under the assumption that the stars aligned this year and now is the time to "go for it." First, the facts: David Robertson is a 32 year old veteran of 10 years. He has a career 11.9 K/9 and 2.80 FIP. A righthander, he has reverse platoon splits owing to a hammer curveball that devastates lefthanded batters. He is in year 3 of a 4 year, 46m contract. He's owed $12m in 2017 and $13m in 2018. He had knee surgery in the offseason but is showing no ill effects. His curveball is getting whiffs at a 50% rate and his velocity is steady. A typical batted ball will be in the air with an exit velo in the high 80s. Last February there was heavy speculation about trade interest from the Nationals. One of the rumored deals was that the White Sox would send David Robertson plus eat some of his salary in exchange for 23 year old catching prospect Pedro Severino. Severino was on the 40 man and had two option years remaining. This seemingly was too great an ask for the Nationals and the deal failed. In another rumor, a CWS-NYM deal would have involved 24 year old Mets outfielder Michael Conforto. Conforto is a significantly better prospects. Drafted #10 in 2014, he has already reached the majors and is doing well. He's controlled through 2021. This too was too much of an ask for the Mets and no deal was struck. So if there is any truth to these rumors the price point for a deal appears to be just south of a big league ready position player with multiple years of team control and decent upside. Perhaps they're a bit desperate for a catcher. What could the Twins offer at that price point?

I don't know if the Twins are real or pretender but there's no doubt in my mind our club is in a better spot than the White Sox. A lot better spot. They made it close last night but they are a lousy group of players except for one or two guys in the bullpen.

A little bit unfair because Wimmers and Gibson needed elbow surgery after being drafted but I get your point. K-rate certainly isn't 100% predictive. But as a rule we'd have to expect k's to go down as players approach the majors. So its a reasonable, objective proxy for "stuff" as any. In that respect you'd have to say McKay's stuff is as good if not better than Greene's, even if he doesn't throw as hard or wear a size 38 inseam.

I'll also be disappointed if we draft another Slow-Bake-Burn pitcher. But, I don't think that describes McKay. No he doesn't light up the radar gun and he's not 7 feet tall but he has struck out 36% of batters he faced this year. By comparison Greene struck out 40% of the... high schoolers he faced.

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/chris-gimenez-on-non-sugar-coated-communication-and-analytics/ Love the attitude!

Fair enough. Not knowing anything about the business, that's the first thing I'm looking for. Looks like Q4 didn't get much of a bump over Q3 either. Q2 did though so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. I'm gonna stay on the sidelines so probably the price will shoot to the moon over the next 12 months just like SHOP, NVDA, etc every other stock I haven't bought.

I looked into SQ on your recommendation Brock but top line growth in the last qtr. looked pretty lackluster for a growth company. Is that temporary?

I'm with BigGentleBen, McKay and Adell 1/1A. Flip a coin. Still a few weeks to go though.

J.B. hasn't pitched in a long time. Scheduling and/or weather gave UNC a 1 week break. Apr 28 was his last start although he was lapped by Tyler Baum in the rotation so maybe there's something else going on.

What difference does it make they're apples to oranges. Gonsalves was never suspended, never overweight, his character never really in question. Boy scout stuff compared to Romero who is screwing up his life before our eyes.

So I looked it up and BABIP stabilizes between 820 and 1126 balls in play (depending on the source you want to believe). Grossman for his career has a .334 BABIP over 743 balls in play. Even if he regressed hard over his next ~300 BIPs, you're still looking at a mean that's worst case, around .305-.310 which would be above league average which is .292..

Sad. Kid could have had a really nice payday. How far will he fall I wonder?

"Past results do not guarantee future performance."

From that Torii Hunter piece: And from Randball's piece: Seems possible these two things are related.

NVDA good grief.

Rookie phenom Aaron Judge is a half year older than Bryce Harper, and 10 weeks older than Manny Machado. The Yankees are going to be really good in 2019.