Otto von Ballpark

Unlikely. Burdi is on the DL at AA and not even set to begin throwing again for at least another week, and still has a lot of unanswered performance questions. And he doesn't require a 40-man roster spot until after 2017.

Nunez, he has Escobar on the bench.

Suzuki won't be released this year, I guarantee that.

You can do so yourself quite easily here: http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/MIN/ So far, the 2014-2016 Twins pitching staffs have each been older than any Twins staffs since 2003 (Rogers and Reed) and 1988 (Blyleven, with a dash of Niekro and Carlton). Our position players are indeed younger than the 1996-1998 teams, but older than the 1999-2003 squads.

Has there been any rumblings that the Twins might actually consider this? May to the rotation, I mean, not the monkey/lizard thing. If anything, the recent trend for May has been toward shorter 1-inning appearances. I think their lack of offseason bullpen moves, and issues with Perkins/Jepsen/Fien so far, pretty much guarantees May will be in the bullpen all season. When Gibson comes back, they will have 6 starters, and I'd guess that Milone might get another shot before May, as well as Dean and Rogers particularly for shorter-term spot start duty.

I just scraped season schedules/results from the web into a database and queried it. You could probably do something similar with a subscription to B-Ref's Play Index, but it's just more intuitive for me to build my own database queries.

Rochester has announced Sunday's starter, and it's Tommy Milone. Still TBD for Monday.

The Royals would probably have the inside track, if they are willing to include this key piece: http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/d/duensbr01.shtml

No. The Angels wouldn't pay ~$4 mil for Milone a week ago, they're not likely to pay $23 million for Nolasco today (and given the general state of Twins pitching, the Twins are unlikely to include cash to move Nolasco, particularly not for a "prospect" from the Angels depleted system). They just got Jhoulys Chacin, who is guaranteed less than $1 mil, for a very fringe prospect (I believe not even on Angels lists). That gives you an idea of the kinds of deals teams prefer to make for short-term help right now.

Only 1 team has had a worse start than us in the wild card era, at 7-26: 2003 Tigers (finished with 43 wins) 8-25 starts in the wild card era (prior to 2016 Twins & Braves): 2005 Royals (53) 1998 Diamondbacks (expansion team, 65 wins) 1995 Marlins (prorated 76 wins) 9-24 starts in the wild card era: 2013 Astros (51) 2012 Twins (66) 2010 Orioles (66) 2007 Nationals (73) 2006 Pirates (67) 2006 Marlins (78) 2003 Indians (68) 2002 Devil Rays (55) 2002 Brewers (56) 1999 Marlins (64) 1994 A's (prorated 72 wins) 10-23 starts in the wild card era 2014 Astros (70) 2013 Marlins (62) 2007 Royals (69) 2006 Royals (62) 2005 Rockies (67) 2004 Devil Rays (70) 2004 Expos (67) 2001 Devil Rays (62) 2000 Tigers (79) 1999 Expos (68) 1998 Tigers (65) 1997 Cubs (68) 1996 Tigers (53) 1995 Twins (prorated 63 wins) 1994 Padres (prorated 65 wins) 11-22 starts in the wild card era: 2015 Phillies (63) 2014 Diamondbacks (64) 2013 Angels (78) 2012 Padres (76) 2011 White Sox (79) 2010 Royals (67) 2004 Royals (58) 2003 Padres (64) 2002 Blue Jays (78) 2002 Royals (62) 2002 Tigers (55) 2001 Royals (65) 2000 Brewers (73) 1998 Marlins (54) 1997 Phillies (68) 1997 Reds (76) 1994 Cubs (prorated 70 wins) Of the 49 teams above (counting the 2016 Twins and Braves), 17 of them (35%) have been in the AL Central. Next most is the NL East, with 11.

I was curious, so I looked this up at Fangraphs. The biggest gap between Twins WAR at a position, and the MLB leader in WAR at a position, is CF (3.1 WAR). SP would have a comparable gap too, with Kershaw about 3 WAR ahead of most of our starters so far. If we swapped both of these performances onto the Twins, we would net ~6 wins, leaving us at 14-19 right now and still in last place. Additionally closing one of the next big deficits at C or one of the outfield corners could get us to .500. Interestingly, the leading CF so far isn't Trout, but actually someone who was available freely this winter (for a comp pick, Dexter Fowler).

Also of note: the 2006 Twins were 14-19 at this point in the season, and finished with 96 wins. If the 2016 Twins could manage the same record as that bunch over the season's last 129 games (including an 18-1 stretch), they would finish with 90 wins. The 1991 Twins, despite a 2-9 start, were already back to 17-16 at this point in the season. An equivalent finish in 2016 (including a 15 game winning streak) would put us at 87 wins.

Since our last inquiry when the Twins started 0-9, I thought it might be interesting to take a look again at the 2016 Twins record and history. (Note that for this exercise, I have prorated all records to the modern season length of 162 games for easy comparison.) 8 wins or fewer in first 33 games The Twins currently sit at 8-25. This is pretty rare. Since the "proper" major leagues began in 1901, only 27 teams have started their season with 8 wins or fewer in 33 games (13 with exactly 8 like the Twins). Out of 2775 total team seasons, that's just under 1%. Rather interesting that the Twins and Braves have both done so in 2016 -- that has only happened twice before (1904 and 1981). None of these teams finished at .500 or better. The 1995 Marlins had the best finish of the bunch, finishing at 76 wins. 1907 Brooklyn (71) was the only other team in this group to finish above 65 wins (remember, prorated to a 162 game season). The Twins had never previously started 8-25 or worse, but the 1904 Washington Senators did (finishing at 40 wins). 9 wins Another 42 teams won 9 of their first 33, and two finished above .500: 1965 Pittsburgh (90) and 1925 Detroit (85). More recently, the 2006 Marlins (that franchise again!) started 9-24 but managed to get back to 78 wins at season's end. 2012 marks the Twins previous worst start in this group, with a 66 win finish. 10 wins Another 54 won 10 of their first 33. The legendary world champion 1914 Braves (100) top the finishers, followed by 3 more teams with 81 or 82 wins, none more recent than 1973. The 1995 (63) and 1978 (73) Twins are included here. 11 wins Another 82 won 11 of their first 33, only 5 finished at .500, and none of those since 1988. The 1974 Pirates reached 88 wins and won their division. The 1981 (61) and 1982 (60) Twins went back-to-back in this category. So all told, 205 teams have won 11 or fewer of their first 33 games, and only 11 of those have rebounded to finish at .500 or better, none more recently than 1988, and only two have made the postseason (1914 and 1974). (Things look a little better at 12 wins, with the 2005 Astros and 1989 Blue Jays making the playoffs with 89 wins each, and the 2015 Indians climbing back to 81 wins too. Although the infamous 1962 Mets make their first appearance here too...)

How well did surrounding himself with the right people help Bill Smith?

Why should Jay be on an innings limit? A full season starting at high-A should only be about 130 innings. He threw 85 last year between college and the pros. Tyler Duffey went from 70 to 120 a few years ago. Berrios (103) and Stewart (87) wound up with lower innings counts in their first full seasons, but they were both 19 year old high school draftees who each missed a handful of starts those years. If he's pitching well, there should be no reason to mess with Jay to limit his innings. The shorter season and 6 man rotation are already enough to do that.

Agreed. Although it's also pretty much the same line he posted at AA and AAA last year. It's good to see that his rough MLB start hasn't affected his minor league hitting, but it remains to be seen if he's ready to adjust to the bigs. Hopefully it was just the leg kick messing him up this year -- his MLB numbers last year were bad, but not hopeless. Getting back to that could be something to build on.

I hope that's not the new trend -- if they start allowing slides to the side and past the base again, it will encourage runners to keep doing them and hope that the umpires don't rule against them under the new additional subjective criteria (did the runner impede the fielder). I thought the rule was actually pretty darn clear when they started the season, but allowing something like that Gose slide really mucks it up.

How did you do it, if you don't mind me asking?

When did Buxton add the leg kick? According to Parker it was this spring: https://twitter.com/parkerhageman/status/712332871860494336

The FSL as a whole is hitting .241/.314/.344 (.657), and averaging 29 K and 12 BB per 32.2 IP. The teams that Jay has faced are collectively hitting even worse than that, ranking 6th, 8th, 9th, and 11th out of 12 in raw OPS.

Was this person without direct knowledge also responsible for 2015 parade planning? Is he a trusted source? Players don't take physicals when they are optioned, or when they leave aircraft. If Meyer gets a paper cut in the Rochester clubhouse, that's one thing, but it's difficult if not impossible to pinpoint an exact "moment of injury" for reported shoulder or elbow fatigue. I would imagine it's quite possible that Meyer felt "normal" fatigue after his last start, and first noticed that it hadn't gone away like normal in his first bullpen session in Rochester. In modern MLB, if it requires you to miss a start or close to 15 days, that usually means a retroactive DL stint. I don't know if anything will come of it, particularly if he winds up starting Sunday after 11 days off, but I am sure the union and Meyer's agent (Boras) are keeping an eye on it, especially if it drags out any further. Nothing contentious about it either -- I am sure players and teams go through this situation on a regular basis. The service time and MLB backpay will probably be trivial to the Twins.

Thanks Seth. Seems strange that wasn't disclosed before (and still hasn't been disclosed anywhere publicly except this thread, to my knowledge). I wonder if Meyer will later see an adjustment in his service time and MLB backpay -- the union can't look too kindly on a player getting optioned when he's not healthy enough to take his next turn, for at least 11 days in Meyer's case, more if he doesn't start on Sunday...

Seth, any results yet from your "digging"? That was Tuesday morning... I see Rochester's Sunday starter is still listed as TBD, but even if he takes that start, it doesn't really explain why they would skip his turn entirely. Seems like we would have heard about any health concern by now, seeing as how it could affect his roster status (the union would probably be suspicious of a player getting optioned if he was unable to play). If he needed time off to clear his head -- maybe that's a clue he's not the best candidate for messing with his routine in the first place? Maybe he's seeing some sort of super-secret pitching guru?

Indeed, the Twins screwed up big time with Polanco in 2010. A quick scan of BA's top 25 international prospects for 2009 indicates that Polanco was the only one in that group to spend 90 days on a pro roster in 2010: http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/prospects/international-affairs/2009/268478.html Others spent more than 90 days on a roster in 2011 or 2012, of course (Sano, for example, didn't need 3 full seasons in rookie league ball), so they wouldn't all get a fourth option year either, but no other player in that list lost his 4th option year eligibility in his first pro season like Polanco.

Upon further research, Polanco indeed missed out on a 4th option year by 3 days. Players with fewer than 5 full pro seasons get a 4th option year, with 90 days as the threshold defining a "full" season. Rookie leagues are all under 90 days in length, so seasons spent fully in a rookie league shouldn't count toward those 5 full. However, in 2010, Polanco started in the Dominican Summer League, which begins earlier than other rookie leagues, then moved to the Gulf Coast League, which runs later. His combined rookie league season between those two leagues appears to have run 92 days. Given that Polanco was a fairly high profile signing (#23 on BA's top international prospects that year, and his $775k bonus was I think a Twins international record at the time, preceding Sano by a couple months), I think someone dropped the ball on this one back in 2010.