cmathewson
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Everything posted by cmathewson
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I agree with that. But those dozen chances were mostly about the 24th or 25th man, depending on how you count. As I said, the Bartlett move would have had minimal impact if they had DFAd anybody but the only center fielder above single A with options when they claimed Fuld. -
See Gomez, Carlos. You don't want to mess with that.
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Playing the hot hand makes sense if you're a pennant contender. The way they're managing the roster, this team will be lucky to escape the cellar of the ALC. Play the kid. Help him learn. Coach him. Praise him publicly. Correct him privately. If you do it right, you'll have a decent starting shortstop in 2015. My hope is that Molitor takes him under his wing. Someone has to coach the kids.
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I don't think he was in the dugout at the start of the game. I think he showed up in the third inning or something.
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Good teams care about every roster spot, on the 25 man and the 40 man. Over the course of a season, a marginal player can make a big difference as a fill in. Unless you really don't care about winning actual games.
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I think both Gardy and Antony favor veterans above all else. That's why Gardy did everything he could to make both Barlett and Florimon work, because once he's trained them, he can sit back and watch. It's work to develop young guys. He hates that. Just a theory. But he has shown it over and over. Guerrier is the latest example. He could keep Tonkin and work with him. But he knows what he has with Guerrier. Same with Burton.
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I understand not wanting to use Parmelee or Ramirez. Say you add them to the 40 man. What happens when the injured guys come back to take their spots? You have to DFA them, further depleting your outfield depth. Still, why have depth if you can't use it? I was actually more upset about the Mastro move than the Presley move because Mastro had an option year left. So he could be that extra guy you call up and send down as needed. Aside from Hermann, who does not belong in the majors, the Twins have a bunch of outfielders who are out of options. This is where Antony is clearly to blame. He didn't need to DFA Mastro to make room on the 40 man for Fuld. He could have DFAd Bartlett and paid the extra $500K. Or he could have filed the retirement papers when Bartlett announced his retirement, instead of waiting three days. Or he could have DFAd Raley. He chose the one reserve outfielder who can play all three outfield spots and who has an option left.
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This. Exactly this. Gardy is the king of the hill until Ryan gets back. He exerts the authority due to him by his tenure. Bill Smith is not and never was a baseball man. He started out in accounting. Rob Antony is not and never was a baseball man. He started out in PR. They can try to paint him as a "talent evaluator," but that's bogus, and Gardy knows it. So Gardy will win every argument until Ryan gets back. Ryan is the consummate baseball man, which is what it takes to put Gardy in his place. Clearly Gardy doesn't know how to put a roster together. And Antony just defers to him. I have little hope it will improve until Ryan returns to re-exert his authority.
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Kenny Wilson will not be ready to play in the majors until next September, at the earliest. He's barely a AA guy. Mastro would be playing now, instead of Escobar or Hermann or whatever other guy is out of position and costing us games. I can't believe you don't see it. Losing Presley cost us an outfielder. Claiming Fuld didn't improve that, because it cost us another outfielder. So we're still down an outfielder. And the Fuld deal happened a month into a season when we were short an outfielder.
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What do you have against Deduno? When he was on the major league roster, he was clearly the best guy on the staff, even after he hurt his shoulder and tried to pitch with it. It wasn't even particularly close. His competition was horse hockey, so maybe it's not saying much. But he was Secretariat to the rest of that field. Sure, he didn't join the team until late May because he pulled his groin pitching in the WBC championship game. But that's hardly his fault. It was so wet on the mound, they had to use a squeegee to remove the puddle where his foot landed. I've never seen a serious analyst use counting stats against a guy who was injured. So you can't be serious, right? Or, perhaps you have something else against him that cannot be numerically verified, like he walked away when your granddaughter asked for an autograph, or something.
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The elephant in the room is that Antony was Smith's right arm and Smith was an administrator, by his own admission, delegating many of the decisions to his Luitenants, primarily Antony. Ryan injected a level of sanity back into the circus that Smith and Antony created. But as soon as Ryan was out of the picture, the circus resumed. Both those guys grew up in a Twins organization that used to make fans throw back batting practice balls and hand back broken bats so they could be sold at the Pro Shop. That's how Antony manages: Let's scrape the bottom of the barrel and see if we can eat it.
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I disagree, Brock. The Bartlett decision was dumb and it led to serious problems with the roster in the outfield. Suppose you keep Presley instead. You actually have a real outfielder next to Hicks for the first two months, instead of a DH and a first baseman. And when Hicks got hurt, you would have had depth in Mastro. instead, they let Mastro go to make room for Fuld, which did nothing to improve their depth. At one point, Fuld and Hicks were the only guys who could play center field above Low A ball. That says a lot about how stupid it is to carelessly discard center fielders because of some insane fantasy that Jason Bartlett is another Ben Zobrist. And so now we have a roster with zero center fielders and no real outfielders. Injuries made everything bad. But the Bartlett blunder turned it into a crisis.
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Using the media for coaching of young kids--one of the least endearing traits of this manager. The kid makes three great plays and hits the ball hard a few times in one game, and Gardy focuses on a low feed to second on a successful DP, or some such nonesense. Another unflatering side to this manager: how volatile his opinions are. Want a different opinion from Gardy? Wait 24 hours. Last week he said Escobar would start at short for a while. How long did that last? Two games. As soon as it was convenient, he put Esco at third and Florimon at short. Esco did great in those two games, but he couldn't wait to get Florimon back out there. Whatever they do with Santana, you don't let a 23 year old with his tools sit. If he's not starting up here, send him down to start in Rochester. Don't bring him up to sit on the bench. I for one think he's the most talented shortstop in the organization. It'll take time for him to develop, but the sooner they start, the sooner they'll have something. And Chief, I don't doubt the general public will complain about him. That's nothing new. They have unrealistic expectations.
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Gardy might try him. But one game with Gibson on the mound and seven hits through the left side of the infield and he'll be back where he belongs, in a utility role.
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I thought he was due for regression from last year--something like a .550 OPS, which is below what he would need to do to keep Santana down in AAA. But I didn't think he would regress this far, this fast. On the other hand, he's the kind of guy who has to do a lot of work to be able to hit at all. When he wasn't able to do the work in spring training, it kind of doomed him to a horrible start. I thought they should have started with him on the DL to put in that work in extended spring, but they didn't, so he really wasn't ready to start the season. He was just showing signs of life, such as they were, but it was too little, too late. I haven't totally given up on him, but I'd be surprised if he makes it back with this club.
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Sure. After watching Santana the last couple of games, I think it's time to give him a shot and start developing him into the shortstop of the future. That's why they didn't sign Drew.
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So they lost Brooks Raley in the Guerrier deal. Easy come, easy go, I guess. Hicks is expected to take one of two spots. Nunez is already here, with Fuld going on the 7-day concussion DL. The other guy is probably Arcia, if his sore wrist is better in the morning.
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Game Thread: Twins@Indians 5/8 11:05AM
cmathewson replied to Riverbrian's topic in Archived Game Threads
Chris Hermann with a ground ball to the right side, for the 400th time in this young season. -
First of all, the Twins have said that Antony and not Ryan is approving all moves until Ryan is back full time, which is not yet. Who recommends them, and such, is irrelevant. So assuming the Twins are not lying about that, in two months, Antony's made a half dozen basic mistakes. I'm not talking about nuanced mistakes here. These are GM 101 type things, like not offering your number 1 draft pick a contract in time so that he becomes a free agent. Those kinds of mistakes. I can excuse a couple of them. But when every single roster decision he makes is the result of a basic mistake, and the combination of these mistakes leads to a crippled team, he needs to be held accountable for it. If the Twins or the media won't do it, it's our job to. And firing him is not the only way to hold him accountable. I was saying that to be controversial, half in jest. But how else do you hold a guy accountable for screwing up a decent team?
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It's the grand scheme of things that led to my fire him comment, not this one mistake. There's an appaling lack of any accountability on the outfield situation. It gets worse, you know. Today's outfield has Kubel in right, Escobar in center and Hermann in left. Injuries, of course, led to this. But good GMs plan for injuries. The fact that they don't even have a center fielder in AAA is on Antony. Until they claimed Wilson and Buxton came back from injury, the highest level where they had a legitimate center fielder was the Midwest league. That should not happen.
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Fire Rob Antony. There, I said it.
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Both, actually. Stewart, Meyer and Thorpe are future ace pitchers. Meyer alone is more valuable than Smarmia. And he's under team control for at least six years.
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I don't mind it in a vacuum. But in the context of the circus that is Twins Roster Construction 2014 Edition, this looks insane. In nearly every game this year, the Twins have had infielders or catchers playing outfield. This has cost them several games. They did nothing to address that issue. Shuffling relievers is like arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. It all started when they DFAd Presley to make room for Bartlett. Not that Alex Presley is any great shakes, but he is a competent outfielder. Bartlett had never played outfield in professional baseball outside of spring training. And he was horrible at it in spring training. But Gardy had this notion that he's a super utility guy based on 30 innings of outfield play in spring training. Nuts. Anyway, it's amazing the ripple effects one bad roster decision has on a team. They had a chance to make good on it by bringing up Mastro and adding him to the 40 man. But inexplicably, they DFAd him (instead of someone else) to make room for Sam Fuld. That led to several games with Hermann in the outfield, and last night's game, where they had a guy who had very little experience playing left field. All this makes me extremely wary about whom they will DFA to make room for a guy that might be OK this year and will not have a spot on the team afterwards. And he might be horrible, if his recent AAA outings are any indicator. I hope it is not an outfielder, but given the way Antony has managed this roster, I wouldn't be surprised.
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You don't give up a future ace and a top prospect, just to pay a guy what he will make in free agency.
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What Stringer said. This is ridiculous. When are we getting a real front office again that has even the slightest notion of how to manage a roster? Clearly Gardy can't. And apparently, Antony just defers for Gardy on everything. Guerrier is the last pitcher they should call up based on recent performances. But Gardy liked what he saw from him in spring training, so... We have infielders and catchers playing out of position in the outfield, we have relievers not getting work with 13 pitchers on the roster and literally not a single player to pinch hit late in games. The team has fallen apart at the seams and they are just exchanging relievers on a 13-man staff. It's pathetic.
