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cmathewson

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Everything posted by cmathewson

  1. cmathewson
    Maybe he was catching his breath after a flat-out 4.3 sprint for the ball.
  2. cmathewson
    Let me get this straight. You want to go out and get a bunch of low-cost free agents to push the prospects out of their opportunities during a rebuilding year? That's a new one. As for having "something for the fans to come to the ballpark for," we do have Mauer, and Morneau and Willingham. Whether we build a team of prospects with some upside around them or a team of retreads with no upside is the choice. I would take the prospects with some upside. At least you won't be discarding whatever value you have in former first-rounders like Plouffe and Paremelee by getting marginal upgrades for them.
  3. cmathewson
    We've seen this countless times before. Guys go from his favorites to his dog house. He is such a hot head, little stuff that makes no difference to the course of the game can make him blow his top. Big stuff that does affect the outcome seems to do very little to affect his demeanor. The example of the misplay in the 11th on Monday is such a case. he's got two guys out there who have not played at those positions at all this year. Neither gets to a catchable ball. And he says nothing. Hicks comes in a a tough fly and makes the catch (after running about 130 feet), and he blows up. There's no rhyme or reason to it. And that's where he starts messing with Rookies' heads. If you're consistently a hard ass, or you're consistently lenient, kids can run with that. It's the inconsistency that destroys kids' confidence.
  4. cmathewson
    I'm not so sure, Rochester might be the best thing for him. It worked for Hunter and Santana. But it seems a little early to send him down. I think Hicks' demeanor is what people often misinterpret. He is more like Span than Revere. Revere is just a high-energy, ADD, happy-go-lucky kid. Even when he took horrible routes on balls and made rookie mistakes, people gave him credit for trying. Span was cool and collected. Almost calm. After he made some amazing plays with his long, smooth strides, few questioned his hustle. Hicks has long strides. And he makes most of the plays Span made. Span missed several plays near the wall that Hicks missed last night. Thing is, most guys never even get there, so it's tough to judge them when they fail to make the catch. Anyway, I don't think it's a head game, unless you're talking about Gardy playing head games with him. I don't think it's hustle. I think it's just a tougher league and he needs to learn it. He needs to learn to read balls off the end of the bat better. The question is whether he can learn that better in Rochester or Minnesota. I'm not so sure.
  5. cmathewson
    This. Gardy is free to instruct players on the finer points of the game at any time. Better to do it when it happens than after a few days and through the papers (as he has sometimes done). I thought Gardy handled this one appropriately. Maybe he's learning. This was way overblown by FSN North, in particular, Dick Bremmer, who's knowledge of the game begins and ends with, "he's going to be bunting here," in obvious swing-away situations.
  6. cmathewson
    Gardy needs to get used to coaching guys without shaming them. If he stays around, he will have a lot of young, raw talent in here over the next few years. My sense is what Hicks is doing is nothing compared to what Sano or Rosario will be doing when they get here. I think Hicks is making slow progress. He sometimes gets fooled on balls where a guy takes a big swing and hits it off the end of the bat. Looking on TV, it seems like he's let a couple of balls fall in front of him that were catchable, if everything goes right. But that's a learning process. If he's better off learning in AAA, fine, send him down. We now have a viable option down there (Benson, not Thomas). Offensively, he's been about what we expect since the disastrous first 10 games. I'd rather he learn to hit up here, where he can learn the pitchers, than down there, where only a few of the pitchers will end up in the majors.
  7. cmathewson
    Let's recap 1. As someone said, short-term contracts tend to attract replacements, not good solid players. If you want good solid players, look to the Willingham three-year contract. 2. It is doubtful that there were enough long-term replacements on the free-agent market to fill 10 holes in the team (three rotation spots, three spots in the bullpen, three infielders, two outfielders). 3. The place where we know there were no viable long-term options was in starters, outside of a couple of guys the Twins missed, like Dempster 4. Lacking available talent, the Twins decided to give their internal options a chance, except where there weren't any. Then they signed short-term options to fill the remaining holes 5. The end game is not this year but a run starting as early as 2014. If that is your end game, it makes more sense to give internal options a chance and see what you have rather than releasing those out of options and sending the rest to Rochester This is where I disagree on a few points. First, long-term FAs weren't there. Short-term FAs don't typically help over internal options. Besides availability, they did not follow your path because they prefer to give internal options a chance over signing short-term options, who only offer a marginal upgrade over internal options, if that. You can sometimes get lucky with a short term guy like Victorino. But as many of them fail as succeed. We have seen this time and again.
  8. cmathewson
    I agree with this. I just don't think this past offseason was a good fit for this approach. Whatever talent we acquired would have supplanted the home-grown talent we needed to try out. You could say we should have acquired a shortstop and maybe a center fielder, but I'm not sure that helps this team in the long term. Assuming this is a rebuilding year, it didn't make sense to buy a lot of short-term talent.
  9. cmathewson
    I don't call a lot of these guys aces. I guess it's semantics.
  10. cmathewson
    Can we say double or nothing? I am in favor of FAs that make sense. Willingham made sense. It made sense that they sign some pitchers this year. It might make sense for them to sign more pitchers and players next year than this year. It depends on how these guys do. And you can't find that out until you give them a chance. It didn't make sense to sign Greinke or Sanchez. Those were the only high-buck free agents who could have pushed the Twins payroll into the 50% range. It doesn't make sense to insist on spending an arbitrary number if it hurts your team long term. They could have signed a bunch of marginal guys to fill positions, but that would hinder organizational development for guys like Parmelee, Plouffe and Dozier. One way or another, we need to know about those guys. So you take a year to evaluate things. When you find out what you have, you fill holes with FAs and acquisitions. What I don't understand is the claim that this year is the start of some kind of trend. There is no evidence of this. Ryan is historically cheap, but he spent around 50% of revenue in every year except 99, which was a rebuilding year. This is a rebuilding year. What he does when he has a chance to win could reverse the current trend line. To assume the opposite is cynical speculation.
  11. cmathewson
    The scouting report was based on his college pitching. Apart from the elite pitchers in college, it is really hard to scout college pitchers. Among other things, their innings and pitching frequency change the whole dynamic of how hard they throw. They either burn out or they conserve their strength. Baxendale appears to be the latter. Now that he's pitching every fifth day with the regular Twins workout regimen in between, perhaps he is tapping into his natural stuff better. Just a thought.
  12. cmathewson
    You mentioned that Harrison had a homer taken away because of a celebration. Did this also happen with Sano, when he gestured at the Cardinal's dugout after the attempted beaning?
  13. cmathewson
  14. cmathewson
    I wonder if Joe had arm issues last year. I know he did in the injury-plagued 2011. But I wonder if they lingered into 2012. He just wasn't himself throwing the last two years. This year, he looks like his old self again,
  15. cmathewson
    Allison was a great hitter. And he was slowed by injuries. But he was never a very good fielder. He played on a team with Harmon and Vic Power, so they had to put him in left. In today's game, he'd be a 1b/DH. But a great one.
  16. cmathewson
    Well I disagree. They're billionaires. The don't want to lose money. But I believe they care more about winning than profits. And I never told anyone to move. I said he could choose to spend his money across the river if the .03% sales tax in Hennepin County bothers him so much.
  17. cmathewson
    Fine. Mine is speculation as well. I prefer to speculate with optimism, that the Twins will try to build a winning team with their available funds. You choose to speculate that the Twins don't really care about winning, all they really care about is keeping more of the taxpayers' money. Each to his own.
  18. cmathewson
    Who are you talking about? Outside of Mauer, Willingham, Perkins, Correia, and Burton, everybody is only marginally over the minimum. Plouffe and Worley are arb eligible. Everyone else is per-arb. The young players aren't going to reduce payroll that much. What they choose to do is speculation. They might just go with kids. Or they might get some veteran talent to complement the youth movement. They certainly will have the flexibility to do what they think is right. And there will be a lot more talent available after this year than before.
  19. cmathewson
    I hope they return to spending 50% or more of revenue. I'll be disappointed if they don't. But I don't get too worked about it if they don't, in a year when what they could spend money on was not going to improve them much and might make it harder to win in future years.
  20. cmathewson
    The chief cited the 2012 revenue. The $99.5 was 2012 salary budget. I don't doubt that the 2013 payroll is around $76 million. Revenue for 2013 is TBD.
  21. cmathewson
    Fair enough, so their 99.25 is 46.4 percent of revenue.
  22. cmathewson
    I see a bunny.
  23. cmathewson
    Hicks, Arcia, Meyer, May, Sano, Rosario, Buxton, Berrios, Polanco, ... I doubt he'd leave if they can't win NEXT YEAR. But if he felt he had a good chance to win over the span of a three-year contract, say, I think he would stay. Jon Lester, James Shields, Ervin Santana, Matt Garza, Roy Halladay, Jason Hammel, Tim Hudson, Tim Lincecum, and just about all the back-of-the-rotation pitchers who were available after the 2012 season.
  24. cmathewson
    Benson's best bet is to be better than Mastroianni and become a solid bench option. That might happen if this leg thing continues. I don't see him starting outside of injury replacements. I could be wrong.
  25. cmathewson
    Really? We're captives? If we don't like how the Twins are managed, we can choose not to be fans. If you feel like a captive, just walk away. That I can agree with.
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