Rod Carews Birthday
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Everything posted by Rod Carews Birthday
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Exactly. Remember the “2nd base logjam”? That certainly worked itself out quickly. What people sometimes fail to realize is that Player X, with this flaw or that flaw that makes you not want him, isn’t going to command a tremendous value from another team that sees those same flaws. That other team is also likely to send you Player Y, who has this flaw or that flaw that makes them not want him. I get this is why players are packaged for big trades and that there are few one for one challenge trades, Arraez for Lopez notwithstanding. The reality is that the players who really have tremendous value in a trade are usually on a team’s untouchable list for trades. -
Ty France is a player who so far has produced at about league average, while playing better than advertised defense. Luckily for him, he seems to hit best in spots that matter most. I doubt it's an actual skill, but lucky is just fine if it's on your side. He gets on base at a good pace, which is also a valuable skill (as is, apparently, getting hit by pitches). In a vacuum, I would prefer a player like Freddie Freeman, or prime Albert Puhols, but we don't live there. For the investment, you've got to be pleased with what France has brought to the table so far. If it continues, I will definitely call his year successful. He is most definitely better than anybody else we could/would put there at this point.
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There are plenty of at bats to go around. He may not start on a daily basis, but there will inevitably be short term injuries, slumps, and days off to get through. I don’t think that makes him any less valuable, in the same way that Willi Castro is valuable. Having a non-starter who “could be” a starter limits the amount of drop off that occurs when bench players start. Let’s just keep them all healthy and productive.
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I am in agreement that Festa pitching a little deeper into games will do wonders for the bullpen fatigue situation. However, it's really just a question of whether he can stay in control of the game in innings five and six. If he can do that, I think he will be given enough leash to continue to pitch, but if he can't get people out the third time through the lineup, the extra innings are negated by the runs given up. So to oversimplify things, he just needs to pitch reasonably well. If we can score some runs, that will be enough.
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Week in Review: Turn for the Worse
Rod Carews Birthday replied to Nick Nelson's topic in Twins Daily Front Page News
If the offense can get/remain straightened out, it will do a lot toward keeping the team in contention. It seems quite likely that there will be a dip in the starting pitching situation, so it's time for the offense to step it up. The sky isn't falling on the pitching side. We're still covered and we haven't dipped into "break glass in case of emergency - hello Randy Dobnak" territory yet. In a bizzaro way the games might just get more "interesting" -- in both good and bad ways!- 13 replies
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- pablo lopez
- zebby matthews
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Weird headline. How about "Twins' need for long reliever grows with Pablo's injury" instead of the clickbaity title? If Adams can come up and pitch well in 2-3 inning stints, that could be extremely valuable to the preservation of the rest of the guys in the bullpen. Alcala probably has better stuff than Adams, but at this point he has probably worn out his welcome and needs to go, which is a shame. I think he will figure things out somewhere else and be effective. Such is the nature of relief pitching. A huge number of successful relievers have flamed out with a previous team (or several teams).
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I prefer to focus on the point of the article, so I don’t really care about the rest of that stuff. I wish more people would join me in that. From a completely selfish standpoint, I don’t want anything to get in the way of a sale and new ownership. This bill could do that, so it commands my attention. I don’t care how much or how little the Pohlads make from the sale, I just want it to happen. Let’s go billionaires! Get busy and buy the Twins!
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That’s me wishcasting that it will create a sense of urgency for the Pohlads to sell the team. I don’t care at all how much they get from the sale, I just want it to go through and provide a little ray of sunshine for fans. As a fan, there is nothing we can do, unfortunately.
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THIS is exactly the point that is important to Twins fans specifically right now. Politics is just politics and there will always be disagreements, but sometimes we have to let things pass and not be offended by everything the other side says. SHORT ANSWER: Let’s get this team sold RIGHT NOW!!!!
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I'm not sure in the current times that there is such a thing as a politically neutral format. Such is the nature of the beast. Unfortunately there are always triggers out there for people (on both sides) that prevent them from looking past the chaff and into the real information. It's the world we live in.
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Point taken, but paragraph two (the one that is the most controversial) is probably necessary to really clue people in to exactly what bill we are talking about. Otherwise, it would be lost out there ("buried on page 966") and people wouldn't realize what to pay attention to. Bills like that (on both sides of the aisle) pass all the time and it is only after the fact that people realize what has happened (when it is too late). Without an article like this, I would probably not have known that this was out there. Now I do, and I'm glad the article was written.
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It's always about the price and return. Absolutely, I'm a fan of trading any one of our pitchers, for the right return. Unfortunately, the Twins' idea of the right return and the other teams (or mine) are likely going to be different. What I'm not a fan of is trading for the sake of trading -- creating churn just to make it look like something happened. Until we know the target and the proposed package from the team that is willing to actually trade said package, this is just us saying "Looky here! We've got a bunch of pitchers!" Right now, nothing is likely to happen until for at least 5 or 6 weeks. Let's wait a little longer before the speculation gets out of control.
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- simeon woods richardson
- david festa
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The bill, if passed and signed, would represent a major change in how teams are valued and taxed. That means that selling the Twins would be even more messy (maybe even impossible) than it is right now, which greatly affects something that many (probably most) fans want to happen, the sale of the team. Yes, it's politics. But also yes, it belongs on this site because it affects something integral to what this site is about. If a tax bill put a $10 fee on every ticket sold, I would expect to see that here as well. I also hate politics on non-political sites, but the effect would likely be direct and deadly.
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I can't specifically answer to the merits of sending Royce Lewis to Fort Meyers vs. St. Paul. If he can get better and more specific coaching, then by all means send him to Fort Meyers, otherwise St. Paul. Right now he is doing very little in the way of helping the team so he will not be missed while he is away. Putting it more bluntly, if he doesn't figure it out, he'll hang around for second/third/fourth chances and then be out of baseball. It's time to take the plunge.
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Then some results need to be forthcoming. REALLY SOON, because it’s getting ugly out there.
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- griffin jax
- royce lewis
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I completely agree where the overall team is concerned. The beginning of the season produced far too many “sky is falling” comments and the streak produced a bit too much optimism. The twins are probably that 85-87 win team that they were predicted to be, although they took the bizarre path to get there. I agree less when it comes to individual players. Perhaps someone with a very long track record of excellence — Byron Buxton, Carlos Correa — deserves a very long leash with regard to substandard performance. However, players that have had limited success probably need to be looked at somewhat more skeptically, like Julien, Miranda, or Lewis. Those guys aren’t finished products and sometimes they may need their run in a lower stress environment like AAA to ultimately be successful in the big leagues.
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- griffin jax
- royce lewis
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No, but Matt Wallner is!
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He would benefit greatly and it is well beyond time to do it. He’s been a mess offensively since the middle of last season and in his current form does almost nothing for the team. The Twins did it with Wallner and Buxton with good success. Julian and Miranda were no worse when they were sent down. Time for the reset.
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I get the attraction and the interesting thought exercise, but our pitching is definitely not the problem right now. Acquiring another good pitcher means we still lose lots of 2-1 or 2-0 games. Skenes is a huge talent, but I would argue that ERod and Jenkins are probably more valuable to this team than Skenes would be, unless he can pull an Ohtani and hit also.
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- paul skenes
- walker jenkins
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Well, if we can switch him back, while still sending Groyce down to St. Paul to work on his swing, maybe we can have both of them on the team! Unorthodox for sure, but seems worth a try.
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For approximately the past year, Royce Lewis has been atrocious at the plate, yet for some strange reason we keep trotting him out there and calling him a “star” whose hitting is key to the season. “Some” hitting is indeed key to the season. It doesn’t have to come from him. Perhaps the odds of that hitting coming from Royce Lewis would increase with a stint in St. Paul to clear his head and work on his hitting in a lower pressure situation. The way things are going now for him, I don’t see the downside. On the flip side, it may not work. So far it hasn’t worked with that other guy (Julien), but that doesn’t mean that it won’t in the future. I’m not sure why we are so hesitant to send him down. We’ve done it before with lots of players (Wallner, Buxton, Sano, a bevy of pitchers, etc.). Why not Royce Lewis.
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The 1987 offense was better. The pitching wasn't close. OPS+ of 99 in 1987. Current OPS+ of 126 in 2025. The 1991 offense was excellent and their pitching, while better, still wasn't in the same class as the current pitching staff. The 1987 team wasn't a juggernaut. I still remember everyone thinking that they were going to fade away at some point, but they didn't. Tom Kelly definitely had all of his smoke and mirrors working in 1987. Don't misunderstand, I always have been and remain a huge Twins fan, but I think you are waxing nostalgic about that team and Tom Kelly's zebra striped Zubas (and who doesn't!).
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So. If he gets his expected results, he’s below average. Ouch!
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You never know. Calling the 1987 Twins a team where a bunch of career years lined up isn't really accurate. Hrbek was awesome. Bruno and Kirby were very good. But the rest of the offense was pretty blah. On the pitching side Viola had one of his best years, Blyleven was OK, and after that, the best starter was Les Straker -- Randy Dobnak anyone? The team was good, but mostly they put it together in time to get hot for the playoffs (and had less rounds to go through). This year's pitching staff is miles ahead of that one. If the bats can find reasonable consistency, they could be good. One hundred wins good? Not sure, but hardly impossible.
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He came up and had some spectacular moments, so we all figured that's who he would always be. However, now the world has caught up to him and he can't figure out a way out of the downward spiral. I'm sure both Royce and his coaches have tried lots of things. It's been a LONG spiral (actually very little like Wallner, who just had a bad start to the season). In his current iteration, he really does nothing for the team's chances of winning and for all the talk about "he's hitting the ball hard", if that were true then his batting average would be higher (not to mention his other stats). A trip to St. Paul right now would be excellent for getting him back to being the player that we hope he can be. A good Royce Lewis for the last half or even third of the season will be better for him and for the team than the one we have now for the rest of the season. Right now, Jonah Bride is probably the better option.
