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Rod Carews Birthday

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Everything posted by Rod Carews Birthday

  1. Rod Carews Birthday
    Deals expire and are renegotiated all the time. It happens with little guys like Bally and even with big guys like ESPN. The two parties obviously don’t agree on the value of the product. That’s between Bally and Comcast. The Twins aren’t at that negotiating table. Pure streaming deals are not very lucrative in a midlevel market so they turned back to the best TV deal they could get. Strategically, development of other options in the past couple of years would have been ideal - but doing so would have cost a fair amount of money rather than making it and the Twins opted not to do that.
  2. Rod Carews Birthday
    Which other more lucrative TV deal would you have had them take? Many things were speculated and dreamed about but when crunch time came, what they got was probably the best financial deal they could get. The Comcast debacle isn’t on the Twins. That’s on an entirely different set of billionaires. It sucks. As to ranking, i believe that I also had them middle of the pack - better some years and worse others. I just choose to take the long view because as I stated elsewhere, owners are around for a lot longer than relief pitchers and utility infielders.
  3. Rod Carews Birthday
    You kind of have to take the long view on team ownership. They stick around much longer than relief pitchers. Would I have done some things differently this year? Absolutely but then again I don’t have the same information nor the same size checkbook, and ultimately no influence over their decisions.
  4. Rod Carews Birthday
    I understand and agree with some of your frustration. I think you are wrong if you think that there aren't many team owners that have done these same things (or obviously similar with different names). I don't like it, but they own the team so they get to call the shots. I think they are roughly middle of the pack as owners over the years, with some real flashes like the Correa signing, and some real turds with the offseason budget cuts. It's hard to call the Pohlads incompetent. They have managed to keep the team mostly competitive , with a couple of WS championships, for more than 40 years. We may not be satisfied as fans, but I think that's true of more fan bases than you think. Where the Twins dropped the ball the hardest was in failing to capitalize on some good feelings after last year's playoffs to keep fans excited for the next year (2024). The PR associated with those decisions was absolutely atrocious.
  5. Rod Carews Birthday
    This is always an interesting thought. The question is whether any of those vaunted prospects will develop into real stars or not. On paper (and that's a terrible place to play baseball), we have Correa and young pieces in place in the infield all the way around. In the outfield, we have Buxton and then several potential future players in Wallner, E-Rod, Jenkins, etc. If some of the young pitchers are good, that could be covered as well. The problem is that that almost never happens. Prospects can and do fail all the time. It will take those young players, and then trades from the surplus spots or free agent pickups to put a championship level team in place. The trick is to know which ones will be great and which ones won't. We as fans send ridiculous mixed signals when we declare that we definitely want/need the team to be aggressive and trade for (insert name of established star player here), but yet we consider the prospects that might get it done to be untouchable. We clutch our pearls when anybody talks about trading guys like Lewis, Lee, E-Rod, or Jenkins. They could be immensely valuable . . . until they aren't. Would you include one of them in a trade for Skubel? I would. What if we had traded Miguel Sano or Byron Buxton at peak prospect value? Would we be better off? Buxton (maybe?), Sano (likely.) Could they trade Duran, who is at a relatively high value? Why not? It ALWAYS depends on the return. Would you have traded a young Rod Carew? No way, but wait a minute. . . what if the return was Johnny Bench or some other HOF'er? Unfortunately as a GM things aren't that straightforward and you have to make some good choices to succeed, but sometimes you really do have to try to guess right as much as you can.
  6. Rod Carews Birthday
    Will Baseball Leadership stick around? I think probably yes. First of all, they have done enough to bring the Twins organization kicking and screaming into the 21st century, and they have also won enough to earn their continued keep for now. The 40 man roster crunch remains. No. Not really. They have a little bit of a 26 man roster crunch but not really a 40 man. There are certainly guys on the 40 man that can be jettisoned, particularly on the pitching side. The 26 man is trickier. Money Really Was a Big Deal. Yes it was, times 1000, and it will continue to be.. However, it would be simplistic to assume that it was the only factor. There weren’t that many names that changed hands at the deadline that were really on my list of desired acquisitions, and the cost prohibition was more about the prospects that would have been required than the money. Does the wrath of Correa matter? No. He’s a really good baseball player and a really smart baseball mind. I’m sure that the front office listens to what he says and takes it under advisement but he ultimately doesn’t sign the checks so the decisions aren’t his to make. He knows that also. Roll the dice in October. THIS. If you have a reasonable amount of talented players (the Twins do), you can go through a hot streak where most everything seems to go right. Neither of the Twins two World Series championship teams were teams for the ages, especially not 1987. They won because they had good chemistry, played well at the right time, and the other pieces fell into place. Acquiring Tarik Skubel would have been awesome and really made a difference, but he didn’t get traded to anyone, let alone us, a team in the division so we can stop crying about that. Let’s get to the playoffs and play some October baseball. I plan to enjoy it while rooting for the Twins to win.
  7. Rod Carews Birthday
    And what if they were worse? Ask the A’s. Ask the pre-Pohlad owned Twins. I would love a great pickup. I can’t control that. It didn’t happen. I’ve moved on to the next game and I will continue to enjoy baseball.
  8. Rod Carews Birthday
    While those prospects weren't as highly regarded as the ones the Twins have at the top of their list right now, that's really a depressing list. (Who can forget the Tom Stuifbergen era?). I do think the Twins have some prospects that will turn out, the simple fact remains that most of them won't, and then they won't have any value at all.
  9. Rod Carews Birthday
    I think some people are mistaking activity (or a lack of it from the Twins) with productivity. The Dodgers got better, but how many teams actually got better and how many were just shuffling chairs on the deck? I would have loved to get Flaherty, but beyond that there weren't that many realistic targets for the Twins to trade for that would be difference makers. I think that the Twins are pretty solid and will likely challenge the Guardians for the division title. Will they catch them? Not sure, but it should be fun to watch and find out. In the meantime, I'm gonna cheer for the guys we have (like Ober and Ryan) rather than lament the pipe dreams that didn't materialize. Complaining about the Pohlad family's money and cheapness just gets me sweaty and frustrated. That doesn't change it or make me feel better.
  10. Rod Carews Birthday
    Yes.
  11. Rod Carews Birthday
    Point taken, but it also means that they have to sign the “right” guys to make a difference. That’s a long ways from a sure thing, plus you do have to sign another catcher. I’m not defending the (lack of) moves at all, but it’s not an easy fix.
  12. Rod Carews Birthday
    I think that is a reasonable starting point, but I don’t see the trigger being pulled on it. As others (and you) have said, you have to trade something to get something, and expecting to trade a backup utility infielder and a bag of balls for a quality MLB starter is just ridiculous. Specifically, you need to figure out if you think that Rodriguez and Festa will be stars or whether they will just be players — think the difference between Royce Lewis (who appears to be on his way to stardom) and Max Kepler (nice career WAR but really only a star for a couple of short bursts over the years). If Rodriguez is going to be as good as a healthy Royce Lewis and Festa is going to be Brad Radke, then you can’t make that trade. However if you think those outcomes are unlikely, don’t dream on what could be. Trade them now for something better.
  13. Rod Carews Birthday
    Vasquez and/or Farmer isn’t going to fetch the kind of pitching that a contending team needs. At best, a low level lottery ticket. Just getting someone to take on the Vasquez contract would be difficult. I agree that I would not relish trading some of our upper prospects, but we have to decide what we really want. If we want to hang on to everybody, then this year’s team isn’t going to get a talent infusion and we continue to play the hand we have been dealt. If we trade someone substantial from the prospect list, we can be better in the short term but maybe lose something for the future. Remember, not every prospect (even “sure thing” prospects) turns out. The key is to guess which ones have a higher value now than they will in the future. Those are the ones to trade.
  14. Rod Carews Birthday
    Unfortunately, if all of the top prospects are off the table, this is the type of pickup that we are looking at. It won’t be flashy. It might help a little bit, but it will lack the excitement of a big pitcher trade. We (fans and the team) have to realize that it takes some serious capital in prospects/players to get some serious return. We tried that two years ago with Jorge Lopez and Tyler Mahle and got snake bit. Odds are that won’t happen again, but you never know. Baseball is funny like that.
  15. Rod Carews Birthday
    Funny. Quick, let me go check under the couch cushions. . . OK. That’s 37 cents. . . . and I was saving up for my new Bentley.
  16. Rod Carews Birthday
    Sorry. My reply wasn’t as clear as I had hoped. I was responding to whether I wanted to trade away all of our top prospects for a few players at the deadline. No. I do not want that. However, I am totally supportive of making a trade or two that will better our team. We’re not trading for Tarik Skubel, but picking up a rental piece like Kakuchi or Flaherty or a solid lefty reliever would be great. If that takes trading Jenkins, I’m out, but if a package of other prospects (and maybe a MLB player) would get it done, I’m in. We have more than enough prospects to get this done. What people sometimes forget is that prospects can and do fizzle. Even 1st round draft picks sometimes don’t make it to the majors. That means that in our top ten or twenty prospects, there are plenty that even though they look great now (against lesser competition), may not even make it to the show, or certainly not become stars. The challenge is trying to figure out who to keep and who to trade so that you get the player you want in trade and still hold on to the guys who will do well on your MLB team in the future — i.e. trade them before they fizzle. We can’t get hung up on individual prospects (without more information, and the teams have more information), because many will wind up doing nothing in the majors.
  17. Rod Carews Birthday
    No. Just some if we can make our team better.
  18. Rod Carews Birthday
    That would be a really bad time to figure out you don’t have something you need!
  19. Rod Carews Birthday
    Any time that a team "must acquire a particular player" it sets them up for an overpay. If the Twins are smart, they will kick the tires on every available starter and then make an offer for one they like. Kikuchi is one, but there are others as well who could also do as good a job for the team. The best deals are usually the ones that nobody saw coming.
  20. Rod Carews Birthday
    He is likely a better version of Dallas Keuchel. Not likely to start a game in the playoffs, but could provide you with 50 innings down the stretch of reasonable pitching which would save/rest some other better arms. For the price, which should be a prospect in the 30 to 40 range, he would be a useful get.
  21. Rod Carews Birthday
    I was always a much bigger fan of Justin Morneau than Joe Mauer. I just liked him more. There's not a lot of logic to it, nor is there for most fans of a particular player. (I also really liked Danny Ford?!?!) However, I recognized that Mauer was the superior player and certainly deserved the honors he received over the years. For me to think otherwise would have been an "emotionally immature loser move" because I would have elevated another player illogically over him and his accomplishments because I liked the guy more. I could also have pointed to the fact that Mauer didn't hit enough home runs and was just a punch and judy hitter and that I just knew more that everyone else and that Mauer didn't belong in the HOF because he didn't hit my decidedly arbitrary (and decidedly amateur) standard. I believe that would have been a "cynical knuckle-dragging move." Dimwits? Well, they're everywhere. I just try as hard as I can not to be one even though I only sometimes succeed. On a more serious note, and perhaps a more controversial stance, there always seemed to be too many fans (for my taste) that would continually denigrate a guy who was certainly a generational Twins talent, like Kirby Puckett, Rod Carew, and Harmon Killebrew before him. Was he Johnny Bench? Nope, and I don't think anyone else compares to maybe the greatest catcher of all time (and I hate the Reds). Harmon Killebrew wasn't Babe Ruth either, and I'm immensely proud that he played for my team. The message I take away from this original article is that some of those people might want to re-evaluate or reconsider their position because the rest of the baseball world (or at least 75+% of the baseball writers) has declared otherwise. Perhaps the good-natured poke was too strong, but I think we are strong enough to handle it on Twins Daily. We should all be celebrating Mr. Mauer today!
  22. Rod Carews Birthday
    If you don't recognize the position, there is probably no complaint that needs to be registered and you are not the intended target of the criticism. It does, however, seem that there was a small but exceptionally vocal contingent that seemed to fit the descriptions put forth by the original author.
  23. Rod Carews Birthday
    Also. . . loved the crack about the 1991 doubters.
  24. Rod Carews Birthday
    It’s definitely clever. If it also manages to make some uncomfortable defending a position to which they have set their flag, then it indeed accomplishes what good satire can and should do. That’s the point, and I think it’s preferable to an article which blatantly screams that these guys are idiots.
  25. Rod Carews Birthday
    So, in other words, the people complaining about using data are in fact collecting data and using it to argue against a manager using data. Hmmm. They’re probably right. Decisions arrived at randomly by gamblers would be so much better. Sheesh.
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