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Rod Carews Birthday

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Everything posted by Rod Carews Birthday

  1. Rod Carews Birthday
    @Cody Christie, are you just a glutton for punishment? You know what happens on TD when there is any mention of Rocco Baldelli in a positive light, let alone something nearly this superlative. It's likely that ultimately (after time has passed and wounds have healed -- and hopefully after the team is sold) Baldelli will rank somewhere in the middle of all of those names. At the moment, however, in the heat of battle, there really isn't any way to view him objectively. More importantly, it's probably time to move on from him at this point. What that means without a new front office and/or ownership is probably very little. The problems didn't start or end with Baldelli, but he is probably the public face on them.
  2. Rod Carews Birthday
    I’m not sure any of these moves actually move the needle on a competitive season. IF the bullpen was kept intact from this year, AND Pablo and Ryan aren’t traded, then maybe some of these guys would be useful pickups. However, as is, they will need to devote at least some of their resources to rebuilding the bullpen (because what they have now probably isn’t even a good AAA bullpen) and then backfill whoever they trade BEFORE even touching upon making the team competitive. All of this is without the speculation of WHETHER they actually will spend the money. I think the most likely scenario, and let me be clear, I HATE IT, is that they will trade Lopez & Ryan, possibly Jeffers, which will put the payroll down to about $60M. Then they will try to spend about $30-35M to backfill, all while shouting from the mountaintops that they are spending to bring people in. Last time I checked, spending $95M on payroll with those good players is about the same s spending $95M on payroll without them. It’s still a pathetic amount for a Major League Baseball team.
  3. Rod Carews Birthday
    If the calendar had worked that way it would have been nice, but last I checked, the starting pitchers are on a rotation and I can't imagine this situation being important enough to upset the starting pitchers' regular routines. You can complain about "Falvey & Co" all you want, but blaming them for how the rotation hits the calendar seems a little over the top.
  4. Rod Carews Birthday
    Interesting article. I’m definitely with you in saying Taj Bradley is tantalizingly interesting for the future. He definitely has the makings of a very good rotation piece. I also concur that Austin Martin has come on very nicely serving as a bit of a catalyst for the offense. Whether he is a “starter” or bench piece won’t matter much because if he hits like this, he will certainly play. I’m less sure about Cole Sands, however. He certainly has a spot in next years bullpen, but in a GOOD bullpen, he should probably be #5 or #6, and not #2 or #3. Reality would seem to suggest that next years bullpen will be mediocre at best without some major additions or surprises, so that higher leverage spot is likely where he will be, at least at the beginning of the season.
  5. Rod Carews Birthday
    I can generally agree with this sentiment. However, it would have been nice if ONE of the acquired players, JUST ONE, would have looked good in their August/September audition. I really am not seeing Outman though. He's 29 and been terrible for two years, and it's not hard to see why. Seems like the guy you get in a trade for Miranda straight up. They are quite different players but their career value arcs are kind of similar.
  6. Rod Carews Birthday
    Could be, but remember, billionaires are so wealthy that they don't need to care what their employees, mere millionaires, desire. In essence, they have made themselves immune to criticism. I'm not saying the Pohlads don't care, but the Pohlads don't care. If they want to have a good baseball team with good players on it, wanting to succeed, it would be a really good idea for the Pohlads to do some damage control and NOW.
  7. Rod Carews Birthday
    I hope you're right on the lack of a status quo going forward. I'm also glad to see that Ryan and Buxton have stood up and are commanding a little attention. No, teams don't (and aren't ready to) discuss specifics with anybody prior to the offseason, but some semblance of reassuring key players like Buxton and Ryan would seem to be in order. I don't think he said, "you need to get Mike Trout in here", but he is rightfully frustrated by what he has seen over the past years. Reassuring the fans would also be very nice, but the minimum is keeping the players on your team, on your team. Buckle your seatbelts folks. It's going to be even worse before it gets better -- and anything resembling good is farther away than people are thinking.
  8. Rod Carews Birthday
    This is where we disagree. I think that the measurable part of having those pitchers on the team is probably 5 wins or so, but I think the intangibles of having an A level pitcher take the mound about 40% of the time are greater than that. I also think that the team will get sold, making at least one extension possible if not likely. We dealt Cruz as an impending free agent and Arraez from an area of strength at the time (hitting). Trading Lopez and Ryan would essentially be trading what little of value we still possess. So much ink has been spilled about how the sell off and potential further sell off will make us competitive again in 2028. Why? In a rose colored glasses scenario, next year’s team is a 100 loss team. 2027 is still a 90 loss team. So, in a best case scenario we are back to being a .500 team in 2028 — or put more succinctly, where we were before this whole thing started and we started dumping talent. In the meantime, the next two years are going to be really bad. Believe me, I’m all for this working perfectly. I just don’t see it. The White Sox tore it all down and have been terrible for three years with no end in sight. The Colorado Rockies have been terrible for four years with no end in sight. The Pirates rebuild consisted of 3 terrible years and 3 years in the 70”s for wins. The Detroit Tigers were terrible for three years and had three years in the 70’s for wins before finally being good the last two (and they haven’t won anything but a division). It is apparent that we think differently, but I would rather not live through several years of 90-110 losses. It just takes a lot longer than a couple of down years and I think that people are WAY too optimistic about what the future will hold.
  9. Rod Carews Birthday
    If you define relevance as “in the pop culture mind”, then I suppose you might be correct. Since you count terrible teams as being more relevant, I’m not sure that’s a place I want to be. Nor do I want the Twins’ identity to be defined by a “what the heck were they thinking during that selloff?” This seems like a very millennial argument to make. For me, relevance is a good product, a good history, and a positively projectable future. Right now, we’re failing on some of those fronts, but historically, this franchise has been quite relevant to the league as a whole. If it’s about what the specifically east or west coast teams/fans think, that doesn’t actually matter because that’s not the audience we need to convince (nor will we ever convince) that the team is relevant. Our relevancy is more regional, and that’s OK but I also think that’s the wrong word.
  10. Rod Carews Birthday
    Do you see no value in having them on the team in the next two years, fighting to at least keep the team relevant? I don’t want to sink to the White Sox/Rockies level by completely tearing down in pursuit of a complete rebuild. I would like the team to remain watchable, and hopefully a sale ensues, allowing for additional $$, possible extension(s), and more of a rebuild on the fly. It’s way more fun to watch. Also, I don’t think it is silly at all to be skeptical that any comparable value will come out of trading one or both of them. That has probably happened at least as often as getting comparable (future of course) value. You’re right in that we have no guarantee of health or effectiveness for either Ryan or Lopez. However, I would rather bet on them than two random prospects from the system. There are many — SWR, Zebby, Festa, Taj, Abel, Raya, Prielipp, Dasan, etc. Who do you think will become as good as Ryan/Lopez out of that group? I would be pretty thrilled if just one of them did, let alone two. But YMMV.
  11. Rod Carews Birthday
    You are quite correct that we don’t know any of these things for certain (but spurious? maybe not) but I am far less than confident that trade receipts from Ryan/Lopez, et al will ever be their equal (and not just as pitchers). In the meantime we’ve made the team completely unwatchable for next year and possibly beyond. The White Sox tore it all down a few years back and they are still a giant mess. I would prefer to avoid that. Players change and I’m fine with that. Fire sales get it all out the door any way you can, and perhaps a bit to haphazardly for my taste.
  12. Rod Carews Birthday
    Would having another veteran solid starting pitcher who is healthy help this team or any team every year? Of course it would, but I think that saying that this was the catalyst for the downfall to come is a little exaggerated. They traded a high draft pick pitcher for one good and one career best year of Sonny Gray. He left and they essentially got their money (pick) back. I make that trade 10 out of 10 times and so do most teams in the league. At the time, the hope was that Ryan and Ober would step up and take his place. Ryan did and Ober got hurt. Pablo was healthy when Gray was here but got hurt this year. As much as we hate it, those aren’t unusual expectations or outcomes for a baseball team. BTW, we just traded a player making only slightly more money because we couldn’t afford to pay him.
  13. Rod Carews Birthday
    I want Martin to be successful, but while he is improving, he still seems to be prone to really boneheaded play, especially on the basepaths. To call him a super-utility player in the mould of Willi Castro seems a stretch, as his passable defense is much less than Castro’s more solid D. He also isn’t the same level of hitter, but admittedly, that could still improve. At best, he might be Nick Gordon, who was good for about a year and then not so much.
  14. Rod Carews Birthday
    “It's a bleak time. Watching the Minnesota Twins, the worst team in MLB since the All-Star break, get their brains beat in by horrible competition, with a roster that offers little hope of improving enough to be competent next year — that's really all I can bring myself to think about. I appreciate that the people reading this column still care. I myself will be following this team to the bitter end. But aside from us sickos, the Twins are making it extremely difficult for anyone to care and invest their energy, time, or money. “ This. And yet, there are folks who insist that if only we trade Lopez and Ryan we will magically resurrect into a contender by 2028. The BEST we can hope for is to replace them with equals — if we make great trades. The worst seems to be what we have done with the bullpen. This team is almost unwatchable right now and I’m not seeing enough immediate help coming to make a big difference — and we will need much more without our two best pitchers.
  15. Rod Carews Birthday
    The odds of them having a core capable of competing without any holdovers from the previous good team are pretty long. Taking nothing away from our prospects (even though some won’t make it), it’s just too many players to have hit the mark all at the same time. Hence, my reluctance to trade off Lopez & Ryan and absolutely stink up the joint for the next couple of years. Those young pitchers will develop better with a little bit more mentoring going on.
  16. Rod Carews Birthday
    Hopefully they find a pick that can't be screwed up, like Mauer or Paul Skenes. I'm tired of believing in Lewis' amazing potential and Lee's super high floor. Right now they both look like filler on a bad team. This season has definitely gone from "getting ugly" to just plain ugly in a hurry.
  17. Rod Carews Birthday
    I know this is a starting point and not an ending point, but you paint a pretty ugly picture. At that level and with those players, this team will likely lose close to 100 games. Trading Lopez and Ryan makes it even worse and might put us in Colorado Rockies territory. As pitchers that will at least keep us in the game, they give us a chance to win two out of five days. Even if some of the young guys step up, it's still a crap shoot at best 60% of the time. Since we can't even dream up who the bullpen names are, they would at least have to add someone (or a few someones) there, but where they generally shop, the budget can largely stay intact. On the subject of the lineup, it makes me queasy to think that Clemons could be the starting first baseman and Mickey Gaspar could be the backup catcher. Even at a ridiculously low budget number, something will need to be done there, even if it means bringing up prospects that aren't ready. Also, I think Trevor Larnach is a non-tender candidate given the players coming up to push him. That will save them almost $4M to spend on that bullpen. Speaking of that figure, Royce Lewis projects to $4M? That's actually a worse value than Larnach, but I get it, we keep him as still having projectability to what he might become. I hope he's worth it.
  18. Rod Carews Birthday
    Some of these guys were actual major leaguers, but many were a result of not having enough good players on the team at a given point in time. For most of them, their reputation was greater than their contribution.
  19. Rod Carews Birthday
    “The mental dangers are often much more hazardous than the physical ones,” Isn't that the truth!
  20. Rod Carews Birthday
    Certainly it's a question, but not a ton of evidence there. As for more use of lower body to gain torque and power, I don't think we have any idea how much or how little they already do that. I don't propose to know and I'm guessing it varies with each individual pitcher. I don't think that the Twins are ruining any pitchers by increasing their velocity. If they didn't have the improved velocity, they would likely be out selling cars or insurance. From a player's perspective, it's have a MLB career vs. not having a MLB career.
  21. Rod Carews Birthday
    Maybe there is a systematic problem. OR maybe pitchers get hurt. Not everyone's arm can handle a pitching workload of any type, let alone the major league push for more velocity. Taking Festa's injury alone as proof of anything at all systematic is a pretty big stretch.. It is possible to dismiss small sample sizes in just about any statistical analysis. Well. . . . this is pretty much the definition of a small sample size. Taking this further, are the Twins responsible for Brock Stewart's difficulties? Or Randy Dobnak's? How about Jorge Alcala's? Each of these cases are individual, with causes that vary by individual. Not all dots connect.
  22. Rod Carews Birthday
    It would seem that the stats cited are basically compiled stats -- making long tenured players look worse than they actually were. Some sort of divisor is needed so that these can be rate stat oriented. Otherwise we are just criticizing unfairly some of the longer tenured Twins.
  23. Rod Carews Birthday
    It seems like this is the direction we go over and over. Twins have a good prospect — People dream on what that prospect could become — Crazy expectations are thrust on the player (that no one could live up to) — Player struggles (even if temporarily) — What’s wrong with said player? — Team/Fans are very disappointed — Rinse and repeat. Certainly Jenkins looks like he could be excellent, but let’s give him time to develop and truly be ready for what will hit him in MLB. Building around one guy is never a good idea, and especially so when he hasn’t proven anything at the MLB level.
  24. Rod Carews Birthday
    A far bigger concern, and a much easier group to empathize with, would be the players who were NOT high draftees with big bonus money. Royce should have real money in the bank. Not sure Julian or Varland or most of the members of the AAA team can relate.
  25. Rod Carews Birthday
    His OBP is .317. That’s not very impressive — and I really like Arraez. Play the young guys unless you are going to sign someone that will actually hit and drive in some runs.
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