LoganJones

There was exactly 1 reason the Vikes made the playoffs. Adrian Peterson. The guy dominated enough games that they outlasted a couple other teams for that bottom playoff spot. This is something that every single MLB team can dream of now. Getting a chance to play the WC game in an integrated league will not require as many wins. Integrating the leagues like this will minimize the interleague effects, and suppress AL records a few games. The bottom wild card spot might even go to a team with 85 wins. Who knows? Sure that means a 22 game improvement for the Twins. When does that happen? Just about every single year, actually. Twice last year to two teams that had "no talent" at the beginning of the year. This is about the 'plan' though. The plan the Twins have to build for the future while having enough MLB players to get lucky in a down year, and buy at the deadline.

Or then there's this. If Harden could recapture some of his promise and a bunch of health, the rotation starts to sneak into legit territory. Harden you would put up against the JVs and CCs.

The Tigers are a puzzle to me. They should have cartwheeled through the AL central, with the amazing seasons that Cabrera, Fielder and Jackson all had. Yet, they barely scored any runs that those three didn't have something to do with. Their defense was bad, and doesn't figure to get better. Even with the Big Addition of Torii. Hunter is probably a bigger boost offensively, at this point. Add in Victor for 100 at bats, and the O should go up a little. Of course they have good pitching, but I dunno. They could go either way.

Haha, pouring over too many details today, TG. That's just not a very likely issue.

Get in front of the damn ball!

It makes more sense to line Worley up against a second or third starter. You want to try and get as many mismatches in your own favor. Let a guy like Correia deal with the Verlanders of the world. Last year, KC gave up 0-2 Runs in 50% of his starts. The others were 3-6. If we cut that to 3 runs, it's 22 starts. Verlander had 26 starts of his 33 result in 3 or fewer runs. Verlander often went deeper into many of these games and is head and shoulders a better pitcher. He will be better than every one of the Twins pitchers. Why waste the best outings the team's going to get from their younger pitchers, when you can let a vet take his lumps on days when the team was gonna lose anyway (so to speak)? Particularly, if when you do line it up right and JV has a bad day, and KC has a good one that's a win you weren't looking for?

What more can Florimon learn in AAA? He is what he is. A rangy flashy shortstop who really doesn't hit much. Dozier on the other hand is flipping to the other side of the diamond, as he's primarily been a shortstop. That might be part of it.

Mauer will probably DH as much as he catches. He'll get lots of ABs. Can't have one of your best hitters sitting out.

I'm sure they mean they want to get a good look at him. See what he needs to do to get better and make sure that plan is sent along with him to High A.

Don't forget that ST renewals are likely inflated by 2014 All Star Game implications.

You think the Twin Cities is some sort of magic place where market factors behave differently than everywhere else? Fan engagement works the same everywhere. There are diehards, who are outnumbered by fair-weathers who are outnumbered by casual fans. Casual fans make up most of every game's attendance until the end of the season when playoffs may or may not be in the offing. 'Big' games will sell out based on competetive interest, but that won't last more than a series or two. There might be a 3-4 game stretch where 'clinching' is a draw, but really, you're looking at 10-15 games tops where the competitive value of the game is really an advantage to ticket sales. The thing is, the actual distribution of fans doesn't change, it's just that more of the die-hards scrape together a couple bucks and fair-weathers are active. The casual fans are a bit less casual because they read in the paper that the team is close to playoffs. But overall, the atmosphere, the cost of the tickets and the quality of the spectator experience is what really draws fans to ballparks over a long season. If you have a large market, your job is easier. Of course year after year of losing will choke you out, but for fair weather and casuals, not making the playoffs is losing.

Its fine if it boggles your mind, but go back and look at attendance records. Winning has little impact on in-season attendance. The only bump you get is from making the playoffs last year and that even isn't all that great. A great example is last year. the Twins were 12th. Notable behind them? The Washington Nationals. Nats Park has a capacity of 41,400. Despite being a shoo-in for the playoffs from June, and having a close race with Atlanta, they still got out drawn (over 4,000 fans a game) by the 66 win Twins coming off a 63 win season. The White Sox were in first place until September, and drew and avg of 24,000 fans. It's just not a huge factor. Playoff games are the way to generate excitement for next seasons regular season attendance. Without them, you're just stuck with the prevailing attitude that your team sucks. (I'm not suggesting I think the season is a failure, I'm saying as a marketing tool, nearly missing the payoffs is of no use to you.)

Because ultimately, they don't matter. If you don't make the playoffs, your season was a failure. In fact, if you're not making the playoffs, you're better off being terrible for a couple of years to get a couple high draft picks. Bad teams that make 100 million in payroll obligations to free agents in one offseason rarely climb out of their morass. We'll have an interesting comparison to approaches this year. The Twins have decided to fill the rotation with guys who they feel confident can give a good offense enough support to win games. If the defense and the offense are improved, these starters should have them above .500 in May. Then they will look around the league at teams who will be struggling and have pending free agent starters who are pitching well, but might not be worth a 14 mil qualifying offer. Roy Halladay, Matt Garza and even James Shields jump to mind. Meanwhile, Cleveland (despite the W/L records) was arguably worse than the Twins in every way except starting pitching. Essentially, in the same spot. They threw a bunch of money at the problem and got a few intriguing fellows. Reynolds, Bourne and Swisher should help offensively, but hurt defensively in total. I know Bourne is pretty darn good out there, but Swisher and Reynolds are more bad than Bourne is good. The pitchers they got are no more likely to be good than the ones the Twins have, but they do have more previously good ones holding over on their roster (Ubaldo and Masterson) to hope for bounce backs.

And you'll find that offering long term high dollar contracts to pitchers is going to wok out a lot less often than it pays off. Fast forward to 2015 and you'll see a similar list with names like Anibel Sanchez, Zach Grienke, Edwin Jackson, CC Sabathia and Felix Hernandez on it.

Seriously, go look at the best hitters in Twins history, and compare them to Mauer through age 29. He has a higher OPS+ than every Twins great apart from Tony O and Harmon. He's on a track to be one of the greatest Twins of all time. It's just bizzaro land where these thoughts of Mauer not being 'worth' his top contract.

Agreed. Anibal Sanchez is a quality hurler, but his little tease in the post season has people in Detroit dreaming of '4 Aces'. He's getting paid like one, i guess that's a start.

Generally speaking, if you feel the need to say something like 'get a life, people', don't. Also, there is literally nothing worse than hyperbole.

You're right. Terry Ryan lied to you.

I voted 70-79,but I have a feeling that if they get off to a good start, that they will be there at the end, because there will be some trades. The poll said as constructed.

Spencer Steedly sounds like he fell out of a Noir Novel. Pressly seems like a good project. He very well might take Swarzak's spot as the long guy, if his rib injury proves to be a setback. Or if they move Swarzak up to a 1 inning guy and let Burnett head back to AAA.

As to the Mauer discussion. Who is the greatest hitter in Twins history? If you think it's Harmon, then you're going to find Joe's game a bit underwhelming due to the homer thing. If you think hitting is about getting on base, it's Rod Carew. Both of these guys are fine choices. If we compare the slash lines of all three players through their Age 29 season we find this. Harmon: .263/.373/.546 147 OPS+ (leaves out his 1st 5 years which were not representative) Carew: .328/.383/.430 130 OPS+ Mauer: .323/.405/.468 135 OPS+ So depending on how you value hitting, Mauer is either the best or second best hitter in Twins history through the age 29 season. Kirby should get a mention (.323./.357/.469 123 OPS+), but he'd only played 5 years by age 29. ETA: If you're an OPS+ supporter you might also think Tony O rates ahead of Mauer for the age 29 thing.

Bummer, but not end of world situation. Time to look into trading for Capuano.

Probably a good route to take, really.

Important to note: you can't do the qualifying offer thing to players you acquired mid season.

And why is 100 runs the magic number to shave off? In 104 starts covering 542.1 innings, the 'Bad' starters (as in anyone with a 5.3 or higher ERA) last year surrendered 383 earned runs. That's an ERA of 6.36!! Sure it's possible that the guys they got to correct that will be just as bad. Even if that mob just pitched to a 5 ERA -and that's still pretty bad- in those bad innings, it would shave 83 runs off the board. This is to say nothing of the fact that if they're pitching on average 1.3 runs better, they'll also likely be going a little longer into games. Just 1/3 of an inning more per start and we've got 34 fewer Jeff Gray innings. There's 11 fewer runs right there. 94 Runs saved, just by pitching 20% worse than average vs 36% worse. Naturally, to improve by 16% would also mean fewer base runners, thus fewer unearned runs as well. We'll take a 16% reduction in unearned runs, 11. 103 Runs Saved just by starters pitching one more out and to a 5 ERA. Funny thing is, Correia's haters are hating on him for likely pitching to 4.7-4.9 ERA. So the pessimist's projection is better still than even that bleak calculation. If we do the same with a 4.7 ERA, It's an additional 17 runs off the board from the starters, and 3 more unearned runs, pushing the total to 123 fewer runs. That works out to around 80 Wins with exactly the same offense. Two of the key members of the offensive attack are missing, but on the other hand, the team won't be behind by as much and as often. The current bunch stands to be able to score more than last year, particularly if motivated by a good start to the season. Sure, it's only barely .500 team projection, but last year the Orioles won with a similar projection. It can happen, but it's probably best not to be getting yourself ready for the playoffs just yet.