bird

Thank you for your astute and objective analysis.

Yes. On BA's rankings, Sano was #1, Minier #7, Diaz #10, others were ranked too..Ynoa, now Javier. Other teams competed and bid on these prospects, so it's not accurate to describe the Sano signing as a different animal. BA's rankings should be viewed with skepticism though. It's probably better to look at other evidence of the point being made about being committed to investing in the international markets, which includes those unranked players signed for a half-million or more: Thorpe, Kepler, Polanco, Barrie, etc. So again, just because there's new rules in place, or just because they've refused to engage in the Cuban wars doesn't mean they should be discredited. They deserve credit for both the money being spent, and even more for the results (yeah, Chief, I know it hasn't yet translated into wins and may never )

Without me as a sparring partner, your health would swiftly decline, mike. Use the dang inter web. We still have stuff to re-hash over and over.

whose projections are you talking about, jimmer? and whose praise? Ryan has consistently cautioned fans about "no shortcuts", so aside from the standard media interview gibberish that should always be ignored, "we want to win now" pablum that they all spew to the beat writers, I really don't think the Twins have given us a bunch of revised timetables. Just four crappy seasons. As far as on TD, there hasn't been an abundance of overly optimistic projections for three years, really. Not a boatload of praise either.

I do agree that 2011 offers a precautionary tale about getting too excited about these B prospects. It also offers a precautionary tale about the ability of guys like Sickles to project results. But ultimately, the 2011 system was viewed as middle of the road, #14-17 IIRC, and that probably wasn't far off the mark. Dozier and Plouffe should be acknowledged as examples of lesser-regarded prospects who emerged, too.

Can't wait to feel your newfound joy, mike. Maybe as early as 2016. Sorry you can't find joy in watching it all slowly unfold.

I won't beat a dead horse here, but to clarify what the Twins have always said, they believe in building PRIMARILY from the ground up. They have very consistently said they'll look at all avenues. Like the Cards, their least attractive option is FA, but alas, and clearly with typical Ryan reluctance, he had to resort to that option to a greater extent. And yes, due to BOTH a few poor draft decisions and a couple unfortunate draft results, most notably Gibson and Wimmers being set back by injury. I get it that the Twins disagree with a lot of fans about how much the budget should be, or which FA should be signed, or whether it's prudent to put a high bid on the Yas Tomas's, and how patient they should be, and all that. Often, reasonable arguments get made on both side of those decisions. The thing is, no one is arguing that they failed to be any good over the last four years, right?

I missed any reference in the article about the Twins currently rebuilding through trades. Might you be mistaken mike?

If signing guys that rank highly by BA (to cite one reference) doesn't mean anything, then why do the people who rank the Twins as having the second best farm system always mention Sano, Polanco, Thorpe, Rosario, Minier, Diaz, Ynoa, Kepler, Romero, Santana, Vargas as reasons the Twins are so highly regarded? The Twins have been competitive in bidding for guys other than through the Cuban auctions.

Hahaha, here we go again. You continue to bring up those two trades as your argument that they have been lousy at trades. Apparently, the jury's in for you on this. We get that. Some of us disagree, and, for the sake of fairness and a more truthful look at things, would suggest reviewing the entire body of work over some reasonable period of time. Say, since Billy Smith made a slew of horrible trades that every one of us on TD agrees were horrible. Even more to the point, ask this question: since coming back, who has he had to trade that was going to bring anything back in return. Other than Revere and Span, who at least half of us thought were good trade decisions at the time? I know. Liriano. Sheesh. And mikey mikey mikey....hahaha. I really believe the responses to your frequent comments about how badly the Twins were at drafting have been extremely consistent on here and fair-minded. In fact, I can't recall a single contributor who: 1. Has claimed the Twins are anything more than perhaps above -average at drafting or at developing. I see that you've now changed your vote though. You have always consistently been in the camp that they are at best no better and at worst inferior, right? 2. Has excused the Twins for draft "mistakes" OTHER than to point out three things: that it's been documented that drafting early as opposed to late, especially over many years, will make a team look like geniuses; that sometimes a good draft decision ends up with a poor result. Examples being Wimmers for the Twins and Oscar Tavaras for the Cards; and that every team has busts. So isn't this cool? We're finally on the same page about the Twins and drafting. The Twins are good at it, and drafting early is extremely helpful.

Interesting. Although I don't totally agree with the idea that they're doing precisely the same thing. For one, the Twins now have a budget that doesn't border on ridiculous. Also, the Twins made a financial and strategic commitment to invest competitively internationally, including staffing, facilities, and the signing budget. Contrary to what some of my friends believe, I see Sano as being symbolic of this commitment, not some one-off deal, and this is supported by subsequent signings of top-tier prospects like Minier, Diaz, Thorpe, Kepler, Ynoa et al. Naturally, someone will respond that the Twins haven't signed any Cubans, and I don't think this signifies anything but a belief that signing a few of the likes of Miguel Sano and Wander Javier for $3-4M apiece makes a lot more sense than signing one Yasmany Tomas for $40-50M. The other thing that concerns me is that much of what's taken place in baseball has evened the playing field between clubs, things like allotments and the inevitable international draft. This takes away much of any advantage a team committed to scouting resources has over another team less competent. Also, the trend appears to be toward acquiring and developing, so more teams have built terrific scouting organizations. This makes it close to impossible to do what the author claims the Twins are trying to do, which is to do it better.

I agree, and if Arcia starts or ends up in Rochester, it will be his own doing. I have high hopes that Hicks will take him aside and mentor him.

I'm missing how it "reads" that way from anyone: TD commenters, Reusse, or the Twins. The Twins have consistently, throughout their entire history including recently, been more than willing to bring up young guys, often before they're completely ready. Arcia is an example of this, is he not? The problem has been having prospects worthy of the promotion. I'm just happy we have fewer and fewer of the tired and false criticisms about how they suppress all these worthy prospects that if just given a chance without all that pesky tinkering around by the stupid coaches, they'd come up here and set the world on fire. You know, like Alex Meyer.

But Reusse wasn't writing about spring training stats or our emotions, and I doubt there's two other players in camp that have benefitted more from patience than has Arcia. It was quite predictable from my vantage point from afar that Arcia was going to be a source of great frustration, especially to Paulie. His body language is painful to watch at times. You can almost feel him tense up with this macho grandiosity, which invariably gets converted into stupidity by the opposing pitcher. He's proven in the past that he can hit for average and control his approach, so why he can't figure it out is enigmatic. And no one will convince me that his crappy outfield play isn't mostly a product of his attitude about it. I'd have zero problem with them shipping him to Rochester with a checklist of things to work on, starting with giving serious thought to growing up a little.

Mauer's batting .200. A scholarship for him too? That darn Ryan.

That's too many walks.

Fair or not, Mauer was lauded as a superstar, the face of the franchise, the man who built Target Field, blah blah blah. His agent negotiated a contract for him based on an expectation that greatly surpasses what we've gotten. And sure, we should be kind and gentle and cut him all kinds of slack and perhaps accept a different reality as to the type of player he is and his value to the club. While I'm disappointed with what we got and unhappy that he failed to live up to my expectations for him, I'm not a Mauer-basher per se. BUT...he can't make more obvious and productive adjustments than what we've seen, at least so far? And I'd feel so much better about him and the $90M+ still owed him if he proved to be a philanthropic force in our community. I applaud what he's done, but I'd love to see his family do even more for the community with all that loot he's getting based on a player we didn't get to see. This may be too judgmental, and maybe he's doing more than we know.

I'm a little down on Mauer because I don't see anything in his history to suggest a willingness or aptitude for making adjustments, and I'm guessing he needs to make some to improve his offensive performance. I listened to Keith Law yesterday on MLB, responding to a question about which factors slow the game down most. Without hesitation, he said players taking pitches early in the count and working deep into the count. He described it as counter-productive, in that it is not resulting in more walks, just many more strikeouts. His theory is that pitchers are too adept at throwing quality two-strike pitches now to make this strategy effective, especially when the guy being removed because of a high pitch count gets replaced by some unhittable monster (not Law's words exactly). My biggest complaint about Mauer is that he's inventing a new category for me. Instead of having an empty batting average, I'm perceiving him to have an empty OBP. Swing away, Joey!!

1. If both Vargas and Santana struggle, that might be frustrating since they occupy such key slots in the order. We have to expect a tough adjustment for both of them, I think, as they face tough pitchers who now have a good book on them. But if one or both demonstrate the smarts and talent to make those adjustments, and Arcia matures with his approach, this could be fun. 2. Gibson might be the #2-3 starter he was projected to become, making him a pretty decent draft choice after all. 3. I'm less concerned with the bullpen, for a couple reasons: 1. the guys they sent down, Oliveros, Achter, Tonkin, Pressly, Thompson, Pryor, and Darnell, if inserted as replacements en masse, wouldn't be that embarrassing. A couple of the current guys will falter, and a couple of those guys will emerge as good replacements. In the meantime, Burdi, Jones, Chargois, and others are knocking on the door. 4. Yes, Paulie will be a better game-day manager, but I'm going to wait to see signs of a healthy clubhouse environment. This, to me, is perhaps the hardest and most important part of a manager's job. I know people will disagree with me, but I believe Gardy managed his clubhouses about as well as any manager in baseball. Even the bad apples, guys like Delmon, were managed well by Gardy. Paulie seems to be liked and respected too, so I'm optimistic. 5. Meyer's handling has been a lightning rod for criticism. His spring performance should put most of that to bed. But alas, it probably won't. Hopefully, he'll make the necessary adjustments quickly, because we'll hopefully find a slot for him by the trade deadline. Right now, though, he'd get carved up.

The Twins couldn't appear to disagree with you more about Santana's ceiling, thrylos. I believe we've heard more accolades for Santana from the team's field people than we did for Plouffe or Dozier at the same stage, and in the case of both of those players, their value has inflated dramatically since they got to Target Field. If Santana works out like Dozier and Plouffe have, I'm not going to quibble that we might have to trade Escobar for less than his optimal value to make room for someone like Polanco. And if Danny doesn't turn into much of a player, at least they have options. It was only a couple years ago that we had countless comments here about how the Twins were inherently bad at developing middle infielders, and now we know that was a false perception.

When a hitter golfs a pitch at his ankles over the fence, I know what Bert Blyleven's comment was even with the sound off. "He left that one up in the zone, and [your hitter's name here] dropped the barrell of his bat on the ball."

Hey Chief, Ash. What was that Viet Nam thing?

What I'd want from the bench on THIS team, in order of importance: 1. Defensive replacement(s) for Hunter and/or Arcia. Schaeffer is an adequate answer, Herrmann would give them another option for this. 2. Reliable catcher. Please Josmil, get better behind the plate real fast. Herrmann would be less than satisfactory, but not criminal as a choice for 2015. 3. True utility. Escobar is almost perfect here. The next best options are in the minors. Nunez would be less than satisfactory, but not criminal as a choice in 2015. But as has been pointed out, redundant. 4. Bench bat with power. Pinto works here. Schaefer, Nunez, Herrmann, and even Escobar would not, because most every bat in the lineup stands a better chance than any of them as a pinch hitter. I'd go with Schaefer, Pinto, Escobar, and Herrmann.

It's a great question, and I like Mr. Kemp's answer. I would always be a seller, and especially at the deadline, when teams feel some desperation, regardless of my own record, the caveats being: 1. Will my replacement, within a window of less than a year, be a better performer than the player being dangled out there? And do I have two replacement candidates like this? 2. The buyer must be willing to overpay. 3. Untouchables are limited to future HOF types and players who the fans adore, and to a much lesser extent, guys who help via those nebulous intangibles. 4. My bias is for acquiring lower level prospects.

Ash, if I order a cap, will it have a damn train on it?