bird

We're in deep doo-doo. Me too.

Right, like every other club in baseball.

A player can be perceived by us to be MLB "ready", but we lack a credible factual basis upon which to judge readiness for ourselves. It's hard enough for the coaches and evaluators who are watching every bullpen and every BP these guys take, let alone monitoring their clubhouse and off-field behavior, to make this call. That's why it's a bit presumptuous to so vehemently disagree with the team about these decisions. And because it's impossible for even the field staff to be certain, I really hope Ryan brings someone in, even if it means turning around and trading from a surplus later.

If you carefully read the articles linked in Parker's article, you'll also find very very little mention of working down in the zone, or up in the zone. I think we're overplaying this notion regarding some sort of mantra about staying down in the zone. In those articles, there are at least a half-dozen other concepts stressed repeatedly other than the over-simplified concepts of pitching up or down in the zone. And you certainly won't find any mention of avoiding ever pitching up in the zone. I wonder if we're falsely attributing Blyleven's predictable lazy commentary ( "he left that pitch up" ) to the Twins.

Kubel was a bad signing, but the right idea. Overpaying for an "actual OF" on the FA last year would have required a multi-year contract for a player that gets you maybe a few extra wins in a year that the team's going nowhere. (Not to mention the options are limited by the fact that the team's going nowhere.) This year is a little different. If Ryan finds an actual #2-3 type starter, like he did last year, then .500 is within sight, right? And from there, it makes a lot more sense to overpay for an actual OF, even on a 2-3 year contract. So this year, I'm with you, mike. It's funny how the conversation has evolved from finding useful ABs to insert in the lineup, then to avoiding wasted ABs from the likes of Kubel, and now to worries about blocking ABs from the likes of Rosario. This is the right time to find an actual OF, via trade or FA, and it's the first year of the rebuild in which having a guy like this might really matter.

Again, there are field people in the organization that probably believe that Meyer would have been annihilated as a MLB starter last year. Why would anyone think the Twins had a goal of making him a AAA All-Star? It just doesn't make a lick of sense to think Meyer wasn't promoted for any other reason than that they disagree with you about how ready he was.

Nice balance of pitching and position prospects, with 8 of the 10 likely to be contributors within a year or so. And there are another 20 prospects that are or will possibly be C+ or better prospects. Very exciting!

Hicks serves as an example of why Ryan should, this time around, have a "back-up plan." This time around, he has no excuses. He has one other hole to fill of higher priority ( a #2-3 starter) so he has cash available should he want to resort to the FA market. And this time around, unlike even last year, he has relatively valuable trade chips. Bring in a veteran, and if Hicks, Rosario, or Schaefer stun us with a bout of excellence, well, super.

My dear brother, are you maybe just pretending Ryan and his team had nothing to do with all of this? Jim Pohlad explicitly spoke last year about his intentions to "go for four SP signings" last year? Sorry, I don't believe he ever said anything of the sort, nothing even close to this. Ryan and his group are fair game for criticism, but we don't need to paint the kind of picture you're trying to paint. Ryan may have winced at the market prices for Nolasco and Hughes, but don't try to tell me he was dragged kicking and screaming, objecting to the decision and being overruled by Pohlad. As far as the interest in Tomas, I might guess that Ryan's feeling a bit of "encouragement" from the front office, maybe not specifically about Tomas, but about not using financial limitations as an excuse. We just don't know the actual facts.

Your claim about Nolasco and Hughes is not based on any facts.

I doubt you could find a single professional talent evaluator that would agree with you that we saw Santana's ceiling last year.

The strategy is about trying to build sustainability. The Cards are a team that has done tat. Many others have done it. The Twins once did it. And even if an organization does it, the result is a range from decent to exceptional. It's not easy to execute a strategy that calls for a strong pipeline as the foundation. The Twins lost 380 games over four years because they didn't execute, and veered from the strategy under Smith via ill-advised trades that failed miserably, IMO. That happens too. The Braves have failed to execute too, and they used to adhere to a similar philosophy, I think. So, it's not a matter of right and wrong, and doesn't (necessarily) have as much to do about profits as people like to think, IMO. It does involve a consideration of financial resources. The Card's GM is quoted as saying, they rely on the draft because of costs, and FA is to be avoided because it's to0 expensive to build that way. Again, the Twin's "model" is superior in theory only, because they have a shot, like the Rays back when and the Cards now and the Pirates of the future maybe, to sustain things. The last thing is this: because of the recent changes, drafting and the international markets are a more level playing field. That means it has become more difficult to build a superior farm system, so teams like the Tigers are going to have a longer, more difficult time building up a pipeline. There are only maybe 4 aces in the average draft, and most are gone before the tenth pick, like I think Verlander was. I may be off on this, but how many true aces are out there? 20? And how many were NOT top ten picks? Half? Not your statement, Chief, but I'm always baffled when someone comments that building up the farm system "hasn't worked" instead of stating the more important thing: it is working, and it borders on the obtuse to ignore all the signs of that, wouldn't you say?

You're right, my bad. We've only had three off-seasons of rebuilding so far, and the main visible benefits of those three years is a top 3 farm system and additions like Hughes, Vargas, Nolasco, Santana, Arcia, May, Pinto... I don't hear anyone calling us a "perennial legit contender", do you? You're absolutely right, though, that none of the five prospects we have ranked among the forty best in all of baseball have made an impact yet. I think even the most optimistic of us would be happy with a record of around .500 in 2015.

Good set of questions. Let's take your favorite organization, the Cards, to exemplify how an organization can, with luck and skill and mistake avoidance, keep themselves from the deepest depths. It starts with having a mentality of constant rebuilding. A team can "rebuild" from mid-cycle better than with a completely depleted farm system. Some semblance of excellence can be sustained for longer than ten years IF the organization EXECUTES with an acceptable volume of those inevitable mistakes and the very occasional but inevitable bad draft. And yes, it's tenfold easier to have a good draft if you have a top ten pick. SO, in my view of the Card's world, they always have talent rising at a decent clip, they avoid becoming financially encumbered for years beyond the useful life of a player contract, they avoid the Garza-Ramos-Hardy stuff that sets a franchise back two years, and they avoid FA moves almost at all "costs", because they can, frankly, having avoided scraping bottom like our Twins have done. To emulate the Card's model effectively, you have to first get back to roughly mid-cycle in terms of prospect depth, and you have to begin to accumulate a bit of surplus talent that can be traded to fill the remaining holes. Entering their fourth (not third, my bad earlier) off-season of the rebuild, I'd say the Twins are in a position to begin a sustainable run of success. In contrast, even spending $170M or more, Detroit's run of success, if you call a wild card one-and-done a success, is past its apex.

For perspective, the Tiger's best OVERALL prospect is Steven Moya, a lefty with massive power and a more massive hole in his swing versus LH pitching, and this guy would probably be the Twin's fifth-best OUTFIELD prospect, maybe on par with ABWIII and a lesser prospect than Max Kepler.

On pitching coach, I agree! And throw Guardado into that mix as far as I'm concerned. On commentary, I disagree. I watch Twins baseball with my trusty spaniel at my side, and she offers better insights about the game than Blyleven.

Yohan Pino was the better performer at the time?

Me too.....

Yes, I very much appreciate that you aren't one to unfairly disparage Anderson, and I agree that, although he was a solid pitching coach, it's time for a change and time to fully embrace the sources of all this valuable new information. We all know the Twins can't be accused of being early adapters, and it'll be interesting to see if there's some early evidence of a changed mentality in light of how the game is evolving.

Maybe we should send a link for this article to Steil and the five dozen pros who report to him.

This doesn't detract whatsoever from your point, but I was struck after reading the two linked articles containing all of Anderson's comments by the fact that the two things he's criticized for, throwing strikes and keeping the ball down, took a back seat to a half-dozen other things. In fact, throwing strikes was not mentioned once outside of the context of maintaining command. So in fairness, we shouldn't disparage the poor guy as single-mindedly calling for those things, but it's also likely that your analysis would contain new material for the man. All of these things were brought up by Anderson more often, even a lot more often, than keeping the ball down: using all pitches, changing speeds, not rushing, moving the ball around and changing locations, staying under control, and maintaining an arm slot.

What a great piece of analysis, Parker! Thank you. If I had a dollar for every time a hitter launched a low fastball into the bleachers, followed by a lazy "he left that pitch up" by Blyleven, I'd buy y'all a beer and a shot.

Ventura, by anyone's estimation, was a superior pitcher to Meyer in 2014. Part of this may be related to Meyer's return from injury. Duffy has had his struggles. Could this be in part because he was rushed? Jake Odorizzi has yet to establish himself as a rotation mainstay, although he's closer than May or Meyer at doing so. Like Meyer, he's likely to do so in 2015. Yohan Pino was the better pitcher at the time of that decision. Meyer was on a pitch limit and had some control issues. I think the Royals make the same decision.

I keep reading that Hughes, Gibson, and Nolasco are locks for the rotation. Then I painfully recall when Liriano, Baker, and Pavano were locks for the rotation. Yes, we now have some depth, unlike back then, but what's so risky about taking a shot with Anderson, for example? As I recall, in the Liriano, Baker, Pavano season, all five starters went down with injuries for extended periods. Stockpile the guys and sort through the congestion.