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bird

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Everything posted by bird

  1. bird
    There IS some actual talent, and it's being tried right now. It just so happens that the best CF prospect in all of baseball is a year away because of injury, and they decided this guy was a better alternative right now than Farris or Wilkin Ramirez or Daniel Ortiz, who are manning the outfield for a Rochester team that's ten games over .500. To suggest that one waiver wire castoff move indicates a failed rebuild is nonsensical to me. If one wants to complain about losing Mastro and Presley due to sloppy roster management, fine. Some bitched about that awful waiver wire castoff Fuld too. And the Fuld acquisition said zero about the rebuild just like this move. Swapping him out for Milone, on the other hand, says something about the rebuild.
  2. bird
    I don't think this move says a thing about the rebuild. Arcia, Gibson, Hughes, Santana, Polanco, Buxton, Meyer, May, Pinto, Hicks, Tonkin, Pressly...the list is much longer. Those are the names that say something about the rebuild, not some replacement for Fuld. And would you rather they not acquired Milone?
  3. bird
    I'd submit this is not just a recent phenomena, nor is it less prevalent for pitchers. It's a function of talent, not philosophy. Thorpe is the youngest player in the Midwest League by what, four years? Exceptional talent has always risen through the system fast; Hrbek, Blyleven, Carew, Wynegar, et al from the past. Arcia, Santana, Gordon, Thorpe, Polanco, Vargas, Stewart, Pinto, Rosario, Buxton, Sano....it's a very very long list of prospects who are among the very youngest players at their level.
  4. bird
    Trouble is, who do you replace to give Beresford a shot, and why?
  5. bird
    The Twins will finish the season with 72-74 wins in my admittedly optimistic view. This record will have exceeded the pre-season expectations of the majority of you, I believe. The value of playing the young guys, in terms of what it does to prepare them for success in 2015, is being a bit overblown, I think. That said, getting value for the vets, which is what Ryan's trying to do, is the right effort to make. Unfortunately, outside of Suzuki, and possibly his surplus of passable relief arms, he's got nothing to work with. If I'm the GM, in the next five days I'm trying to get a return for the obvious candidates, not so much because it's that imperative to play the young guys, but because, at EVERY deadline and over EVERY winter, I'm a potential trader, for VALUE, of my surpluses. I'm not going to DFA guys like Burton, or even Correia, just to appease some fans. I'm staying focused on the long haul and staying committed to developing my young talent, at the pace my staff sees fit, in the environment most suited for that purpose. I'll live with the fact that my fan base will erode a bit, knowing that I'll always have a core fan base that likes seeing the emergence of the new guys and can live with a 70+ win team in 2014.
  6. bird
    This, to me, would qualify as being blown away by an offer, especially if it were Polanco.
  7. bird
    Don't look now, but once again, a dozen teams, according to their crappy records are on high-strength rebuilding programs. Another half-dozen, those only a game or three on either side of .500, are on rebuilding programs by your standards. Another half-dozen of these teams with winning records will lose very quickly in the playoffs or come up just shy of a wild card berth. Rebuilding candidates for sure if you ask their TD-type fans, right? hat leaves a half-dozen teams that, in 2014, will slot into an elite category, and you can bet your Morales shirsey that half their TD-type fans will find fault with their GM or manager. Man, we are so demanding!
  8. bird
    I wouldn't have taken this deal for Perkins. Jake Thompson is a 3-4 starter according to a few of the reports I've read, and the other guy doesn't stack up to be better than Perkins is in the future. I'd say that we might have a half-dozen starters in our system with higher ceilings than Detoit's formerly best pitching prospect. So, listen, but get more!
  9. bird
    A little off-topic, but the Twins have had 3 top 5's now, right? Gordon, Stewart, and Buxton. Any qualms about proper development of these three? And the highest pick before them was Hicks at #14 in about 2009? How many top 10 picks have the rays had in the last 20 years? The Rays get way too much credit, the Twins not enough, and the Cards...just right, they're incomparable right now.
  10. bird
    These stats are about as meaningful as a pitcher's W-L record. We could compile a huge list of reasons for these stats, and for sure, plenty of the reasons would be attributable to mistakes of commission and omission by the GM's and the Manager. Just like with every other team in baseball with similar failings over this period. My point is, go ahead and replace these guys. I think the chances of improvement above and beyond what you'd have gotten from Ryan is less than 50%. Gardy? Not so much of a risk.
  11. bird
    How much clearer could Ryan have stated it? The front office hasn't delivered. His strategy also couldn't be more obvious, IMO, like it or not, and Nolasco and Hughes were moves made in line with the strategy.
  12. bird
    Not trying to be combative here, but I'm seriously wondering what Pino's and Johnson's statistics suggest. Something much different?
  13. bird
    One man's opinion, but I think the only reason they've promoted a few hitters such as Santana and Arcia and let them have a baptism by fire is because they decided they represented the best alternatives. Similarly, perhaps in the Twin's mind, Pino, Johnson and Darnell have represented the best alternative ( a decision many of us here disagree with), especially in light of injuries or specific items being worked on in their games. It's not all decided strictly on statistics.
  14. bird
    It's very ironic that, given how most posters here form their opinions about who deserves to be promoted and when on a review of the stats that Johnson and Pino are kind of given short shrift. They aren't parading out a couple of misfits, and "start after start" is a little strong here. May and Meyer's turns will come.
  15. bird
    Were the topic top organizational talent versus top farm systems, we could talk about it, except for another dilemma: who besides BP has published such a ranking? But I certainly agree that we're not at a point yet where the overall organizational talent, MLB and MILB combined, earns us more than a top-third ranking.
  16. bird
    My bad, jorgenswest, I just caught the fact that they're incorporating the MLB roster and attempting to rank organizational talent, not prospects only. Now it makes sense.
  17. bird
    Sorry, but, despite whatever one "ranking" says, your point isn't valid. That BP ranking must be flawed. There are way too many credible rankings that dispute that. There just isn't this big pool of top prospects age 26 and above. So, these other rankings in fact DO compare our younger prospects to other team's younger prospects, without question. You can take a look at Seth's or Aaron's rankings of as many as 40 Twins prospects and be hard-pressed to find 5 prospects on them over the age of 26. Of our 6 prospects ranked among baseball's best 50, Meyer is by far the oldest and the other 4 have been the youngest player in their league at some point in the last year, average age about 20.5.
  18. bird
    I'd suggest that the real difference between what contending and rebuilding teams do is related to the probability that contenders have a surplus to work with and rebuilders generally don't.
  19. bird
    While it is well-known that the majority of Suzukl's defensive value is derived from his distracting the batter by coughing or spitting loudly just as the ball is thrown, the metrics just aren't there to measure just HOW effective he is. White papers are to be presented at the next SABR conference presenting theories on just HOW distracted the batter gets and exactly HOW this affects bat speed and how long the bat stays on the swing plane, etc. FanGraphs is working frantically to install a humidity detector within the strike zone. So, I guess all we really know right now, for absolute sure, is he calls a good game for absolute sure and scores kinda low on framing stuff.
  20. bird
    Levi, I agree with you that the Twins could uncover someone (Burdi, Tonkin, Oliveres, May) and overcome the loss of Perkins. They've taken this kind of gamble a lot, and won the bet with the bullpen but gotten their butts handed to the with the rotation. We know for sure that Perkins is elite as a reliever. But he may implode next month, or suck next year. I guess I'm inclined to see one or more of these prospects show that they're a notch better than Fien and Thielbar first before shopping Perkins. Contract understandings aside, I'd guess the offers we might see for him wouldn't be enticing enough to get me excited about the deal.
  21. bird
    I get what you're saying. My complaint is a little different. I think they've lacked a "sell discipline", not a lack of planning. Planning is very difficult because so many things (players) go awry. For example, I think their plan was for Sano and Buxton to play on the big club this year, maybe Rosario too. In 2010(?), their plan was to put a rotation out there of Liriano, Baker, Pavano, Slowey, et al. When things go in the pooper, it's easy to blame it on a lack of planning. And your example of timing the retention or disposition of Perkins illustrates this. One plan would be to incrementally improve, so maybe the thought is that 2015 is the year of competitiveness (.500 ball) and 2016 the year of possible contention for the division. If I'm planning for this, I retain Perkins, don't you?
  22. bird
    Buxton, Sano, Meyer, Stewart, Gordon, Berrios, Rosario, Polanco, Burdi, Thorpe, May, Tonkin, Pinto, Vargas, Walker.... Which of these 15 is too old for your tastes? Every one of these guys would make almost very team's top 10 prospect list. Many of the guys are one of the youngest players at their current level. The facts just don't fit your complaint. It would be nice to "decide" that the future is "now", but it just isn't. Yet.
  23. bird
    Curious about where Law ranked Kansas City.
  24. bird
    I get it that there's huge performance volatility among relievers. I also get it that a mediocre former starter can surprise us and excel as a reliever. Perkins is a case in point of course. I also agree that Meyer and Berrios have higher ceilings and am guardedly hopeful May does too. My argument is not about whether to trade Perkins. It's about filling holes by trading clearly surplus talent, so while we can surmise that a new "closer" will come out of the woodwork from AAA or AA for 2015, it's far from a certainty. My view is trading Perkins possibly creates a deficiency rather than reduces a surplus, so whatever deficiency gets solved via the return better be impressive.
  25. bird
    At the risk of being accused of lacking modern sensibilities, I still am suspicious of the thinking that closers are overrated and so utterly fungible. If so many relievers have the stomach and the weapons for the job, why don't a majority of teams go with a closer-by-committee approach? We might also be overthinking this notion about "timing" things so that we have this influx of primo talent at their peaks simultaneously, and that having a closer like Perkins is "wasting" him because of the lack of save opportunities. Indulge the thought for a moment that the team should trade from surplus to solve deficiencies in other areas. And then tell me: at AAA and AA, who represents a "surplus" of Perkin's caliber, and not Burton's? Who's got a shut-down ceiling? Your list includes some pretty solid prospects: Tonkin, Achter, Pressly, Ibarra, Trevor May (not a mistake here), Olivares, Salcedo, Cole Johnson, Mathhew Summers, Melotakis.... I don't see Perkins as especially fungible.
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