bird

The Twins would be ill-advised to count on a banjo hitter like Arraez at any time, let alone some time in 2019. Even if he DOES amount to something, I don't see the logic of keeping Polanco at SS so as not to block Arraez at some future time. And frankly, one could make the argument that Blankenhorn, Gordon, and Severino are ultimately more likely to be successful MLB 2nd basemen than Arraez, and maybe on an equal or faster timetable. That would be my own bet. The question to me is this: since you know you need an external option to start 2019 at one or the other position, which makes more sense? Do you try to sign Iglesias and move Polanco? Do you sign Jed Lowrie or someone and keep Polanco at SS? I think it's foolish to think a whole lot about the timetables for Gordon, Lewis, Arraez, or anyone else in the system. We have a problem that needs an April solution, not a September one. I vote to find a SS, via trade most likely, to man the position for maybe two years. Trade the guy if Lewis, Javier, or someone else nudges them aside. And if Arraez or Gordon are ready for the show at 2B, make some calls and see who's interested in them, or in Polanco.

In the absence of an exceptional defensive 1st baseman arriving via trade or FA, I'd argue this is the primary reason to shuffle Polanco to 2nd and add a stopgap SS with above-average defensive skills.

Venezuela is a complete mess. Maybe Sano can relate.

I think everyone understands that their productivity problems differ. I contend that the Twins need to have the same goal for them, which is to identify the barriers to productivity and remove them to the best of their ability, and then pretty much sink or swim with what they give you for 2018. No one has a grip right now on exactly what those obstacles to performance are. Falvey and Levine have said as much. I think you're understating and oversimplifying the problem when you say Sano is just fine when he's healthy and in shape. Despite the overall career numbers mentioned, Sano has been wildly erratic and he's had some stretches at the plate where you're left wondering when he had the frontal lobotomy. I think too many times he'd be the last player you'd want to see come up with a bat in his hand, times when his cluelessness had nothing to do with being out of shape or injured. Although I certainly could be wrong about this, we heard plenty of comments from Paulie and others criticizing his approach that hint that his hitting issues go beyond the physical. Personally, while I agree that Sano's offensive talent is superior to Buxtons when you gauge it by the measurements you used, I'm not sure solving his issues is any less of a challenge than solving Buxton's.

These two disappointments have put the organization between a rock and a hard place. Their talent is just too immense, in both cases, to do anything but attempt to identify and remove every performance obstacle you can and put them back out there for one last try. Because if they perform remotely close to expectations, they totally transform this team into contenders IMO. As long as the players demonstrate an intense willingness to succeed through their actions and behavior (I remain skeptical about Sano in that regard), you have to "count" on them for 2019 and move on after that if they fail you again. This team is going nowhere in 2019 without them, BOTH of them. I don't know how much of the problem is between the ears for either of them, but it doesn't matter. Whatever the problems are, you either solve them or move on after this year. As for how much leash to give them? You make a judgment call. My guess is part of the decision-making that's taken place so far (Chad Allen, Molitor, et al) is about finding some new eyes to focus on this, because solving it is THE game-changer for this club.

I consider this a promising start to the off-season for the organization. As much as his in-game tactical decisions could be baffling, the whole energy and vibe problem concerned me much more. The constant mental mistakes. The lack of palpable joy, the body language of the players some times that made you wonder if their hearts were in it, the stoicism and careful language of Molitor, rarely openly disenchanted. The inklings of clubhouse tension. All of those incalculable things. A team is supposed to sort of take on the character of its leader, but this team couldn't steal bases, couldn't even run the bases smartly, or take smart at bats, or play smart defense, or play hard every play. It may have been partially bad luck for Pauly, but I think he kinda lost the clubhouse until all the fresh faces arrived with their own reasons to play hard.

True. They have failed at managing the assets, not at identifying and developing the assets through the minors so much. The previous regime was more of a "buy and hold" asset manager, was unaggressive (risk-averse?) and perhaps too sentimental even. We saw a lot of inaction, missed opportunities to move assets for decent returns, etc. Let's give the new geniuses a chance to execute a more "traderly" philosophy and strategy when it comes to asset management. This winter may tell us a lot.

You provide a fact-filled rebuttal to a common and perpetual false narrative we see tirelessly promoted in these threads. It would be a breath of fresh air to see in-depth comparisons to other teams concerning complaints about either the judgment or the pace of advancement. Instead, we get familiar anecdotal arguments. And almost always, the examples involve the super-elite prospects. Being more objective and fair doesn't excuse the occasional blunder. For example, selecting Jay instead of Benintendi. But when we put those blunders into context, we reach different conclusions about whether the talent evaluators, or even the development people, are a problem for this team or not. Since Boston was mentioned: I looked at the selections the Twins and Boston made in the three years on either side of the Twin's colossal blunder of picking Jay and letting Boston have Benintendi in 2015. In 2012, when after we selected Buxton, the Red Sox passed twice on Berrios and instead took Deven Marrero and Pat Light. Dumb dumb dumb. Then in 2013, we screwed up and took Stewart, after which Boston screwed up worse and took Trey Ball. Both teams stupidly passed on Aaron Judge, Sean Manaea, Tim Anderson, Hunter Renfroe, Marco Gonzalez, and four others who so far have been more productive in MLB than either Stewart or Ball, who hasn't seen the MLB roster and may never see it. Dumb double dumb. The points I'd make are that, first, talent and luck dictate the pace of advancement, not the quality of the development people so much. And second, while financial resources have historically been a source of massive friction for the Twins and a source of great benefit for the Yanks and Red Sox (take for example how cheating and blowing through the international spending cap gives the Yanks a talent pipeline almost unrivaled), those advantages are fewer. I take heart in the fact that the organization has finally beefed up its baseball operations in a big way. The development people, and the talent evaluators, most of whom are holdovers, now have financial resources and technology and facilities and people they never had before. No more excuses. They have financial muscle and are building up player assets. I feel hopeful we'll see evidence of this in Target Field sooner than a lot of people think, although the linchpins are still Sano and Buxton.

Just auditions.

It may not be a monopoly, but I don't have much competition either.

Concur. The FO presented this season to us with the exact same problem as before: no front-line starter to anchor the rotation, but instead a handful of guys who MIGHT give you some #2 type performance and might not. And no reliever that could be safely viewed as a high-leverage shut-down guy. This FO knows numbers, and they played the numbers game. Let's hope they count the right thing this winter by counting how much room there is in the budget and how much mediocre "depth" they have that should not be counted on. Don't count on "pleasant surprises", Mr. Falvey. Jake Cave and Mr. Magill don't move the needle at all.

Hermsen is coaching the sophomore baseball team at Waverly-Shell Rock HS in Iowa. He was the victim of a sudden unexplained loss of 6MPH in velocity, and never mastered a third pitch. He's one of those mysteries that often is explained as a failure of the development staff but just as likely resulted from either injury or something of a more personal nature. I'm not at all suggesting this is the case with Hermsen, but I think we lose sight of how often people are derailed by problems with addiction and mental health in their daily lives. I'd argue that kids with sudden cash and unsupervised free time might be susceptible to certain temptations and that more flameouts are a result of this than we'll ever know. Again, I'm not thinking this kid fell victim to anything in particular, and it's possible the development people simple failed him too. Any pitching prospect that succeeds in MLB has overcome long odds, so I'm especially impressed with these late-rounders like Rogers and Hildenberger who defy the odds. I hope there are a couple more of those guys mentioned here!

I keep wondering if we just simply experienced a confluence of factors that contributed to the malaise, and that fewer things were "done" wrong and more things just "went" wrong. I see some things that need to "coalesce". I see a couple more things that need fixing, starting with a replacement of Molitor. Many of the talent evaluators are holdovers, and that's good, as evidenced by a number of successful drafts, trades, international signings, etc. I don't see that this skill is a weakness, and it might be a strength, especially now that the human talent has been augmented by technology, systems, and analytical support. The organization really beefed up its baseball operations big time. We might want to give it another year to start reaping dividends. I'll continue to contend that the FO should not be on the hook for the colossal failings of Sano and Buxton, which I attribute mostly to just plain unforeseeable bad luck. And it's those two huge disappointments that dwarf any other contributing factors to the horrendous results we're seeing in 2018. There may be some personnel improvements that can still be made in the development ranks and in the field staff of affiliates, but I see coaching leadership at Target Field as a very likely culprit. So, MLB leadership, luck, and more time to gel, in that order, IMO.

The most difficult thing about this fact, for me, is that for half of this time period, the previous financial obstacles have been significantly reduced (but not eliminated) by events and changes: revenue sharing, team payroll ceilings and penalties, revenues from a new stadium, the international pool, more TV revenue. The playing field is level enough now to warrant our higher expectations.

The difference, I think, is that for the most part the players you're mentioning were in fact moved along quickly (Mauer and Baker) , or would have been were injuries and struggles (Kubel and Cuddyer) not present, and all of them were ultimately successful. My earlier question is twofold: Is it still not possible that Kirilloff and maybe a couple of the other top prospects perform seamlessly and therefore advance at a Mauer-like pace? And second, is it possible that guys like Wade and Rooker, to pick on two of the touted prospects, are ultimately no more productive as major-leaguers than prospects like Becker, Cordova, or Kielty, who we also wanted the organization to move along more quickly? The thing is, whether a prospect ultimately ends up as the next Mauer or the next Becker, we're going to clamor for the organization to speed their timetables up at the first sign of excitement. When we're right about a prospect, chances are they advanced quickly perhaps by any standard but our own. And when we over-hype a guy and can't understand why he's "languishing" in the minors, more often than not we get to see why that happened later as we deal with our disappointment. I wonder if Gonsalves isn't a bit of a poster boy for this, and I worry that Rooker and Wade might be too: lofty expectations soon to be adjusted.

I remember the same sense of urgency about advancement when the prospect's names were Rich Becker, Scott Stahoviak, Marty Cordova...we always champ at the bit , right? Remembering this reminds me to lower my expectations, for one, and to wait patiently. I'm convinced the organization gets the timetable right more often that we give them credit. I'm also of the belief that if Lewis, Romero, Rooker, Thorpe, Kirilloff, Gordon, Rortvedt, Graterol, Wade, Gonsalves, et al were all in Atlanta's pipeline rather than ours, their progress would be much more similar to what it's been than a lot of people think.

You might be right. They'd probably have to agree with his agents that he's worth what they say he is. This might be one of the rare times I think the player and his agent are right too. If I'm the GM, I'm going to outbid others and overpay him a bit if I have to and give him the length he wants too. He'll be a good 2B for a year or two, a good UT thereafter, and a good teammate always from what we hear.

Signing Escobar would fill the huge hole left when we traded Escobar.

I kind of had him comped to Dustan Mohr, but maybe I'm too focused on all the OF errors.

Kepler and Kiriloff can both play first. Who knows, maybe this Tyler Austin would be a nice guy to plug in against LH starters too. But yeah, 2020 is probably a realistic and prudent timetable unless he hits .379 in Chattanooga with power numbers.

Of the next 7 starters they are up against, 4 are touted 1st rounders and 2 are 2nd round guys. Fiers is a lowly 22nd round guy.

Yeah, I think you're probably right, but I still think maybe we're too confident about Wade's future around here.

Yeah, I've kind of been wondering if we're not getting a little too excited about Wade similarly to how Granite had favored status here back when.

Even when a player makes it to MLB, his probability of being better than replacement level, by definition, is low. Pick two random years and two random teams. Look at their draft record. Even IF they had a stellar year, for example like history will show the Twins had in 2013 with six of their selections seeing MLB time (Gonsalves is assumed), every team will have their share of Zack Granites and Aaron Slegers. I think the Scouting Director of every team would tell us that, if you draft a guy with the 160th pick and then he ultimately proves to be kind of useful as a bullpen piece even if he failed as a starter, they'd consider that to have been a good result. That describes Tyler Duffey. I wonder how many Scouting Directors who selected one of the 14 prospects ahead of Kirilloff would now trade their selection for Kirilloff.

As for 2016, it will obviously be awhile before anyone can proclaim it to be the monster draft that it shows the promise to be. If it fulfills its promise, Deron Johnson will probably still be humble enough to mention all the "we's". "We had a lot of looks." And he should pass along the credit. A lot of those "looks" at Kirilloff were by the same scouts who had looks at, say, Levi Michael, Brian Dozier, Travis Harrison, Trevor Hildenberger, Hudson Boyd, and Taylor Rogers. Again, to blame scouting for failures and not credit the same scouts for success, and then to conclude that the bad results indicate ineptitude? Help me out with that. Explain why the successes happened. Some decisions that produce bad results can't be defended. But some can. Of the 30 prospects selected after Levi Michael in a notoriously shallow draft pool, only 7 have produced positive WAR as MLB players, less than 25%, so perhaps organizations should be forgiven if their particular selection isn't one of the success stories. Of the 10 prospects selected after Travis Harrison, only one is a major leaguer. Should we expect our organization to have passed on Harrison and the 9 other failures and hit on the one success story? And teams can't expect to know these prospects well enough to predict which individuals will suffer from addiction, mental health problems, and injuries. Which means that if 2016 IS in fact a great class, luck will have factored into it to some extent.