bird

… perhaps the two things we were most concerned about after North Korea and Charlie Sheen. Um, Lindsay Lohan?

Especially because he was crack-addled and poured rot-gut whiskey on his Wheaties that morning.

I agree that this is an uninspiring roster because it lacks marquee names. But a couple of decent prospects can still emerge from this mix. It's not an untalented team by any means. Suggesting that Trey Vavra is somehow representative of the talent on this roster is just silly.

I don't think he'll have more than eleven singles cause he'll prolly just run to second after he hits it.

Trying to deflect attention away from its sexual harrassers.

And remember how everyone was saying that Brant Alyea was going to be the next Byungho Park? That memory is clear as day for me.

I'm a huge fan of things what lead to death. Just not a big fan of avoiding those things.

The only allergy I wish upon Mr. Santana is a strong one to PEDs. I wish him zero allergic reactions, mind you.

Here here, I'm with ya. "...the possibility of 162-0 still exists no matter how unlikely..." I'm so sick and tired of all the Negative Nancy's around here.

Hope DanSan has an eBay account. Those gloves will move.

Leads me to believe they're coming out of the blocks very concerned about short starts from Santiago and Hughes in particular, and aren't ready to trust a couple of the others to give them longer starts either.

This is an insightful and well-articulated summary. I'd add two additional things that I see evidence of with Falvey that I thought were woefully lacking under St. Peter/Ryan. One is being more strategic, as opposed to tactical, about virtually every aspect of organizing and operating the baseball operations. The second is greater competence when it comes to qualitative analysis. The evidence I'm seeing of this most notably comes from Falvey's comments about interpersonal stuff, about culture, things like that. So I'm very much heartened that it appears we're not dealing with some smug nerd who's developed a love affair with all the new technology that captures useable information. Falvey has an executive's strategic perspective about taking advantage of information resources to drive improvements. That he values qualitative judgments probably as much or more than quantitative analysis is a huge plus for me.

This is my one criticism of the new FO regarding the off-season. A sad carryover, but I hold hope it's a one-off phenomenon unlike the previous FO.

We wouldn't have to search hard to find a very very long list of Twins prospects who people on these threads stuck a fork in and then with great conviction railed about the team's latest blunder. Only to see the prospect have a terrific career. Perkins. Hunter. Cuddyer. Who's next? Pressley? Park? Even Buxton by some.? Now Duffey? Or next Burdi? Which of these guys will have the fork pulled out of them? The list goes on and on and on. It will always be here on TD. So, putting it another way, basically, as long as they aren't thriving in the majors, you can keep arguing that it was a bad decision to draft them. Or blame the team because your timetable doesn't match up with reality. Basically, a person can never win an argument that these prospects represent promise because there's always some prospect who has actually already failed to justify their point. And that example will be brought up a billion times while every example like Cuddyer, Hunter, and Perkins is quickly forgotten.

The Twins do not have a shortage of pitchers of the caliber of Wimmers, Haley, Tonkin, and Tepesch. These are fungible assets. The best way to move forward in this case is to REDUCE friction by picking your (temporary) poison and letting two guys go. And hopefully, Molitor and Falvey don't create friction by caring a whole lot about which ones go bye-bye.

I'll wait to acknowledge the wins too, Mike. I'll also wait to hammer a nail in the coffin, that seems fair. It's a simple fact that Burdi, Melotakis, Bard, Chargois, and a number of others drafted and groomed as RP's are regarded with promise and pitching in the high minors. Every one of them missed a full season or more due to injury. Nobody said they can control the timetable for any of these prospects. Any frustration we feel about that issue is sort of superfluous, really.

Come on, Vanimal, let's let them play the games. I can easily see them with final rankings of, like, 23rd and 24th or something.

I understand this point of view. However, I cut them more slack for a few reasons. First of all, after we get through the first half of the first round of any draft, the odds of a selection overcoming the issues that caused them to drop this far down in the draft? Less than 50% for the rest of the first round, dropping to 25% in round two, and dropping precipitously after that? What percentage of all 3rd rounders ever see a MLB mound? So, taking chances on the Melotakis's and Cedaroth's and Burdi's and Bard's isn't quite as ridiculous as it's portrayed to be. If you score with one every other year, you're probably ahead of the game. Second, the organization ran into some pretty tough luck with injuries to so many of these prospects: Burdi, Wimmers, Baxendale, Bard, Jones, Melotakis, Chargois, Jorge, Rosario, Guerra, Tootle, Bashore...and maybe others drafted in the first 2-3 rounds. Sure, they missed on a few too, like Hunt, Gutierrez, and Bullock. But remember, these guys were already long shots for the most part, 50% or much less. The injuries derailed some careers and pushed back the timetables for others. Third, the jury is still deliberating the issue. Tyler Duffey, Chargois, Melotakis, Burdi, Bard, Wimmers...there are a number of 2nd and 3rd round selections (or later) that could pan out and turn the effort to correct the previous shortcomings into a successful one. How many winners will it take? When might people stop mentioning a couple of highly visible failures and instead (begrudgingly?) acknowledge a couple of winners? I for one am optimistic that a few of these selections will still end up looking like very smart investments. Fourth, as is frequently mentioned, the value of high-leverage RP's has been sky-rocketing. People can complain about the current status of the farm system, but I think the experts still regard the system as being pretty rich when it comes to excellent bullpen prospects. Fifth, drafting and developing RP's and drafting starters and then converting them are not mutually exclusive things. Taylor Rogers, perhaps Wimmers now, Perkins in the past...but the fact of the matter is that you can't count on a huge uptick in velo, so if you want velo in your pen and are curmudgeons about paying for it on the open market, you probably need to draft it. So let's wait a while longer. This year and next should be telling.

Vogelsong never was better than #10 on the depth chart. Slegers just moved up a spot.

Yeah, I get this, but my own take is that in past years they have often preferred "better" players over the ones they had available from their own system. And better players they could attract were going to be veterans. I mean, if I had a buck for every time you reminded me over the years how crappy our talent pipeline was, I'd buy you your own golf course. That said, I would concede that Gardy and others had a bias towards veterans, but not as exaggerated a bias as we all have towards projecting MLB readiness on to these prospects. The caution here being about Garvey over JRM or Giminez, and I imagine maybe soon about Berrios over Santiago. If I had a buck for every time someone mentioned that Berrios was ready to light the MLB world on fire last year and the year before...or Burdi, or Reed, or Chargois, or... I feel somewhat comfortable that this FO, when the decision is a close one, will almost always go with the inexperienced player over the veteran, especially if the kid has a higher ceiling in the long term. When it comes to Garver, I wonder what their thoughts are regarding his ceiling.

I get your point that you'd prefer one over the other based on their age. But let's not project the reverse preference on the organization. If Garvey gets sent to AAA, it will have absolutely nothing to do with his birth date. Rightly or wrongly, they will have decided either that someone else will help the team more at the moment or that Garvey has a few things yet to work on. Obviously, we'd all like to hear that Garvey is ready to go and is a solid regular in the making.

I see Mejia as a solid option for the relief corps myself. The scouts say he's maxed out his development and has little or no projection left. That puts him squarely in the 5th starter long relief category, and it'd be wonderful if we had five better options than him for the rotation all year long.

I'm not terribly concerned about that one instance of inflexibility. Frankly, I'm practically hoping for a 4-pitcher shuttle from Rochester to the rotation, and hope it would be a one-way ticket most of the time. This team is caught in a bad spot IMO. While they won't compete on a sustained basis until they upgrade the ceilings of their top three starters, they don't have prospects who appear ready to reach their better ceilings for a couple of years. In the meantime Falvey has a delicate dance ahead of him. I'm hoping he has the option to accept a big overpay for Santana at the deadline because it's offered and because Berrios, May, and one or two others now in the minors (Romero or Jay?) are shining. If the relief staff isn't on a shuttle system, we're in trouble. We absolutely have to get at least two real gems out of that group that includes Shaggy, Burdi, Melo, Reed, etc.

You're absolutely spot on. I see little immediate hope myself. The hope will be for the most part in Chattanooga's rotation, in the quick insertion of Berrios into the rotation, in a fast and steady progression at the MLB level by May and Berrios, and in the readiness of Mejia, Duffey, and/or Gonsalves to step in and acceptably fill the role of back-end starter. I think anyone investing a great deal of hope in the resurgence of Hughes or even positive regression (let alone improvement) from Gibson is risking disappointment. Santiago? Blah.

To be fair, though, we have to acknowledge that the talent level has been underwhelming since the pool was shrunk. We're not seeing the Darren O'Days and Hector Rodons with regularity, and this type would represent our highest hopes. The last two Rule 5 pitchers to stick for a season were named Joe Biagini and Matt Bowman. So maybe Justin Haley is as good as it gets these days?