Jump to content
Twins Daily
  • Create Account

bird

Verified Member
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    1,413

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Profiles

Minnesota Twins News, Rumors & Analysis

Minnesota Twins Videos

2026 Minnesota Twins Top Prospect Rankings

2022 Minnesota Twins Draft Picks & Signing Bonuses

Minnesota Twins Trade & Free Agent Rumors

Minnesota Twins Fan Guides & Resources

2023 Minnesota Twins Draft Picks & Signing Bonuses

The Minnesota Twins Players Project

2024 Minnesota Twins Draft Picks & Signing Bonuses

2025 Minnesota Twins Draft Picks & Signing Bonuses

2026 Minnesota Twins Draft Picks & Signing Bonuses

Forums

Blogs

Events

Store

Downloads

Gallery

Everything posted by bird

  1. bird
    Joe Mauer, pushing the peas around on his plate tonight: "You know, honey, I just hate the thought of these poor minor leaguers working for peanuts. Say, any mail from the player's union or my agent?"
  2. bird
    In looking at a very fluid roster of 14 pitchers, I see 8 of them have never thrown a pitch as a pro. All but one of the 8 is a late-round pick, Schick being the exception, our 6th round selection, age 21. Does anyone believe any of these 8 guys should be slotted somewhere besides E-Town? Of the 6 with some previous "experience", Lujan has amassed a grand total of 19 career innings, Robinson and Vasquez 12 innings apiece. Does anyone believe the Twins are misduidedly holding these 3 guys back? Robinson is the gem here, a 5th rounder. In other words, not exactly a can't miss superstar in the making. Then we have Martinez, age 19, a Venezuelan kid. Age 17 at DSL, age 18 at GCL. Not exactly old for this level, right? Next: Wells, age 19, nursing an injury perhaps, but this Aussie is likely on a fast track to the next level if he continues to develop as impressively as he has so far. To argue about his initial placement at E-Town though is to seriously quibble. Last, and probably the best case for criticism, is Quesada. He's 21, and has 64 innings under his belt. So, if one were to make a case that he might be well-served by being pushed, fine. But to make a wholesale argument that they're misguidedly placing these guys at too low of a level to start the season? Nonsense. KLAW wouldn't know what he was talking about if he offered that opinion about this group. I'm pretty sure he would not have a problem with where any of these prospects are playing to start 2016. As Seth said, it's important to know the prospect information on a case by case basis.
  3. bird
    Not sure who I'd rather watch pitch, Kirk Gibson or Debbie Gibson. Thinkin' Debbie.
  4. bird
    Yeah, I've always suspected the same,especially in light of scattered "reports" that Hardy wasn't exactly a beloved figure in various clubhouses. A good GM doesn't make this trade. Period.
  5. bird
    No one disputes the Ortiz mistake. No excuses, but other teams give up on guys too, and virtually no one foresaw Ortiz's potential. Hardy and Gomez left via trades made by Billy Smith. No more need be said.
  6. bird
    tobi, thanks for digging that stuff up, it's interesting to see. It doesn't tell us much about the question of any team's prowess or ineptitude in plucking late bloomers from another team's system, or retaining their own, since almost all of the players sent packing were dispatched via trades. I'm not sure what conclusions to draw from this, although it tends to support a belief I have about the Twin's most egregious deficiency as an organization, which is that they do not have a strategic buy/sell discipline concerning their player assets. It appears to me they have no strategy, and no discipline regarding player movement, but instead simply react to circumstances that confront them. The result of this has been unacceptably poor returns, player after player, year after year. I'd argue that this single deficiency is the cause of most of their issues. I'd go a step further and suggest they are quite competent at both talent evaluation and player development, but this isn't overcoming their poor decisions on when to trade an asset and for what value.
  7. bird
    No prospect who is projected to have a front rotation ceiling lasts until the 32nd pick. Berrios is still regarded by many experts as having a mid rotation ceiling. I think the lofty expectations are due at least in part to all this talk about how Berrios has apparently cornered the market regarding work ethic, character, etc. I disagree with your assessment. Berrios would be at pretty much the same stage of development elsewhere. And if we're going to cite an example or two of players who haven't or aren't progressing at an acceptable pace (Berrios IS, IMO), then we need to explain away the many many opposite examples. Pat Dean was projected to be a non-prospect for all practical purposes. Do we maintain an awareness about how few 3rd-rounders ever see a major league pitching mound? Does a guy like that simply overcome what you think is an inept development program? Or is there a possibility that Pat Dean and Jose Berrios are actually living up to their real potential in part because of competent coaching?
  8. bird
    I believe jay is talking about real comparative analysis that might show differences in the success rates among teams when it comes to retaining and acquiring late blooming players. Your statement, while pointing to an obvious and frustrating recent string of poor results, doesn't do much to shed light on the subject.
  9. bird
    If that's the case, pretty much every team has been terrible for a long time. Where and what are your correlations? Which selections in the past ten years would the experts consider "terrible'? Remind us who YOU picked in 2011, and give us YOUR ten-year track record. You must have hated almost every pick then if you describe their record as "terrible". Say what you want, but when you say the Twins drafts have been terrible for a long time without drawing any comparisons whatsoever, you're saying absolutely nothing. You obviously can't force people to look at history in some context either.
  10. bird
    Once again, Levi Michael was NOT a need pick. He was the 30th player taken in a very weak draft class. Of the ten players taken before Michael and the ten players taken after him, only two out of the twenty have distinguished themselves so far in the major leagues. Only four players drafted ahead of Michael in that year have as of this date been impressive as major league players. People are constantly pulling the Levi Michael pick out of their shorts and claiming it's an example of draft ineptitude on the part of the Twins. The reality is that the ineptitude belongs to those using the pick as an example of what they choose to believe.
  11. bird
    Just a suggestion: jam the left side of your bed up against the wall. That way you'll be forced to get up on the right side.
  12. bird
    Resurgence? Doubtful. Spurt? More likely.
  13. bird
    Nunez has had a lot do do with that I'd surmise. For whatever reasons, Molitor seems to be really really really high on Santana's upside. Enough so to ignore the numbers. My guess is he envisions him as a long-term super-utility guy for his team. I don't know if the Arcia dump is the right decision, but I do know that I'm not gonna miss watching him "press", especially in pressure AB's. Grossman may have had more AB's in a month than Arcia got all year, but Arcia had more absolutely brainless AB's in two games than Grossman had in a month. I for one won't miss watching Arcia, but that's just me. One point about the notion that the Twins overloaded on DH types by design: they won a bid for Park, probably not a bid they expected to necessarily win. They didnt say, "hey, we need another DH type." To fault the Twins for that seems a bit two-faced, since we tend to chastise them for not doing enough of that sort of thing. So, once they got him, don't they need to find out what they have, regardless of the eventual answer? Park may flop, and Arcia may find himself, but I see the reasoning behind giving priority over Arcia to Park, and also to Rosario, Buxton, Kepler, etc. Santana? That one I don't get, but there may be some things about Arcia that we don't see and that don't make the papers, who knows?
  14. bird
    Neither decision would have been unsound assuming a fair return in trade. I personally would have opted to trade him back then. For someone like Wilson Ramos.
  15. bird
    This makes so much sense to me.
  16. bird
    Hey, you should start a thread on this. That's a topic that's gotten short shrift around here.
  17. bird
    I'm in the same place. Since 1961, which was around the time of Chief's 30th birthday I think, there have been maybe four seasons that I decided the team was virtually unwatchable. Maybe I'll take in a few innings here and there, but only to watch the kids play. The funny thing is, coming into the season, I was feeling less excitement, because I knew there would be a whole bunch of players I simply don't really enjoy watching play baseball. I'll name names: Plouffe, Ervin Santana the Cheater, Mauer, Nolasco, Dozier, Suzuki, Fien, Gibson, Milone, Jepsen...Even some of the young knuckleheads were getting to me, especially Arcia and Rosario with stupid AB's, dumb base running, and sloppy effort in the field. Geez, now that I think about it, who's left?
  18. bird
    It's important to note that all of those guys were among the top 5 prospects in all of baseball. If we did an honest comparison across the league, we're just not going to see any teams regularly bringing up a bunch of less-heralded guys at age 21-22, and when they do, they tend to "transition" similarly, meaning they struggle for awhile. Pick a few random teams and check out the histories of their first and second year players, including those back in AAA. This is a league-wide thing.
  19. bird
    So, in one thread, were talking about Arcia, who has been in almost half the games and has 100 AB's. But he hasn't had an opportunity? No chance to get hot? The poor stats are to be discounted as SSS and offer no proof that he's a bench player at best right now? Why isn't that a good plan for him for now? Who would you bench instead, and why? And in another thread, we're talking about Polanco in a similar number of games but about five more game's worth of AB's. This apparently IS an adequate sample size. Meaning Polanco has had an opportunity to prove that he belongs at the next level. That we should not discount his performance on the basis of it being at AAA rather than MLB? From my perspective, both players have had an opportunity, and their performance so far this season holds meaning. And it's simply a matter of time before Polanco is in MLB and Arcia perhaps is not.
  20. bird
    But they do. At a success rate pretty much the same or better than that of other organizations.
  21. bird
    Lots of conclusions could be drawn from this exercise, and most would be woefully flawed. One could to do a useful, truly comparative exercise. If we're not comparing the result against other teams, what are we learning? I'd start (but I won't) by examining a relevant and longer window of time, say 2002-2011. Then, I'd track just 6 picks from each of those drafts: the two preceding the Twin's pick and the three following it. With this limitation, we're accounting for the quality of prospects available in that particular draft at that particular stage of the draft. I'd then compare the present-day value of the Twin's pick against the other selections, probably using more qualitative criteria, i.e., in what order would a GM most likely select these six guys for his team today? Not a believer in WAR as a stand-alone-tool. This might begin to provide us a slightly more valid answer than the one we often get. The question we'd be asking? Compared to other MLB teams in a similar position, do the Twins appear to be bumbling idiots when it comes to making draft selections?
  22. bird
    Thank you for adding some context that others chose to simply ignore. Adding this context does nothing to de-legitimize arguments that Jim Pohlad and the other members of the Twins Board of Directors couldn't do a lot of good by re-shaping their thinking about their ownership goals, their relationship with the community and various segments of the fan base, etc. Proper context simply makes good discussion possible. Otherwise, the thread just turns into a lot of vapid ranting with an occasional reasoned thought.
  23. bird
    He'a high school kid.
  24. bird
    Seven pitchers and seven position players taken ahead of this pick.
  25. bird
    Just got here. Came for the thread but am staying for the music suggestions. Four tunes mentioned, all worthy enough to already occupy shelf space in my Spotify library. Great taste, people! Don't know if I'll stick around until Closing Time, but if I do, it'll be accompanied by tunes of that title by Lyle Lovett and my deep dark hero Leonard Cohen.
×
×
  • Create New...