The Wise One

There might be a little more love shown for more people than just Mauer.

The more the consistent and repeatable the swing, the better the golfer. Same for pitching. Mind also analysis is preferred over lysis of the player. The paralysis does not come from the analysis but the lack of knowledge involved in the treatment plan.

In terms of many fans what Joe suffers from is 2 things. 1, Never had the team jump on his beck and he carried them through the playoffs As Jimmy Jam penned "What have you done for me lately"

Arcia was cut by two teams. What romantic notions that somehow, some way Arcia will reinvent himself from a hitter that gets himself turned into an out by swinging at everything into a patient hitter is folly. Using his name and Vargas in any context together as similar is a gross disservice to Vargas. Vargas was not let go so you can quit the sorry lament for Vargas

In the end Bryant, a big man could play in the outfield with no problem. Adam Dunn played outfield. He did so as well as he fielded any other position on the field, without injuring himself. Carlos Lee was bigger than Sano. He managed. Jason Werth is a pretty big OF, There was absolutely no reason for Sano not to be able to play in the outfield other than the limitation of Sano being Sano. Sano has over 400 games played at 3b as a professional How long does it take to learn a position? Plouffe after 200 games was a good defender. Sano to right was about getting Sano less chance to touch a baseball in a game. After 4 years Sano is no closer to being competent at 3b than when he started playing. They are now having a "problem" at corner infield because Sano managed to somehow be a worse OF than 3b.

I had read somewhere that Luhnow thought that any one of his assistants could be a GM. Great opinion to have. Pitching he had developed? Great trades he has done? Draft management other than Correa(which may or may not have been determined from time in St Louis. Uh, why would you want someone from Houston? What other organization has been consistently good with similar resources? St Louis. Hello, that is where Luhnow came from.

Antony is in the best position to know what is wrong in the system. The problem comes is that also would beg the question why didn't he work at fixing it. It is likely that anyone the Twins hire would likely not have been a GM previously, or a miserable failure at one earlier. All you get a different perspective from what was done before. The right answer is not always clear except to the 20-20 hindsight. Some of the processes that led to some of the debacle may not be fixable under the ownership group as the ownership does have directives.,

Fundamental errors need to be cleaned up. I could be wrong but it seemed like they played better fundamental baseball under Kelly. Better base running, better fielding decisions. Other players seem to learn batting practice is for more than just mashing home runs. There is the pitching development algorithm that seems to be broken

Is Weiters having a down year? Do people expect him to be the pre injury catcher he was ? That is not going to happen. Ramos 5/82 (Russell Martin money) would be the starting point. Twins are not going to do that. Aaron Hicks. OPS+ of 50. The John Ryan Murphy trade looks almost equal. When the Twins hire a hitting coach there will be improvement. The question becomes who do you trade for and what is the cost. Don't bother if you think Kohl Sewart and Trevor Plouffee and 2 other prospects on your sourpuss list are going to get you a top ranked catching prospect unless Stewart no hits ta AA team a couple of times this year and the parent club takes notice. club hotshot prospect At some point the decision is what is the cost of a gain from Suzuki versus paying Suzuki his couple million

BMI is based on proportions of height and weight. The number itself for an athlete is useless in terms of body fat. On the other hand two people of different heights and weights with the same number as bmi are going to be built proportionately close to the same . Despite the flaws of the usage of bmi, the number can be used as a comparison tool . Any argument one uses to say Sano shouldn't be in the outfield on size thus should have been used on Bryant. They were not. Sorry the word BMI is like a red flag waved in front of a bull

Up the 100. When a similar player received a late offer of 2 million you are not going to trade Plouffe and not create another problem. The return is going to be another contract of a player you do not want Microcosmic thinking goes along with denial.

Denial is a strange thing. No matter how many times it is pointed out that there was not a market for 3B last winter there are people who insist on Plouffe should have been traded over the winter. It is sort of like thinking Duensing was a valuable commodity to be added into any trade to get a player or multiple prospects back. Gluts of 1b/3b/dh types. No one person's play has been anywhere close to making the team look foolish for having the other players. Sano in right as a mistake. Schwaber is built along the same lines as Sano. Shorter, but about the same BMI. Can't find where people thought Epstien and Maddon were idiots. The all Star Bryant does not always play 3b, he gets to play OF Jeezo, those Cubs must sure be idiots.

Santiago's LOB% is better than Nolasco's but not dominatingly better than league average. The league average was brought down by Nolaco. His LOB needs to be better than league average because he gives up league average hits and walks.

By highlighting the fact the best player by accumulated war is not even the first person selected then it really shouldn't matter who is doing the drafting, it is luck. Any person drafting then should be fired from their job if they can't pick out the best player in the draft. Some judge of talent Players multiple picks lower than what Johnson picked doing "better", Again multiple teams missing out. All heads must roll Drafting Wacha rather than Buxton would leave some bitter blogger in another 5 years wondering how the idiot Johnson passed on a superstar CF where Wacha was a flash in the pan that after the scapular injury limited his career . Poor snakebit Twins ended up with another injured pitcher.

Read the article some time ago. Common sense says between 2010 and 2014 there were a few players the Twin drafted that put up decent numbers, even if they were no longer playing for the Twins

Where is yours?

Bread isn't the worst thing in the world, debatable if even bad, for diabetics Now 2 Snickers and a liter of Jolt would be nasty for a diabetic. That would be sweetness. Nobody would call Santana's play sweet.

A study looked at the WARP of the players drafted by each team for the seasons covering 2014. Minnesota was right in the middle, when they expanded it to 2010-2014, the Twins were still in the middle. Drafting was the issue over the last 15 years

Nunez was deemed as a player one who should not to be tendered a contract. He is not what they thought he was. So are you saying Antony is a better GM than people here are giving him credit for? You better watch out or some people's butts are going to explode.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2016/07/31/jonathan-lucroy-trade-indians-brewers/87865486/ Lucroy to the Tribe. That is, if he approves. It looks like not an awesome return if the main listed prospect is about the number 9 in the Indian minor league rankings Suzuki is probably going to stay unless Antony decides Norris might come cheap.based on the Lucroy trade

take out the top ten picks in the drafts from 08-12. look at the number of 5 b war or better players drafted by the team.. Johnson has drafted 2. Of the franchises that still have the same basic management team around or promoted how many players have the stable franchises drafted. Tampa one, Washington one, Texas 1, Giants 4, Cards 4, Indians 4, Pirates 1, Oakland 3, Royals, none. Melvin with the Brewers in 08 an had 5 in those two years and nothing since. You can draft a lot of fringe major league players and accumulate some WAR. You can draft near the top and accumulate war The bottom line is how many decent players do you draft? Your position was Johnson is drafting worse than other teams. In a time period that allows the better players to shine through Johnson is not the best, he is not the worst. Other teams that changed GMs through that time period, they might have changed scouting directors, they might not have

Anyway, the others ide to the coin is the other club in town was accused of being a country club and tumbled down. in organization and performance. House was cleaned. 4 years later, the answer to who had a vision was actually a member of the country club. It is hard to know what Antony really knows about baseball, business, or likeability (Beware, Tim Brewster was likeable). When Pohlad made the comment about looking at where things went wrong the answer to what he find will lie in the type of GM he hires. A number crunching starts guy/gal. A minor league operations guy? What system churns out the most prospects from the middle of the pack drafts and rounds? One of the stats guys on this site should be able to sort and tally from baseball reference.

Antony as I said elsewhere was an assistant to Ryan , not a clone. Ryan was his mentor. I have learned from more than one teacher what not to do. He has had 2 to learn from as he should have also learned from Smith. I do love the criticism of Antony talking to USA Today. Newspapers are written for the masses. Any PR depart will know that and keep their message on a simple level. As to what stats he knows are does not know I would guess that every team has their own stats and measures that they use. St Louis hacked Houston to find out if Luhnow was using what he learned in St Louis and likely signed a proprietary agreement not to use. Jack seems like a smart man. I would bet he has his own statistics. Does he have any idea about statistics. No one here ever bothered much with him to talk. . He has been the liaison between the technical department and baseball department for 10 years. It would be reasonable to think he would have learned something. Reason and fans can be a fickle thing here. Descriptive statistics should not be what causes Antony not to get the job. Nobody has ever mentioned in this thread that when Antony was promoted to Assistant GM bother to look at what his duties were then. Here from mlb.com's Twins site Rob Antony, a member of the Twins organization since 1988, has been named Assistant General Manager. In Antony's new role he will focus on MLB rules, waivers and the negotiation of player contracts. He will continue to assist longtime Twins Director of Minor Leagues Jim Rantz in providing player evaluation throughout the minor league system. I think Antony was part of the problem unless he was not listened to when there was a problem with player development. No GM for you.

Grossman has been getting AB as DH lately. Do you suppose someone could be interested? Getting at bats while limiting his time in the field does seem like a good idea

The chart shoes the value of getting the one player of the draft 08.09.10. and 11 are the valid comparison years as you really should have the players at least either mature, or have a few seasons to judge by. That is sort of the problem with trying to assess drafting, it takes a quite a few years. 2011 draft, number of high school players having played a full season not drafted in the top 10? Does that mean the scouting director did poorly? You do not have the data to know if solid players were picked. It seems like more and more players are not hitting their stride until 25 except for the exceptional player. The 2009 high school draftees would be in that group, 2011 college players. What is presented is showing that it pays to be lucky to draft the exception player near the top of the draft. Any team with a big number more often than not had an early draft pick. Valid research, once again a wrong conclusion from the author