Apixarfan

I see a few people criticized the Twins for not trading Larnach but they are leaving out that the Twins had a trade worked out with HOU before the team owner nixed the deal at the last minute. I wouldn’t be surprised if that basically came too late to work out a fair deal somewhere else.

The Twins were actually one game over .500 against the AL East this year and the Tigers were just one game under .500. If the East is a superior division, and we won half our games against them, wouldn’t that just indicate a lot of parity in the Central? I think if we had kept Varland and spent in free agency last winter we’d probably be in a wildcard spot. Because they didn’t, that’s why I was pessimistic and they about met my moderately low expectations

Why do we always have conversations about just one way on the offensive side? When Big Papi was a Twin, why couldn’t we have let him be a slugger while other scrappy players could do what they do best? Put a high OBP player with speed in front of your best slugger. If you try to mold all the players in one way, your offense becomes very feast or famine. If you have a whole team of Austin Martin types and you make it to the playoffs playing in NY or BOS, games seem to end up a contest of who can outslug the other. If you have a whole team of high HR, but high K types, and you go up against a pitching staff that induces a lot of ground balls, you’re going to be in trouble. Balanced offense seems to make more sense to me.