Mr. Brooks

Hey I'll never tell anyone what to do with their money, it's a free country. But, we don't get to complain about the product and still give them money. This would be like going to McDonalds every day and complaining about the quality. And the Twins haven't cracked any code, because a lot of sports owners have a desire to win. The Pohlads have no interest whatsoever in winning.

Please don't do this. The Pohlads only care about turning a profit. There is no incentive for them to field a competitive team if we keeping giving them our money.

1) Agree completely. He throws 95 and had some bad luck and SSS contribute to his results this year.But, even if he turns it around in LA, who cares? This team has no chance to compete this year. Fien had no chance of contributing to the next contending team. And with his awful start, it would take months to maybe flip him for a lottery ticket in July. But, his spot should have went to Chargois, not another older filler like Kintzler. 2) The Perkins deal was fine. Where you can blame Terry is for not trading Perkins when he had value. Perennial 90 loss teams have no need for a closer, and it was highly unlikely he'd be a valuable player by the time we were ready to compete. The shelf life for elite closers, outside of Rivera, is pretty short. I'd say half this board was begging Terry to trade him at the time, so it's not hindsight. 3) I'm not sure worse contracts have ever been moved, and I don't think even a full year of this production is going to convince anyone to take that contract. But, it's a moot point. Mauer would never agree to a trade. 4) Personally, yes, I would have traded Plouffe for whatever I could get, even if it's basically nothing. Sano is a potential superstar, and you build your team around him. 5) Jepsen is fine, but he should be a depth guy. A 6th inning guy, not a late inning guy. The Hughes extension is maybe the worst decision I've seen an executive make in these parts, and I've lived through the Joe Smith deal and David Kahn, so that's saying a lot.

How well would he have to hit to climb higher than 6th in a bad lineup?

In what way is Park not ready to bat 4th?

Well 860 isn't always enough. Some players take longer than others to figure it out. Hicks was a nearly league average hitter last year. And, has roughly the same OPS+ as Torii had through 860 ab's. He showed last year that he can be a good 4th ofer/fringe starter (1.2 WAR), and may not be done developing.

Sorry Nick, the odds of this many players on the same team "slumping" being unrelated are astronomical. It leaves only two possibilities. Either these guys were never actually that talented, or there is something in the water, so to speak. Personally, I think it's a little of both. I think the Twins vastly over estimated JR Murphy's talent level. There were questions about babip and his Yankee Stadium numbers. Also, and admittedly it's a SSS, but I hope he had some nerves on defense, caused by his hitting slump, because his defense was awful. Eddie Rosario is not a major league hitter, and likely never will be. You can't swing at everything and succeed long term in mlb. Fangraphs projections knew this, many of us knew it, somehow the Twins did not. By the way, Fangraphs also predicted a severe defensive decline, which was criticized here but has been spot on. Eduardo Escobar is another guy Fangraphs also correctly pegged for serious regression. I'll admit, I was skeptical of Fangraphs on this one, but I will say that he's such a butcher in the field that any offensive slump at all is going to cause him to be a severe detriment. I also think the Twins underestimated how uncomfortable Sano would be in RF. It's clearly affecting his hitting, IMO. On the pitching side, it amazes me that such supposedly smart baseball people could look at Phil Hughes' 2014 season, and not see it as clearly an outlier compared to his career. Kyle Gibson should have been considered an obvious regression candidate with that awful k rate. It's extremely rare that anyone can succeed long term without missing any bats. This club decided to roll into the season with arguably their three best starting pitchers either in AAA or the bullpen (May, Berrios, and Duffey). Duffey earned a spot last year, in actual games. For him to lose that spot for what he did in pretend games was a joke. When will this team realize spring training numbers mean absolutely nothing? I suppose if they don't after this year, they never will. Then you have the bullpen. They admit it's the top priority, then do nothing. They say because they are counting on young prospects to step up. Ok, I'm fine with that, but only because I'm in favor of a complete rebuild. To pretend they could compete with "hope" as their bullpen plan is laughable. And while yes, Dozier and Plouffe are slumping, that's evened out by Mauer and Park far exceeding expectations. All of this is also not helped by bizarre on the field decisions like constantly having guys who can't get on base in the leadoff spot. Or bunting early in games. Or wasting May in blowouts. Or refusing to pinch hit for your sub .100 catcher. I'd say there has been some bad luck. They won't lose at this clip all year. But mostly they are reaping what they've sewn with decisions that were completely predicted to be mistakes.

Those 3 you list are all #4 or #5 type starters. Seth is right, the only pitcher we have that would interest the Sox is Berrios.

Sano has an OPS of 1.021 in his career with RISP. On what planet is that not good??? He has a career OPS+ of 137. He started the season slow, sure, but he's been fine since, and is one of the best young hitters in all of baseball. Sano more than belongs in mlb, not AAA.

Yeah I don't even understand what they are doing right now. Off the field they don't seem to have any plan whatsoever. Sure, someone like Seth can defend each and every move they make in a vacuum. But, taken all together, it's hard to see a plan anywhere in there. And on the field, they don't seem to be playing for now, or for the future. If they were playing for the future, they'd be playing guys like Kepler and Chargois, and May and Meyer would be in the rotation. But, if they were playing for now, they wouldn't have run out that pathetic lineup today, when they just had Thursday off. Then there are the things that make no sense in any context, like putting Mastroianni at leadoff, bunting early in games, and pitching May in a blowout when he didn't need the work. Somewhere, Gardy has to be chuckling, for as bad as it got at the end, he never looked embarrassingly incompetent like Mollie does.

Why? That money would go straight into Jim Pohlads pocket. The Twins do not carry extra money over to the next year.

Mastroianni has been up for 2 games and started both. I really don't understand what is going on with this club right now.

There have been a few times I'd agree with that, but not this time. Santana gave up 10 baserunners in 3 innings. It's a miracle we're still in the game.

Well they said they didn't bring in any more relievers because they expected at least one of the hard throwing milb arms to make a case for a call up EARLY in the season. Early in the season implies they wouldn't need a 60 IP sample size. Birdwatcher said he hasn't been dominant. He didn't day anything about sample size. I'm just curious what dominant would look like at this moment, never claimed it was a large sample size. In the chances he's gotten so far, he's dominated.

It's much to early to declare a winner in this trade.

Yep, either that or he can start in right field and bat leadoff.

Chargois hasn't been dominant? He's given up 1 ER, 6 hits, and struck out 13 in 11 innings. What would dominant look like if this isn't it?

You say you guess both sides of a Chargois call up could be argued. I'd be interested in hearing the argument against it?

Adding a couple of those young hard throwers, nice.

How about giving Kepler a shot? And I mean an actual legit, every single day in CF for a month minimum shot. The guy was the Southern League MVP last year. It may turn out that he isn't ready, but at a minimum he's earned a shot. That is what rebuilding, 8-20 teams do.

When you say "each time he starts", you mean the exactly ONE time that he has made a start in mlb, right?

You say that even though Kepler at 75% of his max potential might be better than 100% of Rosario, the Twins owe it to Kepler to get him as close to 100% as possible before putting him in the lineup. I'm not sure I buy that. There is no reason whatsoever that he can't make that final progress in the mlb. A players development doesn't instantly stop the moment they put on a major league uniform.

I don't think we could get anything for Hughes unless we eat most of his contrace, which experience says they don't consider doing. Everything in his body of work points to 2014 being a complete fluke. He looks like at best a 5th starter on a bad to average team.

The lack of accountability in this article was stomach turning. Also, much of what Pohlad said simply did not make any sense, at least not in a logical world, maybe some parallel bizzaro world.

Yeah that was head scratching from the start. He was still under contract for TWO more years, and 2014 was, statistically, the exception to his previous results.