Mr. Brooks

It does if you've watched the corner OF defense and third base. I've been a huge supporter of Plouffe's in the past, but it's getting harder and harder to be one. He's the Delmon Young of third baseman, just laughably ugly defense.

Another in a series of bizzarro moves that makes me question exactly what Terry's plan is.

Just think how good Ruth would have been if he was pumped full of steroids? Scary to think.

I'd say it's about the equivilant of AA, with it being a little easier than that for hitters, and a little tougher than that for pitchers (just due to the fact that some pitchers maybe tiring a bit by that time of the year, while some hitters are really getting into a "groove" by then.)

http://twinsdaily.com/minnesota-twins-talk/8366-fangraphs-twins-take-p2c-new-heights.html

I believe this is May's first season on the 40 man roster. That means the soonest that we would have to pass him through waivers would be coming out of spring training in 2016. There are exceptions, but in general you have a maximum of 8 seasons for HS draft picks, and 7 seasons for college draft picks before they have to be exposed to waivers.

That sounds like a reasonable timeline to me.

http://twinsdaily.com/minnesota-twins-talk/8366-fangraphs-twins-take-p2c-new-heights.html

A side bar to this, how far has Morneau falling that nobody thinks we can as good of a return for him as we got for Drew Butera?

Its often a 60% increase. So if he manages to throw 100 this year, you wouldn't want him throwing more than 160 next year. Of course that is not a hard line, its a case by case basis. But, I think this is why he needs to go to the AFL. If he can get up to 130+ combined innings, then he should be fine to throw a full workload next year.

Byron Buxton » Game Logs » 2013 » Batting | FanGraphs Baseball

I'm not giving up on him. Certainly he has a high ceiling. Unfortunately he also has a low floor. I just don't see a 3rd pitch needed to be a starter. He's got a great fastball, and an ok changeup, but at what age do you stop waiting for that 3rd pitch to develop and decide it's best to move him to the bullpen? It's nice that he only walked 1 last night, but for the season the walks have still been a pretty big issue.

Well that is your opinion, I'm not sure why you state it like it's fact. You speak about him like he's 29 or 30 and facing the downward arc of his career. He's 24 years old, just 1 year older than Aaron Hicks and Alex Meyer, and a year younger than Kyle Gibson. I'm not saying I'd want to take on Andrus' contract, I'm just saying lets not compare him to Florimon, that is completely unfair. Andrus is the the much better player. Florimon was in low A at the same age Andrus was having a 2nd place ROY season, and at Andrus current age, Florimon was just earning a promotion to AA. I see this as nothing but a down year for Andrus, almost every player has had one, and he is still young enough to get better before he starts to decline. Andrus also gives you GG caliber defense, but adds 30 to 40 steals per season and a .340 OBP. Andrus has better than a 2:1 K/BB ratio, while Florimon strikes out nearly 4:1 and doesnt steal many bases. Andrus is the vastly superior player, and while he will be overpaid for a chunk of that contract, that is just how baseball works. If you want good players, chances are you are going to have to overpay for them.

Hard to argue with Ted Williams, but I'll try. For me, when I try to gauge the greatest of all time, I always compare to their contemporaries. Ted Williams was merely head and shoulders better than his peers during his time, while Babe Ruth was leaps and bounds better than his.

My hunch is that Morneau will be traded before tomorrow's game. Doumit was originally scheduled to be reinstated today, but now they are pushing that back to tomorrow. They say he's fine, but it's for logistical reasons, that they wan't him to catch a bullpen session first, but didn't have any live arms to throw him one yesterday. Now, it could just be that they really didn't have any live arms to throw BP yesterday, but an alternate theory is that they plan on trading Morneau in the next 24 hours, and therefore are delaying Doumit's return so that he can be the corresponding move to the 25 man roster.

Babe Ruth IS the best of all time, IMO. Again, there is a big difference, at least to me, between most talented and best. You can go to a 5 star restaurant and get a dish that requires the technical acumen of a highly talented chef, but it's not always going to taste as good as a juicy burger that you found at some hole in the wall dive in Topeka, Kansas.

Must be the same guy who scouted Alex Wimmers.

I was thinking about Kirby on Monday night as I looked at his statue walking through the plaza at Target Field after the game. But then I was interrupted by a stripper from Rick's Cabaret handing out free admission coupons, which I thought Kirby would have appreciated.

The only way it's 2 choices is if Terry is actually considering bringing Morneau back after the season. If that is the case, then I've lost faith in Terry Ryan. Justin Morneau is one of my all time favorite Twins, and nothing will change that. But you don't build a roster and an organization based on sentimental feelings. There is absolutely no excuse for a 33 year old, replacement level first baseman to be taking AB's from anyone at this time next year.

If your argument is who has more talent, then of course I can't argue with you. but you didn't say the most talented, you said the greatest. IMO, there is more to being the greatest than just having the most talent. You have to look at their accomplishments vs. their peers. Sure, Ruth was facing less talented pitchers back then, but his peers were facing the same pitchers. Everything is relative. There is nothing exceptional about the Great Pyramids without context. Any mid sized construction firm in the world could build the Pyramids today. What makes them an engineering marvel is WHEN they were built, not the fact that they were built.

The Twins have about 200 players in their organization, of which about 165+ qualify as "prospects" (meaning less than 130 AB's or 50 IP of MLB experience). Any prospect you get back for Morneau, even on the very low side, is going to be in the top 25%, they will not be blocking anyone of significance. For perspective, the prospect we got back for Butera was immediately slotted into our system as our #13 prospect, which puts him in the top 6 to 7% of our minor league system. Even if we only managed to get back a top 50 prospect for Morneau, that would still put them in the top 1/3 of our system.

I'm guessing you are saying this tongue in cheek, but in case you are not, they have plenty of room to fit any kind of prospect into the organization, even with the great prospects we have down there now.

I disagree about the best baseball player of all time being an active player. Babe Ruth completely revolutionized the game. He came along and started hitting more HR's than entire teams were hitting. Nobody in baseball is doing anything like that today, and I don't think anyone has come close to doing anything like that since. And he wasn't just a HR hitter. He was consistently atop the leaderboards in BA, runs scored, RBI, BB, OBP, SLG, even triples! He also stole more than 100 bases, and was a very good pitcher. Ruth is by far the best all around baseball player of all time, to me its not particularly close, especially when you compare his numbers not only historically (which speak enough on their own), but also when you compare them to his peers, in which case they are ridiculous. When you look at some Ruth's stats, they are mind boggling. There is a reason that "Ruthian" has become a superlative for many extreme accomplishments. He had a career OPS+ of 206!! To put that in perspective, Miguel Cabrera has a career OPS+ 155. Cabrera's career high for OPS+ in a season is 178. In 1920, Ruth had an OPS+ of 255. Ruth's career BA, OBP, SLG and OPS all dwarf Miguel Cabrera's. And Ruth was doing this in a time that nobody else was hitting for anything but average. Ruth also stole 123 bases in his career, walked more than 2000 times, and never once struck out more than 93 times in a season. Ruth also hit 136 triples!! Cabrera has hit 14. Ruth was not the overweight, slow, plodding, one dimensional player that some believe him to be. He was a complete ballplayer. Don't forget he was even a very good pitcher too! Your comeback to the triples might be that they played in odd shaped stadiums. Ruth was in the top 6 in triples 4 times in his career, so even compared to his peers he could move around the basepaths when he needed to. He consistently led the league in runs scored as well. Six times in his career he more than doubled up the 2nd place HR hitter. Nobody will ever do anything like that again in baseball.

What exactly should it tell me? You can compare any two players if you want to. Lets compare them: Andrus: career .272/.338/.345 (.683) OPS+ 82, 34 SB/11 CS per 162, 14.7 career WAR (avg. ~3 WAR/year), 2 all star appearances, 2nd place AL ROY voting at age 20, currently age 24. Florimon: career .217/.275/.322 (.597) OPS+ 65, 13 SB/5 CS per 162, 1.0 career WAR (avg. ~1 WAR/year), currently age 26. You are right, it should not even be a comparison. The guy is having a down year, it happens. It even happened to the great Joe Mauer. Andrus is a very good player, still young enough to improve. Florimon is barely above replacement level, and will be 27 in December.

With his age, the number of innings that shoulder has thrown, and the fact its the second surgery on the same shoulder, I just can't see the recovery going smoothly with no setbacks, that is the reason it was so widely speculated to be probably career ending. The older your body gets the slower it heals, especially with multiple surgery's on the same location.