Mr. Brooks

Despite the hype that Fleck and his allied local media tried to pump all preseason, this team just plain old doesn't have the talent to compete with Big 10 teams, not even the ones in the bottom half. Maybe Fleck is a good enough recruiter to change that eventually, but let's not give him credit for something he hasn't done yet. I'd also be more tolerant and open minded of Fleck's style, if he would simply be honest about the process and where they are at in it. I get that he doesn't want to disparage his players, but when he goes out of his way to try to convince everyone that is a talented team, and will be better, then it's fair for me to hold him to that.

Well it was clearly sarcasm aimed at the OP, who seemed to be claiming the Morrison injury is an invention to justify his poor results. Since sarcasm doesn't always register online, I'll state definitively now that I am not the one who believes the surgery was unnecessary.

Great to see a good performance by Gonsalves, regardless of the opposition. Hopefully it provides him some confidence.

And Dozier isn't even selling it as well as Morrison is, with his unnecessary hip surgery.

Once bitten, twice shy. My oldest child will be 15 in March and has never seen the Gophers beat Wisconsin. Fair or not, Fleck will win me over when he beats Wisconsin, and not a moment before.

1) Santana makes complete sense. He tried to come back, he didn't have it. His velocity was way down, and he was being hit all over the ballpark. There were no signs of improvement. Who gains by him continuing to pitch? All he'd be doing is putting more miles on his arm for no return on investment. Continuing to get hammered with diminished velocity isn't showcasing for his next team, if anything it hurts his value. He has no possible incentives that he can reach, despite your earlier suggestion of that being a motive of the club. Here are all of his incentives: 200 innings: Not even close to within reach. Cy Young: No chance. Gold Glove: Already missed too much time to be considered. All-Star: Already passed. That's all of them. Last year he put off treatment until Spring. That decision turned out awful for him. So, he decided to get a head start on treatment this year, knowing he's going to need as much time as possible to be healthy to audition for someone next Spring. I don't understand how that makes less sense to you than a conspiracy to force treatment on him as a form of punishment. 2) You seem to be correlating any disagreement with you as a stance that the FO is great and everything is going to be just fine. You certainly won't find me saying that anywhere. It doesn't have to be all in on one side or the other man. I've seen things I like, and I've seen things that I don't understand. I don't know if these guys will succeed or fail. But regardless of my opinion of the FO, or yours, when I see an accusation like the one you are making regarding Santana, I'm going to debate it. It reeks of a theory that can only be born out of a biased decision to create the most negative possible explanation for anything within the FO's reach.

So you are going with #2. The Twins forced him to get a medical procedure against his will. The good news for him is that he should get many times his lifetime earnings in the lawsuit. And, I'd expect prison time for those involved as well.

Tradesmen are never going to have some amazing ability that allows them to do their job multiple times better than every other tradesperson can. Sports are not similar to other lines of work.

Which are you suggesting? 1) The Twins are lying about the injection Santana received in his finger? 2) The Twins forced Santana to have a medical procedure done, against his will, for the sole purpose of shutting him down as a form of punishment? Both are extremely far fetched, enough so that perhaps you should step back and ask yourself if you are being completely objective in your evaluation of them.

So you think they are bad executives, don't know what they are doing, and aren't trying to win. But at the same time you think that the Red Sox or Cubs are going to offer them high level positions? That's more than a little bit contradictory.

That's all fair, those types of posts aren't what I'm pointing to. I've read his mlb performance described as awful, terrible, pathetic, etc. Those are bizarre descriptions, unless one completely disregards half the game.

I'm as disappointed in the lack of offensive progress as anyone. But reading these Buxton threads, it's like defense doesn't matter at all. Preventing a run is theoretically as good as producing one. Buxton has 7 bWAR in 302 career games.

If it doesn't matter what Mauer makes, then I never again want to hear about budgetary constraints when we come in second place for a FA signing. Can't have it both ways. Either the Twins are mid market with budgetary constraints, and need to make every dollar count, or the money doesn't matter and they should be able to top any offer for Machado and/or Kershaw.

4 times in 20 is kind of a lot, IMO. That's 32 times over a 162 game season. Why is he sitting at all in favor of Gimenez? Who is more likely to be a contributor to the next Twins contender, Austin or Gimenez? I'm not making any judgements off one game, but it's absolutely a data point that goes against him, IMO.

Do his August stats count from last year?

His k and bb rates in AAA indicate someone who is struggling mightily, IMO. If he's striking out at this rate in AAA, he's got little chance against MLB pitching.

I'm not convinced Mauer is better than Austin in 2019. In fact, Austin has been objectively better in 2018.

New Mexico State might be the worst team in the country. I doubt they'll win a game all year. So, there really isn't anything that can be gleaned from this game, IMO. I think they need to change the bowl selection process. Scheduling these pathetic creampuffs in an attempt to gain cheap Bowl eligibility is one of the biggest things that turns me away from college football.

I'm as frustrated by Buxton's season as anyone. But, it's fair to note that at age 24, Buxton has almost 3 times as many mlb WAR as Grossman has in his career.

That table from bref is comparing his stats to career stats. Comparable by age is the more relevant table. They also are offensive stats only, they don't count for his really good defense. And again, that's great if you expected more. I was simply establishing that those weren't necessarily expectations shared by scouts or his prospect status.

For starters, it's more than a little misleading to include his 7 plate appearances in 2015 to calculate his season averages for counting stats like HR and RBI. His batting average may disappoint you, but I'm just saying that is only one stat. Why focus so much on that one stat? He's improved his OBP and SLG each year. He's taken 55 walks to just 81 strikeouts this year. And defense matters too. He's a pretty good defensive outfielder, that is why someone might want to look at something that attempts to capture the whole picture, like WAR. And that's fine that you personally had higher expectations, nothing wrong with that. I just wanted to establish that objectively, those expectations weren't shared industry wide. He's lived up to the expectations that his prospect and milb status would have projected.

I know, that's why I pluralized jersey. The sensor would already be sewn into the uniforms when the player receives them, after each player has been properly measured while in their batting stance. I can't imagine they'd cost more than a few bucks each.

What about all the other things a player brings to the table aside from batting average? Overall, he's a slightly above average MLB player. Nobody realistically projected him to be better than that. If he's failing to meet your expectations, then I'd suggest your expectations were too high. Not every player will become a star. That doesn't make them a disappointment. Kepler's projected ceiling was a complimentary player to the stars that were supposed to be Buxton and Sano. Kepler has lived up to that expectation.

Couldn't they just sew a sensor into each player's jerseys? Then the computer can track each player automatically, no manual adjustment needed.

League average to above average is pretty much what most every scouting report projected his reasonable ceiling to be. I mean, I can certainly understand being hopeful that he'd outshine his projections. But that's a far cry from suggesting he should be demoted just because he's "only" a league average player. Getting league average production, for the league minimum, from a 16 year old international signing from Germany, who was never an elite prospect? That's a huge win for the Twins scouting and development. We need more success stories like this from that department, not less.