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mikelink45

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Everything posted by mikelink45

  1. mikelink45
    There are many guys who have succeeded without throwing 95+. On Baseball Savant I see the speeds of Tyler Rogers, Kyle Hendricks, and Zach Grienke with 4 seam speeds well below 90, yet they are very successful. What I see at the top is an amazing change in velocity from fastball to curve - DeGrom 99.2 to 83.3,, Cole 97.7 - 83.4. To my amazement Griffin Jax had and average 4 seamer at 92.6 and curveball at 79.9 - which should be really good. Is that what the team sees in him? John Gant has 92 - 74.7. Michael Pineda had a 90.6 4 seam and no curve ball, but an 81.2 slider. Bailey Ober was 92.3 with a 75 mph curveball. Joe Ryan is the slowest of all these pitchers - 91.2 and had 72.7 curveball for contrast. Lots of stats, but the results say Pineda Ryan and Ober were our top pitchers last year.
  2. mikelink45
    Must be Warren Spahn - greatest left hander ever, Milwaukee Brave and my favorite, but never got ranked the best, just won 20 games in each of 13 seasons. If it was you were a lucky guy.
  3. mikelink45
    Not an ACE, but the way Baldelli handles pitchers an ACE would not work here. I just want a steady strong and relatively young arm with experience.
  4. mikelink45
    I enjoyed this, but would not bring Cruz back. I have proceeded through the misery and disappointments that aging creates and I think we have enough history to know that Cruz is on the downward slide - as much as I loved to see him in the lineup, it is time to more on. So glad you stuck a pin in the Simmons is an elite fielder balloon! No more needs to be said. Pitching is everyone's guess. I really want the stress on our young prospects - not Jax, Gant, Barnes - they are not in my SP rotation thoughts, but there are many others in the minors who are ready and need to grow in the bigs. Old pitchers like Greinke, Kershaw are not my wish. I want a young steady player with years ahead of him - kind of like Berrios. Oh well.
  5. mikelink45
    In the past that was true. Now I am not so sure.
  6. mikelink45
    and the difference between 89 losses and 90 losses means???? Bad is bad, if they played against better teams they could have achieved the magical 90. ?
  7. mikelink45
    True, but if I was a pitcher I would not come to the Twins if they are absent Polanco and/or Buxton.
  8. mikelink45
    I am not pushing for him, just using him as an example of how easy it is for teams to fill the corners in the OF, DH, and 1B. That is why their value is so low. However, before you knock C. J. - he had a 3.4 WAR last year. Only Buxton and Polanco had more for the Twins.
  9. mikelink45
    I am not advocating their trade, just assessing trade value and they are the most valuable non-pitchers we have. Young, under control, middle diamond positions. DH/1B/LF/RF are not positions of high value. So how much do we want to get a really good pitcher?
  10. mikelink45
    I just cannot be excited about these three - Stroman is the only one I would sign. Kluber is at the end of the road and we do not have to continue to offer long term care to aging pitchers. Thor has too many injuries and just cannot be counted on the way Berrios did making every start.
  11. mikelink45
    You made me laugh. Of course we have a problem. Winning 90 in a division in which teams 2 - 5 are all below 500 is not a monumental feat. When the Rays win 90 in the American East that is a feat. There is something that impacts the central teams when they get into the post season and maybe it is the fact that they are not hardened by the competition during the season. We were 13 - 20 versus the East, 37 - 39 in our own division, and 13 - 20 versus the West. And 10 - 10 interleague. We often fool ourselves and think we are better than our record - even this year that might be true.
  12. mikelink45
    We hope
  13. mikelink45
    Okay - not sure I can remember, but I hope you are wrong
  14. mikelink45
    How many have Maeda and Pineda had? Or Kiriloff?
  15. mikelink45
    If we want to have value in trades it is Lewis and Martin that will garner value outside pitching prospects. The DH, 1B types are everywhere and do not bring a big return.
  16. mikelink45
    Our surplus has the least value on the trade market. Look at Cron - he outhits all those we list and yet has bounced around year after year.
  17. mikelink45
    I think that the FO pushing Colina into an unsuccessful MLB debut when he was not ready led all of us to believe that they saw this pitcher as a future part of the BP. We signed Pineda when we knew he would be out a year recovering from surgery. Now we drop a young, seemingly talented young arm in a pitcher starved year because he had two operations. It makes no sense to me. And the PR hit that moves like this make - like not giving Maggi an AB - stuns me.
  18. mikelink45
    I think we have another ex-Twin that we can see succeed and wonder why the Twins were so willing to give up on him.
  19. mikelink45
    Let's wait to anoint him until we see it play out next year. We have been hoping for a long time and if he is turning the corner I am really pleased, but I did not see enough this year to make that leap.
  20. mikelink45
    Get an older baseball guy to be a bench coach - someone that can balance and slow down Baldelli's analytic obsession.
  21. mikelink45
    No doubt at all
  22. mikelink45
    Your grade is fair and accurate. The fact that we played 500 ball for the second half does not rescue Rocco. With the expectations that we had for the team beginning the season we would have been upset with a 500 team, but this team was not 500, that was half a season when all the pressure was off them in the worst division in baseball. I do not like the way he handles his starters, and the artificial limit on pitches which is well below 100 - and I always thought that was an artificial number. Colome is part of a bad bullpen management. He said he did not use designated closers yet he continued to use Colome in that role. Combine the SP going to few innings with a poor BP that was then expected to cover over half of every ball game and we have the mess that presented itself this year.
  23. mikelink45
    I agree - the bats that are not in MLB are not impressive when you get past the top 3
  24. mikelink45
    Somehow the Cardinals were able to extract what they needed from him and yes - he helped them. Maybe Shoemaker was right, the veterans do not take well our pitching instructions.
  25. mikelink45
    Painful, but you ended like the Twins with some positives. You might add some preseason months when we signed Happ and Shoemaker.
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