mikelink45

I would rather use a pitcher who has a future with us than one that is a one year fill in.

Has anyone noticed how well Larnach is starting to do now? Very impressive. Of course I think Kiriloff should still be getting ABs. They are not just using their starters and it is better to give him experience. A silly question - someone said he was sent down to avoid injury (which I do not buy), but could it be that they feared he might be like Larnach and catch fire at the end of ST which would have meant sending him down would have got a lot more attention? Many of Ted's choices are solid, even if his ability to count to 26 isn't. Maybe we do not count the DH - it is just an add on. I do hate that in NL cities we once again have no DH and he has to sit. How about if they both play by their own league rules. We have Cruz bat, they have a pitcher. That should speed up the universal DH decision. One last thought - I cringe every time I see Kepler leading off.

Dobnak has to be winning everyone over. He just takes the ball and does what he needs to. It's just a wonderful story and excellent talent. I really want him in the starting rotation.

Here is the correction: "As far as Max goes, please correct me if wrong, but hasn't he had a couple bad springs before cranking it up when the season started?" He has not had a couple good seasons. He had one very good season and a bunch of okay to mediocre. We need to see more from him.

I like Smeltzer's story, but I keep seeing others pass him - Thorpe now, the prospects next.

I predict Smeltzer is the first to go if they need room.

The fact that they are a bad team makes our pitching and hitting more suspect.

I suspect that there is room in other practice sessions. When I watched yesterday's game we had Lin in RF - do we really expect him to be there? We had Maggi in LF - do we expect him to make the team? We had Sabato at 1B - his batting this spring is much worse that Kiriloff. We had Riddle and Romine in the lineup. So what would be so hard about getting Alex some at bats? I don't see it.

I certainly hope your optimism is accurate. BPs are hard to predict and difficult to maintain. I agree with cHawk - don't over use the pen. BP games, 3 - 4 RP per game just is too much. If we can only use a starter every 5 days when they are pitching 4 - 5 innings a game then how can we use the RP every 2 - 3 days? Averaging 3 RP per game means 486 RP appearances during the season and then they we try to depend on them in the post season. We need a new analytic for the pen or we need to have a 25 man BP and 15 men on the field and bench - 40 man rosters will be the thing of the future. Notice the RP that we discussed on this site in the off season that are now shut down - Kirby Yates (out for year, surgery right elbow), Rosenthal (groin), Hunter Harvey (Orioles - 60 day IL), Zach Britton (Elbow), Jose Leclerc (Texas - elbow), Tyler Clippard ( six weeks Capsule sprain), Will Harris (Nationals, blood clot in throwing arm) - BP arms blow out, burn out, need rest just like starters.

Adding to my early post - why send Kiriloff out now? Why not wait until the end of ST? It is not like he is going to get his AAA experience in the next month.

You are right, Garlick has two years of MLB experience and according to baseball reference his has accumulated -0.4 WAR. If the Twins rhetoric is to be believed a bad spring would not matter. Have you ever looked at Willie Mays career? He was awful for his first few weeks, but they stayed with him and the rest is a record in the HOF. Not to say Kiriloff would be HOF worthy, but ST stats do not mean anything or Buxton, Kepler, Cave, Simmons would all be cut.

Eddie Rosario this spring - .139 .179 .139 .318 Jake Cave - .143 .357 .190 .548 Byron Buxton - .115 .143 .231 .374 Max Kepler - .067 .067 .067 .133 Miguel Sano - .094 .171 .188 .359 Andrelton Simmons - .059 .111 .059 .170 Alex Kiriloff - .129 .182 .258 .440 What does ST mean? I certainly would have made Kiriloff one of the last cuts and given him time to put things together. Look at my chart - he is third best!

Yes Kiriloff is off to a bad start - but let's look at the BA of some other Twins OF - beyond Garlick and Rooker: Kepler - 067 with a 111 OPS Buxton - .115 .143 .231 .374 Cave - .158 .360 .211 .570 Kiriloff - .129 .182 .258 .440 Which of these players has played himself off the team? Do we have a Garlick, Broxton, Rooker OF? https://bleacherreport.com/articles/1077317-mlb-12-reasons-spring-training-stats-dont-matter

Nicely done - I like the continuity of signing and developing players and then putting them on the Twins roster. Your summaries were great - Arraez was especially enlightening. I always feel bad for players who are career major leaguers, but then I have to remember that if the make AAA they get a nice pay check and they get to play baseball! Thanks.

I cannot disagree with you - I just don't like the way baseball is being played now.

I will take Jack - I like Maeda so this is not one or the other, but Jack won a lot of games with determination and I really enjoyed him. Durability counts a lot for us old timers.

Kaat, Perry Pascual, Grant, Boswell - 1965. Merritt number 6.

You are too kind and obviously root for the minor leaguers and those who have struggled to get to the top. Way to go.

You beat me - if there is ever a hardboiled detective name it has to be Joe Law

I believe there is a good measure of home bias in this report which is fun, but does not mean we are really that much better. The Twins can win when their bats wake up, but here are my differences: I do not know what Garver's upside is. He may have already plateaued so Grandal is by a landslide just like Abreu over Sano. Please Miguel wake up to the fact that a Home Run merely needs to clear the fence and all that exit velocity means no more than the one run a HR is entitled to. However, controlling the bat, less K's, more hits could make you into the value we all hoped for. Polanco vs Madrigal is a wash. Not enough to call it. Same with defense versus offense at SS. I believe in D, but let's see how it plays out. The Twins are much better, but Anderson has really caught the public's eye with his play. Donaldson should be the better 3B, but let's check out his health before we declare a winner. Another wash. Luis Robert does look like what we hoped Byron could be. Buxton just has not lived up to the hype yet and Luis looks like he is going to continue to build his resume. I give this a wash too, but lean towards Robert. RF is probably Kepler, but I am not happy with either choice. LF is difficult. Probably Eloy, but I watched some Sox games in ST and he butchers the defensive side of the OF. I am not as big a fan as most are because I want some balance between O and D. However at this stage the sox have to win because we don't know who will be in LF. DH - Cruz crushes everything including the competition. And the bench with Arraez looks like the best. I put the lineups as equals based on my perspectives above. Now its time to look at the pitching staff. As usual the arms are what win. After I wrote this the Athletic came out with their fantasy rankings so I thought I would look at how that compares the positions: Grandal 3 - Garver 8 Abreu 3 - Sano 15 Madrigal 28 - Polanco not on the 2B list (24 in SS list) Moncada 9 - Donaldson 15 Anderson 8 - Simmons 36 (I know defense does not play fantasy) Eloy - 14, Robert 15, Eaton 82 - Buxton 24, Kepler 38, Kiriloff 74 No DH - Cruz 3 The Sox definitely win on this list.

I hear Pittsburgh could use some help and we have our old Bench coach there. Maybe a little gift to the Pirates. I liked Smeltzer's story when he came up, but a good story can't replace a good arm. Time to move on - the inventory of pitchers coming soon in Dman's post makes it pretty clear.

One of the reasons Randy Johnson became a HOF legend was his height and arm length cut off several feet that his great fastball had to travel and reduced the time the batter had to see and react to the ball. According to this article Randy released the ball 52 feet from the batter - https://radicalbaseball.blogspot.com/2014/11/adding-inches-to-fastball-just-release.html

This is how they hit in the playoffs - just got to convince them it is the regular season and they will be okay. Astudillo and Rooker have both looked good at the plate. In fact we have 8 players hitting 300 so far and Donaldson and Polanco join Astudillo, Rooker, Garlick - Cruz 261, Arraez 250, Garver 235. Celestino 267 has outshined Buxton 150. Cave, Kiriloff and Larnach at all below 167 making a heck of a LF battle - Rooker by a mile at this point. Then there is Sano 125 and Kepler 087. How many wake up with the season and show us again that ST stats don't matter.

No - stay with what we have. No more looking to the left overs and I love left overs - if they are turkey or other great foods.

After watching a number of different teams in ST I have been impressed with many young arms and join others in their concern about lack of big arms in our system to fill these slots rather than reconstructing players who have failed in other systems. Maybe some geek will rewrite a book showing how RP break down and that SP going 7 innings again would be better.