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mikelink45

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Everything posted by mikelink45

  1. mikelink45
    The loss of Buxton would be terrible. With Sano out we need bats and with our pitching we need defense.
  2. mikelink45
    The real question is why Perkins is up here now when we are pushing for a WC. I love Perkins history with us, but this is not how we should be managing the roster. We should have put another hitter on the bench. Now that it is September it does not matter, but the way this was handled raises lots of questions.
  3. mikelink45
    I just want the team to give the competition a real chance to knock Gibson out of the rotation. If they can't he is #5 and we are okay, but if they do push him I do not want a veterans bonus point to be the difference. Gibson has had 2 good years - not great - out of five. https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/g/gibsoky01.shtml That is not enough to guarantee him anything. What I want to see is one of the video comparisons that I see on so many of these pages - Gibson old versus Gibson new mechanics - has anyone really seen the difference other than the fact he has been jolted by demotions and used against losing teams?
  4. mikelink45
    Yes I did. Duffey amazed us and has not been able to recover his early success. To say that Berrios would have succeeded or failed is impossible, but at the time he was our best bet.
  5. mikelink45
    I hope so - I would like both.
  6. mikelink45
    I like what I have seen, but I am still confounded by the FO not bringing up Gonsalves. If he is our best minor league starter put him in. He could fail, but everyone else has too so lets try. Two years ago we whiffed on the WC because we would not bring up young pitching. Lets not do that again.
  7. mikelink45
    A talent like this should just improve yearly. I think we have a long term greatness that will be pleasure for the fans and the team.
  8. mikelink45
    It is fun to see the exceptional players that move to the majors almost as soon as they are drafted - Griffey, Trout.. wouldn't it be fun if Rooker and Lewis can be on that kind of race track? By the way these two position players look great so far, but what about the pitchers we took in the early rounds? Since they pitch every 4 - 5 days I am having a hard time keeping track of their promise or struggles.
  9. mikelink45
    I really enjoyed this baseball history. Somehow I feel Rooker is going to continue to rise and will get more than a cup of coffee in the bigs.
  10. mikelink45
    Keep bunting, keep stealing bases, keep hitting home runs. This is what we have been waiting for. How fun to see him hit, field and run. We are watching greatness unfold from this raw talent and it is something we should all enjoy.
  11. mikelink45
    There are true biases in this statement and that is why it is destructive. How can you define laziness? Too many times it has been a racial epithet and most of the time it is because someone does not do what you think they should. If Souhan wants to talk about improvements we would like to see Sano make like less Ks, fine, but from everything I read this year Sano has worked hard to be a better player and I cannot wait for him to reach his peak. Unfortunately there is also a fat bias - and based on the agility of Sano at 3B this year I to not think that is justified either. It is up to the team to communicate what is needed and if this is someone's way of motivating Sano they are way off base.
  12. mikelink45
    Must be the manager!
  13. mikelink45
    The inside the park homerun is still the most exciting hit in baseball, triples are second and Buxton did both. He is really giving us what we have been waiting for. Nice that Turley got a couple outs. Now if we can get Gonsalves in the rotation and if Slegers continues this years magic we have a formula for getting to that playoff. What we need now is for Berrios to get out of his slump.
  14. mikelink45
    Some where you might have to figure in offense too - this is just defense and this is huge.
  15. mikelink45
    I said Escobar at 3B because I think Molitor really likes him. When I see him continually in the 3 - 5 holes in the lineup I think it shows that Molitor wants him up as much as possible and now with Polanco back on the rise SS is not a place where he will get a lot of action. I like Sano at third, but I think this fits with what I expect from Molitor.
  16. mikelink45
    Excellent news. Lets move Giminez out and fill some more spots with quality players.
  17. mikelink45
    So much to say here - but first let me say that I like the idea of competing for the Wild Card and I think it is worth making decisions based on that, but not doing a trade. With that said here is what I would like to see: Put Sleger in for Gibson. If Kyle has not established that this is not his year I do not know what else needs to be done. Bring up Gonsalves and put him in the fifth spot in the rotation.Tell Perkins it is nice that he is coming back, but we are trying to win something and this is not the time to lose that roster spot.Put together a real bench. I think we will have Escobar at 3B and Sano at DH now, but I would like some power on the bench and I would have Vargas there and I would have Granite as the fourth outfielder. As I have written elsewhere the defense has been the difference this year and the team ERA would shoot up to 5.33 if the defensive runs saved were the same as last year.Get Giminez off the roster and put Garver in and let him platoon with Castro. Lets get over the love affair with Castros pitch framing - it has not made a difference - look at all the pitching stats.For next year I am fine with Molitor but not his pitching coach. Move on.
  18. mikelink45
    The Twins defense is the difference - especially Buxton. Take the difference from -49 runs to +17 runs saved in defense value and add that to the ERA and suddenly we have a staff with a 5.33 ERA (and probably more since we would need more outs to compensate). Neither the pitching coaches or the catchers have made the difference. The defense along with a better offense has allowed us to surf the series with mediocre teams to our advantage. Castro and Giminez are not the ones that deserve the credit although I constantly see that. Give them a little credit, but I am not convinced we would be worse off with Garver behind the plate. Pre season Fan Graphs had our catching ranked 22nd. http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/2017-positional-power-rankings-catcher/ Jason Castro has 1.84 WAR, 1.18 defensive. Good, but not team changing. Giminez has negatives on all the ratings and cannot hold up as the second catcher. As the signature move of the FO I know Castro came in just before the upswing in record, but I think we have to delve further to find the real causes and judge the real value. In defensive ratings of catchers the best I found for Castro was 16 which is pretty much the place for league average.
  19. mikelink45
    I look at this and think that the Twins had preferable drafting positions because of bad finishes and that should have produced more than what I am seeing in this summary. I really appreciate the summary because it helps to put things in perspective, but I really find the success rate to be both a poor drafting and a poor development issue. We have some really good players already in the majors, but look at the pitching - yikes. The idea of the draft is to help the poor teams and we really blew some opportunities.
  20. mikelink45
    Garver should have been with the team all season, but Giminez is from Cleveland and that counts. The pitching staff with the new catchers are 13 in ERA vs. 15 last year, 12 in runs allowed vs 15 last year (both a result of defense more than framing). K they were 12 last year and this year they are last - 15 - with their new pitch framers.
  21. mikelink45
    The preseason analysts who pointed out the amount of mediocre teams that a lucky or improved team can beat up on was right, the discrepancy is really apparent We are 5 - 19 versus the Red Sox, Indians, and Astros. http://www.espn.com/mlb/standings/grid and 5 - 22 when we add in the dodgers which means we are 54 - 36 versus the rest. Maybe that makes us a wild card team, but no matter, it is definitely a not ready for prime time team - just a fun one.
  22. mikelink45
    I loved this report and I would like to see another at the end of the year and every couple of months during the year. This is out signature move from the FO and tracking the players is fun as far as I am concerned. I am not worried about SSS and conclusions, I like to see how they are doing so that when conclusions and decisions are made I can understand them better. Thanks for the post, my curiosity has been high.
  23. mikelink45
    With the pitching staff and pitching coach that he has had the results are pretty good and I would not object to him returning, but I would hate to have the pitching coach come back. Pitching coaches do make a difference. This year we signed the premier pitch framer - how has that worked - we rank 30 in SO, and 8 in BB and left Garver in the minors so we could have Giminez as an extra pitcher. We are also 26th in batting average allowed. http://www.espn.com/mlb/stats/team/_/stat/pitching/sort/opponentAvg/order/false So what great HOF manager could win with this staff. The complaint is how Molly handled a bullpen - our big additions were Breslow and Belisle for crying out loud. Consistency is not a word I would use for any of them. Our bullpen ranks 27 - http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/2017-positional-power-rankings-bullpen-16-30/ Our young batters have been inconsistent. Sano still strikes out too much, Buxton took half a year to progress, Kepler is stuck in league average, Polanco stunk for a month, Dozier took half a year to warm up (again), our catchers cannot achieve the batting average against that their staff allows, and we have had Giminez and Escobar bat 3 and 4 because we only have a three person no bat bench. How much is FO and how much is manager? I just know that Molitor has exceeded by far what I would expect from this roster.
  24. mikelink45
    Call up - don' trade. I have never seen a graph of reliever performances but I have to believe they are really erratic; great years lead to overuse and then they get good contracts with the next team when their arm is not recovered from the previous year. I prefer to have a bullpen of young arms and I would like to see us fill it up with our potential relievers and put them on rotation rather than designated roles and use them evenly so that they eventually sort themselves out. As for out pitching coach - I did not like what he did last year and looking at our rankings this year I am very unimpressed again. Berrios is struggling, Santana is down - where is our pitching guru - do they need to skip a start, do they need our wonderful pitch framing catcher who has obviously done so much to move us up in the rankings (sarcasm - yes) to call some different pitches? Are they getting predictable? There has to be some answer - 31 pitchers and a minor league full of arms and we are still this bad? There are lots of questions that this raises. http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/board/showthread.php?t=255060
  25. mikelink45
    Good highlights which begs the question - if we continue this unexpected surge who will be the players who step up next? Surely Sano has the potential and Buxton is no where near his peak, but what about perennial question mark Mauer? Can Polanco surge more, will there be a promotion? Stay tune - this is a fun year.
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