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mikelink45

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Everything posted by mikelink45

  1. mikelink45
    Good game - the Twins showed a lot - getting past two straight bad starts by their two best starters and a one game bullpen implosion, some shabby defense and then the inexplicable passed balls to win the game and the series. With a little luck they could have swept the series. What a fun year.
  2. mikelink45
    I have wanted to know more about the Twins draftees and this report really gave me insight in to the top two. Very nice to see. I would love to see them really fast track to the majors. Now I am curious about the other draftees.
  3. mikelink45
    Very nice. I like seeing the young players moving up the ladder. Lets concentrate on some of the talent that was here before the last draft too.
  4. mikelink45
    I love to see that the pitchers are going so well. I am tired of the scrap heap moves of the big team and anxious to see promotions within the system to set us up with real prospects. What is Rooker's slash line? I am impressed with his power, but is he doing anything else? I hope you will give us a draft update periodically to see where our players are in their development and pro transition.
  5. mikelink45
    This is fun baseball and I wonder if some of this doesn't relate to frustration the players had with the trades and events that took place after their losing week at LA. I feel like they put a chip on their shoulder towards the FO and they are going to show the world that they are not in the sellers division. I love it They seem united and are winning even with Gibson who has to be replaced in the rotation - maybe he can be in the pen. He has 1 - 3 inning ability.
  6. mikelink45
    Enns struggles, Gonsalves has a good AAA start. Will be start to recognize our own assets at some point?
  7. mikelink45
    I do not like the way we handle young players and I have seen so many of our best stumble along the way and wonder who is there to guide them. At the same time Vargas is the sacrificial lamb to a bullpen full of pitchers we do not use. Vargas could have stayed up and Enns could have come up for a turn this weekend. BP pitchers that we are not using are eating up bench spots we could use. Vargas has to have his confidence shaken by frustration. Granite did well and then went down and had a little funk - who would not feel bad with a demotion. Our minor league pitchers keep watching a revolving door of pitchers since opening day and yet the only ones we tried were Jorge and Turley. I hope Enns does well but I have no attachment to him like I do the names that Seth writes about each day.
  8. mikelink45
    I am not excited, but enjoying the ride. No anticipation of playoffs, but glad to be competitive. No I would not engage in more buying. What I wonder about is the messages that players perceive from FO moves. I liked your insights on the clubhouse after Garcia and Kinzler and I wonder how the young pitchers we have in the minors feel about all the trash pitching we have had in MLB while they continue to wait. And now Enns comes in and immediately moves in ahead of them.
  9. mikelink45
    More than feeling sorry for their plight, perhaps we should question their leadership. The team has some fine young players who could use the leadership and clutch performance of two vets.
  10. mikelink45
    This lineup is the most frustrating of the year for me. We do not carry a big bat on the bench so we have GIMINEZ BATTING FOURTH. This would not happen in any of our minor leagues - no one would bat him fourth. Man up Joe - Cole is a tough pitcher and you are getting $23 million to be out leader. But why do we not have a bench? Why not a Vargas or Park or Palka or anyone who might be able to drive a pitch. I cannot imagine what Hammel must have thought when he saw this lineup. He might have taken a quick glance to the calendar to make sure we were not have a return of April 1. I think that we can send all the position players out and bring up all our shortstops. Speaking of confused - what must Garver think when he sees this and is not even given a short call up?
  11. mikelink45
    When our major league lineup has Escobar and Giminez are batting 3/4 we could not compete in AAA. This is a joke. No bench, no real hitters to call on when we need them. I have never seen a team that ignores the bench like the Twins have. Players have to be out of position and are asked to be something that they are not. One big bat on the bench would change many things and maybe a catcher that can hit like mister Garver. I have to say it once more - Giminez batted cleanup!
  12. mikelink45
    It is always pleasing to read about good pitchers in the Twins system, just frustrating to not see them get a chance to outperform Colon and the other fillers.
  13. mikelink45
    I am so glad to read this article. The farm system has to deliver and the coaches need to help them deliver. A great team is part of a great system. We once had one, but then baseball evolved and we did not. So what does our system record look like at this time and what can we do to resolve it. So far the FO gets an incomplete for the year. I have seen too many Wilks, Colons, Breslows for my fandom rating and it will be good to see us starting down another road. Coaching - C- We over performed so we need to give some credit. Molitor takes a lot of heat, but many things are at the direction of the FO. But what about the pitching and hitting coaches? Are we getting players to reach their potential, are we getting them to adjust to higher levels of performance when they get to MLB? The Farm System. C Considering the players we have called up - Jorge and the ones we have not called up - Gonsalves, the reluctance for using our supposed bullpen depth the Twins system has not provided us with the depth and support we need, although it might be the FO and Coaches who are responsible for this. Pitching Staff. D Right now, how many are performing at a high level or even the level you anticipated? Fielding. B+ OF, C, 1B, 3B are A and Dozier does well at 2B, but SS is too much of a question mark. Batting. C- Sano is in a poor place right now and needs to right the ship again, too many Ks, Buxton may be ready to have another September surge but a full season would be nice. Rosario has been at his best and Kepler seems to be stuck while Dozier is down and Polanco has disappeared. The catchers can't hit, Mauer is a walking machine but can't get to second base without help and when Escobar spends a series as the clean up hitter it is not good.
  14. mikelink45
    Gibson raises a different question for me - one I wrote too much about last year - what good are our pitching coaches? Our young pitchers struggle too much when they get to MLB. Other systems get some really good results when young pitcher jump in to the majors, but our fail rate (or at least the rate by which we get underwhelming performances) is too high and has been for a while. We have not heard much about our pitching coach and the new system, but I note that everything we do seems to be reaching into the waste basket of baseballs waiver bin instead of progressing more of our own. I have no answer for Gibson but I would like to see how he does in another system.
  15. mikelink45
    I have been too confused by the current FO to predict what they will do. For me the people you trade are the ones you have potential replacement for in the system. So the middle infield and one catcher and one outfielder fit that model as does one or two starting pitchers. Sano, Romero, Gonsalves, Mejia and either Santana or Garcia makes a rotation for 2018. And in the bullpen anyone can go, we do not have overwhelming quality out there.
  16. mikelink45
    It has been a really fun year and I hate to throw in the towel on the year at this point. They have given us quite a story line and maybe they will find some more magic to keep the second half worth following, but they never had a chance to be elite, just fun. Flipping players has worked for the White Sox because they had Sale and Quintana, if we had had them we would not have been in a position where we needed to trade them. The return on players in trades is really pathetic and should have happened much earlier if we were going to get value. When all your trade chips are down so are the trade offers. I am all in for trading for value, but more interested in getting minor league players to the bigs. My only concern is that when we have players ready in the minors we do not translate that success to the majors. What can be done about that? I am looking around the league at teams that have brought up minor league stars who turned in to major league stars - more than I have ever seen in such a few years, yet our players come up and at best show potential to be good. Is there something wrong in our approach to promotions and development?
  17. mikelink45
    A minor move in a season of minor moves. Fills a minor league roster, but nothing to be excited about. Losing Murphy is not a big issue either, of course a 33 year old never going to make the majors guy is not the most exciting fill in for him and we dropped Rohlfing - Again. The big question is still when Garver comes up.
  18. mikelink45
    I am uncertain that we can get anything for our available players. They just do not have the same value we see on the national level. I would hate to have high expectations even if we do sell. This is a hard time because we have a lot of needs.
  19. mikelink45
    Good article. Fortunately for most of us we went to sleep while the Twins played in LA. But we know that we are not elite and the Dodgers are so that is not a surprise, i blame lack of bench for some of our problems and I would have had both Buxton and Sano on the 10 day and Vargas and Garver on the team. No way is Escobar my number 4 batter in the series. I enjoyed your musings, but we have all been frustrated by the inability to move minor leaguers up - bullpen and the real starters - Gonsalves and Romero, Garver...Lots of litter pick ups until Garcia. If we had closed the deal right away he might have given us a shot at LA too. Polanco bothers me because I am not sure I see how they can get him out of this funk. They mismanaged his early options and they cannot use the minor leagues. Winter Ball is all that is left - can that bring back his promise. We always heard he had a bat, even though his glove was weak. But I have felt that 2018 is more important all year. I look at what we have and the best we can hope for is #2 wildcard - I would rather we put together the team that might take us to a series. You have many really good points so I will not elaborate. Thanks for helping us get our frustrations bundled in to one place.
  20. mikelink45
    Look to the minor leagues. Maybe they should have had Sano on the 10 day and Vargas up. They need more than Escobar hitting 4th against the Dodgers. This was a mismatch again and I keep looking at the Bench. I know we want 25 men in the bullpen, but your use chart says that we are not using all those relievers anyway. Polanco has really hurt the team with his performance and he now occupies one of those rare bench spots along with Giminez - It would have been nice to have Garver to PH instead.
  21. mikelink45
    This is not an impressive list. I would not trade in this division.
  22. mikelink45
    We have such a weak bench that with Buxton and Sano down we have Escobar hitting fourth against the Dodgers. Can't someone figure this out. We have minor league options for those spots.
  23. mikelink45
    I am a little confused by the continuing hate on Molitor. I agree this switch was a mess, but I am not sure that MLB and its umpires handled it professionally and I agree that MLB needs to start announcing to the crowd what is going on in these prolonged interruptions - remember this is the year they are addressing length of game - how about length of interruptions? Molitor has been given a lot of young and therefore inconsistent players from the FO. The rotation help that this FO has thrown at the team this year is a joke. If they wanted a Garcia type pitcher they should have gone after him in the off season and skipped the Tepesch, Wilf, and all the others I refuse to continue to remember. Dozier had not value last year according to reports, with this years performance he has less. Molitor played Sano in RF last year, but was that his decision or was he following orders? The Twins called up Polanco for ridiculous reasons and we lost the ability to send him back down to get himself right - winter ball ahead? The only other FO effort was getting a better catcher. We did, but the raves stop here. How many more runs have we surrendered than our opposition have given us (72)? How big would that be if didn't have a great pitch framer? We are currently 24th place among teams on run differential. I do not care if Molitor stays or goes, but I also feel that there are very few managers who really impact the W-L records dramatically. How many more games would we have won with a different manager? I am harder on coaches. I wanted the pitching coach to go last year and I am just as adamant this year. I think pitching coaches actually have a greater impact on the team than the managers.
  24. mikelink45
    Glad to see Santiago continuing his brilliance in AAA, let's leave him there. Rucinski is a player that I really do not know much about but he looks brilliant in AAA, but was terrible in MLB. What is his back story. Does he have a future? I know AAA is usually not as rich in true prospects as AA, is that true this year too?
  25. mikelink45
    The minor leaguers are the hope of the future, and if the FO does not get caught up in its own stubborn sense of significance they will come up and be part of this years success.
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