mikelink45

You justify my continuing criticism of our new think FO. Scrap heap vets do not improve our situation. The Minor league arms need to be used, get over your need to show that you can find the hidden gems - that was what TR was fired for doing. Move on. Get young, get the arms in the MLB. Berrios is the starter and the relievers have a long list. Move on.

I give him a vote of no confidence. 28 years old, at his peak, he is not showing us the skills that we should expect from a key reliever.

I think the Buxton comp is a good one. Bring him up, give him time, let him settle in. The long run is what is important now, but to get there Berrios has to get past and issues in MLB>

I have nothing to add, no wit or wisdom. I just want to follow a long Sano career and enjoy homer after homer.

Maybe TD has a spot for Jason Stark and Mark SImon and Jim Bowden? Just kidding, but I will miss them for their writing. ESPN with no Baseball tonight has forsaken our sport. Your article missed the key to the series - because of bereavement for Santiago we have Bosher back in the pen for three days! One miscellaneous thought - I do not know why, but I am rooting for KC in the match up with Gibson. I know none of the players so I should not want to see someone fail. I just do not have faith in Gibson and with the Twins a player, once established, has to really bomb before change comes and I want to see the rotation get some new faces behind Santana and Santiago

Joe Mauer has a great swing - he always has, but the difference is that hitting a ball hard at a fielder is not as successful as Wee Willie Keeler's dictum - "“Keep your eye on the ball and hit ‘em where they ain’t,” http://baseballhall.org/hof/keeler-willie That is why Mauer hits in to so many DPs. Hard to an infielder makes their job easier. Sano hits them long and hard and it there "ain't no fielder that counts on the otherside of the fence".

The Key for us is giving them steady time at one position - it took the Twins a long time to figure that out, and when they field good they are in a comfort zone that impacts their hitting too. This is the best since Zoilo and Killebrew were on that side or Gaetti and Gagne.

With the recent implosion of relief pitchers on the Twins it is time for Melotokis and Burdi to be up. We have four relief pitchers with eras over 5 including Pressly at 9. Relief pitchers should have lower eras than starters. They are short stints, if there are men on base the previous pitcher gets charged. This is a seriously flawed pen and now that we basically have one month in we should try something new. After starting 5 - 1 we have gone 5 - 10, this is not a good team and we need to develop our talent. Last month fangraphs rated our bullpen #27 http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/2017-positional-power-rankings-bullpen-16-30/ And they had Pressly and Belisle with good years last year listed to be contributing 0.9 WAR to what they expected to be a total bullpen WAR of 2. That does not look like a good prognostication at this point. This is not to say that some might not get turned around, but if we have players who might succeed rather than just compete I want them on the MLB team.

I am glad all of you can participate in this conversation. As an old guy still guiding hiking trips in my 70s and trying to pay for my daily expenses I watch and read about baseball until the adding machine comes out. When players are making more than I make in a lifetime - average players - how can I relate? Here are the salary milestones: http://www.baseball-almanac.com/firsts/first9.shtml None of it makes sense to me. After all I bought gas from Bronko Nagurski - arguably the greatest football player of all time (my choice) from his standard oil station in International Falls. I hope the Twins do all they can afford to do to keep Sano and Buxton and Kepler. I hope we get a winner again and I hope that with all this funny money circulating people will quit obsessing over Mauer's contract. But what do I know, I still like batting averages and win-loss records. http://onthelake.net/connections/nagurski.htm

If Falvey and Lavine are creative as some reported with the Bosher up and down call why not get creative and pull some of these pitchers up for a look - I would love to see us go through a sequence like this one time - what do we have to lose - and if it does not work, are we really worse off? This was a fun pitching day and we do not have a lot of these to obsess over in the Twins world.

In the fifties we had junkball pitchers on every roster - pitchers like Stu Miller who had a windblown balk https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/07/sports/baseball/stu-miller-dies-at-87-blown-off-mound-in-all-star-game.html?_r=0 He won 105 games and accumulated a 27 WAR. "Stu Miller never threw a pitch more than 60 miles per hour, yet he enjoyed a 16-year career that saw him save 154 games and may have had the best changeup that baseball has ever seen." http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1159429-mlb-the-30-quirkiest-pitching-deliveries-in-baseball-history I thought this article on who throws the slowest fastball in 2015 was instructive http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/125659856/mlb-slowest-fastballs-masterson-vargas-lincecum-haren-weaver-buehrle because we would take Buerhle results and two of the pitchers on the list included one former Twin and one Twin at the time. Finally this article from 2014 on how to survive without a fast fastball has some interesting pitchers on it https://www.numberfire.com/mlb/news/1666/how-to-pitch-in-the-major-leagues-without-a-90-mph-fastball All of which leads me to say that Hughes might figure it out and extend his career yet even if he does not get his fastball back. Although this list of the slowest fastballs in baseball in 2016 has only one pitcher that you might want in your rotation http://www.masslive.com/redsox/index.ssf/2016/05/who_throws_the_slowest_pitch_i.html

Molitor's quote is the key to the criticism Polanco received and the most important thing the new FO can do is get the minor leagues in tune with the Twins major league club. We have had awful adjustment issues.

well done. I like your research and data. It does not make Buxton shine, but it certainly gives us some perspective. I am so anxious for him to get this horrible period behind him. Yesterday I posted the worst starts for HOF players. We love baseball because it is filled so many variations, but sometimes they can also drive us crazy.

Now that Tepesch instead of Berrios is coming up I expect the team to soar. (Sarcasm alert).

3.2 War came in his career year. That leaves 1 for the other four years. Still not excited by this. http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/g/gibsoky01.shtml Wins above Average Adjusted - 0.4 I am glad Gibson has one fan - but it would take a lot to get me to join you. From last years horrible year his strike out per walk is down, his WHIP is way up (I value this stat a lot), his FIP is up. He is building off a horrible year with a worst year. I hope you are right and it turns around and he is great, but if so I will be very pleasantly surprised and wrong.

And I believe we specialize in the Blackburn/Slowey types.

I put this up on another essay in TD, but I feel it belongs here: Kyle Gibson - fifth year - record - 32-41 4.72 era 1.42 whip. His third year was good, his trend is not. -0.4 WAR for his career. Mejia did not deserve to stay up on a good club, on this club he was outperforming Gibson and we need to try something new. Of course I want Berrios, but based on the luck Twins have in bringing up their superstar MiLB players and converting them to MLB my expectations remain low. http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/g/gibsoky01.shtml I would love to see Gibson prosper, but I am getting the sense that he has peaked and as our #3 rotation guy we are hurting. Of course the question is - beyond Berrios, who is ready to make the jump, especially in this organization that seems to have a "Wall" between MiLB and MLB and we have not done well at getting players over it. I have tried to look at comparable statistical starts to see how Buxton compares. Since we have touted him as a superstar I looked at the worst starts of HOF careers and found this article: http://www.azsnakepit.com/2012/4/11/2938842/worst-starts-to-hall-of-fame-careers-cooperstown Even though the WAR figures are the same for Buxton and the worst of the starts - Brooks Robinson, the batting lines are so far apart that Buxton would have to start a new category of his own. Is he pressing? Is he unconcerned? Who is working with him? This is painful to watch.

Kyle Gibson - fifth year - record - 32-41 4.72 era 1.42 whip. His third year was good, his trend is not. -0.4 WAR for his career. Mejia did not deserve to stay up on a good club, on this club he was outperforming Gibson and we need to try something new. Of course I want Berrios, but based on the luck Twins have in bringing up their superstar MiLB players and converting them to MLB my expectations remain low.

Nice to get these thoughts. I would love it if you listed the top four or five at every Twins position for this year. Not their potential, but their current ability to be in the bigs. I keep reading about all these players and try to think who comes up if Dozier or Sano or anyone else goes down. I do feel bad for Garver and would love to see him get a chance.

As much as I enjoy these minor league summaries, I hope I do not have a season in which I have to find more pleasure in these than in the major league results. It seems like we have been doing so well in the minors for the last five years (or more) and that does not translate to the majors. What must be done?

Thanks for the enjoyable opening. If you did not have to state a few Twins facts the entire article might have been fun, but with the Twins reality eventually surfaces. We have 40% of our starting rotation functioning, we have 25% of our bullpen functioning, 33% of our outfield, 33% of our lineup batting over .250 and we are in last place - I am shocked.

Reality can be so depressing. The mirage that was the first week created a massive balloon and when it popped the casualties among fans who wanted to believe was devastating. This is the same rotation plus Mejia, this is a patchwork bullpen with one FA signing that was not even a closer and we expected what? It was so fun to been over 500. But now we are three times through the rotation - a magical moment in my assessment and we are have lost the glow. The bats are weaker than we thought and the arms are delivering what was expected. Something needs to happen and a lot of creativity would be welcome.

Wonderful thought exercise. I have been frustrated by the love of Pressly who demonstrated again today why I do not love him. MPH is not the measure of a relief pitcher. I always thought that the relievers ERA should include the runs scored by any of the runners that they inherit. They can be charged to the starter too, but the job of a reliever is to put out the fire and if all the runners score and then they get the batters out I am not counting that as a 0.00 era. I am also amazed by the Hold stat. Yikes is that perverted. We have not gotten a good measure for relievers and, like you, I think the save is ridiculous.

I love a pleasant surprise - but the cynic in me says - too early. His trend has been a steady increase in ERA with a one season dip, so I am not ready to see him as a number 2 in the rotation. http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/santihe01.shtml

Lets not mess with another pitcher like we did May and go back and forth with tantalizing suggestions that he could be a starter but is a reliever now. He was a reliever and he is doing well - don't mess with success. Right now Haley, Breslow, Tonkin, Belisle look like replacement level at best pitchers. I do not trust Pressly to be consistent and Rogers and Kintzler look good. If you take Duffey out of this mix it looks really bad for the long run. http://www.espn.com/mlb/team/stats/pitching/_/name/min/minnesota-twins On the other hand Mejia and Santiago (to my shock) have looked decent in the rotation behind Santana who is off the charts in the small sample size while Hughes and Gibson look like what they have been the last two years - not much. I would love to see Berrios again, but putting Duffey in the rotation limits his use and impacts the pen while doing only minimum to upgrade the rotation. At this point Duffey is a starter only if we run out of starters. So if we think of rotations needing 7 - 8 starters to make it through the season and Berrios is currently number 6 and Gonsalves is an injury risk, who are numbers 7 and 8?