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mikelink45

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Everything posted by mikelink45

  1. mikelink45
    I want the recognition of younger players in the minors. They deserve the opportunity to advance instead of watching a Gong Show reject list filling spots all season. If they come up and have rough spots we can look ahead. The players the FO has brought in have rough spots followed by a downward spiral. We the Twins slowly losing their way to 500 the fans need something new and shiny to come to the park and see. Give us Garver (I too am totally obsessed with the fact that Giminez batted fourth) and lots of new pitchers. Colon going for his home country record is not sustaining my interest, Gibson bouncing up and down and staying the same is not productive and young pitchers waiting and waiting in the minors is ridiculous. Belisle will be gone (I hope) at the end of the year so get him out of here and bring up a young pitcher. Sit Taylor Rogers down for a while, he is toast right now. More than anything put some bats on the bench and NEVER EVER bat Giminez fourth again.
  2. 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?
  3. 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!
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. 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?
  9. 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.
  10. 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.
  11. mikelink45
    I am not ready to give up on Polanco - His scouting reports - by Seth and others have been too good for us to end up here. There is an adjustment to be made, but how do we do it without having a AAA option? Put him on the 10 day DL and work with his head? Send him to Winter Ball...are MLB players eligible for the fall league? I seriously doubt that Dozier gets traded. His batting this year drops him into the middle to lower level of 2B. Not much to get for that level. And who can say that Gordon will not follow the same pattern once he crosses to the MLB diamond? I suspect that the Adrianza move put a lot of mental pressure on Polanco and he has not been able to handle it.
  12. 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.
  13. 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.
  14. mikelink45
    This is not an impressive list. I would not trade in this division.
  15. 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.
  16. mikelink45
    Has anyone checked out Dozier? .247 and 16 homeruns. https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/d/doziebr01.shtml His fielding, his batting do not make him elite this year. Even in Fantasy https://www.fantasypros.com/mlb/rankings/2b.php he does not make it. So what do we have now for trade bait? Santana and Kintzler. We might have missed the big opportunity. But what we have is not enough.
  17. mikelink45
    I am not sure how to respond to this posting. It is really good and what I have been hoping for the last two years, but I have been so disappointed and so impatient for the minor league relievers to show up that I am unable to get my enthusiasm going again. I just hope you are right because I do not believe in trading for anything but the really elite BP pitchers and that is not going to happen.
  18. 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.
  19. 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?
  20. 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.
  21. mikelink45
    I do not mind Haley being outrighted, but based on the way we have treated him and the impact he has had on prior decisions it is a shocking move.
  22. mikelink45
    That surprises me too.
  23. mikelink45
    That is a wonderful response. Thank you. This is something I have been thinking about a long time and I hope you do a full posting with notes on this topice - you are our source.
  24. mikelink45
    I am not comfortable with the process - Gibson is still a pitcher we might need and what is the message? The first time was to go down and work on some things, but this time he came back and seemed to be doing better than any other 3 - 5 rotation pitcher. His attitude has to be in the dumpster right now. But I am finally seeing the light, instead of a closer we will have a starter who will go through the lineup once and then go sit his old body down while the bullpen picks up all the rest of the innings. Maybe we should have kept Gibson up as his caddy and plan on him coming in to pick up innings 4 - 7!
  25. mikelink45
    Nice to see five twins in the 100 but a little surprised that Rooker did not get in the list. Considering Granite's season I am surprised to see him so low on the Twins list. I might have jumped 13 - 16 up to the 5 - 8 slot. What I would love to see, but do not know how to find it is a list for MLB and the Twins that puts them in order of their MLB readiness. For example I keep reading about Wander Javier but I know he is not anywhere near getting ready for a call up - who is. Based on what I have read here, not what I have seen myself, I would think it would be GraniteHildenbergerGonsalvesCurtissPalkaGordonRomeroChargoisRosarioPlayers like Kiriloff are there on reputation and hope not performance.
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