mikelink45

Jepsen gave us a career year and the Twins thought they struck gold. How many times has that happened (think Suzuki). But more bothersome to me is May. I think we have taken a live arm and may have ruined his future. Taking a starting pitcher and then pushing him to twice as many games a year as a reliever reminds me of taking a third baseman and putting him in right field.

My pulse is racing - another great move by the Twins. Go TR, you said you needed to make more waver wire, signing of people no one else wants and you did it.

Desperation and ridiculous statements follow teams that are miserable. What else is there to do? How else do writers get readers, shows get viewers? Stupid statements have been the forte of the media for years. But we do not have to give them any credibility. There have been a lot of difficult players from Ty Cobb to Ted Williams to Manny Ramirez. But we pay for managers, coaches, and FO to deal with difficulty not run from it.

I am fine with the Souhan article. It really has an underlying theme that is more important. We are now hearing about these two players being out of shape, of Sano having a bad attitude...These are the signs of a team that is more than bad on the field. It is a team that is disintegrating from within. Bad Karma, Bad juju, bad everything. It is more than missing Hunter, it is a bad mix of players who are blocking one another from the positions they should play, it is the lack of veterans showing the way, and it is the management from field to FO that is not addressing the issues and clearing the deck to build the right team for the future. As I chose to read this I saw another article in the forums about trading Sano. Maybe we should go back to David Ortiz statements about how the Twins handled him. Maybe we should have some latin American coaches on a team with a growing number of Latin American players. Perhaps we need an owner who steps forward and does something besides telling us it is a system breakdown - may we remind him - it is your team and, therefore, your system.

You have added to my woes. I have been upset by the FO, the manager, the handling of young players, the rotation, the bullpen, the fielding and now you ask us to be upset with the batting! Yikes. But you are right. This team is so clueless that I cannot begin to imagine how they will correct the ship for next year, it is sinking this year. It is time to tinker with the rotation, lineup, and fielding situations for the rest of this lost year. Tell Paul the season is lost! So play Polanco, rotate minor leaguers in and out of the lineup, get Sano out of right field. Your DFA idea has merit, it also has no chance. But Mauer on the bench is okay. This team has to give us something to show that we might actually improve in the next year. The only good news from the last few weeks was Dean's surprise performance in the rotation.

I feel really bad about Joe's demise, but I also am frustrated that the Twins have let this stop them from putting the best lineups and batting orders in place. Please Joe hit .275, if you are pouting because you are hitting third I have no sympathy for you. I do not care how much you earn, you would be on the bench if I could choose and I am not one of your haters. I do not care who gets to spend the Pohlad money, I just want a good team.

Keep the minor league reports going on this site, they have been my solace for the last five years and will continue until we get a major league team in Minnesota.

Is this a surprise. Since TR has come back the prospects have regressed and the replacement level player has thrived (thrived is a relative term on a 11 - 30 team). TR loves those old vets. Just like TR, they come in serve a purpose, give us a few shining moments, take the teams money, and leave us in last place.

Nice response to my thought exercise. Maddon has been creative and that is essential in bringing young talent along.

I thought that I should expand on your thoughts and see how our leaders stack up to the rest of mlb. For example - our top average belongs to Joe Mauer - and he is #41 on the list (ESPN stats). Then we move down to #70 for Miguel Sano and #73 for Park. Brian Dozier makes the top 94 at 83 and the leader board stops there. I know we are supposed to be power versus average according to Twins strategy so I find Park tied at #12 for homers. Followed by Sano tied for #30 with a bunch of players, Dozier and Arcia at 69 (another big group) and Plouffe tied with most of the rest of the league at 82. At #48 (in a big tie) is Sano, our leading RBI guy. Joe Mauer hits our high water mark in a tie for OBP at 15. Park is #14 at Slg Park is also #24 at OPS which I believe is the big one on the list - he is followed by Sano at #56 and Mauer at #59. Last stat - WAR - where Joe Mauer leads our pack - tied at #40 with a few players that also have 1.0 war. I could not spend too much time on pitching - I am too old to put my heart through that, but I did note that Nolasco is #82 in ERA and Hughes is 96 and no one else had enough innings to make the list! Sorry to share this - I have to sit down and recover.

I would replace Santana with Duffey. His last outing was not good, but he has been a model of consistency in a year when every other predictor is negative.

I fear that this is the kind of material we are going to have to write and read this year. After Duffey came back to the fold and pitched poorly last night we lost the one positive thread. With Mauer back to his recent self we do not have the resurgent vet. With the only thing we can look forward to is Park hitting a mistake pitch out of the park it is going to be a slow and boring year on TD. At least your writers look at the minors so we can have something to follow. However, even that has been tempered by the fact that all the great prospects keep falling on their face.

This year is lost in the majors so it is time to experiment, move players up and down as needed, but don't waste innings on players who will not be with us two years from now. What are we gaining by Kinsler or Nolasco or Grossman or Mastrianni getting to play? There are a lot of wasted outs right now and they could be used to explore the future potential of the team. I will not forget how they handled Polanco, Kepler, Buxton, Meyer this year.

The Twins believe in an old vet with diminishing skills, Torii Hunter, to give sanity and perspective to the team, but they do not think of alternatives that might help the new young talents, like maybe a professional baseball counselor. I know that goes against the baseball gods, but the new players are different from the past and, obviously, the Twins have not figured out how to integrate them to the majors, how to help them transition, how to get them to adjust to adjustments. Other teams bring up their young players and watch them thrive - see the Chicago Cubs, but are those players more talented, better adjusted than Berrios, Rosario, Buxton, Kepler, Polanco? We have talent that is beyond my old brain to put a value on, yet we bring them up and down, sit them, play them, and seem to have no answers. Why? We cannot afford to waste this talent, these players who have consistently given us the top rated minor leagues. Some players will flop, but this is too many. Even the players who came up and did not revert develop some questions. Sano is still here and okay, but not the MVP player some speculated. Why? They adjusted to him. He has too much talent to fail, but what have we done to help him succeed at the level where he belongs? Duffey came up and just about carried us to the playoffs despite other collapses. Then when he experiments with a changeup in the spring training he gets sent down for not having sterling statistics, only to reemerge and once again be our best pitcher. On Bullpen calls up are not fixing the damage and then I start to think about our pitching coach. Is he doing his job, is Molitor able to handle this? The FO, I believe, does not deserve anyone believing in them. A mess, much more than that, a disaster. And the fans? Who will council us?

Back spasms are anything but a sign of softness. Everyone who has experienced them knows that they are a real issue and a lot of pain.

I have always wondered what a replacement level team would be - that is everyone at 0 war, the proverbial replacement player that everyone is judged against. I believe Mastrianni and Grossman would qualify here. Fan graphs has the entire team with a collective 4.9 war. That is spread over 9 players (Tommy Milone is one) and nine with a 0 war. 18 players divided in to 4.9 war = .272 war per player - pretty close to replacement level. Then I continue down the list and there are 7 players with negative war for a total of -2.2. The total for the team - 25 players currently on the roster is 2.3 war batting and 1.7 war pitching when I checked the team totals (also fangraphs). Is this the closest thing to a replacement level team that can be found? Does this mean that we are actually over performing with 10 wins instead of 4?

What is the WAR potential of Grossman and Mastroianni? What is our ceiling now. But them around Santanna in center and we are able to maintain our current pace and still say we are playing up to our potential.

I remember ushering in 1961 when we were just so happy to have Major league baseball, then we watched the Twins rise to the world series and it was glorious. We watched the Twins stumble and rise again and again. There were some really bad teams in between the really good. But there were none that were as pathetic, as embarrassing and as lack-luster as this year. If Pohlad cannot see that it is time to clean the entire leadership out and rebuild with some different baseball minds we have no hope for anything now or in the future. This is atrocious.

Molitor is showing his own frustration and his inability to keep perspective. There have been many reasons to bench Rosario this season, this was not one of them. I am even more embarrassed by the Twins and their less than stellar coaching: Mastriano and Grossman!!!??? What the Hell - this is what we get from the top rated minor league in MLB? Are there any Rugby games I can watch instead? This is really pathetic.

Maybe this should be what do we do with all of these pitchers. Tonkin and May looked as bad as Berrios - should they be sent out too? We are stinking all over. Help! I have no suggestions, just angst.

I usually do not debate when people disagree with a statement I make, that is the fun of these forums, but in this case I think that the point you are making would be different if JR was not being intentionally hidden on the roster during a year that actually meant something to the Twins. You can talk about all the other players who were called up or chosen for the roster, but none of them had to be retained for a reason other than that was who the Twins thought was the best person for that 25 man spot. We might disagree on the choice, but it was not a mandate with the other players.

The frustration is that last year a couple games would have made a difference and keeping Graham on the 25 could have cost us those games.

I keep hearing about bringing Doug M up to manage, but isn't he part of the team that is preparing the youth for the majors and that transition has not looked so great. It is not our talent, but the way that we handle it that has me really frustrated. Some challenges are acceptable, but once in a while a player has to take off for more than an exceptional year. If Molitor is not handling rookies correctly I believe he has a boss who could set some expectations. I like this article a lot, but lack confidence that the Twins can do this.

This is an interesting stat - I went on the Twins stats page and saw that Ricky Nolasco leads the team in ERA and strikeouts and Kevin Jepsen leads in wins and saves - those are the stats that summarizes the Twins season.

Seth your optimism and belief in the Twins is amazing. You see plans where others see chaos. And if you are right and there is a plan, I believe your conclusion is one of the biggest understatements of the Twins Daily year.