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mikelink45

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Everything posted by mikelink45

  1. mikelink45
    The Yankees need a third baseman and Plouffe would fit well here. Look for injuries and problems and sell all that can be moved if they are 27+ Clear the logjam. Mauer can't be moved, Park should be held, but after that move the remaining three infielders. Gibson may be the only starter who can be moved, but once again the logjam of these long, pricey contracts to Vet starters is eating up roster room. I would rather lose with youth that be mediocre with the veterans. And please, if Molitor is secure, maybe we need to look at this coaches and start some movement, just for the sake of showing some life and concern.
  2. mikelink45
    This season has spun out of control and I do not see anyone having an answer. The Vets we have are worse than the young players, because they have already gone through the growing pains, they can only go downward. Not sure how Hughes got anything above an F - he is our ACE and signed for three more years. Ricky is coming back down to Earth after a decent start. Gibson should come back to the pen and earn his spot again, I hate to see the young players punished and Gibson is no longer young and with potential. Jepsen is an F - he has continued to fail in his role as the closer and that is how he should be judged. Handling of young players (calling them up and putting them on the bench) and coaching them to succeed gets the team another F. Finally, TR, at a minimum is a D. He is the architect of this tumbling structure.
  3. mikelink45
    I like the thought process. If we are truly at the bottom and we know the future players let them play. KC struggled with its wave of talent for a few years but let them play through the learning curve. We bring up players and put them on the bench because we are so good. Kepler, Polanco...get time wasted watching others play poor baseball. What are they learning? May has been a conundrum. What are they going to do. Is he counting the days until Free Agency? Buxton is hitting, Kepler is hitting lets get going.
  4. mikelink45
    when I read this I am saddened. There are places to agree and disagree, but no place for optimism for this years team. We have a wonderful team of DH's and if we ever get to a place where no one has to go in to the field we will be champs.
  5. mikelink45
    Sorry Seth, but I really have a lot less rosy picture of this teams handling of prospects and minor leaguers. I started with the Twins by ushering their first year and continue to watch, read, and care, but have been really disappointed in the developmental progress of our minor leaguers and their transition to the majors. With all the money spent in baseball I think that there needs to be more money and better coaching - sometimes one to one - to get these players ready for the majors and then ready for year two. Not all will make the leap to the majors and that is no one's fault, but there are some special players who deserve more of a chance. And fans who are waiting.
  6. mikelink45
    The moves are just bizarre. What is the plan? Mastriani (you have to be kidding). Where is the improvement. Graham - worth a spot all last year, but expendable this year??? Of course Fien is gone, why did he come north? Milone, well he is okay, but shouldn't we have gotten something for him? I mean we gave something to get him. This is the first time I have seen a roster constructed by pulling names from a bag. Some teams think about age, potential, position, and ability. What are we thinking about? Why don't we dfa major league coaches, randomly pick some from the minors and start over there. But of course lets leave the maestro TR in place.
  7. mikelink45
    This is the Twins. The article is well written, but easy to write because this is what the Twins do. They hire and stay the course. They do not make changes, especially changes that switch directions. The manager and the GM have security. We all know that. Our complaints are not because we expect change, but because we want some change. We want a different approach. And it is not Molitor that most of us question - it is TR.
  8. mikelink45
    I am going for a reach here because you are on to all the obvious ones (except for Tonkin who deserves some kudos). I will say Sano. He is not hitting with power - yet - but he is continuing to get on base with walks and hits at a pace that allows him to stay in the line up unlike Buxton and Rosario. His power will come, his home runs are guaranteed, but his consistency is showing some maturity and that is appreciated. We seen too many 100 hitters in this lineup the last couple years so 260 begins to look like something good.
  9. mikelink45
    Fascinating discussion. It make me think about a few surrounding issues - 1. Molitor has been given a mess to straighten out and he is only in his second year. With surprising success last year everything seemed to come too the team easily and now he is in a sophomore slump and has never experienced anything like this in all his years. He should call up to Gardy in the front office who has plenty of experience with non-performing Twins. 2. TR has a responsibility to clear this roster. He has to establish a plan and direction. It is not that I think he will, but he should. Then I have to ask if he is capable of this and I do not think so, but he is what we are stuck with. 3. Meyer should have been given a second start. We are 9 - 20 it is not going to hurt us. Berrios had a rough start and won his second start. Confidence starts there. If we damage the psyche of a pitcher it can ruin the career. I do not care about Santana, Hughes, Gibson, Milone, Nolasco - they are not going to lead us to the promised land. Meyer has real pitching ability and as the old man on this forums I have to remind everyone of Sandy Koufax who I got to see many times and when I saw him as a young player he was terrible. When he finally got it together he was great. Meyer is not Koufax, but he still could be very good.
  10. mikelink45
    This is an issue on all levels. The Twins need a better plan (or a plan) and they need to invest as much as is needed to get coaches matched with talented players so that we can start reaching potential in the majors.
  11. mikelink45
    There is a time in all franchises when every move has to have the future attached. Even if Perkins comes back his weakness does not look good for the future and Jepsen had a career year for us (reminds me of Suzuki and Hughes) and we have banked on that while he instead has returned to what he has always been. May has the arm for the pen (not my decision, but two years now makes him a reliever) and it would be good to groom a potential future closer. If he is not fit for this role Burdi and others are right behind him, but this year has already become one for experiments and should not be wasted.
  12. mikelink45
    Take time off from the Buxton bashing. Let him have a couple months to settle in at AAA. Let him find his own comfort zone, and get him some coaching. Young players have different levels of confidence and knowledge and they can be bolstered. Technique can be tweaked and improved. What Buxton has is speed, coordination, fielding skills and potential. Those come from within. The question I often raise with the Twins is how do they coach the young player? If a player has so much potential then hire him a specific coach who knows how to develop that potential and knows how to help adjust the mental barriers. Hire a Rod Carew type player or a Torii Hunter to shadow Buxton until it all comes together. The money spent now could be the difference to later in his career and to the Twins organization.
  13. mikelink45
    Such relief in Twin fandom. Lets hope this is not a down performance because I believe he is the top of the line performer we have all been waiting for. Let's hope this summer is a big veteran trade off - rebuild the farm teams and let someone else have our savvy vets. Do the same in the bullpen. Where are the young guys?
  14. mikelink45
    Terry wants to prove his trades are good so Meyer instead of Berrios. Catcher a mess, bullpen a mess, the best option for 3B stubbornly kept in RF. Did I miss something? I thought we had an off season to figure out things.
  15. mikelink45
    What a nightmare you paint - Neil Gaiman should hire you. If this happens I am going to turn to Rugby.
  16. mikelink45
    If this was a jigsaw puzzle we would all be gathered around the table wondering why all the pieces are in the sky and we seem short on the body and in particular the edges that define the picture. Plouffe down means we should have gone to Polanco and kept him so that we had the position filled. Escobar may have had a career year last year and SS does not look particularly well manned. Then there are the positions with so many options that no one knows which direction to turn their piece so that it will fit. I want a trade that clears some of the excess. I think we have two puzzles mixed together and Terry Ryan is not the man I want trying to do the sorting.
  17. mikelink45
    Let's imagine a football team that signs 6 great centers and four great fullbacks and then has to keep all of them on the roster so the other positions need to accomodate them. Or one with a really great, recently drafted quarterback on the taxi squad because they signed 3 over the hill or never made it to the top of the hill older QBs to fill the primary QB slots. How long do we keep that GM?
  18. mikelink45
    The Twins need counseling on how to handle their young players. There is no reason that the young call ups can't play at least every third game ( I mean start). Give them experience. Learning is not sitting.
  19. mikelink45
    Nice comparison! Without a doubt his concussion has cost him and he needs a few good post catcher years to get back in the run for HOF. Modern era comparisons to players like Cochrane are great for those of us who look back at early baseball, but I am not sure that computes for the voters any more.
  20. mikelink45
    Sorry, no excitement. 29 other teams were not interested in him as a manager so we bring him back. TR is happy because he has accomplished two things: He brought back a former TwinHe is building a screen from those crazy cybermetric guys and all their numbers and crazy ideas.
  21. mikelink45
    The seasons biggest frustration is the What's on Third question and like Abbot and Costello we have to look at Who, what, where, when and if. The Twins can be truly stubborn so Sano to third is probably no, but with Arcia hitting now, a move of Sano to third would be an interesting lineup.
  22. mikelink45
    It is fun to see nice comments about Joe again. Of course many of the comments will be from the same people who wrote him off. Baseball is so difficult, it really is hard to predict the rise of young players, the declines of old players, and the sudden one year surges of unknowns. Thats why we love it.
  23. mikelink45
    I keep hoping to see a study of relief pitcher performances over years of service. It seems to me that RP tend to fall off after having a big year (considering how often they throw which to me is more important that total innings) they tend to regress the year after they shine (except for the HOF type - Mariano). I think Perkins has peaked and will be middle innings if anything, Jepsen is a fill in and Fien had his peak come and go whiich means he should go. I am not sure how this translates to the young guys in the minors, but I do think we need to get them in and using their peak value in the majors. In this sense I think we are really wasting May and hopefully they will get him in the rotation and see if he is what we hope. There are some teams (SD) that could use some of our current rotation vets and it would be good to move them and start building the minors up and getting the young arms in.
  24. mikelink45
    This is the biggest over-reaction I have read. Come back when he is at least 24 and tell me we were wrong, for now, there are enough other problems to be concerned with including TR's signing of Murphy as some patch on the leaky inner tube.
  25. mikelink45
    I did not know when I chose this time to travel in Europe that I would be glad to find people who do not know what Baseball is and think Twins are cutie little kids.
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