Jham

I often type like that at 2:52 am as well... That's when you get the truest and most accurate posts of all, at least to the poster, at least until you wake up and re-read your post.

When I last looked we had 1 hit. Now we have 5 runs and a mark in the left-hand column. Is Nunez an All-Star at this point??

To avoid analysis skewed by hindsight, and then I may be missing the whole point of the thread I guess, we can look at the 20 moves as a whole and speak in general terms about the process without judging based on results. It is abundantly clear in looking at the moves that we took almost no risks. Regardless of how the moves turned out, every single move on the list was conservative, even the addition of Park who Ryan has admitted he was surprised the Twins won the bid, and then look at the contract. This off-season conservatism followed some of the more brash moves made by the organization (Nolasco, Santana, Hughes, Hunter) following a need to try to get back to relevance. Aggression which actually worked out, much to the chagrin of those hoping to build only from within. The tentativeness has plagued the team for years now. It looks like a sheer lack of confidence from our management/scouts. We continually overvalue our prospects with no clue as to which ones are ready, which ones will produce, and which won't. We continue to expose their flaws in trial runs that kill trade value and diminish the built in advantage we have of having more complete scouting on our prospects than our opponents. We continue to add expensive mid-level free agents who offer little trade value, command longer contracts, and block development. Basically, we're afraid to trade prospects because we don't trust our scouting. We're afraid to trade veterans because we don't like the value of return. We put ourselves in situations where we have to sign guys that perpetuate the problem. The team needs to take what it can for some of the vets, trade off the prospects we feel the rest of the league overvalues, and then develop and slowly promote the ones we like. We construct the team afraid to make a mistake, we manage games afraid to make a mistake, we pitch afraid to throw a strike, and we bat afraid to strike out.

We all might have the luxury of folding up tent and playing for next year. Molitor and Ryan may not. We'll have plenty of season to get young guys extended looks. But I'd rather see them come up prepared. I don't think trying not to strike out is a viable approach to an at bat and is more likely to lead to bad habits and tentative swings.

I think you're missing the point in your never-ending quest to kick more dirt on the grave of a retired Twins icon. Hunter OPSed .756 through the first half hitting .257 with 14 HR. His playing time diminished along with his production in the 2nd half as more youthful hitters took over. That seems to be the definition of a successful place holder. To go back to the original point, Torii Hunter is irrelevant. Whether the Twins should have brought in a "decent outfielder" is the question. I'm fine with their gamble not to. I think the point Kab was getting at is that you can't really have it both ways: kill the organization for going with a place holder, and kill them when their youth movement fails and they have to get a Grossman off the scrap heap. The whole thing is turning into a dumpster fire, and I've seen a lot of misplaced frustration, and I can't say with certainty that Torii Hunter's leadership would have made this team better, but I do know the ensuing cluster was not his fault.

I think coming through the minors Nunez was almost universally perceived to be a higher rated prospect and better overall prospect than Dozier, particularly defensively. Then Dozier started blasting home runs suddenly and unpredictably. You do know what you have in Nunez. No one knows what we have with Dozier anymore.

Just calling everybody up is a poor excuse for real talent evaluation. We need to have a much better indication of player readiness (and better coaching to get them prepared) before we just call them up because they're younger. You can say we got ourselves into this mess by stocking up mid-level talent and refusing to get rid of place-holders. That's only half of it. If we're going to keep the Santana's and Hughes' (who you can compete with) then you can afford to sort through your prospects and trade some while they have value (pre-bust or "upside" guys). Keeping all of your vets and all of your prospects leads to a nice looking farm system, as no one can get called up, and the cupboards keep getting stocked, but it isn't really a realistic way to build a team. Regarding whether 2 MVP's could make this team a contender. That's hard to say. Does .500 make you a contender? What is the average team WAR for the last 4 out? What's the Twins team War? What would Trout and Miggy do for us there? Conceivably, 2 competitive Alphas and a better record could focus, inspire, and improve the play of others. If I had a line up that included Trout in CF, Miggy, Mauer, and Sano... I think I'd take my chances. (with the belief that the current roster is nowhere near an 8-24 team over the next 3/4 of the season).

In his defense, that ball left the bat at trillion miles per hour. He may have been distracted by the sonic boom. When it left the bat, I was surprised it dove. That ball was up around the shoulders and somehow Jones generated top spin on it. I also would give him a break if he just saw the pitcher, the pitch, and the swing and just assumed the ball was leaving the park.

I'm not disagreeing necessarily, I just really liked the way you phrased all of this. I'd tend to agree that we need to see for ourselves if we haven't seen a rather consistent pattern of our prospects being even less prepared than expected. Like, "they were wrong about Buxton being ready, maybe they're wrong about Sano not being able to play 3rd?" But I'm more afraid that its "Buxton is a waaaay worse hitter than we expected" and then how bad would Sano be if he was "waaaay worse" at third than they expected, and they already expected him to be bad? Either way, we need to do a much better job of evaluating our own talent before they hit AAA, let alone the major leagues. Hopefully Gardy is a better evaluator of talent than he was a manager, at least at the end there.

Despite the condescending tone, I agree with most of your post. As I've stated, I have been a big fan Polanco for several seasons. That doesn't mean I think he will be a future All-Star 2B (like Dozier), or that he would hit 20+ HR and be top 3rd 5 in the next few seasons. I think you hit the nail on the head. We might be screwed either way. In which case playing Polanco doesn't get us any closer to our goal. Playing Polanco doesn't get us a player better than Polanco. Prospect projection isn't a science as discussed on another thread. I don't think the problem with development and evaluation can be cured by simply calling up more prospects and hoping for the best. That's the opposite of a plan. We've actually hurt ourselves that way by exposing the flaws of the prospects we should have had reservations about. Unless we acknowledge that our prospects might not be that great, that our development might not be that great, and that our MiLB scouting has been almost counterproductive to the major league club, we're going to continue having this same debate of "what difference does it make" forever.

I think I may have lost some of my clarity in the length of my original response. NOT trading guys, both prospects and vets at their peak value, like Perk, was one of the 3 problems I suggested. Do I think Plouffe and Dozier will be in their primes over the next few years... I guess so. But my bigger point is that I would guess they'd both be better overall players than say Polanco or maybe even Kepler over the next 3 years, in which I will expect us to compete all 3 of those seasons. I never said Berrios should close, just that he should have been called up last fall. He's the 1 guy I think should have been called up sooner than he was. May would likely be an average starter and a good to elite bull pen guy. I'm fine with him closing, I just worry about his opportunities on this team to close.

I don't think making a bunch more knee-jerk decisions or moves made out of frustration bring us any closer to relevance. May to closer? How many opportunities do we expect him to have in that capacity? Back to the rotation maybe. But we have to clear some more bodies first. And there are others who I would rather see get that shot before May. Berrios, Duffey, possibly Meyer. I've been a big supporter of Polanco and do feel that he can be a productive player. That said, if you forced me to bet $500 on who would put up better numbers over the next 3 seasons, Polanco or Plouffe or Dozier, the players he's most likely to replace, I can't honestly say I'd feel confident either way. Yes we have young players who may be part of our future. But we also have a lot of young players who will not be good enough. I'm not anxious to jettison options for the sake of promoting guys that aren't ready or don't figure to be better than what we have now even once they hit their primes. From what I've seen from the team, our problem has certainly not been a failure to bring up players when they're ready or in an inability to move on from veterans, it has been three things: 1) an over-valuation of their prospects and belief that all will make it. 2) an inability or unwillingness to improve the team by moving guys at peak value, especially veterans but prospects as well (we may have taken a step in the right direction with Hicks and Hu in spite of the fact that the returns have been mixed); and 3) an utter inability to determine which prospects in our own organization are legitimately ready for the Major Leagues (or an inability to get them ready). I'm trying to think of a single player who I think we waited too long to bring up. Sano by a couple weeks? Duffey by a couple weeks? Gibson maybe a month? The one guy that comes to my mind is Berrios, but that has nothing to do with his development and more to do with the team still being in the playoff picture. Now contrast that with the players that have come up and clearly were nowhere near ready. Now look at how many of those were relied upon heavily (or still relied on heavily). Now explain to me why I should be supporting forcing the issue by throwing these kids to the wolves (unnecessarily I might add) when even the ones we bank on being ready have more often than not been nowhere near? It's May 11, I'm guessing we'll see us in rebuild mode after the break. I for one, am not that concerned that we're not going to see enough these prospects to make a fair determination on their future with the team, because I believe we should mostly know that by the time they make the big leagues. I'm much more concerned that we seem to have no idea who will be successful or not and have to resort to short trial roles to make these determinations. And because we can't sort through our own prospects with any level of confidence, we hold on to all of them, accelerate them with dismal results, and have to sign either veteran stop gaps (usually lower talent guys) or higher talent veterans who cost more and require longer commitments. Who's scouting our minor leagues?

He moves well at first, but I have noticed he has an odd habit of leaning back into the baseline when receiving off target throws rather than stretching and playing the short hop or stretching to meet the throw. (letting the ball play him rather than playing the ball). He fields it well enough which shows remarkable hand eye coordination, but it's not the most sustainable way to catch a ball without getting run over. At the plate I've really liked watching him play the chess game. On more than 1 occasion Dick has called him a "guess hitter". I'd say that's partially true. But what that really shows me is that he 1) has the confidence to sit on a particular pitch and adjust off it, and more importantly 2) that he's anticipating how pitchers are going after him. That's a veteran approach we haven't seen from hitters in this organization who have typically been taught outright aggression from early on. For all his brawn, he seems to be a very cerebral player. I can't wait until we see some more of his personality show through. Reminds me a bit of David Ortiz when he first came up.

Twins way being pitching, defense, and timely hitting? I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But I think the talk of the Twins Way is largely overstated. The real Twins Way was probably getting lucky with Santana and Liriano, while taking advantage of decent players like Hunter, J Jones, and Koskie in their primes. Those aren't really pitch to contact guys, or high contact low K hitters. Our best teams were pretty stinkin' solid when you look at those rosters, whether or not we felt they were super strong at the time. Our biggest problem has been either bad luck or poor development of young players. Our players, especially our young players, are not producing at the level expected. I'm also not sure we play as hard as we once did. Guys like Dougie, Ortiz, Hunter, Radke, and yes even Punto compared with these kids... I'll say those guys weren't more talented than the current team per se.

Perkins on the DL, Milone, DFA'd, O'Rourke DFA'd... Do we have another lefty reliever I don't know about? I mean, O'Rourke is a true LOOGY which might not make sense given our starter's inability to throw more than 60 pitches without giving up 6+ runs, but Millone as a combo long man/lefty made some sense. I guess I'll reserve judgment until I see the corresponding roster moves, or see who passes through waivers, but man, I get the spirit of the moves, but am more than a little confused as to the actual process... Centeno deserved a call after his spring and Murphy's struggles. It's interesting that the Twins abandon pitch to contact guys for power arms and the power arms end up just as bad or worse than the pitch to contact guys... I mean, Swarzak, Jefferson Starshi... Manship I mean, Liam Hendricks are all sort of in the league now and then right? The FO has to feel a little exasperated at the results of their efforts. Oh God I figured it out... we're going to re-sign Duensing and Twinsdaily will explode.

I think this probably what happens if the Twins didn't get 3 innings from Gibson then a 16 inning ball game the next day. I'll admit I was confused when they brought him up and didn't use him. Then when they announced he'd be starting, it made sense. Then when he started, the reason why they only wanted to give him 1 start made sense. I'm going to state once again that I'm not agreeing with the way Meyer's been handled. I just happen to think there's a big difference between disagreeing and simply calling any other line of thinking "mismanagement". Especially when your position is backed by hindsight, which is quite useful. Meyer needs to pitch better plain and simple.

If only we'd called him up in 2014 he'd be working on his 3rd Cy Young by now... Or he'd have gotten shelled pitching 2 innings at a time and got sent down almost immediately, be in the same spot now, and the Twins would have 1 less option year for a guy who may develop late, making that inevitable roster decision that much more difficult... Getting consistently rocked, more likely to happen at the MLB level, may send a message that you need to work on your control. But I don't think facing big league hitters who can hit even good pitches a long way is the best spot to learn, and may have the opposite effect of making a pitcher afraid to throw strikes. Goodness, many speculated last year Meyer wanted to go to the pen as a faster route to the MLB. This year he was good for a few starts and a logical decision to come up after a 16 inning game and 2 starters going to the DL. He got yanked early in his start, but had thrown 30+ pitches under heavy duress a couple days prior. He was likely not going to be asked to pitch much more than 60-75 pitches. It was evident Milone was going to get into that game. There was a lefty coming up, (they pinch hit Gattis). And why not let him go back to AAA on a more positive note rather than setting it up for more damage? I'm not saying I necessarily agree with the decisions, but I am saying the decisions are very defensible and far from mismanagement.

I was just looking at the fangraphs chart which show 1 pitch at 97, but the vast majority right at 95. Good heat. Not necessarily overpowering without location or sink. I suppose the speed matters out of hand vs. at the plate, and might be different in park, on tv, on the graphs. If those who scout and watch consistently believe he's throwing as hard now as before his shoulder strains, I'll trust them. Regardless, I just don't see how he can be a successful starter without taking a little bit off and hitting spots. Verlander was a master of that. In his prime, he threw harder later in the game when his feel improved. He can come out of the pen trying to blow people away, and that might work, but he'd still need to improve dramatically control-wise ala Betances to make that work. Basically my advice would be to calm down, play catch with your catcher at 91-92. Reach back for more with 2 strikes or later in the game when your feel improves. The staying calm part seems to be a real issue.

I agree, except I don't think we can say "they" jumped the gun. I think it might have been more of a "he". Molitor sure didn't seemed thrilled to have him. Which is odd, cuz Gardy begged for Meyer a couple years ago, and TR said no. It's a confusing situation all around.

He does need more innings. That's why he was sent down, right? I also don't think it's fair to classify him as the future of this team. He's definitely still just unfulfilled potential at this point. I would have liked to see him stay in for a few more batters last night. I would have liked to see him get one more start to see if he would settle down and throw more strikes. Me personally. I don't deny that his pitching has tended to corroborate the concerns of scouts as to his lack if improvement and general wildness. If I had watched a lot of Meyer, then maybe 2 2/3 may have been enough. Even if we consider him part of the future future, he's not really part of the present future, so given his long break, given his 30+ pitches the other day, given the 60 pitches last night and the left handed hitter, and the fact that Milone was getting into last night's game anyway, I'm fine with the decision to yank Meyer. I'd rather see him get another start, but to those who get to see him in AAA, maybe they had seen enough. Oh well. I'm still confused as to where the 97-99 mph heat went. According to some reports he'd re-found it. I sure didn't see it. His fastball runs laterally (flat), and he can't control it at 94. These are huge issues.

Fun to watch Park make adjustments. He could be a good one.

I don't buy that his stats weren't that bad because of BABIP. I think his BABIP was bad because guys are just teeing off on him. He can't get ahead enough to make his above average breaking stuff even remotely tempting to offer at, and his fastball seems to have lost a lot of velocity. This is why I suggested he move back to the rotation earlier this year. Let him work on hitting spots at 80-90% effort. 94 with lateral run is not going to be effective in the bigs unless you can hit spots. Not just throw strikes. Not many scouts had Meyer as a true ace even when he was throwing 100. More like a solid 2. Most thought that his lack of innings in the minors translated to future stopper in the pen to good middle rotation guy if he found control. You can spin his stats and lack of MLB and even Minor League success all you want, but little he's done so far in his career suggest anything near ace potential at the big league level. No amount of "working through it" is going to fix lack of repeatable delivery, inconsistent arm angles, inconsistent release, and loss of 4-5 mph on your bread and butter (presumably loss of spin and velo on the slider as well). I saw him work in a few get me over curves today, and that could help him be an MLB pitcher. But people need to get over the ace thing. I think his best chance of success isn't re-finding 99, it's finding that 91 on the corner works just as well.

I think if Meyer is one of the young guys we're counting on to succeed, we're in trouble at this point. Anything we can salvage from him at this point would be a bit of a bonus.

I'd like to see Meyer get one more start, but can't say he earned even a move back to the pen. Too bad. We need a boost and one more talented arm out of the pen. I'm also confused. I hear he was hitting 99 in AAA. 94 is fine, but I mean, Nolasco can hit 94...

Meyer better stick. I just followed him on Twitter... Stuff looks good, seems more composed. Still lacks good command in and out of the zone. 94-95 is pretty Pelfrey-ish... He's going to need to learn to hit spots.