laloesch

I appreciate your insight on this and your professional experience but you are speculating. These players know the rules and they have agents, lawyers and teams of trainers adressing their health, nutrition, etc. He's no longer the poor kid from DR with zero resources or he's just plain dumb. He's now 30 years old and has made millions and millions of dollars as a professional athlete. He knew the rules, the risks, but got caught, simple as that. No sympathy from me.

Complete speculation. I'm not giving Mike a pass. He knew what he was doing and he screwed over the Twins in doing so. My opinion, kick him in the rear end on his way out the door after this season. If there was a slight chance in the post season for this team he just ended it with his selfishness. There is no way this team stands up to the Astros with their starting pitching now, not against Verlander, Cole and Miley. That smells sweep all the way. If Mike hadn't gotten suspended he would have started game one or two against the Astros IMO. Berrios is not pitching like an ace and hasn't for months. Gibson is dealing with long term illness which will limit his abilities if not sideline him the rest of the season. Perez is Dr. Jekyll Mr. Hyde and basically a one trick pony for the most part. Odorizzi can't pitch more than five innings in any start. Checkmate unless the Twins capture lightning in a bottle somehow in these last 20 games with Thorpe, Smeltzer or Dobnak. But i'm not holding my breath that happens. Sorry, Big Mike is not a team player via his actions. On top of that what a huge fail by the front office in not acquiring another starter if they knew this suspension was possibly coming, unless Mike somehow withheld it from the team (pure speculation on my part). I mean they had to have known this was coming right? You would think that acquiring a starter would have moved up to number one priority on their list. The fact that they walked away wIth ZERO starters after the trade deadline is just inexcusable. The queston now is can this team deal with this (and i'm not talking about what they do in the post season, because that's pretty much a write off now). Do they have enough gas left with their remaining starters to hold off Cleveland and a surging Tampa team right on their tails in the wild card? Don't forget that Oakland is right behind them as well.

What that really boils down to is that this is not a situation where you have a guy using a PED to try to improve performance. He took some over-the-counter diet pills to try to lose weight. We can call that stupid and the results for the team are significant, but we should not say this is a player trying to cheat. Playing Devils advocate, you don't know this for certain. It may be true it may not be true.

Yes, for the most part it's been a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde group.

I agree. If he keeps up the trend then it is absolutely a good thing. It will take time.

I don't know if i call it a transformation. He's still striking out at near career highs and still not walking as much as did in 2105 which was 15.8%

I'd like to see more of Thorpe and Smeltzer in Gibson's absense possibly Perez slot too if he continues to falter.

Would really like to see starts go to Graterol and Thorpe.

Makes no sense to me either. Schoop has the hot hand not Arraez. Baldelli might be great at creating a laid back, relaxed, comfortable, loose environment for his players but apparently he is not watching the stats of his hitters that closely or simply ignoring them. You would think down the stretch here with Cleveland following closely that Baldelli would be hunkering down and paying close attention to the stats to try and squeeze every last win out of this team to put Cleveland away. It's decisions like this that make me question his decision making. With bases loaded down 6-10 you have to go with the hot hand (Schoop). Regarding Perez, after he gave up the homer to Ronny Rodriguez why did Baldelli not pull him? Certainly after Dixon's double you pull Perez by then right? The objective is to try and win a very winnable game instead of allowing your team to go down by 6+ runs and basically handing it away. I don't buy the reasoning that all the relivers were spent from the night before. Just don't buy it.

I've seen enough of Perez.

It's really too late now to try and work someone else up to a starting role and be effective, although i was really hoping to see Romero (which didn't happen) and maybe Lewis Thorpe. Other than adding Brusdar Graterol or Jorge Alcala as additional BP arms I don't know what else there is for this team to do down the stretch other than try to get the big four (Berrios, Odorizzi, Pineda and Gibson) ready for a series against the Astros. Hopefully Perez finishes strong and is another option because Gibson is really grinding away here down the strech. The other major concern is Berrios. We need this kid to get things straightened out in his final starts because other than Pineda and Odorizzi the rest of the starters have really struggled in the second half.

HAHAH i just noticed the Squirrel at the top of the webpage next to Daily. LOL

Yep and the Twins could have drafted him.

Forget TC Bear we have Rocket B Squirrel.

The Squirrel is like Rain man, bringer of good fortune to the Twins.

Click here to view the article Wow!

Gotta agree with this post. This team can hit no doubt put the pitching is just piss poor and continues to be.

Is everyone still on board with signing Gibson to an extension? Just asking the question.

This rotation is melting down. They can't win big games anymore and when they do have an okay start the bullpen completes the disaster.

I disagree with point #2. The pressure is on the Twins IMO heading into this upcoming series against Cleveland. Cleveland has been playing great ball the last month and a half. They went 18-6 in July whereas the Twins were 12-11 (quite a few of those loses were bullpen melt downs). Sure we've beaten some bad teams the last couple of series but before that it was not looking so good. The Braves are a good team and this series will tell us a lot heading into the Cleveland Series. If we come out victors in both it will be big step in the right direction.

Mehhhh..... i want no part of this. Aim higher, much higher.

LOL, I can't read that many sentences strung together without paragraphs.

I think they wait until expansion occurs. Makes no sense to shuffle things up until you add those two extra teams and figure out what is happening with the A's and Rays. Until their stadium situations are resolved (one way or the other) nothing is going to happen and no expansion or re-alignment will occur. Manfred knows this and the league knows he wants to expand. Part of this exploration of the Rays splitting time between Montreal and St. Petersburg is to put pressure on them to resolve the stadium situation. That said, I could see a scenario where the Rays move out of Florida to Charlotte, North Carolina and thereby staying in the AL East (at least for the time being) and the A's finally getting a new stadium once they secure a piece of land to build on. Once that happens then Manfred gets to expand adding a team in Nashville and another team in Portland or Vegas.

I wonder if adding two more teams to the league and instituting a DH in the NL, the MLBPA might be willing to make that compromise.

I agree on this point. MLB just needs to bite the bullet and buy out the Rays from Sternberg and move them to Charlotte and be done with it already. That way the Rays (or whatever they are renamed too) can stay in the AL east but are simply moved further up the Atlantic seaboard towards Boston and NY. Nashville could also be an option as well.