Doomtints

Strange that Pickler did not play in the majors. He was promoted slowly but on paper there was no reason for it. If you draft a guy after he graduates college and hold him back, pretty soon the guy is pushing 30 and you're stuck with nothing. But then, no one accuses the Brewers of being prospect wizards. Pickler has ties to Levine from his time in the Rangers organization. http://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.cgi?id=pickle001jef

Keith Law is usually wrong. I don't mean to disparage the guy -- almost everyone is wrong about prospects about half the time -- but instead I disparage his fans who take his word as gospel.

Starting pitching prospects work out about 20% of the time. We can expect one pitcher from your list to be a long term contributor. If this is all the Twins have in the pipeline, the future is not bright.

Yep. It's Ron Davis. No contest.

Someone named Delmon Young has a similar frame to Sano, but that didn't stop people from questioning his conditioning. In fact, if Sano's debut year proves to be the outlier, the comparisons to Young will be unstoppable. I'm sure the comparison now makes many of you want to click "reply" and commence the flaming, but Sano's WAR last year was a typical Young year. Both guys dominated in and burned quickly through the minors. Both guys play lazy defense, don't appear to take defense very seriously, and would clearly rather just DH. Time will tell which year was the abomination for Sano -- 2015 or 2016. If it's 2015, he will go down as another Delmon Young. If it was 2016, he has an MVP award in his future. The Twins should not be afraid to trade him if his struggles continue for much longer. Like the Twins ten years ago, due to Sano's high expectations another team will be willing to give Sano a try even if he is underperforming.

Having multiple primary catchers is like an NFL team having multiple starting quarterbacks. Not only is there no point, but it will just cause problems. With multiple catchers, pitchers will be getting mixed messages and won't be on the same page. The team will lack leadership at catcher and this is a young pitching staff. The best word for a plan like this would be "disaster." The Twins went out and signed the catcher they wanted. The backups are already on the roster. It's time for the team to think about something else -- which is exactly what they are doing.

Exactly. The conversation could have happened years before he was traded. And who is to say that the Yankees were not in the mix too, and he simply confused some of the details? There is nothing weird about this at all.

There has to be a documented medical reason for putting a player on the DL, so teams won't be able to stash a pitcher on the DL due to the shorter DL in an effort to be clever. The CBA states that putting a player on the DL is a "request" and requires paperwork with a doctor's signature to be sent to the commissioner's office. Within 20 days of the original request, the commissioner's office must receive a written second opinion for the team to avoid breaking the DL rules. Similar forms have to be filled out to remove a player from the DL. So really you are talking about 2 team doctors plus the commissioner's doctor all reviewing the documentation. If any party asks for a second opinion on top of the automatic one, then there are more doctors involved. Teams have been accused by the union and the commissioner of abusing the DL in the past. It's not easy to get away with it now.

Looking at the past, I have always considered Santana to be underrated. He is underpaid based on his recent and career production. Nevertheless, he's not the type of guy you trade prospects for at his age and at this stage of his contract. For the Twins, he's a bargain. For a trade partner, he's a risk. If he were younger or he had just 1 year left on his contract, trading could make sense for a contender.

If you live in Austin, that's where I lived for about 20 years. The problem with rain there is inadequate drainage. Even I-35 will have patches of standing water after moderate rain. Unless you are familiar with the road and know where the standing water will be, it's better just to go slow.

One thing I noticed is that people from northern climes who move south will often mock the locals for how they drive during icy weather. I further noticed that these people who mock tend to be the ones having accidents because they are expecting a different experience on the road. They also forget that accidents in the north increase during snowy weather, too. I don't live in the south anymore mostly due to getting sick of the heat. I don't mind the cold.

Russia can now buy industries in the US for pennies on the dollar, just like China did in the 90s. Politicians want power and money, but apparently they're OK with having power over less and less as long as their wallets fatten. Barring a terrorist attack I doubt we will go to war in the traditional sense. Russia and China will be owning us in other ways.

To be fair to the South, they don't know how to take care of the roads when it snows or ices. Midwesterners would have the same problems as Southerners in the road conditions they have to deal with.

The problem is an unregulated pay per click content model on facebook. Propaganda peddlers out-bid legitimate news sources, so the fake stuff got displayed and the legit stuff did not. This is less pronounced on Google, etc., as Google is known to be showing "ads." Facebook presents the content as something else. Newspapers would be shredded by the government if they displayed news stories written by the highest bidder. Same with television news broadcasters. As a country we should have seen this coming. It should have been obvious. But somehow it wasn't. We can't regulate liars and we can't change the brains of people susceptible to propaganda, so instead we must work to regulate pay per click advertising on the WWW and particularly on sites such as facebook. *Every* paid link on facebook needs to be marked as a "Paid advertisement" and NOT news ... and that's just the start.

I agree completely. Moderating an online forum is one of the most stressful jobs to undertake.

LEN3's reporting is fine. I think he sometimes injects his opinion on prospects which readers can read and then run with. This results in too much love for some prospects and not enough for others. But this is not his fault at all, it's a problem with the information age. Berardino is a great guy. Sometimes he is a bit moody in his sports pieces but, hey, who wouldn't be moody when reporting on teams in this market?

I don't think it's far out. He has not been good and this is for a minor league deal. What's far out is us even talking about it.

True. This is why I don't do it constantly. But if I have $20k more in one stock than the others, it's time to redistribute that down into the other stocks that are in the black. This is what mutual funds do for you behind the scenes. For example, if a fund is investing 5% in Amazon but Amazon jumps, they'll sell some off and put the money into the other stocks in the fund so Amazon remains at 5% of the fund. This keeps all the money in play but mitigates risk. Also, you're not paying capital gains tax on it because you're reinvesting it. You're not profit taking.

True. The Twins are in a situation where quantity over quality is prudent. It would be better for them to get this step over with as soon as possible so that in future years they can focus on quality.

Telecom stocks have been good to me. They pay very nice dividends. Sure, you may look at AT&T stock and see it was mostly flat ... but you toss in their giant dividend and you've made quite a nice penny. Same goes with Verizon. When Obamacare first rolled out, some health care stocks really rolled, particularly Tenet. I kept a keen eye on Tenet and sold it when it appeared to peak and it worked out well. The stock fell back to earth quickly, but I got out of it before it did. Also, one would think that some of these companies that make everything consumers use would be great stocks to own. You know, P&G, Kraft/Heinz, Mondelez, Unilever, etc., but because these stocks make everything consumers use, they are very susceptible to market conditions. If you want to know how things truly are going, look at these stocks, but don't buy them. If they start falling reconsider all of your investments. These companies are the canaries in the coal mine. I left my 401k investments alone but I sold all of my stocks the day after the election and put the money into 6-month CDs. I am expecting a mini boom-and-bust. If I'm wrong I'm wrong, but to be safe I decided to just get out of the market for 6 months. This is based on the recent performance of the stocks I mentioned in the previous paragraph. My strategy has been to keep 5 stocks on the burner and invested in even dollar amounts. If one stock starts getting much higher than the others, I sell it down and put the funds into the other stocks that are in the black so that they are all even again. I try not to sell anything that is in the red, sometimes it can take a year or more for a stock in the red to break even, but ride it out. Sell it when it finally breaks even if you're not bullish on its future. Also, stocks tend to run up a bit before quarterly earnings reports, but NEVER buy stocks during this time period because this is often followed by a big drop that can take a year to recover from. Buy stocks AFTER earnings reports after the stocks have corrected themselves. This usually takes about 2 weeks.

Those pesky youngins might have better luck finding him if they look up Maddux instead. (Though I imagine everyone knows who he is. He retired just 8 years ago). Maddux was truly great. 4 consecutive Cy Young awards on two different teams. Back when the Cubs were constantly struggling, they let Maddux go as he was about to peak and then re-signed him after his peak years were gone. Ryan's second stint seemed to emulate this model a bit but with even worse results.

I feel like the front office made it clear some time ago that they weren't planning on moving Santana because the pitching situation is too dire to send the best guy they have packing. Certainly if an offer came up that blew them away they would consider it, but moving him wasn't part of their plan. You say you're surprised that there hasn't been Santana talk, but I'm surprised that you're surprised.

The Twins changed their tune a bit and said they'd kind of like to keep Dozier. Of course, this was likely a bargaining tactic. I would have to give the Twins some kudos if they decided to walk away rather than rush into a deal that they felt wasn't good enough. This doesn't mean a trade still won't happen, but it's a good sign that the Twins are open to walking away from the table if the deal isn't to their liking yet. Though it of course must be brought up that there will be some roster problems to sort out if Dozier stays. Polanco gets blocked or Escobar goes away, and the Twins will still have the holes that could be shored up a bit through a Dozier trade. This reminds me a bit of the Santana trade, where it took a hell of a long time to get the deal done, though in that case the Twins still didn't get what they wanted.

I'm not understanding some of the disappointment. This is a rule 5 pick. In that context, this is a very good pick up. It's a guy who has a chance to contribute right away. And if he doesn't work out ... this was just a rule 5 pick....