Doomtints

I'm very excited about Polanco's future. He is going to be a cornerstone of some good Twins years coming up, once they manage to turnover the pitching staff.

The bar is low with this team. If Hughes can achieve a 5.00 ERA, he's already the #2 on last year's team. Last year's team looks a lot like this year's team. I would think the ceiling for Hughes is about a 4.50 ERA -- and it almost pains me to put his potential as being that good. I'm not expecting him to be serviceable. I would love to be proven wrong.

In my opinion what will hold Sano back is his lack of focus, lack of dedication. He is clearly gifted but I don't think he will ever put in the work required to live up to his potential. This does not mean Sano won't be good. He will smack a couple hundred homers in his career, but he could hit 500 if he put in the effort.

I think an injury will cut Sano's season short. But if he plays through the year: .230 - .250 / .325 - .345 / .460 - .485 30 HR, 26 2B, 2 3B

.240 - .250 / .310 - .325 / .425 - .450 25 HR, 33 2B, 3 3B

.270 - .290 / .320 - .340 / .420 - .450 15 HR, 29 2B, 6 3B

.230 - .245 / .300 - .320 / .390 - .415 15 HR, 25 2B, 2 3B

.270 - .280 / .350 - .365 / .385 - .400 9 HR, 30 2b, 3 3B

Projection systems don't look favorably on Rosario. I think he is currently underrated, but as to how much he is underrated I have no idea. We seem to have him rated higher than the projection systems do. We usually overrate our players but Rosario isn't usually a benefactor of that. My gut tells me that he is a 17 HR, .280 BA, .780 OPS guy, but this is near the upper edge of the spectrum of what the algorithms are spitting out.

They're playing in late afternoon/early evening. It won't be that warm in the evening, it will be in the 40s. And again, you're ignoring what I said, so I'll paste it: "Temps in the 40s and 50s aren't a big deal to us, but the team has been in Florida for the past few months." I'll add a bit more: Some of these pitchers have never played in Minnesota in April.

Too bad they're not playing on Tuesday. But you can always go and see them on Monday evening (40s in the evening), Wednesday (40s/rain), or Thursday (40s) before they hit the road to another cold-weather city.

Not many balls will be flying out of the park when the temp is 48.

Twins won't be playing a game in a warm city until the 24th. As Molitor suggested, having 13 pitchers on the roster is only temporary. If having 13 pitchers reduces the misery of the players playing in the cold and thus reduces the misery of the Twins W-L record, Molitor will be touted as a genius. Temps in the 40s and 50s aren't a big deal to us, but the team has been in Florida for the past few months. As for Park starting in the minors, raise your hand if you didn't predict that happening. All of the moves over the past few months pointed in this direction. As for Santana/Escobar still being around, sure it's not great. But again, we all should have predicted it.

Needing two long relievers says as much about the starting staff as it does about Haley. Haley's inexperience would be much less of a factor if Molitor felt he could trust more than one of the starting pitchers.

Slowey's demotion was one of the early comedy of errors that was the 2011 season. Four things: 1) Slowey wasn't demoted for Blackburn. Both of them had been starters previously. He was demoted for Duensing, whose 2010 performance made Twins brass salivate. Duensing's dominance was short lived as we all know. We barely even remember that Deunsing was still on the team through 2015. 2) Slowey played just fine in relief until his injury. The Twins put him in for 6 innnings in long relief without him being stretched out and he hit the DL right after that appearance. 3) The Twins put him back in a starting role after he returned from the DL, and he was terrible. His bloated ERA in 2011 was from those starts, not from when he was relieving. He was clearly still having trouble with the injury. (Though the season was a lost cause by this time and perhaps the position players had thrown in the towel on defense.) 4) Yes, the Twins were completely full of **** when they said he was faking an injury and how they treated him seemed to get around. This was a factor in the Twins having great difficultly in attracting pitching later on. One could make a compelling case that the Twins destroyed his arm as well as destroyed his reputation.

With all the new shiny analytics that they have now to sign the best talent out there, it seems strange that they signed a catcher and that's it. It's almost like they were world champions instead of finishing off the worst year in Twins history.

There is more truth to what this guy wrote than it seems we can admit. It's all right. The season is about to start. We will find out which is truer: 1) Our optimism that the young players who seem stuck in neutral (3/4 of the team) or mismatched v. what the team needs (the one marketable pitcher and one marketable position player) will collectively come together and start generating wins (in spite of really nothing changing since the last time around), or 2) This author's skepticism. I would think we have all seen this rodeo before and would be leaning more to the skeptical side. In any case, the season starts soon, and I would love for the blind optimism to be correct just this once. I don't know who this author was but by what he wrote it actually looks to me like he has been following the Twins closely. Dismissing him outright seems like folly. There is frustration in his tone. Blyleven spoke up last season about how he was tired of journalists sugar-coating the Twins, who were truly one of the worst teams he had ever seen -- seems someone listened.

It would be ideal if he could just hit like Henry Blanco did when he was a Twin. Blanco did not have a great batting average, but he banged out doubles and home runs when it mattered. He looked like a superstar at the right moments. If Castro can play defense as some people suspect and he can swoop in offensively with a superman cape when the situation is dire like Blanco did, all will be fine. It's OK if he's Clark Kent the rest of the time at the plate.

45 & Co's ties to Russia seem to be utterly blowing up into something bigger than any of us imagined it to be. We are in for some truly bad times.

No. They won't have one guy hitting 40 this year. Yes, they can cut down the Ks. But there will be slumps where some players look just as bad as last year. May the slumps be short and the dingers be long.

This is like saying privileged kids should all start in the 2nd grade. Sure they'll be behind, but they'll figure out it. First grade is for the kids who have lower ceilings! Rebuilding teams tend to have a lack of depth. I think you may have witnessed rebuilding teams putting players in the majors who are not ready yet. They do this out of necessity. This is not strategy, it is desperation. The Twins of the past 5 years have proven this to be the wrong plan. Pitchers like Berrios who have not yet learned control need to be in the minors. Berrios has already had many "failures" in the majors and won't learn by having more of them. There is nothing to be gained by Berrios playing in the majors and continuing his MLB ERA of 8.00 or whatever godawful number it is. I think we all agree that Berrios is not an 8.00 ERA guy. The Twins saw enough of Berrios to know if he is ready or not. If they say he isn't ready, I believe them. Regarding Viola, your comparison is unfair on a few levels: 1) As others have said, that was a different era. 2) Viola flashed brilliance right out of the gate, His problem at the beginning was his tendency to give up home runs at the wrong time. Berrios has control problems, a completely different problem to tackle. 3) Frank Viola's ERA over his first two seasons would have made him the 2nd best pitcher on the 2017 team. Berrios is nowhere near where Viola was as a rookie. 4) Viola pitched in college and high school. Look, we all know Berrios is going to be pitching for the Twins this year. There is zero reason to worry about that. It is completely inconsequential to the Twins playoff hopes if he stretches out in the minors first. Give the kid a chance to succeed! If you have this "sink of swim" mentality sometimes you run across some very competent people who sink because they're simply not ready yet. Think of the future, not what you want right now. Didn't you watch Willy Wonka as a kid?

I'm right there with ya. More wins are possible but don't put your money on it.

~71 wins is on par with the reasonable predictions that are out there. Did you crack the Atlantis Casino formula?

Buxton is due. Nevertheless, add this to a long line of predictions of his imminent "breakout."

Nathan was a total stud when he was a Twin. But he's pretty old now. Can he still contribute for a full season? Maybe, I don't know. But he won't be what he was before. I would rather keep the memories of his dominance intact. After he retires I would love to have him as a coach, assuming he has coaching in his blood.