slash129

That would be fine. Just don't give them the rope of 14 starts with an 8/6 ERA/FIP. Edit: No starters should be given the 8/6 rope, IMO.

Basically, that's Johan Santana. Granted, the Twins had to have him on the 25-man.

I'd hope for a deadline deal to fix the shaky fifth starter in that situation this year. I definitely wouldn't want to see the Twins in a situation where they scrap a development plan or load progression plan that mortgages the long term health of the player and his ability to make the team competitive over a longer term in favor of going with the hot hand -- elbow or shoulder be damned. Now, if the Twins decided to call up Romero and have him take his lumps in a low-leverage long relief roll that also allows for more load management, I could see that working. He might still have some gas at the end of the season when it counted and be a Kenta Maeda-type weapon in the playoffs.

There's a little bit different context with the current team. If the Twins are indeed going to shoot for a deeper post-season run, they can ill-afford to allow too many players (and especially starting pitchers) to just "take their lumps" for any extended amount of time. Romero, for one, is likely on an innings limit. I just don't see the wisdom of putting a player in his "coming back" situation into the high leverage situation of a hopeful playoff team rotation.

LoMo would spell the end for Vargas.

ST fodder

Interesting that a lot of the Gophers players go to the Cape Cod league. I'm not going to pretend to know a lot about the summer wood bat leagues, but I wonder why they don't play in the Northwoods league. Maybe they just want a change of scenery?Maybe the Cape Cod league is higher level competition?

I remember that you were high on Silva in another post. May have been a future lineup projection or something. Anyway, those are impressive numbers at Rookie ball last season, so I hope you're right about the slow developing catcher. I probably would have waited for a repetition in a full season league before moving him top 10, or probably even top 20. But this is a projection game (rating prospects). How the catching gets divided up between Rortvedt, Banuelos and Silva in A and A+ ball will be interesting.

Also, word is Duffey is getting stretched this spring. He might even be a 5%er.

Not even 1% for Enns? Might not be opening day, but I bet he gets a start before Romero

Well, the good thing about Rooker on social media is that you get access to interviews like this. https://warstic.com/blogs/news/episode-005-learn-it-to-earn-it-with-reigning-sec-triple-crown-winner-brent-rooker

Muscle weighs more than fat. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Couldn't help myself.

Good piece, Ted. He's definitely been his own worst enemy as far as conditioning. If there wasn't a trend, I'm sure he would have been cut a little slack with some weight gain this off-season, but it has been a trend. As far as the allegations go, that just needs to play out at this point. I haven't seen anything legitimate reported that there have been other incidents since 2015 or when he was with the Lookouts, so I'm hopeful he has done some growing up in that area. Unfortunately for the Twins, JD Martinez just signed a $110M deal to basically play DH. I hope Sano doesn't look at that the wrong way.

Rays OF defense FTW!!!

I think the changes they made are appropriate so far. While I think they need to be careful with pitcher/catcher communication, six visits is a pretty good number with the option to appeal for an extra one. The :20 shave between innings takes 6 minutes off the game. If that same time reduction also applies for pitching changes, then that could average another 2 minutes. I honestly don't want the pitch clocks, pitch clock penalties or bullpen rules changed. Promote a sense of urgency from the minor leagues up. You can handle the Mike Pelfreys, Jose Conteras' and David Justices (just three slow down players that I can think of off the top of my head) on an individual basis. I can't find the post or even recall if it was on this forum, but the idea of using technology to get the fans more involved in the game is a great idea as well. As an example, consolidated game viewing is a great option. You actually get a decent feel for the ebb and flow of the game, if it's done right. As far as the fans going to the park, I don't think these changes will really matter to them. You either have fans like the OP that love every aspect of the game and time doesn't matter, or you have the casual fans. The casual fans are going to be worried about things like "beating traffic", "getting junior to bed", "how close is the score", "do I have a late night event that I'd like to get to". Those people already paid their admission, bought their concessions and visited the pro shop, so the revenue has been captured. Is keeping them at the game until it's over a big concern to MLB? I'm not sure what the game length target is, but I don't see the proposed changes as significant enough to affect the live audience. TV/Streaming media is different, but I think the key with keeping and drawing fans there is putting as much as possible in the palm of their hand.

Great write up, Ted. One correction is that Kinsler was already moved to the Angels. Perhaps you had already written the Detroit section earlier, and I might pass them over too as they've been pretty silent since then. My gamble is that the White Sox finish 3rd. I see some of the Chicago talent starting to figure it out in the second half and showing the team's future (although people still may not come to the games). I think KC will be in full fire sale mode at the deadline trying to do something to restock that disaster of a farm system. Duffy, Herrera and Merrifield could all be gone. We'll see if they bring back Moustakas. If they only win 20 games after the deadline, it won't surprise me. Of course, Chicago could jettison Abreu and Garcia and still try to race to the bottom in 2018.

"Cap Anson (the worst person to ever play)" Really, worse than Julio Machado?

The Twins are still a +2 in terms of prospects over the off-season. As far as moves involving prospects go: Twins give: Jermaine Palacios $2.5 mill Some monopoly money Twins get: Jake Odorizzi @ $6 mill Yunior Severino Jacob Pearson David Banuelos

Pay minor leaguers more.

Well played

Hoping it rounds out with more bats and not too many arms

And the 11 WAR player available and now roster blocked by Sanchez is .... ?

The only people that care about these fringe roster moves are all us commenters on these threads. Most of the fans could care less about the the 40th guy on the 40-man roster, if they even pay attention the 15 guys not on the 25-man roster. Most of the fans don't care about who the Twins didn't sign. Yu Darvish is wearing a Cubs jersey, so who cares about him. If you're so disgusted that you choose to go to less games or not buy that Buxton jersey because say Anibal Sanchez is the 40th man instead of say Luke Bard this spring, I'm sure that giddy fan - who makes it all work - that's excited about a team that made it to the playoffs will more than make up for your cut back on Twins expenditures.

It's probably more likely that Darvish didn't want to play here for anything reasonable to a smaller market team. I also think it's likely that the FO did not feel the team is a Yu Darvish away from making a deep playoff run or unseating Cleveland, so they handled the negotiations and how far they would extend themselves accordingly. I haven't read anything on any of the Darvish threads that even pretends to be from a fly on the wall during any negotiations. I wish everyone would stop making up numbers that would have magically put Darvish in a Twins uniform. It isn't like the Twins had the right of first refusal on him. In reality, I doubt Falvey is too worried about how easy it is to pull something over on a group of stat-crazed, pipe-dream GMs like all of us who represent a pretty small percentage of the fans that they are marketing this product to. They made the playoffs last year, so the majority of the fan base is probably in a good, hopeful place going into this season. They're the fans that look at a 40-64 record on August 1st and say, "Well, they still have time to turn it around," and then double-down after Kepler hits 3 jacks. Darvish is a blip to them.

This really isn't any different than the Vogelsong deal of yesteryear other than the 40 spot that will likely just be Pineda or May hitting the 60-day DL.