tarheeltwinsfan

Interesting, hope-filled article. Thanks.

I bet it is hard to program your brain differently for what to swing at in a 2 strike count,

How soon we forget "La Tortuga".

Mark Davidson, from Statesville, NC was called "Country".

I wonder what Zack Bove told the Royals FO before Staumont was DFA'ed? I wonder if the Twins FO checked with Bove, or would that have been unethical to even inquire Bove's opinion. If I were Bove, I would not feel comfortable discussing Staumont with the Twins FO. That is not Bove's job now. His loyalty is to the Royals.

I I were Kep's agent, I would argue that he should not take a chance on changing his position during the last year of his contract. It that experiment didn't work out, Kep may have cost himself millions of dollars as a free agent. He has repeatedly graded out extremely well as a defensive right fielder, and while CF is a more valuable position, I don't see Kep being as good defensively in CF as he is in RF. Plus it may be difficult for Kep to adjust to a new position, which he has said he did not want to play, which may affect his hitting, causing him to have to take a midseason, ALL-Star week vacation in the European alps again to forget baseball for a while.

Of all the in house choices, I like Castro best. I don't think he has hit his peak.

I don't know if Kep has always been a "team player",

I agree 100%. Catching development has been overlooked by this FO. I would love for someone who has access to interview Falvine, to ask if they would agree, and if so, why has it not been emphasized more? Catchers may be more prone to injuries, but that is all the more reason to hire the best catching development coach possible, and pay him well with a long term contract, so he won't defect to the Yankees after a year with the Twins.

The above is an important 3rd question that the Twins do not have an answer for. By moving Kep to CF, and playing an unproven Larnarch in LF, the Twins may be lessening all 3 OF positions defensively and offensively.

Nick, Here in North Carolina, it is a cold, gray, rainy day after all the Christmas excitement and I have a cough and a cold. My kids and grandkids are leaving early, to go to their homes so they won't get sick. Then I read your realistic article about the probable regression of Julien, Lewis and Wallner...and now I feel even worse. Happy New Year.

I agree that last year's Twins pitching staff was one of the best, if not the best, I have ever had the pleasure of watching pitch. And that really was my point in my argument of disagreeing with the premise in the article that hitters' strikeouts are less important than hitters making weak contact. Both are bad. My guess is that a team should strive to minimize hitters striking out so much and try to get more runners on base and advance runners by any means, including sometimes the weak contact bunt and the weak contact of hitting behind the runner to advance the runner. Not exclusively, but more than I have seen from the Twins of late. The importance of hitting according to the situation, is not emphasized by the Twins hitters and manager, as much as I would like.

No wonder I did not recognize him. I defaced and traded most of my NY Yankee cards. It wasn't until I could learn to read that I learned their real name was not "Damn Yankees".

A really good point. Hitters like Julien and Arraez have better abilities as they are batting, to judge a strike or a ball than do many umps, according to the little strike zone boxes on my tv.

Good post Eris.

If the hypothesis in the article above, that batters striking out, but at the same time swinging hard, is not as harmful to a team's chances of winning, as is batters who have weak swings with resulting weak contact, which lessens a team's chances for victory, then I ask this question: Should the Twins pitching staff be built to induce weak contact, rather than trying to achieve strikeouts ?

Good summary of the Twins' status regarding how the Twins need to build for the future, which includes the 2024 season. Helps me understand the Dodgers better. High payroll plus keeping a good farm system. A great formula to keep winning.

Great memories. Thanks to Paul for the article and to all who submitted comments. By the way, I can't identify the player whose baseball card appears at the heading. It looks like a 1956 Topps card, which I think are the most beautiful cards ever made. If I had to guess I would guess Dee Fondy. But he was a lefty. Farris Fain maybe?

I bet my childhood baseball field in North Carolina has all of your ball fields beat for uniqueness. We had 3 prominent features: 1) We had a hedge of thick bushes for our outfield fence. We lost more balls in those bushes. The other side of the hedge was a small, fenced pasture occupied by a horse named "Lucy", who would chase us when we went into the pasture to retrieve baseballs. Sometimes we just left the ball in Lucy's pasture and used another ball for the rest of the game; 2) A small cement goldfish pond was directly behind second base. Many times, we had to jump the pond to try to catch a fly ball and we had to get onto our hands and knees and reach into the pond to retrieve a floating wet baseball; 3) The most unique part of our baseball field was Mr. Woodward's backyard, directly behind home plate, separated by a woven wire fence, which stopped most of our baseballs from going into Mr. Woodward's yard. Mr. Woodward was a jeweler, with a store in downtown Statesville. But his hobby was catching snakes. He kept them in terrariums in a detached garage behind our ball field. Black snakes, king snakes, water snakes, a rare hog nosed snake, garter snakes and an occasional copper head and sometimes a rare timber rattle snake from Fox Mountain in the Love Valley area of our county. Of course, he also had frogs and toads and mice to feed to his snakes. Every month or two, during warm weather, we'd be playing ball and we would see Mr. Woodward carrying his terrariums outside and placing them on the ground behind home plate on his side of the fence, far enough back so that an errant baseball would not break one of his terrariums. Then he would get his hose and turn on the water. By that time our game had stopped, and we gathered along the fence on our side. One by one Mr. Woodward would take each snake out of its cage and clean the cage while the snake just lay lazily in the grass. We were fascinated. The only snakes that ever tried to slither away while in the grass were the black snakes. The others were content to lie still in the green grass. Then Mr. Woodward would carefully replace each of the snakes and carry the snake cages back into his garage. Only then would the baseball game resume. I'll save the story of when Mr. Woodward's two alligators escaped for another time.

Oh my gosh Dave. I also had a Nellie Fox bat, which was foolish on my behalf because the bat was too heavy for me and the handle was thicker than my skinny arms. I never developed any power, but always tried to punch the ball to right field. That is why I became a pitcher in high school. I couldn't hit, I couldn't field, I couldn't run fast. You have heard of the "crafty lefty"? I was a "crafty righty". Big ole' slow curve ball that the opposing hitters could not wait to hit against...when I got it over that is.

Offer Farmer and Vasquez and E. Rodriguez.

I look forward to reading more from Bobby about Twins baseball. Consider this a belated "Welcome Bobby to the Twins family."

I wish we were.

A fun article. Thanks Cody.

Fun article. Reminds me of a childhood proverb which began: "For want of a nail, the shoe was lost."