Taildragger8791

Weirdly enough, historically Gibson does drastically worse when his strikeout rate goes up. So I'm not sure I'd even be encouraged about that anymore.

Danny....Santana....homerun? Is this the fun mirrors part of the amusement park?

On second thought, how do I send a thank you note to FSN North for keeping this game off their network?

That's not fair. You can't blame a guy for losing consecutive at-bats to the immortals of baseball like Stephen Vogt, Chad Pinder, and Jaff Decker.

Care to elaborate for the people in Minnesota that unbelievably can't actually watch or listen to the game?

I'm disappointed FSN North doesn't really broadcast many midweek day games anymore. Streaming the game in the background at my desk was a pretty great way to get through a slow day.

How can you be so certain that he's much, much better? If he was the same guy at the start of this year as he was at the end of last year then it's more likely that Berrios would be costing us games than winning them right now.

30 of those starts were before his 2-month call-up to end last season, which was hopefully the wakeup call that made it clear he needs to fix some things. Only 5 starts have come since he went back down to work on those things. I think that's the important number to watch. He didn't look any different in spring training or the WBC, by the way, so I don't see evidence that he corrected those flaws in the offseason. If he's up after another 3-4 starts are we really going to care that he spent an extra few weeks at AAA? If we're still sitting here mid-summer and he hasn't gotten a look yet despite continuing to dominate then I'll be right there with you. I just don't think we're anywhere near the point of unreasonableness yet.

There are plenty of things the Twins have earned criticism for, and I've been pretty vocal about a lot of them. I just don't see how a few weeks this way or that way on when they call up a young pitcher who failed spectacularly in previous call-ups is really the issue worth raking them over the coals for. This isn't as anywhere near as egregious as their handling of other prospects (particularly May and every centerfielder the last several years). I mean, Berrios had 14 starts last year and only two of them were big league quality. He averaged 4 1/2 innings per start. I'd say they gave him a pretty fair tryout and it isn't unreasonable that they wanted to see some changes before they throw him back out there for another go at it. And they probably want to be confident that his next call-up will be successful instead of yanking him back and forth or disrupting the good thing that's going at Target Field right now.

How patient would everyone be if his struggles are as bad as last year? Comparable to Buxton's ineptitude for months at a time? Would you be willing to take this first-place Twins team and just forfeit 20% or more of their games for the next month or two? At what point would even you throw up your hands and say send him down until he straightens out his flaws? It wreaks havoc on a team and a bullpen when a starter is getting knocked out in the 4th inning every time out, and those effects are felt for the next 2-3 games as well. I'd be fine if Berrios were called up now, but I'd also expect to see a drastic improvement from last year before I'd extend his stay beyond 3-4 games.

I don't think he was "passed over" so much as they think he fills a critical role in the bullpen right now, which is also serving to help set him up for success. We'd be castigating the team if he were getting yo-yo'd back and forth between roles just as much as they're apparently getting castigated for sticking to a defined role for more than a month at a time.

Tepesch is just a warm body with an arm. He isn't up because they think he's the better player or prospect. I wouldn't get worked up about him other than it means the team failed to provide any depth to buffer between their prospects and their starting staff. If they dumped Gibson tomorrow it still wouldn't necessarily mean Berrios will be promoted. It might just mean they find another filler candidate for the rotation that nobody will like either.

Berrios had a 14 game tryout in the majors last year, almost half a season's worth of starts, in which he showed no progress or trend towards competence. So they asked him to go back down and work on a couple things and he's had 5 games to do that. I can understand disagreeing philosophically on how many starts before bringing him back up but that sounds awfully reasonable to wait more than a few games before yanking him back up. We complain about yo-yoing guys up and down and it seems like the Twins are trying to avoid that here yet they're getting castigated for it.

Our impatience with prospects is such a catch-22. If a guy struggles then nobody says a word. They want to see success before a promotion. Yet at the first demonstrated success there are loud calls for promotions and complaints that the player is overqualified and being held back. You can't have it both ways. Personally, I'd be pretty bitter and upset with my employer if they threw me into situations I wasn't properly prepared and trained for only to watch me drown when they could have thrown me a lifesaver. There's a reason we don't hire college grads for critical roles on projects. Sure, you might get lucky once a generation and get a genius powerhouse that can't fail. Most likely though you'll just get an overmatched kid and everybody ends up with egg on their face.

Many people said before the season that the key for Berrios to get back to the majors wasn't going to be easily discerned from the box scores. It's not about dominating again or "proving" anything by getting results on the scoreboard. He dominated before and he'll continue to dominate (hopefully). It's about his mechanics and how he executes pitches. Nobody should be surprised that he's putting up great stats, so why bug out that he isn't insta-promoted after every strikeout?

Coaches and teams aren't going to tell us everything, or be 100% open and honest, so you just have to accept that. Yes, command of his pitches is one issue, but pitch tipping exacerbated that because anything he threw in the zone was going to get crushed when major league hitters have already eliminated the offspeed stuff. At that point all they're looking for is one speed and type of pitch and just have to read location. That is a cakewalk to those guys. No, it's not indefinitely. He's still young for a pitching prospect. It isn't unreasonable to send a guy up and down while he works on things. Every team does it. That's part of the development process. And pitchers have a disproportionate impact on the team so it's much more important that they be able to achieve an acceptable baseline of performance before you let them struggle it out in the big leagues. If he's cemented in the big leagues by the end of the year is anybody going to remember that he spent an extra few months figuring it out in AAA to start his career?

They talked pretty specifically this spring about him taking the ball straight back more to help with command and not tipping his pitches so much. I don't think his problem was exclusively command, but that he also tipped his offspeed stuff which allowed hitters to pick what they want to swing at. That forced him to nibble more and live out of the zone because he was getting crushed.

Because he still has the same critical flaws to fix. Maybe Berrios just didn't realize how serious they were about it until he faced major league hitters. It's hard to really internalize what someone is telling you about your mistakes until you feel the effects of them. So yeah, he has 200 innings, but only a small percentage of those have come since he's gotten that wakeup call.

I don't see how Mauer rubbed off on Sano in any way. Sano just learned how to lay off unhittable pitches and attack the others. That's just experience. He did it in the minors, so it follows that he'd eventually figure it out in the majors. If he learned from Mauer then we'd see him watching grooved fastballs instead of sending those balls into people's faces in straightaway center.

Man, everybody sure seems to think the entire Twins organization is either incompetent or evil for their handling of Berrios and other prospects. I understand the team hasn't earned any equity or benefit of the doubt but this isn't an example I can get behind. Berrios is 22. He's still pretty darn young. An extra month or two to make sure his next call-up to the majors is successful and hopefully his last is a worthwhile and responsible way to handle him. They aren't keeping him down because they think he's trash or don't want to pay him. They aren't going to keep him down indefinitely and then lose him. They just want to make sure he doesn't hit a brick wall at 100 mph again like he did last year. Yes, I want to see Berrios up here soon too. But I trust that the front office is taking the long view and want to be convinced he's set up for success before his next promotion. Meanwhile, let the current rotation sort itself out so we can finally clean house on marginal pitchers. An overmatched starting pitcher is far more damaging to a team than an overmatched 9th hitter that brings excellent defense. That is why Buxton gets to figure it out in the majors despite being the WORST hitter in baseball for long stretches, whereas no team is going to give that kind of leash to the worst starting pitcher in baseball. Also, please spare the argument that Gibson pitching over Berrios means they think he's better and are too dumb to see the reality. I've been as done with Gibson as anybody but even I can understand their desire to exhaust every possibility with salvaging him while he's still cheap. He'll be gone soon enough at this rate.

This statistic is often repeated and is as broken and misleading as the one claiming women make $0.77 on the dollar relative to men. When you consider only American-born players roughly 12% are African American, which is pretty close to the national average of the population. I can't really get too worked up with this gripe that African Americans aren't fairly represented in baseball relative to American population demographics. NFL is at 68% and NBA is at 75%. I don't see anyone complaining about tilted demographics in those sports. Why is it a crime to be normally represented instead of overrepresented? And why is this complaint always based on the idea that players born outside the 50 states somehow don't count?

Don't forget Vargas was signed that year too. That's 4 out of 9 guys in our recent lineups signed by Bill Smith in one year.

That's possible, and I'm open to it. I just don't see how everything would come together at a point that the Twins both want to sign him and they'd agree on a price they're willing to pay. If we think his baseline is lower than he does based on the way this season played out, then he may want to bet on himself in his contract year to bring his value up. It'll be the only opportunity he ever gets for a big contract. If he establishes his baseline as being sky high then he'd suddenly be worth a mint on the trade market and may be gone anyways. At that point it still might make sense to wait a year and make him prove it again since he won't get any more expensive. Like I said, I just don't see how it all comes together.

Extending Dozier after what was almost certainly a career-best outlier of a season is how you end up with an albatross contract and a player you can't move off of an important starting position for several years. He won't sign cheap right now, especially until he knows if he's getting traded or not. If they don't trade him then I'm totally fine letting him play out his contract and see where his value stands at that point.

They might have fit into the budget, but how do we know that Bill Smith wasn't providing some different direction/priorities at the time that led us to signing those players vs others? It sort of stands out when some of our best international signings the last 10 years came in the short span Smith was at the helm.