Taildragger8791

Maybe you have the wrong idea on how some of these threads operate. Don't take most of what goes on too seriously, especially in the offseason. A lot of this has just been fun and good chatter. The equivalent of sitting around with friends bantering about sports. Just an entertaining way to pass the time in a long offseason when the other MN sports aren't offering much.

Trick question, women hear everything. Even the stuff you didn't say.

I'm still not clear on everything that went down there, but I think we may have accidentally traded TC Bear and the recipe to Surly Furious in the confusion.

Seems to me it should be Santana, Berrios, Gibson, May, and Santiago. This is the last chance to find out if May can start, and see if he stays healthier doing so. Everyone else to the bullpen, AAA, or DL (Hughes, I assume). Hughes can go to the bullpen when he returns. If De Leon shows up it'll get interesting but I'd still start him off in AAA and work guys in as injuries/non-performance open up opportunities.

As much as I hate the White Sox with every bone in my body, I gotta give them credit for being aggressive and effective in player acquisition and also for cutting bait on players when they aren't getting it done.

Not sure why you singled out the Padres unless I missed some player movement, their staff ERA was 0.80 lower than ours and ranked 9 spots better for 2016. Our staff ERA was 5.39, next lowest (Arizona) was 5.19, and after that everyone is sub-5.00. We need to knock a full run off our staff ERA just to get to league average. They'd need another quart-run or so off to get into playoff territory. When you consider Santana's 3.38 ERA is in there, that means the rest of the starters averaged even worse. It's hard to put into context how stupendously terrible that is. To those who want to keep Dozier...that means we at least need 3 new pitchers better than anyone not named Santana that was on the staff last year, and keep in mind that he's no spring chicken so you'll have to replace him in two years as well. We'll be lucky if we get 2 solid mid-rotation starters from anyone in our system right now. Nobody in the system projects as an ace, some have a ceiling of a #2 but realistically you're looking at 3's and 4's. So where do you find 2-3 more pitchers if you don't trade for them? Buying on the open market is rarely possible or even responsible, especially for a team as unattractive to FAs as this one. And how do you trade for them if you won't give up assets of value?

Well this is a bit of hyperbole. There have been articles talking about the work they were doing to improve his plate appearances. But ABW's issue isn't simply his approach, it's that he has poor pitch recognition and he can't hit a breaking ball to save his life. Both of those issue require reps in order to improve. A lot of reps.

To add to that, Moncado's strikeout rate ballooned to 31% at AA. And in a display of irresponsibly short sample sizes - Moncada had a 12/1 K/BB rate in his 20 MLB plate appearances last year.

Well he's not going to get signed by a contender due to his qualifying offer, so if he wants more money or opportunity he'll have to go to a bottom-10 finishing team. He wouldn't have to move his family since he'd know full well that it would be a half-season stint if he performs, and a 1-season stint if he doesn't.

Not necessarily, considering Bautista is an outfielder. He'd probably rotate through the DH spot at times but he won't clog it up. One of those guys might have to go down at some point, but with the inevitability of injuries they'll still see plenty of playing time. Mauer and Sano (due to inability to stick at 3B due to performance and health) will be blocking those two more than anything.

I like this idea. It would be an improvement in the on-field product, a good veteran presence for the team, and a pretty good chance to be flipped for something better than whatever would be available with that 2nd round pick. And the return player(s) would hopefully be closer to helping the major league club than a draft pick.

I think his point was that losing 10%-20% of your hard-capped international signing pool takes a team out of the running for the best talent, akin to losing a 1st round draft pick. Or it at least limits the quantity/quality that can be signed.

Agreed. I just want to make sure that we don't trade the potential to be significantly better in 3 years for the potential to win a few more games next year. We still have a couple more years of growth and prospect graduations to go through before this team is likely to really take off and be pennant-quality.

Setting the bar for "middle of the pack" in the division is pretty weak though. Sacrificing future potential for a pennant-winning team in order to push for being the division pain-in-the-ass isn't enough for me or most people. And nobody outside the home market cares about teams that finish 3rd+ place and 10+ games back in the division. Sure, it was fun at first when the Twins were winning a weak AL Central in the mid-00's. But if you just wind up getting embarrassed and out-classed in the playoffs every time it really takes the shine off those division crowns and seasons. Why not learn from that and push to be better?

Gordon, Garver, and English are all in the lineup. English already with a great diving catch to stem some bleeding.

The Twins' team is in the championship and it's on boob tube today.

Nobody ran away with it by being utterly dominant this year (ERAs all over 3.00) so it's hard to accept any griping over the winner between the 3-4 candidates who are deserving. Verlander probably earned it in my mind, and losing with 14 first place votes is annoying, but you don't automatically win if you can't separate from the pack. But Kate Upton, that was great.

I don't know that the SB numbers are all that low. Even if Buxton brought his average and on-base numbers up to say .270/.340 levels and continued to attempt (~20%) and succeed (~80%) to steal at his career rate he'd still only fall in around 25 steals a year. He'd have to see big uptick in attempt rate or OBP while keeping his success rate near 80%, which seems tough to do. It'll depend on how much better he gets at reading pitchers and situations, which is learnable to a point, but in my opinion the great base-stealers just seem to have that instinct innately on when and how to run.

I don't know if Park qualifies as a "bounce back" candidate since he hasn't really set a baseline to bounce back to yet. He hit some long homeruns and had a couple short stretches that looked competent, but otherwise flailed a lot and was demoted as a result. I'd put him in the same category as the young guys that are still developing and establishing who they're going to be (Sano, Kepler, Vargas, Buxton, Rosario, Berrios, Duffey). Most of them will be ok and find a role on the team, a couple will fizzle out. That's just the nature of the game. When it comes to guys I think of as actual bounce back candidates (Hughes, Gibson, Perkins, Plouffe, Mauer), I don't have faith that any of them will get back to even their median performance levels. Plouffe likely needs to be moved to clear roster space and save Molitor from himself. The rest of them will get their opportunities but I certainly don't want to depend on them. There needs to be a Plan A that doesn't require gambling on these guys to be key contributors. That kind of "planning" is how we ended up with a persistent tire fire on the pitching mound all year instead of actual big league pitchers.

I'm struggling to get a feel on what Sano is going ultimately to be as a hitter. His basic slash line looks alright at a glance for a run-producing power hitter, but I came away from last season with the feeling that while he had some big hits he also had way too many at-bats where he came up short or was non-competitive. Particularly in key situations. That's just going off my general impression I remember from the season, however. Looking at his splits might explain where that feeling came from: after the all-star break he only hit .228/.286/.452/.738, while before the all-star break he hit .243/.350/.472/.823. The weak finish to the year is probably weighing down the impression I took away. The other thing that sticks out is that when he's behind in the count he's struggled mightily. I'm sure most people on here remember later in the season when the analysis came out that he does most of his damage after working his way ahead in the count or to a full count. What I see is that his damage came on the first pitch or when he gets to start out ahead in the count. If he starts out behind or gets 2 strikes his numbers fall way off, particularly in the power department. In 2016 he hit .172/.235/.323/.558 after 0-1, hit .185/.185/.296/.481 when behind in general, hit .219/.223/.439/.662 when even, and with two strikes he hit .123/.210/.230/.440. One more thing I thought was interesting. I seem to remember Sano having trouble with high heat last year, and swinging through those pitches often. BBREF has a split for power pitchers and finesse pitchers, and here were his stats with regards to that: Power: .168/.248/.267/.515 Avg: .232/.325/.465/.790 Finesse: .285/.359/.589/.948 Perhaps the heat is what he's struggling with after all? If he can learn to recognize pitches faster or catch up to the faster pitches he could break out in a big way. But until he closes that hole in his swing good pitchers with high heat will continue to minimize him.

I know they aren't hired right of college to assistant GM. My point was they go from college to low-level front office, probably getting paid well below what they could get in the general job market with their background. That weeds out anyone who doesn't have the passion for baseball and doesn't have the economic freedom to be underpaid for many years. This is where your pool of eventual GM candidates is coming from right now. I assume at some point somebody will break the mold and change their hiring profile, and as soon as they prove successful everyone will copy that and maybe we'll see more diversity that way. But as long as the profile is what it is, it won't change without going out and recruiting for those low level positions and probably offering better pay in the process. The problem with that is you might wind up getting less passionate baseball people, which could wind up with less effective front offices.

Alright, I'll bite. So the current hot trend is to target candidates with premier academic backgrounds? What is the demographic of those who graduate from the most prestigious universities with excellent performance, that then choose to go into baseball scouting and front offices instead of taking a high-paying job elsewhere? My out-of-thin-air guess is it's going to be almost entirely male and overwhelmingly white. Not many people, particularly ethnic minorities, have the luxury combined with the financial freedom & passion to turn down great job offers elsewhere while they go spend 10 to 30 years trying to climb the baseball front office ladder. The only way you're going to turn it around is to proactively reach out and foster interest within those underrepresented groups. Go recruit women & minorities from those schools to get them into your organization early on so down the road there will be a more diverse pool to select from. Maybe I'm being naïve or giving too much benefit of the doubt. I just have a hard time assuming that this is a case of overt racism and intentionally denying opportunities to equally qualified women/minority employees.

I would imagine it's the result of having an organization that's so insular and inbred. They rarely made any significant changes to personnel and when they did it was usually from within the Twins family. They stuck with people and personalities that they knew. This limited the influx of new ideas and experiences and placated the change-averse nature of the leadership and ownership.

I mean...I want to be surprised but I can't say that I am. I half-expect to hear a few more surprising statements like this come out over the off-season revealing how behind the Twins organization was on various things.

Acquiring a closer in mid-season is way more difficult and expensive, and leaves winnable games on the table that can make or break your season. Similar to what happened in 2015 when we went into the year with a shoddy bullpen, tried to patch it up mid-year, and missed a playoff spot by a few games as a result. I don't expect that to happen next year considering how abominable and unsalvageable our rotation is, but the scenario you described is a too-little too-late approach. It's not prohibitively expensive to get a one or two year deal on a bounce-back candidate free agent, and there's room in the bullpen to add a piece. Why not cover your bases and give yourself a chance? There will still be plenty of opportunities to break in young pitchers without over-relying on them to be ready. Then, if we have another 102-loss team on our hands you can hopefully trade that veteran for something if they managed to establish some value.