Taildragger8791

That's fair. I certainly didn't want more vets other than for the bullpen and catcher, and I supported playing the young players who were ready. Yet when you look at this roster it wasn't particularly well built to do that. Plouffe displaced Sano, May displaced to the bullpen, Polanco can't crack the roster, Arcia pushed off the roster completely, no backup for Buxton and Rosario if they need to go down, etc. These are moves of a team thinking it can win and compete now, but then again the lack of offseason moves conflicts with that. The whole division went out and got better and we stood still with an awkward roster overflowing with dead weight vets mixed with really young players. It's tough to buy that Terry had zero opportunities to clean that up a little. And waiting 3-4 years for all the bad contracts to run out isn't realistic. The confusion regarding the plan or expectation for this year is where my frustration is largely stemming from. We went for a middle-of-the-road approach which seems to be taking us nowhere. Thankfully it appears the team is starting to prioritize the youth over vets, so hopefully they stick with that plan for the rest of the year.

I was about to say the same thing before I saw your comment, so instead I'll highlight it. If a few veterans underperform or fail then you can reasonably lay most of the blame on those players. If they all struggle or fail then maybe they weren't as good as you thought to begin with. That has to shift some blame to the front office and coaching. Similarly, if a few marginal prospects don't make it then you can blame it on them being marginal prospects. But when nearly all your top prospects keep falling off a cliff then it again points to the front office and the coaching. Either they are picking talent poorly, they are developing it poorly, or the players were pulled out of the oven half-baked to try and cover up other roster mistakes.

The obvious implication of calling out Murphy's Law is that "bad luck" and the universe conspired against the Twins to generate all these negative outcomes. It's a flawed analogy which deflects blame though, because in the end real people caused and are perpetuating this train wreck with no end in sight. It's not Murphy's Law when you buy 20 lottery tickets and only get 1 winner for $10. That's the expected result when you gamble, and based on how many times the word "hope" or similar appears in the article I'd say that's exactly what the Twins did.

Luckily Dick jinxed it by saying the throw-out would surely be overturned on appeal. So naturally it was upheld and Suzuki caught a Panty Hose basestealer for the first time this year.

About as many times as Bert talked about "that downward plane".

Danny Santana, for some reason playing left field, fielded a hot grounder and threw home to try and get the runner. Ball sailed to the foul side of the line pulling Suzuki away from the runner who slid on the fair side. Suzuki caught the ball but couldn't dive back fast enough and the missed the tag.

Did anyone else catch the article on mlb.com where Reggie Jackson gave an impromptu mini-lesson to Kepler during batting practice in New York? http://m.twins.mlb.com/news/article/186729982/max-kepler-gets-bp-advice-from-reggie-Jackson Pretty cool of him to do that, but the thing I found interesting at the end of the article was a quote from Kepler stating that nobody had taught him to hit around the field during BP. He just got up there and swung the bat instead of going through an effective routine. That seems like a pretty fundamental aspect of practice and getting prepped for a game, and I know I've heard other good hitters talk about doing the same thing. Why would this not be getting drilled into young players before or shortly after they get to the majors? I remember hearing similar stuff about Arcia & Vargas having homerun derbies with their BP. Shouldn't coaches assert themselves over BP instead of just letting guys mindlessly yack around? Particularly with top prospects? It sounds like a small thing but casual fans don't get many peeks into the process of developing these players. When everyone is struggling and anecdotes like this come out it doesn't exactly ease concerns for the way this staff is operating. Maybe I read too much into it. Shrug.

I know you jest, but I was trying to be optimistic about the future and the playoffs should be what we're building for, right? It may be 2018 or 2019, but if Dozier is still supposed to be considered part of the future then his performance should be analyzed in that context. I'm glad he's showing some life again and if he somehow sustains it that would be awesome. But, as the article stated, he's probably still going to be prone to long slumps due to matchups and adjustments and that could be a big liability when everything gets tighter in October/September. We should be thinking about what it takes to win championships, not just build a .500 record and be relevant. His past performance may average out over a long season to look palatable, but in a short winner-take-all series it could sink you. A top-half of the order hitter that can be wiped out by careful pitching and shifts is a liability in the playoffs when your opponent fields top of the line pitchers and defense almost every night. Maybe I'm being too idealist, but I'm tired of trying to find reasons to be content with "not that bad" instead of asking for "good" and "great".

I want to be okay with Dozier's approach, but he needs to drastically decrease the length and severity of his slumps to justify it. Hitting below replacement level for 2-4 months at a time seriously hinders the lineup's effectiveness. Consistency counts for something too, not just career averages. Like a "volume scorer" in basketball who's jumpshot goes cold, you have to keep giving them shots until they get going because you're dependent on that production. Meanwhile, you're digging yourself into holes and losing winnable games. What do you do with Dozier if he's mired in an extended slump come playoff time?

And horrible April and spring training. His May stat line is driven by a hot first 8 games of the month where he hit .370 and had an OBP of .452. The next 8 games (taking us to today) were .200 and .285, respectively. So he's shown signs of life but yes, he's still struggling.

Not sure why Burdi is on your list. He hasn't proven any success above A+ ball and hasn't been able to stay healthy. The Twins shouldn't be counting on him for anything and should build a bullpen as if he isn't available. If he forces his way onto the roster then wonderful! We could use the surplus for a change.

I'd say go out and get enough solid arms this offseason, including a closer, to fill out the bullpen so we don't have to deal with this crap again next year. Let them all compete, there's no reason to limit the job offer to someone internal. Chargois should of course get an early audition this summer. I'm not making any plans that depend on Burdi or Reed though. They're both starting to look like long shots to contribute in the next year, if ever, and should be made to force their way onto the roster through sustained excellence. If they ever stay healthy and figure things out then we get to have a surplus, which is a good problem to have. I'm not into reserving 25-man roster spots for mercurial reliever prospects. That's what contributed to this bullpen mess in 2016.

Kepler had to be put on the 40-man starting in 2014, so an option was burned even though he stayed in A+ ball the entire time.

I don't think Dozier has demonstrated that he's going the other way with his swing yet, so I'm not sure what's changed other than a little luck and squaring up a few more balls. He still only has 4 opposite field hits all year, batting .182 on balls hit that way. Looking at spray charts it seems he is hitting up the middle a little more which could be a sign of progress, but it's hard to tell. I don't have time right now to break down the month-to-month and compare it to previous years to really tell, but that might indicate a change in approach.

You're going to have to pick and choose which of the young players you want to give MLB time. You've argued to have everyone from Buxton to Kirilloff playing with the big club right now. This isn't beer league softball so someone has to sit. Buxton, Kepler, Rosario, Sano, Arcia, and I'll throw in Grossman (he's shown potential value and is actually performing) all need to play as much as possible.

Sano has clearly produced with the bat, but I think people were expecting more of a well-rounded hitter like Miguel Cabrera as opposed to the boom/bust "three true outcomes" type like Giancarlo Stanton. Obviously you'd be happy with either player, but the prolonged slumps and untimely strikeouts that can accompany the latter player profile are frustrating at times. I think some are still hoping that he shrinks the holes in his swing and brings up the overall average.

I got that from looking at their total career ERAs. The gymnastics you went through to show how it's "reasonable" to think that with upside and hopes of improvement these players would be at 4.00 again just reinforced my point. Gibson also had an ERA of 6.53 over 10 games in his debut season. Yes, I know it was his debut season but they still count and I'm trying not to pick arbitrary data points here. So his career ERA is 4.55. I understand he had a good year last year, but if you're hoping for improvement or a repeat of his best season instead of regression then you're still taking a chance. He's always been kind of hittable and isn't a big strikeout guy. That means he'll be prone to bouts of ineffectiveness, especially if his control or the defense wanes. Santana's the best bet, but he has 5 seasons of ERAs that range between 4.28 and 5.76 and then 6 seasons under 4.00. That's almost a coin flip as to which year you're going to get from him. Who knows how much those recent years you quoted were PED-assisted prior to his suspension? He certainly struggled when he returned from the bust. At age 33 and post-PEDs you're again just taking a chance that he'll outperform his average results. Maybe he's not "well" above 4.00, but he's above. Duffey only had 10 career starts in the majors coming into this year. He wasn't a top prospect. He looked good initially but the opponents didn't have time to adjust to him yet so I'm not sure you can even make a reasonable assumption about what to expect from him. You can hope for 4.00 but that should be considered the upside, not the expectation, and I wouldn't stake my team's season on it. Hughes had one good year as a starter over several years. He set the all-time record for walk rate in a season. Reproducing that after his marked decline last year was pretty unlikely. If you want to assure better results than this season you need to find 3 pitchers better than the above guys, and let the rest compete for the last 2 spots. Hopefully Berrios is one of those 3, but that's more "hope" since he isn't established yet. Santana will be a coin flip again with another year of age weighing down the wrong side of the coin. He's a fine #4 in a winning rotation at this point. I like Duffey and think we'll have a better picture of him by the end of the year. I don't know what to expect from him yet because he wasn't a highly regarded prospect and his performance so far has been volatile. I'm comfortable with him as a #5 and Gibson as a fall-back. That means Berrios needs to be at least a #3 and you still need two new pitchers at that level or better. The idea here is to anchor the upside of the rotation instead of hoping for 5 "reasonable" bets to pay off all at once. You'll lose that bet almost every time, which is how Vegas consistently comes out ahead despite giving huge odds on those 5-team parlays.

The list seems pretty agreeable except I'd have a tough time putting Kirilloff into the top ten already. His floor/ceiling spread is huge since he's a total unknown (like most players after the top 5-10 picks), being anywhere from perennial all-star to AAA-washout. He has power, doesn't offer premium defensive value, and could prove to be fatally flawed with this swing length/speed. That puts names like Arcia/ABW/Vargas/Palka/Colabello in my head. Hard for me to push that projection above guys with a floor of actually contributing at the MLB level.

Adding to that, Arcia hit for nearly a .300 average with power over his minor league career, with a high but not unmanageable 20% strikeout rate. Albeit with a somewhat low walk rate. That track record suggests he should be better than this, and we've seen that in glimpses. For some reason his development seems to have stagnated after getting to the majors. The drop off from those numbers to his major league numbers is just so stark that it's hard to believe there isn't some untapped ability still there.

25-30 HRs in a platoon role would be a fantastic addition to a team. Why can't we make that work here?

Not picking on you Eddy, but this closing sentence in your post is exactly what I was referring to. We're already resigned to stumbling into next year with effectively the same pieces, plus a rookie in Berrios, and just hoping for better results.

Do a lot of other teams regularly have struggles with players like this? It seems like we've had a handful of talented hitters, especially power guys, that show reasonably well in the minors and turn into one-dimensional-hitting strikeout-machines in the majors. They appear to have no idea or plan of how to utilize and improve him but they are aware he's much too talented to toss away, further validating that they don't know how to develop guys like him. At this point I agree we may as well cut him because you aren't getting any use out of him, and he has the feeling of a player that will go somewhere else and succeed in a system that plays up his strengths. Maybe he's a bit of a knucklehead with taking instruction, but he seems like an overall good guy in the clubhouse and deserves a chance to prove himself elsewhere.

I'm not sure why you'd assume the group of Santana, Hughes, Duffey, & Gibson would be around 4.00 when all of them have career ERAs well north of that. As does Nolasco. Banking on all 5 of your starting pitchers to outperform their career averages to date seems like a losing gamble. Like betting a 5 team parlay for March Madness and being surprised when you got 1-4. I'm tired of having rosters built on hope and wishes for players to do something they've never consistently done before. When you go into a year needing X, Y, Z, A, B, and C to all fall your way that means you built a poor roster and are straight up gambling on a lucky turnout. If we go into next year with that rotation you mentioned, which I basically expect as well (also Nolasco somewhere), it's going to be an exact repeat of this season and we'd be foolish to expect any different. The only hope here is that Gonsalves, Stewart, Jay, and Berrios all magically work out and are up for 2018 ready to go. Past results suggest that's a long shot, but there's no way this rotation next year won't be a god awful cesspool of incompetence again.

Hopefully studying the Wikipedia page for "strike zone".

Even Killebrew went back down to the minors after his bonus baby year in the majors (when that was a thing) and that was in the mid-50's. It's beyond outrageous, that's easily exhibit A in your plea for insanity if you're on trial this week.