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Taildragger8791

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Everything posted by Taildragger8791

  1. Taildragger8791
    I have led multiple teams to multiple championships in MLB 2K and The Show. Ryan just needs to figure out how to turn down the difficulty settings, but you know how older people are with technology.
  2. Taildragger8791
    After watching the outfield & upper deck walls of our beautiful new ballpark get dented and dinged by baseballs off opposing teams' bats for the last 4 years, you'd be crazy to trade any young pitching off this team. Anyone even considering trading Berrios or Duffey should be forced to sit and watch each of those games from 2012-2014. This team is in no position to be trading competent young pitching. Unless you're getting Trout or Harper straight up in return it's a total non-starter. And if that did happen, I'd turn around and trade either of them for 5 more pitchers because holy crap that's awesome. You can't out-hit poor pitching.
  3. Taildragger8791
    Not gonna lie. I had to double check which site I was on and re-read that last line before I got the intended meaning.
  4. Taildragger8791
    I don't know much about the guy, but my initial guess is that 28.8% strikeout rate at AA right now has something to do with it. Would you trade ABW III or Vargas straight up for a backup big league catcher today? That's about what you're looking at from the other side of it.
  5. Taildragger8791
    I'm interested in Palka but I've held off on looking into him while waiting for the sample size to grow. Without knowing anything about the guy and just looking at numbers, he falls on the spectrum somewhere between ABW III and Kennys Vargas as far as recent comps, while being at an older age for each league. The general narrative is that Walker & Vargas have no major league future; so what is the projection for Palka? We've seen our share of poor K/BB ratio guys with power flame out at AAA or after a taste of the bigs, and I'm hesitant to get invested in another one. I hope for the best and want to root for the kid, but I feel like setting appropriate expectations is necessary for everyone right now.
  6. Taildragger8791
    When they brought him up initially they said he was to be a reliever due to the overtaxed bullpen and struggling starters. Molitor even reportedly said he wasn't going to use him in high leverage situations. In other words, he'd be relegated to mop up duty in a decidedly lost game. He wasn't initially supposed to start, so that was just more head-scratching decision making. If they needed a warm body to eat up innings they could have called up some other yokel hanging on the 40-man. If you can't find anyone else then that's just even more evidence of a terribly mismanaged roster. How do you not have any redundancy for a couple short-term injuries? Speaking of 40-man roster issues...what are the Twins going to do if they have to DL a catcher? Suzuki has been battling some nagging injuries already and had to gut out the game where Murphy got ejected. Centeno and Paulino aren't major leaguers, and the thought of pairing one of them with Murphy for 2+ weeks is depressing.
  7. Taildragger8791
    Even if you can find a defensible argument for Meyer's handling, the reason it's difficult to give the Twins the benefit of the doubt in these situations is because they lack proven results from their way of doing things. Unfortunately, the Twins over the last 10 years haven't shown they can develop solid MLB pitchers and as a result it is fair to call into question their decision-making and methods with young players. Scott Baker is the best, maybe the only, quality starting pitcher we've developed in this system in over 10 years. The jury is still out on Gibson due to his consistency issues, and Berrios has promise but is only 2 starts into his career. Berrios also appears to have an other-worldly confidence and drive to be great, so he is a bit of a unique case. Almost every other pitcher they've developed is out of the league or is holding on as a fringe journeyman. And no, I don't give their development system credit for players that came in nearly major league ready (Liriano, Johan, etc).
  8. Taildragger8791
    Well-written post jiminy, but it's a bit of a strawman argument. Hardly anyone is advocating calling him up to let him start indefinitely, results be damned. That would be a disservice to the team, as you mentioned. The point is that this guy is obviously a little fragile after a collapse last year, so when he finally starts seeing a little success and consistency the team should be doing what they can to let him keep building on that and get some confidence. Keep him on his regular pitching routine, and show him that you won't abandon him at the first sign of a struggle. He should either have stayed in AAA to keep building that consistency and confidence, or been called up to start on his regular 5-ish days routine. Calling him up, telling him he’s now a bullpen guy, but not trusted to pitch in any meaningful situation (undermining instead of building confidence), then telling him he’s going to start after all, but throwing him out there to pitch an inning of mop-up duty a few days before his start, then when he runs into the first tough inning you yank him and demote him instead of seeing if he can work out of it (which he was starting to do). How does that situation look like anything other than a total boondoggle? It’s like a recipe for destroying the recovery progress of a guy whose career is hanging in the balance. Not every pitcher is an infinitely-confident bulldog like Berrios or Johan. Treating every player like they’re the same personality is a piss-poor management style.
  9. Taildragger8791
    We have seen a number questionable incidents over the last few years with regards to management of the roster and prospects, as well as head-scratching player performances. When you isolate and analyze each situation, you can come up with defensible arguments for why the Twins made the choices they did, and why things happened as they did. But in aggregate, after enough of these occurrences have piled up, it starts to become a pattern and speaks to the overall performance of the management. At some point, over a large enough timeframe, I no longer care about the minutiae of these items and instead would rather take a page of out Mike Zimmer's playbook: "Don't tell me about the labor, show me the baby." We need to start seeing results out of this team. I'm willing to give a pass on every individual roster decision and player development outcome if you allow me to evaluate based on final results and expect accountability for them. Based on the dumpster fire this season became and projections for the next couple of years, I can only assess that the leadership of this club is vastly underperforming. If this team still looks like a disheveled mess by the end of this season and goes into next season with the same players and issues, it has to be pay-up time. Finishing with a bottom 5 record for the 5th time in 6 years with little sign of overall progress isn't acceptable status quo to good organizations. End rant.
  10. Taildragger8791
    I'm a little disappointed that we're giving up on May as a starter so easily, just because Ryan & Co mismanaged things to where we had sunk costs clogging up the starting staff and the bullpen was desperately in need of arms. Shoving a guy to RP before he's proven he can't be effective as a SP seems like an underutilization of talent to me. Hopefully there's more to it than that.
  11. Taildragger8791
    The most disappointing thing to me is that the kid wasn't really set up with his best chance for success. We know he's had some struggles and he finally seemed to be straightening things out in AAA. Instead of keeping him in his routine and letting him get in a groove, he gets called up after only a few starts and then sits for 9 days between appearances, pitches an inning of mop up duty in a blowout (after not relieving since last season), sits another 4 days, then gets a spot start? I just don't see how yanking a guy around who was finally figuring it out could ever be seen as optimal. Let him stay in his routine and see if he can reestablish and maintain some consistency over more than a few starts.
  12. Taildragger8791
    I think with Buxton we need to significantly devalue the AAA numbers results (except BBs & Ks) and focus more on the eye test. He's going to get hits, 2Bs, and 3Bs based on his speed against the lower quality defense & pitching. For him it's all about recognizing which pitches to swing at and working the count better. He hasn't had to do that yet because his speed bails him out.
  13. Taildragger8791
    Agree. Once the nerves calm down and the weather warms up I think you'll see his trademark command/control.
  14. Taildragger8791
    This article was written with a fantasy baseball lean to it, but it's interesting nonetheless. He seems to think Berrios' fastball had more run on it than his scouting reports historically indicated. It'll be interesting to see if that holds true going forward. http://www.pitcherlist.com/blog/gif-breakdown/gif-breakdown-analyzing-jose-berrios-mlb-debut-with-12-hd-gifs
  15. Taildragger8791
    Nothing ground-breaking or revelatory, but I found it interesting at the end where it mentioned Trout and Harper and reached out with some encouragement. That's pretty cool. https://sports.vice.com/en_us/article/byron-buxton-and-the-loneliness-of-learning-on-the-job
  16. Taildragger8791
    They got a short start out of Milone the day after a 16-inning short start game and they still didn't bring in their freshest pitcher in Meyer.
  17. Taildragger8791
    Sure, you could do that. If you want to set the bar low and be happy with just exceeding it, you're free to do that. It's certainly easier. Personally, I hope for a little more out of my time, money, and emotional investment. I think TR does a lot of things well, but this isn't a short sample size. I think 22 years is a pretty good trial run to see what someone is capable of.
  18. Taildragger8791
    I think the blown saves and squandered games by the bullpen just validate why the it was the #1 concern in the offseason. Perkins was showing signs of decline, and everybody else was a pretty big question mark. We went into the year with a strategy of "wait for guys to play their way out of a job then replace with untested rookies". That's a plan with a built-in component of failure and it cost us enough games that we are looking at a lost season before April is out. TR should have expected this lineup/defense would have some growing pains and boom/bust cycles, so he should have mitigated instead of compounded that by setting up the bullpen to succeed early. There's no one coming to save this team this year, and we're all tired of dragging out the losing. There's no point in hanging on to vets that won't be part of the next of the next winning team just we can win a few extra games. I like our vets, but we have to face reality. The best thing you can do now is invest in next year by getting the rookies as much playing time as they can handle.
  19. Taildragger8791
    You had me curious so I had to look it up. The most holds by an NFL offense last year was the Bears with 35, while the fewest holds by a pitching staff was 41 for the A's. It would take some effort, but with a little hard work and elbow grease I think it could be done.
  20. Taildragger8791
    I hope you're right, and he did seem to turn a corner there for a week, but he just struck out in 7 of 15 PAs this weekend with 1 walk and 3 hits. I wouldn't say he's settled in just yet.
  21. Taildragger8791
    Heck, I'd like that to be the rotation by mid-June. I'd like to see May get some run too, as well as any young reliever or hitter that is ready to be tested and has potential to be on the next winning Twins team. This team as-constructed isn't going anywhere this year, and most of the veterans aren't going to be part of that next winning team. We're going to lose 90 games anyways, and we're seeing now how much young players struggle adjusting to the league. Bite the bullet and overlap those learning struggles and this 90-loss season so that next year has at least a chance of being a .500 team. If we go into next season with another crop of untested young players with less than 1/2 a season's experience then we're just going to repeat this April all over again.
  22. Taildragger8791
    He's also a better offensive option than Murphy, Buxton, and probably Suzuki. Can we DH for our catcher on days Milone is pitching?
  23. Taildragger8791
    If I remember right, didn't he smoke a few good heaters in spring training? I thought I remembered reading that he didn't appear to have any issues catching up to the mid-90s fastballs he was seeing in mid- to late-March.
  24. Taildragger8791
    Since this has gotten nearly unwatchable, and I'm concerned for everyone's livers, I suggest the following solution: 1. Send everyone with an option to AAA. 2. Backfill the 25-man roster with whatever non-prospect pieces you can. 3. Take the Twins off TV and put the Red Wings on in their place. Enjoy winning baseball. 4. Leave this arrangement until at least July.
  25. Taildragger8791
    I don't remember Sano having such swing-and-miss tendencies in the zone before. He seems to have a good eye and isn't swinging at junk, but when he gets to two strikes and the pitcher puts something with movement in the zone he swings right through it almost every time. Was that an issue in the minors, or even last year?
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