USAFChief

If RBI are extremely valuable, why would they be an extremely poor evaluation tool?

Fun with numbers.

I'll never understand how someone can watch baseball and then state "RBI are meaningless." Never.

Not to pick on you, but I've been reading some version of this post for several years now. "Now's not the time. Wait. The minor leaguers are coming. Don't trade. Don't sign bullpen help. Don't sign free agents. In two years, we'll be good, and THEN go get the guys needed to be good." I will give you credit for being the first person to mention trading Sano, though. Uff-da.

1. legit starter: better than what the Twins are running out at 4 and 5 right now. 2. I pay very little attention to Fangraphs, even less to their projections, and even less than that to WAR, so I don't care about any of that. The Twins are currently on pace for 90 wins. We're a quarter of the way through the season. That's reality, and with some help, I see no reason they can't come close to maintaining that pace.

Add one legit starter, 2 relievers from the minors, and suddenly this team looks a lot different to me. Nobody--NOBODY--has dominant pitching up and down the staff. And if you DO have it, it's fleeting. Look at the Mets from a couple years ago...everybody's darling, all that young pitching. They were going to dominate baseball for half a decade. You don't need 5 great starters to get to the postseason. And you shouldn't count on tomorrow being better than today, if you just wait.

None of this makes much sense to me. I don't understand how, on the one hand, we don't have a good enough minor league system for any other team to want any of it in trade, but if we just hold onto those minor leaguers, they'll magically turn into everything needed to win the WS. I don't understand what the previous regime has to do with what the current regime should do, nor do I believe the holes the team had "for the last decade" have anything to do with 2017. I don't understand arguing, on the one hand, that good players by themselves don't win ("Trout"), and then arguing, on the other hand, against providing them some help. I don't understand arguing that the Twins won't sign high dollar free agents, and also arguing against trades. That leaves only the minor leagues...and you've already said the minor league system doesn't have much talent. Somewhat off topic, but I also strongly disagree that it "takes all 25 guys on the roster to win in the playoffs." It takes all of the 25 man, and most all of the 40 man roster to get to the playoffs. Once you're there, it's about the top 15-18 players on your team. You said it yourself...you'd be fine with Berrios starting games 1, 4 and 7 in a series. You're only using 3 or 4 starters in the postseason, and only the top 3 or 4 relievers will be used in any significant way. Nobody is starting the utility IFer in the playoffs. You don't need, or use, a 25 man roster in the playoffs. The Twins minor league system has already provided them with the basics needed to win. If Sano, Buxton, Polanco, Berrios, Kepler, et al aren't good enough to contend in 2017, might as well trade them all off and start over. But they are good enough, so what's needed is to man up and go find the help they need, and start doing it now.

Fair points. I do, however, believe there is a deal out there that can help this team. Obviously they're not trading for a top line starter. Maybe take on money, find a situation where someone with talent needs a fresh start. And don't let trading away a prospect or two stand in the way. Fortune favors the bold.

When it's 90 percent of his PAs, and he's extremely power challenged, yes. I will point it out every time. Mauer hurts this team.

Not a single Oriole takes that pitch.

That's 99 percent on Gibson. Yeah, coulda been a GIDP. That leaves it at runner on 1st, 1 out. 5 runs later...its all in Gibson.

Was that an 0-2 pitch, Gibby? Why yes, yes it was. I'm so tired of the same old ****. .

He might have been taken more seriously if he'd updated his map. What are those...territories?

Take away their record vs the Twins, and the Royals are 17-18.

Trading for a starter ruins a rebuild? Trading any prospects would be a "disaster," and "lead to 5 more years of awful baseball?" I think you have that backwards. "We're going to do this the right way," (i.e. NOT trading anything from the minor leagues) is one significant cause of the awful baseball. If, indeed, they are 2-3 starters away, trading for one, now, seems like a good way to get going on finding them. The other option is to do nothing. That's not an acceptable strategy. Not for now, and not for later.

I can buy the argument he needed to start the season in Rochester to get some innings. That needn't have been over a month, though. You don't CHOSE to give a start to Tepesch over Berrios.

WINNAH!!! Feels like we STOLE one!

Y'know, people used to laugh at me when I said I would be a comedian someday. Well, nobodies laughing now.

Mrs Chief and I love to go camping. A few weeks ago we were up in the beautiful Catalinas, just north of Tucson, at about 8000 feet, enjoying an absolutely beautiful, moonless night. The stars! Billions of them. Mrs Chief looked over at me, and asked, "Will you look at that. Tell me dear, what do you see?" "I see billions and billions of stars!" "And what does that tell us?" she asked? "Well, it tells me I'm but an infinitesimal speck in a vast, limitless cosmos. I am probably looking at other ecosystems, much more advanced than ours. What does it tell you, honey?" She looked at me for just a second, and said "Somebody stole our tent."

At the same casino I talked about earlier, we went to see another magician. There's usually a pretty cosmopolitan crowd, and that night was no exception. We were in the back row, and right next to us were a French couple, a Spaniard, and a German. The magician noticed us way in the back, and he shouted out "can you guys see, way back there in the back?" So we all jumped up and shouted "Yes" "Oui" "Si" "Ja"

Have a night, Robbie.

Dick is close to an anueryism.

Honest to God, I can't let this go. I want Mauer out of the GD lineup. I'm sick of this. I'd rather watch Park or Vargas take three big hacks and K than watch Mauer passively let every pitcher dictate every AB, while passing the responsibility of DOING SOMETHING to everyone else in the lineup. Edit: Hallelujah! Holy ****! Where's the tylenol?

ick.

Did we really just take Sano out of the game for a trail pinch runner?