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gunnarthor

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Everything posted by gunnarthor

  1. They had Bruno on the bench last year. That didn't seem to help. These moves seem pretty smart and hopefully they'll help but I certainly can't see how they'll hurt. Last year's team sucked and they were also boring and unwatchable. They seemed to lack energy and drive. I think that blame should go on Molitor but if Hunter et al can help the team, great.
  2. Yeah, he kind of reminds me of Kepler 2015. Same build, both are lefties. Not as good a hitter but more power and fewer walks but a real strong AA season. He's only 20. He entered last season as BA #54 prospect and will probably move up into the top 30. But he does have warts. I don't think he's an elite prospect like Buxton/Berrios/Sano were but he's probably in that next grouping with Kepler.
  3. I think this is why we're seeing reports that Falvey/Levine are asking for a very high return on Dozier. They aren't going to give him away and the hope is that the players he gets back will be a better fit for the Sano/Buxton/Berrios nucleus. But if the best return is a couple non-top 100 prospects, you keep Dozier because you don't have to trade him now. He's cheap, he's a pretty good player and you can always reexamine trading him during the season.
  4. Both probably have notes from TX and CLE on the Twins minor league systems. I think Levine has strong scouting background as well. And, as Klaw has stated, the Twins scouting system is well respected so I don't think they're going in blind.
  5. Yeah, I wouldn't want him straight up for Dozier.
  6. I think Puig would be a really nice fit for us, actually. He isn't perfect and I think he'd have a bit of culture shock going from LA to MPLS but, in a down year, he still had an 101 OPS+ and doesn't strike out too much. He needs to start taking a few more walks again but .... We'd have him for his age 26 and 27 seasons and (I think) he'd be a nice upgrade over Rosario and Rosario could be an intriguing fourth OFer option.
  7. Well, hopefully he can help nibblers like Gibson
  8. Mike hit on the smart points but does the economy really feel that secure to anyone? These last few years, I've been very surprised by how well the stock market has been doing vs. how I feel the economy should be doing. I think the economy should take a hit.* * Again, I'm just some idiot on the internet.
  9. Another note of worry on TSLA is that they were (arguably) somewhat dependent on tax credits and rebates for solar power that a Trump presidency might not continue.
  10. WFC (and other banks) had a pretty nice week until today. Probably not a bad idea to throw some money into banks and oil for a bit.
  11. I'm not sure if Sano, Buxton, Berrios really fit into the 'bounce back' category. They are all young guys adjusting to the league. They'll be fine. I think guys like Gibson, Hughes, Perkins etc are more the bounce back types we need to do well. I'm not sure what to expect from them but I do think the young guys on the team will be better because 1) they are very talented and 2) players get better with experience.
  12. I probably wouldn't touch Russian stocks unless you're trigger happy with when to sell them. Russia's underlying economic troubles are legit and frightening and just being buddy buddy with the US President isn't going to fix those problems. We might see some movement based on things like expectations and hope but probably not on the fundamentals. * Remember, I'm just some idiot on the internet and know nothing.
  13. I think, unless we see a real deal, we're going to collect cash for a bit and reexamine investment opportunities after next summer. I tend to think the market will be lower a year from now.
  14. I kind of wished I caught the ending but when the tarp went out I went to bed. Pretty decent WS though.
  15. Nice piece, Seth. The Twins have been taking a few PR guys in most of their recent drafts too.
  16. I think you might be ignoring the pitchers they signed in FA.
  17. Profar never played first in the minors. Ian Desmond played 8 innings in the OF in the minors before TX put him in CF this year. Teams do it all the time. Players move down the defensive spectrum. Puckett to right, Yount to the OF, Betts to CF, Napoli to first. As explained above, the Twins had a few options - cut Plouffe for nothing or play Sano in RF. Moving Sano down the defensive spectrum isn't that controversial. The reason it didn't work is probably not because Sano is too big but probably because Sano didn't work hard enough to make the change work.
  18. Or, you know, two years ago with Betts to show that it's been a constant thing throughout baseball history but feel free to ignore the examples that you don't like.
  19. Sure he is. Sano is a lot more athletic than many athletes from the 70s. Here's some video of the 1972 ALCS - Those guys are not at the level of athletes we see today. It's not even close. It's nice that Winfield got a scholarship for basketball but so did Flip Saunders.
  20. Sure. He is also a better athlete than Noel Jenke, Mickey McCarty and Dave Logan. Murphy is right - the differences between players today and the 80s (and the 70s in Winfield's case) is stunning. Offensive linemen didn't weigh 270, now some of them push 400 and run speed drills under 5 seconds. Baseball players are getting bigger and stronger. Sano is among the top tier for that right now but he's not unique and other players will eventually be bigger than him.
  21. Sano is probably a better athlete than Murphy and Winfield. The players today are so much bigger, faster, stronger and just better than those from even the 90s. Dale Murphy said this: "“I don’t think I could have played today,” he says. “Hey, I’d love to play now. But, you know what? These kids are better than us. They’re better players. We might not want to admit it, but we go back and look at old highlights of ourselves and compare it to these kids now: No comparison. Everybody throws 95 mph-plus. Their swings are so much more fine tuned. They’re in so much better condition. And they make plays — I watch them and I say, ‘Wow.’ Athletically, I don’t think I could compete today.”" They could have moved Sano to the OF in 2013. Sure. But I don't see why. He was still playing third and learning the game. You don't move players down the spectrum until you have to. They didn't have to and they didn't know he'd miss all of 2014 and be in the majors in July 2015.
  22. Good grief. Moving players around at the ML level happens all the time through out baseball history. Dale Murphy was a catcher in the minors and played literally one inning in the OF before Atlanta made him their center fielder. Dave Winfield was drafted as a pitcher, played firstbase in college and never spent a day in the minors. He learned the OF at the ML level. Mookie Betts didn't play in the OF at all until he was pressed into service in Boston. Craig Biggio was a minor league catcher who was moved to CF and 2B in the majors. etc, etc. All of these guys - like Sano - had ML ready bats pretty fast. The argument against Sano is that he was too big but that's not much of an argument. We already see some pretty big OFers out there - Stanton, Trout, Hamilton all look like NFL linebackers out there. Players are rapidly changing and getting much bigger - 270 pound outfielders will happen. The days of 6', 180lb Jack Clark LFers are long gone. The Twins had two choices with Sano - play him at third or play him in right. If they played him at third, it would have meant dropping Plouffe for nothing - there was no market for him. No team is going to make a 22 year old kid the permanent DH without eliminating every other option, especially when they are concerned about his weight. So they put the better defender at third. It didn't work. There were a lot of reasons why it didn't work out - I think the chief one was how little Sano prepared for it. Despite what the Twins said, Twins reporters reported that he didn't do much before ST and didn't seem to be very enthused about the move. Heck, several TD posters noted his apathy in ST toward the move. But the idea that the Twins were wrong to try this because he didn't play it in the minors - esp when he missed a full year in the minors but still made the majors at 21 - is ridiculous.
  23. The reason they didn't play him in the OF in the minors was because he missed the entire 2014 season and his bat was ML ready by mid-2015.
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