gunnarthor

I don't really like either but I'd probably bet on Schoop for next year. That said, i wouldn't be too surprised if Kinsler has a bounce back season.

I won't answer for Howie but your schtick gets old too. The farm system wasn't bare when the new guys took over - they inherited a playoff team full of former top 100 prospects and a top 10 farm system per Klaw. Ryan's trades were the main reason the Twins were able to stay competitive for a decade. We have yet to see the new FO make any trade even as good as Liriano for Escobar. Let alone trades that would bring us guys like Santana, Sivla, Milton, Bartlett, Punto, Liriano, Castillo, Nathan, Boof, Lohse or even Lew Ford. His second run at GM, the trades didn't go as well but Span for Meyer was the type of trade they needed to make. I don't have much faith in May but he could still turn that trade around as well.

I think one of my thoughts on this was that the Twins have done a decent job in acquiring talent cheaply. International signings - Polanco and Kepler made the bulk of the WAR last year - look pretty good. Besides those two, the Twins can reasonably expect better results from guys like Sano and Romero this season as well. And the draft was strong, too. Higher than the Cubs and a good season from Buxton probably would have made them even with the Sox and Astros. So those are both pretty good. For all the complaints about draft/development, things seem workable there. The problem seems to be that the amateur talent is the only streams that are working well. We didn't see anything from waivers or rule v picks. Ryan made a bucket load of strong trades in the late 90s and 2000s that kept the team competitive for a decade. We don't have those trades (yet). FA has never been a huge part of the Twins foundation so they need to make better trades. The third thing is less specific but the Twins high-end talent hasn't yet shown consistent ability to play at a high-end level. Since the 2011 season, the Twins have only had a 5 WAR season for a player 4x - twice by Dozier and once each from Mauer and Buxton. (Again, only using bWAR. fWAR would probably have added Hughes and maybe others. Also, is there a real difference between 4.9 and 5.2? Probably not). I think that is more on the ML staff than the development staff.

Texas judge rules ACA unconstitutional, putting the health care of millions of Americans in jeopardy. President is happily tweeting about it.

One last thought on this was just looking at how much negative WAR was added by all players Twins -8 Sox -5 Cubs -4.5 Astros -5.5 Again, not really shocking but the Twins had a lot more bad players playing and giving bad production. Obviously, negative WAR for SSS is very misleading but ... eh. Twins had to play bad players more than good teams did b/c they don't have the depth (for whatever reasons) that better teams did. Does anyone remember that David Hale threw 3 innings for us this year? He wasn't good for us.

So I did back of the napkin math only here but looked at three recent WS teams to see how they constructed their teams. I only added up the value of players worth 1 WAR or more. There's significant issues with this, of course. WAR isn't a great measurement for relief pitchers or power only hitters. In season trades might have had some impact by either bringing or removing some WAR that was/wasn't counted. And we're not counting negative WAR from crappy players. But, whatever. Boston had about 57 WAR from players. It broke down like this Trades - 19.5 (34%) FA - 14 (25%) Drafted - 19.5 (34%) intern signing - 3.8 (6%) Houston also had about 57 WAR as well Trades - 17.3 (30%) FA - 6.1 (10%) Draft - 20.3 (36%) Intern sign - 10.9 (19%) waivers - 2.2 (4%) And Cubs had about 41 WAR (slackers) Trades - 20.1 (49%)! FA - 4.8 (11%) draft - 12 (29%) intern sign - 4 (10%) Last year, using the same criteria, the Twins amassed 29 WAR Trades - 6.3 (22%) FA - 2.5 (9%) draft - 15.7 (54%) int. sign 4.3 (15%) So, first, the Twins need to add WAR in all areas but nearly 16 WAR from drafted guys was better than I expected, frankly, with nothing from Buxton. International signings are actually right in line with the Cubs and Red Sox production wise and nothing from Sano there. Twins are way below on trades, both as % and actual production. That makes sense since the Twins didn't have a lot of top shelf items to move and their biggest trade (Span for Meyer) didn't work. Had they traded Perkins or a market developed for Dozier, who knows. Free agency as a % is actually in line but way below production of the WS teams, which makes sense as they have bigger payrolls. On the plus side, Buxton and Sano combined for like -1 WAR so those two could help by not sucking next year.

Klobuchar is almost certainly running and got a brief write up in Politico about the left behind voters. https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/14/klobuchar-dem-nominee-2020-left-behind-voters-1065225

You could be right. I hope not, but, yeah. That could definitely happen.

Why do you think the left doesn't want that? I think they'd be quite fine with him. He might not be their first choice but they wouldn't abandon him like some of them abandoned HRC. I think he'd make a great candidate. He's already shown he can run a successful campaign in a red state. He's liberal on most issues. He's not the most charismatic guy but that might not be that bad either. I'm not sure he'll win the nomination but I think he'll be one of the last guys standing. He's not another Martin O'Malley, for sure.

Re: Brown, that's my guess. He doesn't get the nomination but he'll be the VP. He almost took it in 2016.

I kind of assumed this was tongue in cheek but even with the safer rules, we've seen a four QBs get knocked out for the season already - the Colt McCoy and Alex Smith with Washington, Bengals Andy Dalton and Jimmy Garrapolo (sp) in SF. (actually, it looks like two more QBs - Luke Falk and Brad Kaaya - are out for the season as well. I've never heard of either. And we'll see if Wenz joins them with his broken vertebra). But I think the repeated physical trauma of being in the NFL, even for QBs, is more harmful than pitching (not that he's a pitcher anyway).

That's my guess. Plus they have a few too many starters unless they make a trade. If healthy, Berrios, Gibson, Odorizzi, Pineda and Mejia are probably your five man rotation in April. Stewart, Littell and Gonsalves back to AAA and Romero to the pen. I could see the Twins moving Stewart to the pen as well but we'll see.

I think you're right but that's a reason to support Brown. He did show that he can win Ohio which is huge. If he's flipping Trump voters in Ohio (which he clearly must have done), then he can flip those voters in WI and MI back as well. I don't think the Dems are going to ignore the midwest like they did in 2016 and the election results in the rust belt were pretty encouraging for Dems in 2018.

I hope he picks Baseball. I think he'll be a pretty exciting player and baseball needs more of them. Plus it's just safer than football.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/13/entertainment/rock-hall-fame-2019/index.html Janet Jackson, the Cure, Def Leppard, Stevie Nicks, Radiohead, Roxy Music and the Zombies get the call. Still waiting for Alice in Chains. ... The Cure is an obvious choice as is Radiohead. Def Leppard, ugh. The rest I don't really care about.

It's not over. We still have the minor league portion!

I'd bet that Jay is picked by someone. Not sure about Reed. He has an Anthony Slama feel to him. No one took him last year either.

George Will article on Sherrod Brown. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/this-candidate-may-be-the-optimum-challenger-to-trump-in-2020/2018/12/12/86fb4a60-fd7c-11e8-862a-b6a6f3ce8199_story.html?utm_term=.61512badaaa7 I like Brown a lot and think any Dem that can keep Ohio in play should be one of the top candidates for the job. The fact that he seems to rub Will the wrong way only improves his standing in my eyes.

Yep, branding. For better or worse, Democratic candidates are perceived as having to be electable in NY and CA regardless of where they are campaigning. I was pretty angry that the party didn't do much to protect and help Donnelly in Indiana. Yeah, it was a tough campaign for him but the party could have done more. I live in Southern MN and Hagedorn (ugh) ran constant ads against Feehan being a elitist left coast liberal when that wasn't really true. The party needs to figure out how to brand better when they are working in red areas. They also need to present actual plans to help these areas. For all the Russia talk, people in rural areas voted against Clinton in large part b/c the Obama economy improvements didn't come to the rural areas. There are real actions the party could do to help but they've been pretty silent on that.

Not sure what comment you think makes him a diva or need of attitude adjustment. From the article. “Pissed? Yes,” Buxton said. “I ain’t sugar-coating nothing, simple as that.” (Honesty from a player) “It’s business, they did what they did, I do what I do,” he said. “At the end of the day, I’m still going to keep playing hard, still want to play in Minnesota, still want to play beside my teammates. That’s all that matters.” (God, no. He might play hard for us and wants to play in MN. What a freaking diva). Buxton said being notified of the decision “kind of didn’t go over well” but added that he and the team have “turned the page.” (Good) “I have no idea what they want now. I stayed in Triple-A for four months. What do you expect? What can you want?” Buxton said he expects to be at TwinsFest Jan. 25-17 but added, “I won’t be as quiet as I have been.” (Nothing wrong with that. Sounds like he's unsure of how he fits in the Twins plans) Asked if he was healthy enough to be recalled before September, he said, “Apparently to them I wasn’t, so I’ll leave it at that, too. Everybody else saw that I was playing every day, but I’m going to leave it at that.” (His health was the excuse the Twins used to not call him up). Buxton said he expect to have to win the center field job back. “That’s how I look at it,” he said. “I didn’t finish the year here.” (Going into ST thinking he has to fight for the starting job. What a diva). Honestly, nothing in that article bothered me. It seems clear that the FO has bungled another relationship. This article didn't mention it but Molly said last year that he didn't think Buxton was promised the starting CF job back next ST and Buxton surely read that. Sounds like the FO hasn't done much in regard to patching up the relationship. I'm surprised our new manager hasn't met him face to face yet but there might be legit reasons why that hasn't happened. Buxton himself sounds like he's eager to prove the team wrong for sending him home early. That seems like a good attitude to me.

Yes and no. They kept the Senate in part b/c of the map. If the GOP senators were up for election in Ohio, Iowa, NC or Maine, the Senate might have flipped. And they won 40 seats in the House. Huge wave. I do think the Dems can get the rural white voters back but they have to have a comprehensive plan for that.

No, unless his agent thinks Buxton is done/injured or a AAAA player, there's no way he'd start negotiations after last year. From what we heard after 2017, Buxton (and other players) weren't keen on signing overly team friendly deals either. If Buxton/Sano group play to their potential, I think the Pohlad's will make one of them a Mauer like face of the franchise (my money has always been Buxton) and let the rest walk. If they bust or are just good not all-star level players, they probably move on in FA. I honestly figured one of Rosario/Kepler would be traded this offseason since that would move one arb eligible player out of the group while Kiriloff was nearly ready.

You are right that 2015 and 2016 were bad but I didn't mention that in my post. I specifically said 2017. I don't really think career numbers in three partial seasons really tell us nearly as much as what we see over a full (mostly) healthy season. YMMV. I don't think you're understanding how badly those small sample sizes affected his season numbers. Again, look at 2017 and look at it at 15 game intervals, that prevents him getting extra credit for incredibly hot or cold periods. He posted above avg obp two thirds of the year (obp in 2017 was .324) which is great considering his speed. What we've seen from Buxton is a player who has taken time to adjust at every level and then done so quite well. .082/.135/.122 (historically bad start to the season) .261/.358/.391 .268/.362/.341 .224/.255/.408 .178/.275/.178 .311/.367/.422 .370/.400/.704 (killing it) .286/.333/.571 .273/.325/.468 Of course, this has nothing to do with the topic of this thread. Buxton got less than 250 at bats last year at all levels combined and was sent home while players with worse performance weren't ****ed with b/c they didn't have service time considerations. The team screwed Buxton over several ways last year - including letting him play on an ****ed-up foot and then claiming that they let him play hurt in AAA - that i don't really understand anyone taking the teams side on this. Had the Twins shut him down in August, they would've had a better argument.

None of this is actually true though. It's the narrative that's sticking but the reality is that Buxton's slow start in April of 2017 killed his season numbers. He adjusted and hit well, league adjusted to him, it took him a couple weeks and he adjusted back.