gunnarthor

There's another stat, WPA, that's supposed to measure how a player helped in their opportunities. It's not a predictive stat or a rate stat, it just measures (do varying degrees of accuracy) how a player influenced a game/season. By that stat, Ervin still wins.

Sure they could. They'd probably win several. It's funny. Anytime a Twins pitcher doesn't do well in the playoffs it's because he doesn't strike out enough guys (even though our soft tossing guys did pretty well) and when other teams strike out pitchers get blown out, it's not a problem. Twins need good pitchers. Good pitchers come in many different forms. Sure, the best pitchers tend to be strike out pitchers but that doesn't mean only strike out pitchers are good. And strike out pitchers are expensive. I'm not saying we should ignore that, of course. But if we could get a Dallas Kuechel or two, that'd be just fine.

Votes of house and senate dems respectively.

Yep, and they keep it.

I'm not sure if that's because the Twins were good or because Molitor isn't a good manager. I would have given Garver nearly all of Vargas' at-bats. We knew what we had in him and it wasn't much. Garver - esp in the second half of the season after he dominated AAA - should have gotten those at bats.

We'll see. Our highest payroll was about 113m although that was in 2011 and they probably dropped about 1-2m during the season in trades (Thome and Young were moved late in the season and were making over 8m combined). I'm expecting our opening day payroll to be around 110m this year. Higher than that and I would be pleasantly surprised.

So now we have Trumpcare. Probably not a good thing. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2017/10/13/daily-202-throwing-a-bomb-into-the-insurance-markets-trump-now-owns-the-broken-health-care-system/59dff67a30fb041a74e75d48/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_daily202-759am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.36e0c2599507

I think Garver should have gotten more AB this season so we know what we have. But he didn't so I don't think the Twins can reasonably expect much from him next year. They certainly shouldn't plan for him to be a solution to something.

I think we have to be careful with pitchers. Outside of the Roid era, most pitchers (not all) are usually done around 32. Obviously, there are exceptions and PED use is still happening but pitchers fall off a cliff faster than most realize. Lynn might be worth 3 WAR next year, 2 the following year and worth nothing over the rest of it. I think I'd rather trade for a younger pitcher or maybe take someone like Vargas on a one year deal while we wait for Gonsalves and Romero to come in. That said, I'm sure I'll be the first cheerleading Lynn's signing if it happens.

I think we do. Falvey came from Cleveland the year they went to the WS. Their WS team had something like 4 WAR of production from free agents. They were built by trades and homegrown talent. That's perfectly in line with what the Twins have done in the past. In an interview, Thad Levine did not sound like a GM who knows that payroll would increase. Emphasis added. "We all know where the Minnesota's payroll ranks among the 30 clubs. We're not going to be in the top 10, and we're fine with that. There's no excuses about the payroll. One thing that when Derek and I joined the organization, we kind of pulled back the curtain of what we did in Texas from a personnel standpoint—in the front office, in the analytics departments, and otherwise, and so did Cleveland, and we kind of juxtaposed that against what Minnesota was doing. I think at that point, we had a little bit of a revelation that maybe Minnesota, just from a sheer personnel and systems standpoint, was a little bit behind some other teams. And if we're acknowledging that we're going to be a little bit behind on the payroll, we tried to present to ownership—we shouldn't be behind on the infrastructure because if you're not spending on the field and also not spending off the field, outside of sheer dumb luck, I'm not sure how you're vanquishing foes, and our goal is to vanquish the foes. We talked about—let's leave the payroll alone, but if you give us the latitude to spend more on systems than on people, then we can be extremely competitive. And ownership was 100 percent on board with it. They have been exceptionally supportive of that. We have a four-man staff right now, and I think that's just the tip of the iceberg. In light of the quality people we have in our organization, I think we're very confident that same group can bring more people of that ilk in, and I think if we have this event next year, I'd be shocked if we weren't talking about the department having two to four to eight more people involved in it. I'd say it's an area we're really, really investing in." The Twins aren't going to change from the Ryan ways. We're still going to make cheap FA signings like Belisle and Breslow, we're going to make rule v picks and hope they pan out, we'll make waiver claims and we'll look at making trades. But the new FO isn't going to rely on FA for much of anything. The best we can hope for is another contract similar to Santana's contract.

The Twins can't afford Darvish.

So now Trump is threatening to pull back federal aid to Puerto Rico in another pretty obvious effort to create a social divide. Abandoning Puerto Rico is great for his base and insulting to anyone with a soul.

So this is really more of a fantasy thread since I'm pretty sure the Twins plan for next year is to have Sano start at third and if/when he can't handle the position, move him to DH and give the UI (probably Escobar) the majority of starts at third. And that makes sense and I'm not really against it. BUT, what would other options be? The defensive metrics didn't love Escobar or Sano but both sorta played third base to a draw. They weren't horrible but they probably aren't getting better and might get substantially worse. Crazy idea 1 - So what about Mike's idea of moving Dozier to third? That frees up an infield spot for Nick Gordon. Dozier's bat would play at third. I'm not sure if his arm would. Sano to DH full time. Crazy idea 2 - move Rosario to third. I know, crazy, right. But he's certainly athletic enough and played 2b a bit in the minors. His arm is strong enough and if Pete Rose could make the move, then maybe he could? I don't think, after some reps, his defense would be a disaster although it might not be good. As rangy as he's been in LF, the metrics don't like him (I have my own theory on why) so we wouldn't necessarily be hurting our OF defense, esp if we replaced him with someone who might have good on-base skills eventually (Granite? Wade? FA slugger? probably not Grossman). Sano DH's full time. Crazy idea 3 - Polanco slides over to third, Gordon is called up. At the beginning of the year I thought this was probably going to happen but Polanco is better than I thought so maybe they don't want to move him out of the MI. (And this and CI#1 suppose that Gordon is ML ready which he might not yet be). Sano DH full time. Crazy idea 4 - just give it to Escobar. Let him have a full season to become a ML starter and see what he can do with it. He has some pop. He'll be 29 next year, does he have any improvement left? If he struggles after a few months, you see where Gordon is and what options he could add.

Sano will probably end up getting the most PA as DH but Grossman might be the opening day starter this year.

Albright college (Div III) cut their back-up QB for kneeling. http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2738139-gyree-durante-cut-by-albright-college-after-kneeling-during-national-anthem?utm_source=cnn.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=editorial The NFL has blackballed Kaepernick. I'm sure there are a lot of players who want to say something but unless they are at the Manning/Brady level, it's pretty hard to do it.

My hope is that the FO discussed some issues they had with his managing before he resigned. I think the fact that they fired Allen plus the addition of Pickler and Rowson last year means this FO is still going to push for better voices in the dugout.

He was given payroll advantages that three other teams in that division would have killed for. I think it's hard to say that the Red Sox didn't underachieve a great deal the last few years.

Yeah, not a surprise. He was always over rated. He was given a loaded team and won a WS and followed that up with two last place seasons in Boston! https://www.baseball-reference.com/managers/farrejo03.shtml

Yep, those innings and complete games were big. Hopefully, Berrios has a bunch next year.

What's Steil's new role?

And after his SOS called him a moron, Trump is now suggesting they compare IQ tests. He's just so very dumb. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/10/10/trump-proposes-iq-tests-face-off-with-tillerson-after-secretary-of-state-calls-him-a-moron/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_pp-trump-iq-8am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.e5105ba4707f

I'm opposed to the move and hope greatly that the Twins win the world series.

I think this is a mistake. Besides bunting, Molitor had a lot of problems. This should have been a time for the new FO to make a move but so far they have not done much at all. This should be a mark against them which are starting to add up.

I think payroll will end around 110mish and that gives us roughly 20m to add in FA but I don't think we'll do all of that. I think they'll make some trades to take on some slightly higher salaries (arbitration years) or such. But the Pohlads didn't hire Falvey do go big in payroll. They hired him because they think he can operate in a low payroll environment. Levine's somments in that BP piece were also pretty damning for anyone hoping for ownership to step up. Love the Twins, hate the owners.

That's an interesting list for 90s albums. Certainly not how I'd have arranged them but there are some all-time classics on that list that are, frankly, too low - Automatic for the People, Metallica, Superunknown,Violator, Janet, Blood Sugar Sex Magik ... man, memories. And no Alice in Chains? WTF?