gunnarthor

But your logic is that the Twins were best offense in baseball's second half so they won't be #1 next year and that's regression? Wouldn't regression mean they had to be worse than #7 (if runs is what you're going by) since that's where they placed during the season? I think most of us considering regression/progression are thinking about how players/teams will perform over the full season and not just the last couple months.

Why would the Giants want help for 2018? They were the worst team in baseball this year. Posey, Shark, Cueto, Cain, Belt, Crawford, Span and Pence will all be 30 or older next year. That was an old team whose window has closed (they did win a lot in their window!). But shouldn't they be moving toward a full rebuild? I can't imagine they think they can compete next year in the loaded AL West. And they have one of the worst farm systems in the majors right now. So Moore, a pitcher who posted a negative WAR last year and put up a 76 ERA, has been bad for 40+ starts for the Giants and has seen his walk, strike outs and HR numbers move in the wrong direction, shouldn't cost much. Frankly, I'm not sure he has much trade value at all. If the Twins think they can improve him, sure, go for it. But he's an NL pitcher moving to the AL? If the cost is something like Travis Blankenhorn or such, fine. But it it's more than that, you don't do it. He's not a good pitcher anymore.

Twins were never going to pick up Verlander's salary.

Make the trades. We have another thread on that. The Twins have some chips, use them. I don't want to spend money on Chatwood and we're not going to get Tanaka so the only options we have are trades and internal growth by our young pitchers. We can do both.

Yep, and that's probably one of the reasons we brought in Falvey. Good development and trades.

I get that but your premise is flawed. There's no sure thing just because a contract is bigger. Lots of bigger contracts were disasters because pitching is very damaging to arms and there also isn't always that much pitching out there. Here are the pitchers who got more than Nolasco, Santana and Hughes the last few years. In 2013 the big three deals were for Grienke, Edwin Jackson and Anibal Sanchez. Grienke's been great although his contract had an opt out that he used to sign with the Dbacks. Sanchez and Jackson were bad deals. n 2014- Tanaka, Garza and Ubaldo Jimenz. Tanaka was a bit special as a FA from Japan and younger than most. The Yankees gave him a 7/155 deal which hasn't been bad so far although this was a bit of down year. Garza, Jiminez and Nolasco all got about the same deal and Nolasco was probably the best of them. In 2015 Scherzer, Lester and Shields got signed for more than Santana. Lester had two good years but was not good this year and is trending down. He'll be 34 next year and owed 85m over the next three seasons (counting the buy out). Scherzer got a 7/210 deal and has been awesome so far. Shields, 25/year, has been a disaster. And before the 2016 season the big deals were David Price, Grienke, Johnny Cueto, Jordan Zimmerman, Jeff Samardzija, Wei-Yin Chen, Mike Leake, Ian Kennedy and Scott Kazmir. All nine of those guys got bigger deals than Ervin. Price had a great first year but was injured and feuding with the media and is still owed nearly 160m. Greinke is good. Cueto put up a 93 ERA+ and is injured. Zimmerman was worse than Kyle Gibson this year. He'll be 32 next year and still owed 75m. Shark's been serviceable but he's never been as good as his rep. Chen's been a disaster. Leake was already traded for nothing and two teams are dividing his salary. Kazmir missed the entire season and Kennedy sucks. So that's the whole list of pitchers who signed for more than our guys over the last few years. It's not a great list. Grienke and Scherzer are about the only two who have been worth it (so far) and they signed for a lot more than 150m. Tanaka, maybe. Too early to give up on Price but it looks bad. I'd probably rather have Santana's contract straight up over any of the rest of those guys. So it's not really realistic to say the the Twins should just sign one big contract. First, they'd have to compete with the Yankees, Dodgers and Nats for it which they simply won't do. And second, there's no promise that the player would perform.

Oh my god, no. Do we want Bread in there, too? Where's Alice in Chains?

True but she's really influential which was sorta one of the things the HOF was supposed to honor. I think she'd be a fine addition.

I think Kennedy will side with the Dems on the Gerrymandering case b/c the if that gerrymandering is ok, nothing can be unconstitutional and Kennedy won't go that far. I'm far more worried about him retiring and letting Trump get to pick his replacement. (or any of the other justices dying. Ugh). I do wish the Dems had made the court a bigger part of the election. Not sure why they didn't. Congress wasn't going to let a black man pick Scalia's replacement? Seems like they should have made that a real issue.

I'm generally optimistic. I think we should expect better offensive seasons from Buxton, Polanco and Kepler. Just going by OPS+, all three were below 100. I think Polanco can get close to 100 and the other two should get far above it. Sano should be a bit better as well. I think his bat can improve (127 OPS+ isn't his ceiling) and he should play in more games. Mauer, Dozier and Castro can all be around what they were this year. Not sure about Rosario. Could see him staying around a .290/.330/.500 slash line but maybe he regresses. That's probably close to his ceiling though. I think Berrios should be better, Santana worse. Gibson might be similar to this season. Pressly and Duffey should be better based on stuff. Neither should have ERA+ below 100, for instance. Rogers, Hildy and Belisle won't put up the same numbers. And as a major progression guy, I'll go with Curtiss. He'll have a full season in the majors and emerge as a huge weapon.

XTC is not in the HOF Also, this quiz is very hard. https://www.sporcle.com/games/g/rockrollHOFinductees

Here's a list of the nominees for 2018. According to CNN, an artist had to release an album before 1992. Pretty ugly list. Bon Jovi Kate Bush The Cars Depeche Mode Dire Straits Eurythmics J. Geils Band Judas Priest LL Cool J MC5 The Meters Moody Blues Radiohead Rage Against the Machine Rufus featuring Chaka Khan Nina Simone Sister Rosetta Tharpe Link Wray The Zombie If I had a vote (I don't) I'd vote for Depeche Mode and Rage Against the Machine. Dire Straits, maybe. I was surprised that Nina Simone wasn't already in.

Actually, I think that's a very good idea as macabre as it is. Pro life advocates got a lot of success by showing pictures of abortions which made everyone queasy. America's support of wars has gone down remarkably after the cameras started showing the body bags.

I'm really hoping that a bunch of Atlanta's prospects are ruled free agents (sorry Ben). I want the Twins to nab them.

Yeah, it's getting hit pretty hard. Over 20% in two days, or so. uff-da. Short sellers suck. If I had cash on hand, I'd probably buy some more at 90 but I don't.

I'm not sure that's true. None of these guys are going to command a Sale-like return. Sonny Gray, who had 2.5 years of control left and came with some international money, cost the Yankees Dustin Fowler (a fast moving prospect but not a top 100 guy at the beginning of the year), James Kapirelian (a top 80ish prospect with high ceiling who missed all of 2017 w/injuries) and Jorge Mateo (another top 80ish prospect). mlbpipeline has those three ranked #66 (Fowler), #97 (Mateo) and unranked in their updated lists and they are #3, 4, and 10 in the A's system. Sure, those guys have some ceiling but I don't think that's any better than a (for example) Gordon (#29 overall), Romero (#70), Thorpe and Wade offer. Obviously, teams will have their own needs and rankings but it's in the same ballpark, if nothing else. I think the guys mentioned are more likely to get a Gray-like return (or less).

2011. http://www.baseballprospectus.com/compensation/cots/american-league/minnesota-twins/

Smith was the GM at the time. Many people feel that he was fired the next year because he wanted to increase payroll again.

I believe Pineda will miss most of next season recovering from TJ surgery.

He's still relatively cheap so I'd expect he'd be back in a reduced role. I think part time DH/OF/bench bat works for him. He gets on base which is a good thing. I think Sano is going to get a lot of games as the DH next year.

But they didn't really spend much on those guys. They gave them #3 starter money, which was more or less in line with what other pitchers of note got. Park got 3/yr. That's nothing. And I'm not sure you can say "sure bets" when it comes to pitching. Look at Hughes, his first contract was great (3/24). He put up a 6 WAR season (or whatever) at 28. Eats a ton of innings. The narrative on him is that he's the type of flyball pitcher who is better away from the small AL East parks. Sets a league record for k/bb ratio. So the team gives him a 5 year deal that would keep him with us through age 32 and pay him like a #3 pitcher. Basically, he just had to be healthy for that to work. Santana's deal has worked out great for us and Nolasco was pretty much exactly what he was before and after he was with us. So I don't think you can say we should just get a sure thing and go from there. A few years ago, people were saying the Twins should shell out for Anibal Sanchez, who had never topped 200ip. He flopped.

I think that's pretty high and likely closer to 110 or 115m. The highest payroll this team ever had was 113m and that was the year after TF opened, huge attendance and a 96 win season. I think, after arbitration and min salaries, our current payroll will be at 90m, giving us roughly 20m to spend.

I've mentioned in other threads that after arbitration the Twins might have around 20m to spend in FA. Here's their payroll for next year - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17Ks25huKVP_ducCpWbLmo7h-N09oIGBGoa940Uergz8/pubhtml So, that said, maybe Cobb or Chacin would be reasonable options in the 4/48m bin? Honestly, I might rather bite the bullet and take a guy like Vargas or Feldman on a one year deal over committing several years to these other guys.

Pohlads own this team. We're not going to win a bidding war for a top pitcher.

Yeah, I don't like that a short seller is causing the concern but I'm not completely sure their critiques aren't at least somewhat valid. But I'll hold for now.