gunnarthor

Nah, the ball crossed

Back in the day, we drank because it was Vikings season and Disco Darren didn't catch the damn ball.

On the refugee issue, I really liked this one. It's dated but it's coming around again. Sadly.

Beats me. I've heard many people say this is another 100 loss team. I have not asked them their theories on baseruns.

So Trump is planning a 20% tax on Mexican imports, according to CNN. I wonder how long it'll take the business community to get him to change that. http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/26/politics/donald-trump-mexico-import-tax-border-wall/index.html

Fancy man.

That's true, I did use baseruns. And when I used it I said if you used baseruns in 2015, then in fairness the 2016 team wasn't as bad.

Gonsalves isn't our #1 and, at least according to Klaw, Gonsalves and De Leon's rankings aren't that far apart.

FLR's your man. Right after Katrina, I kicked around buying it but I didn't. Wish I had. Nice dividend.

True, only Berrios has high upside but wasting Dozier isn't the way to fix it either. Brock Stewart slips right into the back of our rotation, for instance. (And most agree he wasn't offered with De Leon). So it doesn't look like - at this time - the Dozier trade wasn't going to move the needle much on the rotation. So you don't do it. The Twins do need better pitchers at the ML level. They have a handful of ranked prospects in AA/AAA right now. They have three picks in the top 37 (I think) in a college deep draft, and they can trade guys like Dozier or Santana. The Santana rumor mill is pretty empty and the best deal we've seen for Dozier hasn't been enough for most people. So that's what's left.

How you feel about De Leon is going to greatly alter your view. I was never very high on him b/c of his shoulder soreness. Klaw's ranking him in the 70s seems to reflect that as did fangraphs (and others) noting he was not their top pitching prospect. However, if you think De Leon is a difference maker, you look at this differently.

But it's not. We've already removed 46 starts from that group (Nolasco, Dean, Albers, Meyer, Milone) and hopefully another 26 with Duffey into the pen. If nothing else happens, at a minimum we'll get at least 25-40% new starts. I agree that Santana won't be as good but last year he and Gibson combined for 55 starts and 4.4 WAR. I think, even with regression, they can be a bit better. Berrios is the big one, of course. If he's pitching like last year, we're ****ed. But if turns into even a 2 WAR player, that's a huge swing. The point is, we don't have to take a deal we don't like to improve the rotation.

If you go to 4:00 here ... the comedian actually makes a pretty good point

The general ineptitude is helpful. In my work, I do a lot of immigration stuff and, if nothing else, he telegraphing of his ****ty actions has really helped us highlight concerns immigrants face. His fear mongering of Syrian children has to be the lowest point for the White House in a very long time. I cannot get over how ****ing awful you must be as a human being to see these children and say, 'nah, it's too dangerous to bring them here.' There better be a special layer of hell for men like that.

The Twins can do several things to improve the pitching without wasting their best trade chip. Even doing nothing, they can't expect positive regression. They can improve pitching by getting a pitch framing catcher (if you think that's a thing). They can improve pitching by improving the defense - esp the OF defense. I think they've done some of these. Obviously, if pitch framing is a thing, Castro is supposed to be good at it. An OF of Rosario/Buxton/Kepler should be an upgrade over last year, provided they hit and stay in the lineup. I'm not sold on the IF defense and, outside of Buxton, they don't have anyone who should be much more than average at best. But it's still an upgrade. If you don't want to role with Santana, Gibson, Santiago, May, Berrios (my guess for opening day), you can sign a FA starter like Hammel, who would probably be as effective as the "and junk" part of any De Leon trade. What "similar deals?" If you're talking about Dozier trades, again, I think you try and look at trades either of similar players or similar expected value. Ben Zorbrist was traded by Oakland to KC for half a season. KC received a pitcher in Manaea, who is pretty close to De Leon now, and a relief pitcher/occasional starter. The Royals were probably expecting maybe 1.5-2 WAR from Zobrist in that half season (optimistically) + bonus for making them a playoff team/WS contender. Dozier's expected value to the Dodgers - 8 WAR - is four times that of Zobrist's expected value to the Royals. So his return should be more than a top 50 prospect and a AAAA player. And so on

What's the first part? Do we ever trade Dozier? Not unless we get a deal we value.

"Thoroughly debunked" is not the same as "Levi doesn't agree." If you want to find out Dozier's worth, you look at similar trades, and compare the value a team traded away along with its position and length of control and see what the return was. That's why we know Dozier's value is much higher than De Leon and junk.

The leaks are interesting and a new development. Under Ryan, this whole discussion might never have come to light. We'd all be here arguing about whether he's even TALKED to the Dodgers and then they trade De Leon for Forsythe and this place would have exploded.

Quick version, last year was the only surprise year for me. I correctly thought the 2015 Twins would be a winning team (and it was so nice of the people who disagreed to constantly use base runs all season to argue the season didn't matter). I think, generally, the trades that were made were mostly fair. I thought the Twins should have gotten a second piece with Span (at the time, I thought it should have been Sammy Solis, who was coming off TJ surgery and was rated in the 15-20 range on Nat prospect lists). I liked the return on the Revere trade more even though I thought Meyer was the best piece. Injuries happen and prospects don't always pan out but the Twins farm system did a great job of growing and, I think, Brad Steil deserve credit for a lot of it. While Buxton was supposed to be a stud, the Twins got some nice prospects out of later round picks and low level international signings that really took off after Steil. The farm system isn't good just b/c of high draft position (although that helped). My two biggest problems with the rebuild - and I don't know where the blame goes or even if blame goes anywhere - is that, with the exception of Sano and Arcia, nearly every young hitter has had a real hard time adjusting to ML pitching. I'm not sure if they were brought up too soon or if it's the natural difficulty of the AAA to majors jump but it does seem like our hitters are caught by surprise by *something* at the ML level. Now, maybe this happens everywhere but Hicks' constant struggles bugged me. The other problem is that something ain't right with our ML veteran pitchers. Yes, having guys like Nolasco and Milone and Santiago and Worley sucks but they all under-performed, even by their standards. And they did this through different managers and pitching coaches. Was it pitch framing? Horrible defense? The cement drying? I have no idea but even in 2015, you could see the cracks. And I'm honestly not sure if the Ryan regime understood that or just thought it was bad luck. I do hope Falvey looks at this institutional failure more. Surprisingly, I think the rookie pitchers played more like they were expected to. As to FA, I generally don't think we should sign a big FA until you're ready to win. I thought, after 2015, the Twins could have added a FA SP but they also had a bunch of young arms that could be blocked. In retrospect, they should have done something there. (But that also brings into play the Pohlad checkbood, which isn't always reliable).

Yes, everyone who disagrees with your view of the trade thinks the Twins are going to use 'magic'. You have yet to find a comparable trade to Dozier (in your view). You have yet to even find one but you keep coming back to this myth that De Leon was close to Dozier's trade value. It's kind of insulting how much you refuse to listen to other people - and, frankly, insult other people. You've made no attempt to understand other people's views and you continually misinterpret them to make points that don't fit. To summarize, based on trades made in the last few years, a team that trades off a package comparable to Dozier should expect to receive two top 100 prospects + a couple lottery ticket pieces. The Twins made the right decision to not trade Dozier yet you have continuously labeled the Twins as making decisions based out of fear. It gets annoying. Your song has been played.

Molitor terrifies me. The pitching I can see ways around. Berrios gets good, Santana continues to be a solid ML pitcher that he's been for 10 years, Gibson pitches like 2014-2015 Gibson, Santiago pitches more like he did after he stopped listening to our coaching staff, May gets a real shot in the rotation, Hughes arm is fixed, Mejia is a solid back-end lefty, one of our AA arms breaks out for a quick promotion, one of our journeymen signings works out, we sign Hammel etc. Pitch framing is a real thing that improves the staff, the defense isn't the disaster it was last year, esp in the OF, and just natural positive regression. Not all of those things will happen but some will. But you can see where the staff might not be the disaster it was last year esp if they don't give those starts to Duffey and Albers et al. But Molitor? Man. He didn't seem to know what role to put players in, he didn't seem to be a player's manager at all, I think the players hated playing for him. I don't think he's particularly good for young guys who are struggling, for all the bitching about Gardy, Molitor used the media to attack players a lot more, he didn't stick up for his players early in the season, Sano's showboating seems to irritate him but he's ok with Rosario's showboating. I think Molitor can really **** this team up. And the fact that the FO put their own coach in the dugout suggests, to me, that they agree.

He's in the Aussie Open Final. http://www.espn.com/tennis/story/_/id/18557011/roger-federer-advances-australian-open-final-victory-stan-wawrinka Wow. I really hope he gets his 18th grandslam down under. And it could be against Nadal, if Nadal can get by Dimitrov. With the possible exception of Tiger Woods and Roided up Bonds, I don't think I've ever seen an athlete dominate a sport like Federer owned Tennis.

There's a lot of stuff that's relative. I'm pretty comfortable saying the offer was De Leon + junk but if I was forced to choose between the offer being just De Leon or De Leon + not junk, I'd say the offer was 1:1.

Well, I think after the 2012 season is probably when they honestly started rebuilding. The 2011 team was decimated by injuries but a lot of the core of the 2010 team was still there. You had Mauer in his prime, Morneau was supposed to be fine after 1.5 off from concussions, Hammer could replace Cuddy and Span and Revere were good young OFers. Liriano can't be as bad again. Let's see what happens if everyone's healthy. And it didn't work and Ryan started trading off all the vets. As for what we should expect, I think it's basically in place now. The offensive core is there and the Twins will start winning when the young guys get good. I would guess that they'll be in the 75 win range this year and make a big improvement next year. The bullpen is crap and I sure hope the FO does something about it but Berrios should be what everyone was hoping De Leon would be. Santana, Gibson and Santiago are experienced vets who shouldn't be as bad (as a group). May might be put back in the rotation and Duffey taken out. And Molitor has a coach in the dug out to make sure he doesn't **** up as much.

Well, I agree that the Twins need pitching but what they need is ace pitching. They just graduated Berrios who was a top pitching prospect who is probably a 2/3 at best. And the Twins will have in AA or AAA four pitchers who have been top 100 prospects on some list (Gonsalves, Mejia, Stewart and Jay). So they do have high level pitching prospects. But all of those guy project as #3 or less and are on the list for high floors or solid command/control or 'know how to pitch.' They don't have another Berrios in the system and they don't have a Bundy/Gioltio type at all. If Dozier can get us one of those, great. But De Leon wasn't one of those. And before someone says look at this ranking or that, most rankings that have him high have it because his proximity to the majors + a belief in a strong floor. Almost no one puts his stuff on the level of a Gioltio or Harvey et al.