gunnarthor

I think the Twins should see what teams need a second baseman and approach them and ask for the moon. If they don't get a great haul, keep him.

Well the report said that the Twins would interview him but it didn't say when or for what position or who else they are interviewing. This is just something that was leaked. Perhaps the Twins will interview him for both positions to get his feel. My guess is that Pohlad would want someone like Antony will be POBO and someone like Mcleod would be GM. But I'm also not sure how the duties/power between the two positions would differ.

Well, according to the article, he has an impressive resume and people in the game think he'll be a GM so I guess this is good. I really have no idea how to pick a GM but he's worn a lot of hats - minor league manager, scouting director and VP - so he probably has some idea of how the baseball part of the operation works. I'm curious on what he thinks of being saddled with Molitor. On one hand, it's just one year so maybe he can live with it. Other than the Molitor/ownership thing, which I think is a real turnoff to candidates, this job should be a really coveted one. First pick in the draft next year, some room to add payroll, a decent offense already in place, good park, solid minor league system. I really hope the Twins can hire someone like him.

Yeah, I hope you're right. I'm really excited to see what the scouting reports say about him this offseason. I haven't heard much during the season.

Oh, come on Mike. You saw the video. The campaign didn't tell anyone what was going on for 90 minutes and since when is the health of a candidate not an issue the voters should know about? We've claimed that candidates shouldn't be eligible for office b/c they drank water wrong or can't spell or had affairs. But a candidate nearly fainting and being shoved by secret service into an SUV is something the press should consider off-limits? https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/11/the-clinton-campaigns-bad-damage-control-just-made-the-health-story-even-worse/

Klaw wasn't too high on Gonsalves in his last chat - said something like a two pitch pitcher without a great fastball. Thought he could be maybe a back-end starter.

Sure, she lied (well, more accurately, her campaign lied). She left the 9/11 event early, was too weak to get into car - that video is horrible optics - and her campaign refused to let reporters follow her or give information on why she left. After an hour and half they came out with a story that said she was overheated, which was a lie of misinformation. They later came clean and mentioned the pneumonia. And, as the Washington Post and Politico have noted, we now have Clinton's health as a real issue.

Yeah, it's not. Lying about it though doesn't help. I hate this election.

I was in law school out east at the time. I had a meeting in Queens which would have brought me to the WTC on the PATH train just before 9am but a friend from MN had come out so I cancelled that meeting and was supposed to meet her that night at the WTC instead. Fortunately, we were both safe. The local news that night reported that the FBI had arrested a van that was going to blow up the GW bridge. Turned out that was false but there was a lot of false information flying around. It was incredibly scary at the time - for months, we kept waiting for the "next one" to come.

Oh, yay. Clinton's health is now a real issue and of course her campaign knowingly lied about it before declaring she had pneumonia. And people wonder why voters don't trust her.

I think a combination of Radcliff/Johnson approaches might work better. Nab that high upside HS flamethrower early but in the second or third rounds, take the safer college arm with lower ceilings. Guys like Baker, Slowey, Swarzak, Duensing, Dean. They add depth to the system and don't have the same failure rate. Alternate a bit. (Frankly, the 2013 draft seems to be pretty close to that - Stewart, Eades, Gonsalves, Slegers).

Apparently Molitor and Pohlad are friends. I think this is really bad and might affect possible GM candidates. Molitor should have been fired in May.

Yeah, that only a small fraction - which apparently still numbers in the thousands - were financially affected, those actions were illegal. And they could have affected peoples credit ratings - esp if they weren't paying their unknown credit cards or someone else got a hold of a card (identity theft) they didn't even know they had. I think this sort of thing - while small potatoes - will continue unless they are prosecuted. Merging this with the election thread, Clinton's website says that she favors prosecution of bankers who break the law. I really wish someone would ask her if she thinks these 5300 employees should be prosecuted.

Yeah, he said he heard Aleppo and was thinking it was an acronym for something. Frankly, that is sort of believable. Every other time the media has asked about the ISIS/refugee issue, they've said Syria, not Aleppo.

Oooo, Montreal! We honeymooned there (and Quebec City). I love that city.

So Wells Fargo got hit with a relatively small fine although it's been touted as the largest fine ever by the CFPB. "Regulators said Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) opened roughly 1.5 million deposit accounts and 565,000 credit card accounts that may not have been authorized by consumers. The CFPB also said bank employees also requested and issued debit cards without consumers’ knowledge or consent, even creating PIN numbers without telling its customers. Financially harmed customers are eligible for restitution. The OCC order also requires Wells Fargo to take corrective action to establish an enterprise-wide sales practices risk management and oversight program to detect and prevent unsafe or unsound sales practices." This pisses me off for a few reasons. First, WFC is supposed to be one of the "better" banks so if they are doing this, all of them are doing this. The others just haven't been caught yet. So, bank profits (and, perhaps more importantly, bank services) are, again, artificially inflated. Second, none of the 5300 employees who stole money from WFC customers (so far considered to be a bit north of 2m) to create these fake accounts will be charged with a crime. Perhaps you've heard about the homeless lady who got 5 years in prison for sending her kindergartner to a better school for stealing 15k in 'free educational services'? Third, I own a lot of WFC and have accounts with them. The stock market hasn't really been bothered by this. WFC stock price hasn't moved much and they still are worth more than many small (or even medium) sized countries. It has a strong dividend (over 3% now) and obviously it's one of the most important companies in the country so it's unlikely that something this small will make any impact going forward. But it still sucks and might call into question WFC 'cross-selling' business plan. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/wells-fargo-opened-couple-million-103004267.html

I believe we did that

Again, I hope Meyer does well. It's too late for the Twins and I don't blame Antony for trading him since the bridge was burned by then. I do think Molitor should have given Meyer as many chances as he seems willing to give Pat Light and not doing so was a huge mark against Molitor.

Tad early to write off these guys. Guys like Appel, Zimmer, Fried from the 2012 draft still haven't made the majors either and although a few guys like Gausman and Heaney have, they certainly haven't become stars yet.

I know we're a bit down on Berrios but he absolutely dominated AAA and had better numbers and better scouting reports than Gonsalves, who was facing inferior competition.

Rehman is an asst GM (like Randy Bush). http://m.mlb.com/news/article/39489744/cubs-promote-shiraz-rehman-to-assistant-general-manager/ "Rehman, 34, joined the Cubs last November as assistant to the general manager after six seasons with the Diamondbacks, departing Arizona as the club’s director of player personnel. He also held the titles of director of baseball operations (2009-10) and manager of baseball operations (2007-08) after joining the organization as a baseball operations assistant in December, 2005. Before joining the Diamondbacks, Rehman interned for the Boston Red Sox during the 2005 season in the baseball operations department. Rehman is a 1999 graduate of McGill University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in finance and accounting and was a starting infielder on the baseball team for four years. Prior to joining the Red Sox, he spent time as a commodities trader and financial consultant for more than five years and obtained his MBA from Columbia Business School in 2006."

Ah, bull. Ignore how he treated the young players for a moment. We saw a lot of vets start the year slow - Gibson, Jepsen, Dozier, Plouffe, Escobar. Sure, Gibson, Hughes, Nolasco, Milone aren't the best rotation ever but they should've been a hell of a lot better than they were. They all put up career worse lines. If every pitcher underachieves, isn't some of that on the manager? This 40 man roster had some pretty good talent and we're starting to see that in the offense, which is good. But Molitor did about every possible thing wrong. He kept putting Danny Santana in CF, over Rosario, which didn't help the pitching. He didn't give consistent playing time to young players who should have at least had that opportunity. He pushed for May and Meyer to be in the pen. He's had incredibly quick hooks on Meyer and Berrios. He kept Polanco and Kepler on the bench. He called out Sano and Rosario in the media. And his bullpen use has been crazy all year, which seems to have led to Jepsen's utter collapse and May's back injuries. Last year we heard how lucky the Twins were b/c their baseruns were 7 games worse then their actual standings. Well this year the Twins are already 10 games below their baseruns. This might be a bad team but Molitor has made it the worst team in baseball. And when you factor in how much struggling the young inexperienced players have had under him, there is no reason to let him manage anymore.

Is that true? If so, great.

Not if you want to beat the Phillies package.

If the next GM thinks we're 4-5 years away, I want a new GM. We have a pretty nice offensive core in place but some of the development has been choppy. I don't want Molitor yanking Buxton around next year - his last option year - or screwing with May's return to the rotation. I don't trust this coaching staff to develop Berrios. Presumably, next year's team will rely a lot on Sano, Kepler, Polanco and Rosario as well and all of them have had some ups and downs where it wasn't clear Molitor knew how to use them in the best way. I think he's a bad manager and (worse) bad at getting the most out of the talent he was given. For all the **** we give Gardy and Andy, they got some surprisingly strong seasons from some pretty mundane players. You could fairly say that a lot of Gardy's players seemed to overachieve. I'm not sure that's true of Molitor's guys.