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gunnarthor

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Everything posted by gunnarthor

  1. gunnarthor
    I don't disagree but .... man, at 15 that's a pretty nice lottery ticket. I do like the fact that his father was a pretty good athlete too. Bloodlines! And a lot of these HS pitcher are pretty tall - Whitley and Puk are 6'7", Manning and Groome are 6'6", Wentz 6'5". Athletes are changing. I think I still prefer Dakota Hudson but I don't think he slips to 15.
  2. gunnarthor
    Callis has a draft inbox with some good stuff including the high risers in the draft. http://m.mlb.com/news/article/180371796/pipeline-inbox-2016-mlb-draft-questions mlb.com will be updating their list and adding another 100 names next week. On the high risers - "Within the first round, California high school right-hander Matt Manning has made the biggest jump, going from the bottom half to a potential top-10 pick. College righties T.J. Zeuch (Pittsburgh) and Justin Dunn (Boston College) and Wisconsin prep shortstop Gavin Lux had played their way into the second round in April, and they've kept getting better and now look like first-rounders. Three more high schoolers -- Nebraska third baseman Cole Stobbe, Georgia outfielder Brandon Marsh and Florida lefty Cole Ragans -- have moved up boards as well, and all figure to go not later than the early second round."
  3. gunnarthor
    The last thread was getting a bit long and a bit off topic. mlb.com has their latest mock up - http://m.mlb.com/news/article/180464614 Has the Twins picking Matt Manning - "Rumors of a high price tag could push Manning to a team with multiple picks, but if the signability turns out OK, then there's a good chance Manning goes well before this spot."
  4. gunnarthor
    Bummer about Berrios.
  5. gunnarthor
    I think we should leave Buxton down for another month or so. I'm not worried about his krate or walk rate having to meet certain numbers. Right now, if a guy is hitting .400 against AAA pitching (last year) or has a babip around .390 (this year) he's not going to walk much. Let him stay down a bit longer to see how AAA pitchers adjust to him. It's more about taking good at-bats at this point.
  6. gunnarthor
    Always fun, Jeremy. Reports have the Twins on the HS power arms. Do you have any sense of how they feel about Dakota Hudson or Zach Collins, if either was available at 15?
  7. gunnarthor
    Yeah, I think that's where I'm leaning. The other idea is that the shoulder really is hurt, which would be much worse news.
  8. gunnarthor
    He's cooled off but I still think Park. It'll be good for MLB's growing Korean fanbase.
  9. gunnarthor
    Nah, by fip he's just as good as Taijuan Walker.
  10. gunnarthor
    Dang - can't figure out how to paste the cartoon but go to this link: http://heavy.com/entertainment/2016/05/hodor-memes-game-of-thrones-hold-the-door-reactions-tweets-photos-s06e05/2/
  11. gunnarthor
    Even after graduations, it'll be a solid system. I think Gonsalves will jump into some top 100 lists and Stewart will as well. Both should be at AA by the end of the year. Gordon is our best hitter but we have a few potential sleepers in Cabbage and Vielma. My guess is that next year we'll have five top 100 guys (assuming Kepler and Berrios graduate) - Jay, Stewart, Gonsalves, Gordon and Polanco. That's not bad. And #15 in this draft could be a pretty good player and might be on a top 100. Thorpe and Burdi (if he's still a prospect) might get some love. It's certainly pitching heavy but not bad considering all the (assumed) graduations.
  12. gunnarthor
    It stuns me to always hear you say the Twins weren't rebuilding. It actually makes my head hurt. I have no idea how you can say this. The Twins kept Perkins b/c they thought a top closer at below market value would be a good thing to have on their next winning team. It wasn't a bad thought. Ryan traded Morneau, Slowey, Liriano, Doumit, Butera, Herrmann etc .... my lord.
  13. gunnarthor
    I disagree about the book criticism. I think that's one of the things that separates it from other fantasy world stuff. The amount of information and characters added to the story are, in my view, fantastic. There are tons of books out there with the hero fighting the supernatural evil with dragons. This doesn't have to be one of those. So I enjoyed reading Quentin's journey and the possible deceit of the maesters. It adds a lot. (That said, it would work a lot better if Martin could start pumping out books again). But for the TV show, I think the show runners have done a nice job streamlining it to a working show. It's not the books, which is fine. One blog I read said it was, at this point, just really well written fan fiction with the important facts given to it by Martin. That seems accurate. Anyhow, the show has given us some pretty darn impressive visuals - esp north of the wall. Both this episode and Hardhome were amazing White Walker episodes.
  14. gunnarthor
    Wow. I guess this would be the part where we say it must be nice to live in such a black and white world? I mean, come on. The Twins have graduated plenty of players from their minor league system and they are still considered a top farm system. You think that's because they aren't trying to add talent? Jeepers.
  15. gunnarthor
    I'm trying to figure out what would be a comparable deal talent wise, for the Twins. Maybe Felix Jorge and Yorman Landa? Not sure, I don't have a great handle on the guys Atlanta moved.
  16. gunnarthor
    In all honesty, do you really think Ryan would make a move to try and save his job? I mean, you can argue about his quality of a GM but I don't think there is anything in his track record that would suggest he would do something like that.
  17. gunnarthor
    I don't believe I did that. I just said I don't like the service time manipulation. It'll (very likely) be fixed in the next CBA but it's a loophole that I think management has used to violate the spirit of the CBA. So when the OP asked if we should consider it, I said no. I'd prefer to bring him up when he's ready.
  18. gunnarthor
    Honestly, I think some of that is the TV writers trying to fix last years **** up. Certainly Dorne is a much more nuanced country in the books and Asha/Yara isn't a leader in the books, either. (Although you should add the old Tyrell woman as well). I don't think the ending is going to be too empowering although I do think Jon and Dany make it to the end. That's about the only thing I'm confident in, actually.
  19. gunnarthor
    I think Arya's arc will lead to this for the last episode of the season. She's an assassin for the faceless men and she is being sent to kill an affront to the faceless god - a man who came back from the dead. Jon Snow. So next season she'll have to decide if she is no one or Arya Stark. She'll choose Arya and die and warg into Nymeria, her wolf, where she'll be part of a pack. (The books are much stronger about Arya's ties to Nymeria and warging ability). I think that's the only thing that would make sense for her arc. She's not going to be one of the dragon's heads. She's not going to lead a great army. She's not an (obvious) enemy of the white walkers but it's possible that the faceless men are "evil" in the GOT universe. So turning on an evil organization to save Jon makes sense.
  20. gunnarthor
    Ignoring the rest, I'd fire Molitor yesterday. I think everyone agrees that the players are under-performing and the way he has treated some of the younger guys on the roster suggest he might not be the person for the job. I think his baseball IQ is off the charts but his ability to relate and deal with players is not that good. I think he'd be a good bench coach or a third base coach - explain to players why X,Y,Z happened but not necessarily there to deal with the daily frustrations of being a manager.
  21. gunnarthor
    The pro-labor part of me really dislikes service time trickery so I'm against that on principle. But I also think it's a bad example. Players don't like it either so you're poisoning your locker room. His agent should make a stink out of it. And Buxton will need some time to adjust to ML pitching as well. I think the team should bring him up around the all-star break (assuming he looks well in AAA). Hopefully by that time the Twins will be able to bring up Kepler as well (and trade Arcia).
  22. gunnarthor
    I don't think the 25 to 35 year player example works. Both Lunhow and Ryan are old enough to do the job. I think one could argue that Lunhow's win-now trades for Gomez, Gattis and Giles have hurt the team in the longterm (even if helping in the short term). But that's getting into the bushes. I think both have shown that they deserve a bit more time to fix what looked like good rebuilds. As I said to Mike, if the Twins are still playing like this at the end of the year, I would expect a house cleaning.
  23. gunnarthor
    Wouldn't the opposite be true? Realistically, outside of KC and Pittsburgh, teams usually go through losing cycles followed by a few years of winning, repeat. You can spend your way out of that but most teams don't. So a winning season after 8 years of losing probably isn't that impressive. But Ryan was the only GM of a small market team that was able to turn over his nucleus without a full rebuild. (You could argue that we aren't small market anymore and that shouldn't count). But my point is that I'm willing to give more weight to building and maintaining a steady good team in a small market than the playoff results. So let's see where this rebuild goes. Right now some GMs are riding waves created by many losing seasons - is Dan Duquette a good GM? I'm not sure.
  24. gunnarthor
    I honestly don't know how long "long enough" is. Like I mentioned, I thought the rebuild was going exactly as planned until this season. I predicted a .500 team last year and a playoff team this year. Oops. So is this year wrong because of the higher difficulty learning curve or is the team just wrong? Figure out that question first. I'm in the wait and see camp. Right now I think Ryan should do a few steps, if possible. He should try and trade Plouffe and put Sano back at third. Having both was defensible if you thought the team could compete this year but since they aren't, open up a spot in the OF. The team now has 6 guys on the 40 man roster for the OF that have been top 100 prospects - all 26 or younger. By putting Sano at third you can let those guys clear out space for themselves. My guess is that Kepler/Buxton/Grossman are the three standing. See what you have at the end of the year. A best case scenario would be that the younger players have started coming up and/or started adapting. If the team is playing good baseball in the second half with Buxton/Kepler/Grossman/Park/Sano all hitting, Dozier not being a replacement player and Chargois, Berrios, Meyer, Burdi on the staff and maybe you think "we're just a year away." Worse case, they are playing .350 ball and the young guys aren't making improvements, I suspect a house cleaning happens.
  25. gunnarthor
    Yet, the constraint we were discussing was obviously dealing with something else. Why jump into a discussion you weren't part of just to derail it?
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