gunnarthor

So Berrios is added to the 40 man roster so I do think that means the Twins will go with a two man bench for the next week unless they can call Polanco back when/if Santana/Duffey goes to the DL?

Well, if they stay at 20th and 22nd in those stats, sure. But perhaps they get better. I doubt those numbers will stay static.

Wednesday? SHOOT. I have an event I have to be at. Can they move the start time back a few hours?

Several Cy Youngs, a WS MVP and a HOF career.

I think you're bringing up two issues here. First, on Kepler, with Santana on the DL, he was really the only option on the 40 man - other than dropping someone and bringing up Maestro, for instance. So that's sort of the happy problem of having a young 40 man roster. On playing time (esp in regards to Meyer) that's more on Molitor. I'm not sure how Molitor will use Meyer. I'm a bit worried about it too considering some of the reports we heard in ST on how Molitor sees him as a bullpen arm only and didn't use him last night. But I guess just waiting to see how it plays out is probably the best option at this point. That said, if Molitor is using him less than Tonkin, I'll go ballistic.

That's certainly quite possible. I do think we'll be better post-all star game than before it (and, fortunately, that's when we play most of the AL central) but things will change for all teams as the year goes forward. I don't think the White Sox are the best team in baseball and I think most teams will (again) be within a handful of games from .500 so a sudden hot streak or losing streak (like ours) will affect a lot of teams.

Good thing TD takes pride in its negativity. Wow. The strib comments are more rational.

http://m.mlb.com/news/article/174420718/prospect-team-of-week-led-by-brendan-rodgers Obviously, that doesn't mean much itself but it's nice to see Gonsalves get a little national recognition. The write up on him was: "The southpaw continues to show he just flat-out knows how to pitch and has gone at least six innings in each of his first three starts. Gonsalves has walked just four in 19 innings, holding Florida State League hitters to a .156 batting average. He earned a promotion up to Fort Myers last year. If he keeps this up, a bump to Double-A Chattanooga should be in order." It's early, of course, but he really has had a nice start to the season. Lots of strike outs and few walks. Good to see.

Yeah, I don't think it's that big of deal (although I was thinking he was back May 1st, not May 3rd, with an off day thursday). I suspect most teams end up playing with short benches a few times every year for a variety of reasons.

Umm, then they can add Maestro to the 40 man.

Yeah, in a perfect world, he probably gets squeezed out of the corner OF spots but he could, as you say, be a nice piece for a trade. Hopefully he breaks out this year. He's still fairly young for AA even though he is repeating it. Perhaps he'll be like Plouffe and the power won't come until much later?

I thought we'd finish around 85 wins but I did think we'd be better in the second half than the first. But they probably are 3 or 4 games behind where they should be and they should be sub .500 so they have a big hill to climb. I think longterm optimism is still called for but I'm not as confident they can make it to 85 wins. But I think they're certainly more like the 6-5 team than the 0-9 one. I think a few years ago Cleveland started out just horrible but finished really strong so they were a really good 80 win team. That might be us this year.

Awesome pictures, Brock.

We've discussed most of this 1) I don't think it's a big deal since Plouffe will be back in a few games. The other option would have been to keep Kepler on the bench for another few days. Realistically, it's not a big deal. 2) I never thought the bullpen should have been the top priority and I am glad they didn't spend 18m on guys like Sipp. Abad has been fine. Pressley, Tonkin and even O'Rouke have been fine. Perkins, Jepsen and May have been the (bigger) problem. I'm happy to go with what we have and let our deep pool of minor league arms graduate into the pen - which we're already seeing. 3) I think losing Hicks will have the same impact losing Zach Jones did - lots of posts about nothing. I haven't mentioned it elsewhere but I think it's incredible that people think the GM should be calling a minor league player two weeks after signing him to get the players opinion before he makes a roster move. To blame that on Ryan is a pretty good show that you're just grinding an axe. 4) I think the 40 man roster is dominated by young players - the PP/pitcher ratio isn't much different than previous years. The other option would be to jettison someone - say Hicks - and sign a wily vet. I'm pretty sure posters here were against that. 5) Adding Park was a good thing. Sano was never going to be the DH. It looks like the Twins added a pretty decent power bat for next to nothing. I'm honestly confused on why this is still a thing. Sano has looked better in RF - he's still not great and he will make some bad plays but I think he already looks a lot better than he did the opening week. One of your chief complaints has been the team needs talent but you also seem to be complaining that the team has bottle necks. That'll happen. The future OF/DH will be four of Rosario/Arcia/Sano/Buxton/Kepler/Park. They are figuring things out now. As mentioned in a different thread, our 3B/RF/DH/1B are all hitting pretty well (in a SSS). That means somebody someone wants in the lineup isn't going to be in the lineup. It'll work itself out. It's early.

We should probably calm down. The Twins aren't as bad as their record (heck, this year the unlucky team according to base runs!) and they have some pretty good talent. In the long run, they'll be fine. I thought they'd finish second in the central this year and probably make the playoffs in the expanded wild card. That probably doesn't happen now but the future is still good. A lot of pessimists and national writers thought this would be a step back year while young guys got the experience they needed. As others have mentioned, if you think Lunhow is doing ok in Houston, you should think Ryan is doing ok here. (And Ryan didn't trade away 5 young chips for a proven closer, or make anything as bad as the Gomez and Gattis' trades).

Oh, come on. They promoted Berrios aggressively in the minors. He'll be up soon.

Yep. So they can either 1) Hold steady until Plouffe comes back and go with a deeper bullpen or 2) Add another bat somehow to the 40 man roster. Since Plouffe should be back in less than a week, I think they just do that.

Outside of Buxton and Kepler, the only position players on the 40 man roster available are Polanco, ABW and Vargas. Vargas is off to a slow start and not really an ideal fit to the current 25 man roster. Maybe they'll sign a FA or just wait for Plouffe to come back in a week.

It'll work itself out. Most teams use 7 or 8 starters every year that will make at least 5 starts. You always want depth. That's sort of forgotten in April but it's good to have.

So, he's not coming up. http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2016/04/david-murphy-requests-release-leaves-twins-organization.html Also, leaves a 40 man spot open. For Berrios?

Who has a full picture? Maddon doesn't - he just did what the FO told him. I mean, yeah, search high and low for a replacement. I'm certainly not sold on Dougie but the reasons you suggested for not hiring him were reasons that, I think, are relatively not important in the grand scheme of things.

Sure, but the Twins didn't really do that. As I see it, the Twins made two decisions that some might have questioned - no FA relief in the bullpen and starting Buxton in CF. I think they did (and do) have back ups for both those things not working. With the bullpen, they had a bunch of strong AAA/AA arms - which we are now seeing get called up. Somewhat surprisingly, the worst part of the pen has been May, Jepsen and Perkins which was supposed to be pretty good. O'Rourke, Abad, Pressley and Tonkin, I think, have pitched better than most of us would've guessed. Fien sucked. But not locking up a bunch of FA is probably the right move for the pen, even if that means waiting part of the season for Chargois, Meyer, Burdi etc to come up. On Buxton, the back up plan was probably either Rosario or Santana as a short term stop gap while he fixed his swing in AAA. That's what is happening. The Twins 40 man roster was full so the team didn't add another veteran OFer - I was ok with that and I think most were, although some weren't. But as the angst for Murphy shows, the Twins have enough young OFers do play with. What I don't think the Twins (or us) expected was the utter disappearance of our offense to start the season - a problem that was more problematic than the bullpen and not just Buxton's problem. I suspect that if the Twins were 9-9 (as baseruns suggests), Buxton would have more rope.

Honestly, I don't think that matters. There are some reasons Dougie might not be a good manager but that's probably not one of them. A manager's job (I think) it almost universally to keep the team together. Look at Dusty in Washington, Leyland in Detroit, Bochy in SF. All three have been criticized over the years about their level (or lack thereof) of embracing "new stats". In-game managing is massively overrated by us fans mostly b/c that's the only part of managing that we really get a sense of.

ESPN report - http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/70043/purple-rain-in-forecast-for-monday-as-twins-plan-prince-tribute All the player's walk up music will be Prince songs. That's kinda cool.

Yeah, I saw Neal tweet that he thought it would happen but I guess it didn't. Strange.