gunnarthor

I made this comparison a lot before the season. I thought the keys to the 01 team were 1) The emergence of a couple former top prospects (Hunter and Guzman were terrific that year), 2) Some strong play from unheralded prospects (Mays, Koskie), 3) Not a lot of "bad" players getting at-bats and 4) generally pretty good health. I think this years team has a lot more young talent but it hasn't quite broken out yet. May, Meyer, Rosario, Buxton, Arcia, Gibson, Sano, Hicks, Pinto were all former top 100 prospects. Gibson and May both look like solid parts of a rotation but neither (yet) has played better than a middle of the rotation guy (which isn't an insult). So let's see how the second half of the year goes. This still feels like a .500ish team and this should be our worst season for many years to come.

I believe that the Yankees are still allowed to sign individuals but they can't sign anyone for more than 300k.

Sure, why not?

Great to see

Duffey, Sano and Walker made mlb.com's minor league team of the week: "When Miguel Sano was hitting just .159 and slugging .381 in April, no one in the Twins organization was overly concerned. They knew the rust from having missed the 2014 season because of Tommy John surgery would be considerable, and fully expected him to return to the power-hitting corner infielder he was before the injury. It looks like they were right. Sano hit .303/.374/.556 in May and has put up an impressive .329/.422/.671 line in June. That was augmented by a week that saw him tie for the Minor League lead in total bases despite only playing four games. He's one of three players from the Twins organization making the Prospect Team of the Week for June 22-28."

I think Sano is ready now, at least with the bat. Since May 1st, he's hitting something like .314/.395/.606. I don't like cutting seasons in part but considering he had to have some rust from missing a full year, I think we can excuse his first month (and he still had some ok peripherals in there). Also, has anyone seen his splits against lefties? He has nearly a .900 slg% against them! I think Kepler is more ready than Walker but I think Walker has a much higher ceiling if he can reach it. That if is pretty big though. But, man, IF he could be a .275/.315/.600 bat at the ML level ...

The parade was fun. Lady Liberty married an ACLU intern. Lots of beads were given out too.

Yeah, I agree. I have some pretty religious friends on facebook and none of them were posting scary stuff after the decision. Instead, they were posting threads like the one you linked and talked about helping the poor or young children, etc. I actually worked for Catholic Charities once upon a time and SSM and gay rights never seemed to be a big issue to most of the people there. They gave services to gay individuals. I think this was always a bigger deal to "more powerful" people in that it could create a wedge issue and show it as a way the country was falling apart. But it's support was wider than it was deep, if that makes sense.

I think he's very clearly not a HOFer but also a very, very good player. Posnanski once talked about "professional hitters" like Harold Baines who were always pretty damn good, very consistent but never really elite. I think Hunter falls in that category.

The constitution isn't quite as rigid as the dissent would seem to suggest. Michael Dorf had some quick thoughts on this http://www.dorfonlaw.org/2015/06/the-link-between-liberty-and-equality.html. I think the dissent would have been better if they all could have agreed on just one position and stuck to it - preferably the Chief Justice's opinion. Instead, they all seem to argue things differently from each other, weakening their overall dissent.

In all seriousness, I thought his two areas had nothing to do with player development or acquisition. I thought he was in charge of renovation of the Ft Myers complex and expanding the Twins relationships in Latin America with the scouts and notarios and whatnot.

I think the biggest positive is that the negatives seem to outweigh the positives and yet they have a winning record. Nolasco, Santana, Santana, Vargas, Mauer, Arcia have all greatly underperformed hopes/expectations. Suzuki and Escobar have come back to Earth. Hughes is having a good season but not a great one. Meyer was demoted to the bullpen. Hicks failed again. Buxton to the DL. Pelfrey has really performed better than expected but I thought May, Hunter, Perkins, Gibson, Plouffe and Dozier would be solid. No real surprises in those names. Milone has been better but not significantly so. He is what he is.

Just a reminder, the Pride Parade is this weekend and people can celebrate or even march in it if you sign up in time. It's usually a lot of fun and I imagine this one will be more fun than usual.

Someone forwarded this to me and since we have a Game of Thrones thread, it seemed (slightly, very slightly) worth posting. Daenerys (played by Yvonne Strahovski - yum) v. Maleficient. Fairly funny if you can stomach white girls rapping.

Good for him, hopefully he excels for us.

Nice to see.

I think this is true. A few years ago during the first Miggy v. Trout debate, Joe Posnanski revealed that the A's internal WAR calculation actually rated Miggy ahead of Trout but fWAR had something like a 3 WAR advantage for Trout. And he also quoted Bill James who was pretty critical of WAR. WAR is good in that it tries to go beyond mere rate stats (that used to be the real argument) but it has problems. About 6 or 7 years ago, b-r recalculated their WAR. For the most part, it didn't have a great impact on most players but one of the top 20 recalculated players was Torii Hunter, who gained, on average, over 1 WAR per season. When he was going into FA, a lot of sabretypes ripped on the Twins and Angels for over valuing him. Gleeman was pretty bad. We read a lot about how Hunter had had only 1 3 WAR season in MN and teams were dumb for over paying for him and fans were clouded by his personality. And then, lo and behold, a few years later, WAR is readjusted and those teams were right. BP had a recent article on Jack Morris' HOF candidacy and suggested that the narrative pushed by stat-heads the last decade was wrong.

I like Gonsalves but this is too high. We're putting too much stock in numbers and not as much on scouting reports, which still question him. But he's an exciting prospect.

Yeah, their ****ing hilarious. How about stop trolling for attention?

You might want to get your hearing checked.

The Davis comp has been used a lot - Klaw has used it -, although Davis was a very bad defender. But offensively, it's a really good comparison. A healthy Davis would have been a HOFer.

Yeah, obviously we have a few guys coming in or up that could improve the low minors - Minier, Diaz (IIRC), Cabbage (I really liked that pick) but certainly the major wave of prospects is at AA and above. Which is perfectly fine.

Just another update. Harrison had a bit of slump and saw his avg and slg dip a bit but his obp has remained steady, which is a pretty good sign. On the season he is hitting .268/.375/.403 and already matched last year's HR total. His 18 doubles are one off the SL leader and he's walking about 12% of his at-bats. And he also leads the league in HBP. My personal feeling is that hitters that can maintain good on-base percentages are extremely valuable and Harrison has been doing that. He remains pretty young as well.

Several Twins questions came up today and most of the answers were good. Seems like prospect guys are a lot higher on Nick Gordon than the stat line would suggest. http://www.baseballprospectus.com/chat/chat.php?chatId=1266 Anthony (Minnesota): Between Adam Brett Walker and Max Kepler, who do you think is the better prospect? And do either of them have staying power in the majors? Thanks! Jeff Moore: Kepler is more refined but Walker is a lot more fun. He's one of my favorite prospects in the game, and not because I believe in him but because he treats every bat like it's home run derby. It won't work of course, but it's a lot of fun. He can find a niche as a platoon outfielder who just crushes lefties and runs into a number of home runs because the power is legit, but there are too many holes and absolutely no approach. Kepler is more well rounded and is beginning to hit like people expected. I'm still a little confused as to why the Twins have him at first base, though. He's not a great outfielder but unless something happened since I saw him last year that has completely evaporated his range, he's good enough to handle a corner. He could be a big leaguer. Mike (AC): Worried about Buxton's slow start? Jeff Moore: Nope, not at all. He probably shouldn't be in the majors yet, so the struggles are to be expected. Chris (Phoenix): Is Buxton the next Eric Davis? Jeff Moore: Yes, actually, though hopefully with a better end result. People don't remember how good Eric Davis was. He had a stretch from 86-88 where he averaged 30 home runs and 55 steals a season. Averaged! It's a better comp for Buxton than the Trout comps thrown around because of the body type. I'm big on that when it comes to comp. Trout's neck is thicker than Buxton's waist. It just doesn't work. Mike (Minneapolis ): Thanks for the chat, Jeff!! What are your thoughts about a comp for Miguel Sano?? Also, when should we expect to see him in Minny? Jeff Moore: Troy Glaus. He could be up by the end of this year, though he's still getting his timing back. A year away from the game is a long time, especially for a guy who already struck out a lot. If he hadn't missed a full year, he'd already be in the majors. The Twins are also getting some production from Trevor Plouffe so there's no desperation there, though they need another bat, especially a power one, so they could find a way to squeeze him in the lineup somehow. Steve (Cedar Rapids): Mau put a OFP of 70 on Nick Gordon. That's pretty high praise. Is he that well-liked amongst the other BP Prospect writers? Jeff Moore: Well Mau is a ridiculous human being. So is Nick Gordon though so that doesn't make it wrong. Let's look at it this way: as it looks now Gordon is showing the skills to be able to stick at shortstop. That puts him in a certain class right there, and it's one that's filled with a bunch of guys, most of whom can't really hit. Gordon shows a potential plus hit tool and some power, which puts him ahead of 90 percent of the guys who can stick at shortstop. Now, as Mau pointed out, there's a lot of development left. Gordon is far away, so he's a high risk prospect. But we assign OFP's without regard to risk. That's what makes it an OFP. Gordon is very good, he's just very far away and there's a lot of development ahead of him.