gunnarthor

Yeah, my biggest worry with Hunter is his age. At a certain point, players just drop off the cliff. I'm hoping that doesn't happen to Torii this season but it could. I think the shift to TF and the shifting that Molitor will do will make his defense liveable if his bat is working. I also agree with kab - Hunter on a one year deal is blocking anyone and no other FA was really exciting alternative.

I tend to agree with this. It's not like there are that many good defensive OFers out there, anyway. If he's hitting, we'll be fine.

I voted for Buxton. Sell the future.

Maybe. But at the same time there were a bunch of Minnesota sports fans who thought "Tar Baby" was not only an appropriate nickname for Tarvaris Jackson but even thought it was ok to post it.

ESPN has a nice article on Lloyd McClendon, the only black manager in baseball right now. "The lack of African-American managers parallels a shortage of black players on the field. African-American representation on big league rosters peaked at 19 percent in 1986 and fell to 8.13 percent last season. St. Louis, Arizona and San Francisco did not have an African-American player on the roster when MLB celebrated Jackie Robinson Day last April."

Yeah, although maybe that's part of his rehab process. Take responsibility for the mistake, take the punishment that comes with it, etc. I don't know. But I hope he and his family are ok in the end.

The article also says that the Diamondbacks, Yankees, Red Sox, Angels and Rays cannot pay more than 300k on any one player since they all went too far over the pool amounts this year. So maybe that gives the Twins a bit more room to get a few guys.

I'm not sure if it's a big deal but i don't know enough to know. I do know that the ball bounces three different ways, depending on what it hits and I think that could bother a defender. How much, I have no idea.

39. http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/h/hunteto01.shtml Since you want to argue over that, I think the rest is not worth re-stating.

He'll be 39, not 40. As I and others have stated, he was much better than "average" unless you want to give it some strange meaning. The idea that you think his numbers + bad defense = not a good player, fine. Feel free to think it. But that definition would mean you think Mauer, Arcia, Santana, Dozier and Pinto are also all bad players. I don't think you think that. I think you have decided to give full value to the defensive numbers attached to Hunter to make formulate your opinion.

Probably about the same - Walker Buehler is a couple inches shorter and ranked #4 by mlb.com.

No one is arguing that he isn't a bad defender. But some of us are questioning the valuation of those numbers. Huge difference. He can be a bad defender and still be a good player. But the only way you can argue that he isn't a good player anymore - and only a PR move - is by giving full weight to those defensive numbers, b/c the offensive number values were good - and were better than Mauer's. (And his numbers were pretty good for AL RFers last year, his wOBA, wRC+ and oWAR were all top 6-8 off all RFers with over 300 PA (25 in total). And better than Arcia in each, as well.)

Part of me hopes he goes #1 so he makes more than the Astros offered him but another part of me wants him to fall to #6.

Again, ignoring any intangible, he was a good player last year. Better than most Twins players. His WAR was knocked down by defensive numbers - numbers that are really hard to put faith into but you seem quite willing to do so. But his offensive numbers were very good. As for the intangibles, there is a lot of evidence that supports Hunter being a good teammate and a good influence on younger players. At a certain point, the anti-Hunter thing gets a little weird and I start to wonder what is it about Hunter that rubs people the wrong way.

Too bad he won't do anymore TV, he was really interesting.

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mlb-big-league-stew/adam-lind-says-blue-jays-will-smile-more-without-colby-rasmus-111335222.html Interesting story. Obviously, some people like Rasmus as a bounceback candidate this year but character issues (and bad play) dogged him. Former teammate Adam Lind took a shot at him, saying Toronto would be a happier place without him. The article suggests he was burned out "toward the end of the season and simply wasn't receptive to critiques. That he knows how to hit, but doesn't know how to adjust or deal with adversity on the field." And "wasn't receptive to critiques" is probably a nice way to put it. I think those last two things - dealing with adversity and making adjustments - must be incredible hard and probably something we fans take for granted. A guy like Mauer certainly showed the ability to adjust to pitchers over his career and knows how to deal with the golden sombrero but for other guys, maybe the doubt and failures just lead into this awesomely bad spiral of doom, despite the talent. In any event, Rasmus posted a .287 OBP last year (although did have some nice power) and in his three years at Toronto posted a .295 OBP. He was a bit of an out machine. Add in that he wasn't very well liked and burned his bridges in St Louis before Toronto, I guess I'm glad the Twins passed on him.

Pretty sad news. http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2015/02/josh-hamilton-meeting-with-mlb-regarding-disciplinary-matter.html Reports seem to indicate he was using cocaine. His early career was destroyed by drug use and yet he had a pretty amazing run with very little minor league time after basically missing all of 2003-2005. Hopefully, he gets better.

Good piece. Good to see Hunter back (and nice to read Souhan is a company man conspiracy posts already). The Berrios nugget is nice. Outside of his height/plane thing harped on by Klaw, I don't think I've read anything negative about that young man. Really hope he has a great year.

I like Graham a lot, actually (as my quixotic voting at TwinkieTown shows). Unless he looks broken, I think he makes the team. He and Pelfrey being the last two bullpen arms. (Unless injuries/trades change that).

Actually, I'm not sure if that's true at all and it certainly doesn't feel true. As bad as baseball may be, I don't think it has anything on football - at all levels - which has seen insane number of hazing/bullying/sex assault stories over the last few years.

I thought he lived in Oklahoma in the offseason? But yes, if he wants another job then I do see him putting in the effort. But he is a millionaire and in his late 50s, so if he wanted to retire or comeback to the Twins in a part-time role, I would think that was ok, too.

Not really sure where to put something like this so I guess I'll just make it its own topic. In his chat today, David Schoenfield had this bit: Sam Goodyear (London, UK) What about Edgar, did he mentor A-Rod? David Schoenfield Maybe a little. But Edgar was pretty quiet. I'm just saying if you're 20, 21 years old and your teammates kind of treat you like you're piece of dirt, maybe it's a little more difficult to develop a mature, well-grounded personality. Not an excuse for anything he did, of course, but baseball doesn't exactly create the best atmosphere for players to grow up and develop the ability for self-reflection or rationalize decisions. This was in talking about ARod and, obviously, as a baseball player, he turned out pretty good. But it does seem to suggest that maybe a better clubhouse atmosphere (as defined by baseball) has some merit. I would certainly rather be in a locker room where the vets treat you well as opposed to beating you up or mocking you at every turn.

I think his biggest obstacles will be the non-strategy things. Checking/massaging egos, dealing with umps, standing up for players, dealing with losing streaks etc. By all accounts, he's a baseball genius.

Obviously, .300/.630 OBP/OPS doesn't stick in the two spot and Gardy didn't do it either. (Now you could argue that a young guy coming up could hit high in the order and the team would live with his struggles while he learns but neither of us is talking about that). I guess your second complaint is he didn't use Pinto enough at DH or rested Mauer too much? Or is this some version of the "carried three catchers" trope? I forget all the conspiracies but it's a made up complaint. And that's my main problem with your posts in this thread - you say/suggest something that is not true, defend it to death. I mean, your best argument is that Gardy didn't give a **** about putting a good on-base guy in the two spot but you couldn't just say that (and that would be true, during his run, his #2 hitters were last in OBP and second to last in OPS). You had to go with silly hyperbole and suggest that Casilla got tons of at bats in the two hole when 1) he didn't and 2) when he got the most of them, he was a better OBP guy than league average. But the response to any batting order complaint is that it's a batting order complaint. It really doesn't matter. It's like focusing on one small nearly inconsequential thing while ignoring more relevant things - like how his teams usually outperformed their pyth w/l record, his strong use of bullpens, care of the pitching staff, etc. HBT did a study on what managers effect and ranked Gardy the best manager in the game. I think that tells us more than batting order arguments and implied stubbornness. In any event, these type of threads go nowhere. I hope Molitor does a great job as manager and if Gardy wants to manage again, I hope he does well.

Here's the link: http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/12331388/the-great-analytics-rankings#!mlb And the other article trying to determine if stats = wins http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/55317/checking-out-the-mags-analytic-rankings Interesting that the Royals, with Dayton Moore and Ned Yost narratives, are listed as believers.