gunnarthor

Getting him playing time shouldn't be a problem. I think the team will trade Willingham and Morneau at the deadline. Doumit really shouldn't affect him since Doumit really shouldn't be in the OF. I think we'll end the season with an OF of Benson/Hicks/Arcia and some real hope for the next season.

That's mostly true, however, he ate a lot of innings in the minors. He threw 150 innings as a 21 yr old, 170 as a 22 year old and his rookie season he threw 180 between the majors and minors. I'm not overly worried about his durability, although it's something you always worry a bit about.

Sure, it's possible and then we basically have last year again. But complaining about not signing Marcum, with his injury issues, is probably not the right way to go. If this is your concern, Saunders would be the pitcher you want. Healthy and durable. And the Twins future relies a lot more on guys like Gibson and Hendriks then stop gaps like Pelfrey, Correia and Marcum. May and Meyer will both be in AA (Meyer might start at A+ but he did finish in AA last year although Twins might wait for the weather to warm up) which means they are close to being called up if they are doing well.

Off season isn't over. Maybe the Twins sign Saunders. I'm certainly not ready to call for Ryan's head. This is what he does. He's not going to overpay. He's clearly rebuilding and has the support of ownership. He's added Pelfrey, Worley, Harden and Correia to the rotation. Gibson and Hendriks will both be in the mix, too. It's a better rotation than it was last year although I would like the Twins to sign Saunders (or Marcum, sigh). I also think payroll should be a different issue - Pohlad's set the payroll, Ryan just takes the bullets for them.

In fairness, his 2010 was pretty good. It was comparable to Albert Belle's age 24 season and I was soooooo hoping he'd keep developing. Oh well.

Good list. Obviously people might quibble with it a bit - I think May is too low - but when I look at Twins lists now, what I'm really happy with is the depth. This group looks a lot better than the lists we had a few years back which had Valencia, Morales, Swarzak and Hughes. We now have some really intriguing names outside the top 10 that could really develop - Harrison, Bard - as well as some near ML ready depth in guys like Hernandez and Benson. And a lot of bullpen arms.

Even if Hicks makes the team out of ST, it's likely that he will be sent down at some point anyway. It's rare for a rookie not to be sent down. Gibson, I'm not worried about. I think the team should put him in the bullpen right away and make him a starter after the break.

Hall of Famer Earl Weaver, former manager of Baltimore Orioles, dies at 82 - ESPN My first computer baseball game, way back in the 80s, was Earl Weaver Baseball. He actually worked with the game designer's to create the AI strategy. One of baseball's most colorful characters. RIP.

They NL to AL thing has gotten better the last three years. Still a difference but not as much. You could argue that the NL East has just as good lineups, even with pitchers, as the AL central. And Worley is going from a bandbox to a better pitcher's park. You can make all the numbers I suggested a bit worse (and I didn't suggest even a better than average season for any of them) and they'd still easily cover those 88 starts I mentioned. And it could work the other way, too. Maybe Correia does tank but maybe Worley puts up a much better season than suggested to off put that. Worley is a good pitcher. Injuries are an issue with everyone but I'm not overly worried about it. Worley always threw a lot of innings in the minors, his rookie year he threw 180+ between the majors and minors, suggesting a 30 inning increase over last year isn't out of line and still permits one trip to the DL. Pelfrey might not match his 2011 innings but he could very easily be better in most other categories. I don't love the Correia signing and I hope we add Saunders but by just giving guys like Worley, Pelfrey and Correia a bunch of starts, the team is significantly better. It would be almost impossible for any of those guys to be as bad as last years back end crud was. I'm least confident in Correia but I'd rather give him 25 starts than give those starts to a combination of Walters, Duensing and Vasquez. Anyhow, that covers (in theory) 88 starts. Assume Diamond covers 27 starts at something similar to last year, that leaves 47 starts for others. Hendriks started 16 last year and was horrible. He'll get another chance, hopefully he's better. That leaves 31 starts that Deduno and De Vries combined on last year (31 starts, 167ip, about a 96 ERA+, 0.7 WAR 15 QS). Those will be taken by Deduno and Gibson this year. Adding Saunders to the rotation would help, too. But even without him, it's hard to see how the rotation isn't significantly improved simply by not having Liriano and Blackburn in the rotation.

See, this is where I disagree with you. I think we're forgetting just how awful last years pitching staff was. Pelfrey/Correia is a huge improvement. Last year we gave 88 starts and about 457ip to several pitchers (Blackburn, Marquis, Pavano, Walters, Duensing, Vasquez, Swarzak and Liriano) who combined for nearly a negative 8 WAR in those starts. If Correia puts up a 2010 Blackburn line (26 starts, 75 ERA+, 160ip, -0.5 WAR, 14 QS), Pelfrey just mimics his 2011 season (33 starts, 78 ERA+, 190ip, 0.0 WAR, 15 QS) and Worley puts up a modest season (29 starts, 99 ERA+, 180 ip, 1.0 WAR, 15 QS), that covers all 88 starts, takes nearly75 innings from the bullpen and adds about 8.5 WAR to the pitching staff. And that's not asking for a ton from the new guys. I didn't love the Correia signing but I was ok with the Pelfrey and Harden deals. Saunders would be a nice addition. But I think we're ignoring how much of an improvement we've gotten just from getting professional starts. I'm also very interested in how Hendriks pitches for us next year. He was just abysmal last year (16 starts, 73 ERA+, 85.1ip, -1.2 WAR, 5 QS).

He was a 4th round pick, not third. I'm probably less optimistic about Rosario than any of our other top prospects. I'm concerned about his declining OBP last year, esp after he came back. Hope I'm wrong. I think, of all our prospects, he could be the biggest X-factor in that other teams don't have a big time second base prospect and, if he pans out, he'll give the Twins a very rare and valuable player.

Thanks Seth. Seems to have the right idea about not worrying about stats so much as preparation. This last draft was really interesting. Buxton and Berrios were really good picks I was very happy about. Hopefully they can both match the hype. If Bard can make the transition to a starter, suddenly that draft would be a huge success. He seems to have the genes for baseball and the right attitude. Let's hope he can stay healthy.

I think we might be getting a bit carried away with this. Hardy was due something like 6m and the team couldn't spend enough to keep Hardy, Thome and Pavano. Hardy was always dinged up a bit - he only started 95 games for us - and asked out of the lineup a lot leaving us with a 24 man bench. His defense was good but dWAR, for instance, showed him declining three years in a row. He wasn't killing it with the bat for us - Alexi Casilla actually had a higher OBP, SLG and OPS+ and was younger. The team decided to go with a MI of Nishi and Casilla. Obviously, that worked out. Everyone in baseball knew that Hardy was available but Baltimore seemed to be the only team interested in him.

All joking aside, I wonder if we appreciate just how great this retiring pitching group was. The top five guys - Clemens, Unit, Pedro, Maddux and Glavine averaged 300 wins and everyone won at least two Cy Youngs. After those five, Moose, Schilling and Smoltz should make the HOF and Brown, Moyer, Wells and Cone were all great pitchers. It was an amazing run.

Maybe, maybe not. I tend to be a big hall guy so I think there's room for him. I think his durability has been pretty under rated and we'll see his WAR numbers go up once the stat heads start investigating the impact of ip on the team. Raines and Morris are interesting. WAR makes a better case for Raines than his traditional numbers and vice versa but it should be pointed out that both have good numbers in either traditional or new stats. Both are very good players and among the best to have played. That said, I suspect people tend to think that WAR is accurate to the decimal point. But there really isn't much difference between a 4.3 WAR and a 4.2 WAR, for instance. Raines has more career WAR but he played 23 seasons. On a per year basis, Morris avg slightly more (3.16 to 3.06). But that isn't really fair since Raines had a couple call up seasons, so if we exclude pre-rookie seasons, Raines is slightly ahead (3.37 to 3.31). But that isn't really fair to Morris, since he was a relief pitcher his rookie year. So if we adjust again, Morris is slightly ahead again (3.49 to 3.34). Interestingly, neither is very close to Radke's per season WAR - 3.85. The other argument would be that Raines had a better peak, which is a good argument. From 83-87 he might have been the best player in the NL. But Morris had some strong seasons as well. If you accept that 3.9 is the same as 4.0, both had 8 4 WAR seasons, which means Morris was a 4 WAR player in 45% of his seasons compared to Raines 35%. If you don't accept 3.9WAR is no different than a 4.0 WAR, than Morris drops to 33%). Obviously, Raines peak seasons were higher - he had 6 6 WAR seasons and Morris only had 1. On the other hand, Raines also had 9 seasons of less than 2 WAR, to Morris' 4. In fact, for his career outside of that 5 year peak, Raines avg 2 WAR year. Obviously there are issues comparing pitchers and outfielders but there's also a ton of problems relying on WAR anyway. Both players have narratives put forward by their supporters. Raines supporters claim his baserunning and defense were major under appreciated assets while ignoring that he was a very bad defensive player by dWAR and TZ. He had a weak arm and didn't run good routes. I'm honestly not sure if either is a HOFer although I think the hall under represents the 80s by a ton so I'd be happy to have both in. I think Morris has become a lightning rod for stat heads to oppose. I wish more analysis was put into the value of durability. Now that Verlander is doing his thing, we're starting to hear about how CGs help rest the bullpen and gives the team a value that isn't currently being calculated. We have seen views changed on players after the stats were recalculated. Stat heads started to come around on Dawson when wOBA had him on par with HOFers such as Yount and his career win share (the 'in' stat at the time) was recalculated to be higher than Blyleven's. Recently, B-R readjusted WAR and added 11 WAR to Torii Hunter over a 9 year period. All of sudden, Hunter was no longer viewed as overrated.

All that is true. Radke is one of the most under rated pitchers of his generation. He had as many 5 WAR seasons as Beckett and Lackey combined, for instance. His avg WAR/season (fWAR or bWAR) is higher than a lot of candidates - Raines, Trammel, Murphy etc. People looked at his lack of strikeouts and stopped looking. But over his 12 years in the league, he was 10th in WAR, behind 7 HOFers, and two roiders - Pettitte and Kevin Brown. He amassed more WAR than Glavine. Stunningly under rated pitcher. That said, Morris does have 1400 more innings on him. Basically, Radke could throw 150 more complete games and still be short. And fWAR rates Morris a lot better than bWAR. As mentioned, it rates him better than Jim Palmer.

I think Morris' candidacy has become pretty political and it doesn't look good for either side. I wish someone who is a stat head would come out in support of him. Going by fWAR, Morris avg more WAR per season than a guy like Tim Raines and had just as many 4WAR seasons. I've read a million times that Stieb was the better pitcher yet Morris had more career WAR and a higher WAR/season. And if you gave Stieb 100 more complete games, Morris still threw more innings. His career WAR is higher than HOFers like Jim Palmer, Carl Hubbell and Chief Bender. You also hear that Morris had one good post season game but you don't remember that in his first 5 WS games he was 4-0 with 1.97 ERA.

Cool, so we're having a Twins daily prospect list, too? I'm not sure you need to narrow candidates down so much. #1 is going to Sano.

Mauer was 5th in GIBP last year. The leader was Miguel Cabrera.

Yeah, I've always like Burnett. He gets a ton of grounders and doesn't give up any homers and he ate a lot of innings. He'll be 25 next season. Still cheap and has options, if he struggles. He also seems to have a good mentality on the mound.

Not sure he's 'hurt' the lineup, at least in any real sense. Clearly, with Revere and Span gone it opens up some spots that we all are hoping the younger guys can step in and take. Eventually, that had to happen. So, while I'm sure Hicks, Benson and Arcia will struggle (at least offensively) trying to get them into the lineup was something that had to be done. By your logic, the Twins hurt their lineup when they decided to trade Dougie Baseball or AJ to let Mauer and Morneau get their shots. It has to be done. The interesting thing will be how well Plouffe and Parmelee play this season. I think our offense will go as those two go.

Over the years, Ryan and the Twins have picked up some nice cheap bullpen arms through waivers or minor league free agency. Reyes, Brewslow, Guierrier, Burton, Fein, heck even Brian Bass was helpful. Guys that we picked up this year, like Vasquez, Wood and Augenstein can hopefully be like that.

Yeah, saw that. Wonder if a deal gets done now. I'd expect the Pirates to not want to give him more than one year. But who knows. The Pirates are nuts.

I'm not sure how much of this is really valid. Last year, we had issues with RF until Revere took it over but I'm not sure that isn't fairly normal with most teams. The Twins wanted Carroll to hold one MI spot (and he had a decent year) and hoped a guy like Dozier or Plouffe could step up. Plouffe ended up taking over third and had a nice run until his injury. I suspect we'll see something similar this year with CF and RF as the Twins hope that young guys like Hicks, Benson, Parmelee or Arcia step up and take it. As for last year, however you want to criticize the position players, they ended up being pretty good. Their team WAR was 4th or 5th in the AL (depending on which WAR you use).