gunnarthor

I think it's sort of the opposite. Twins draft a ton of HS position players and college pitchers. They don't draft as many college hitters (before Micheal last year, the Twins hadn't taken a college hitter in the 1st round since 97) or HS arms (although it's a bit more common).

Nice. Right now, I'm hoping the Twins get Gausman.

Wow. I'm not sure how much longer we can keep him in Beloit. I was hoping to go down there next month to see him but now, might have to go sooner.

And, the reverse of that, HS picks usually have the higher ceilings.

Quick, find a post where anyone advocated trading Span for a reliever. Or, for that matter, where our GM ever made a trade like that.

I think they have a pretty good catching prospect (Norris?)

I'd love it if the DBacks got in on it. They have an insane number of high quality arms in their system.

Probably depends on how the Twins view Detwiler. Clippard is a good piece but Kobernus and Rosenbaum aren't that highly regarded and are a bit old, from what I can tell. Sickels rated them the # 11 and 19 prospects in the Nats system. Detwiler doesn't have the best peripherals, I'm not sure the Twins should do that sort of trade.

Probably a lot more than you think but most fans don't learn about MiLB hitters that don't make it. Brock Bond, also in the PCL, comes to mind. I'm not sure if the Twins move was good or bad. But prospect sites have never been warm to Solarte, for whatever reason. Generally, I think I agree with shs_59, the Twins had more information than we fans do about Solarte and they decided to move on. They probably had a valid reason.

Yeah, that's what made me want one of the pitchers over him. Gausman just threw a 9 inning, 5 hit, 11k game over Vanderbilt and has done pretty well against the SEC.

From baseball america's Prospect Hot Sheet- "The top four prospects on the preseason Top 100 list are all currently in the big leagues. That means there will be plenty of spaces of new guys in the Top 10 for our midseason prospect update. One of the most likely candidates to move up is Twins 3B Miguel Sano. He ranked No. 18 before the season, but the biggest knock against him was that he had yet to play a game in full-season ball. That's no longer a concern—he's leading the Midwest League in home runs (10), slugging percentage (.645) and OPS (1.055). Sano went 8-for-28 (.286/.323/.714) with three home runs this week, pretty impressive for one of the youngest players in the league."

I think teams don't look at players as much as this guys #1, this guys #2. I think they tend to group guys in tiers. Tier 1 might be two guys (say Buxton and Gausman) that the team thinks is better than anyone in lower tiers. Tier 2 might be slightly larger and etc. The team would then pick a guy from the highest tier but might still have options. In this case, if the Astros took Gausman, the Twins would take Buxton b/c he's the only player in Tier 1. But if they had Zunino and Zimmer in tier 1 as well, then they could alter the pick and consider other things, including roster construction, $ demands, fan base appeal, in making that pick. In this specific case, I think the Twins would consider Buxton. According to Klaw, Buxton is generally considered as the guy with the most talent in this draft. At #32, the Twins should have a wide enough pool of possible selections to take a pitcher in whatever tier they have left. Now, if somehow they're sitting at 32 and 3B prospect Schiffer falls to them (he's expected to go in the top 15) well, fine, you grab him. But that's not likely to happen.

Yeah, you're right. Sorry.

http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/draft/mock-draft/2012/2613371.html Callis has Twins taking toolsy OFer Buxton. I think I still prefer Gausman but I understand why we'd take him if the Astros didn't. Another interesting thing, to me, was that catching prospect Stryker Trahan lasting to pick 30 and Giolito (sp) not being drafted. It would be pretty interesting if either of them were still around at #32.

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Well, if the people that had created the past decade were the ones in charge of the future, why so glum? The Twins have shown an ability to develop talent. I agree with Nick that this is the natural down cycle teams go through but I don't think there's any reason to think the Twins can't fix that. Each recent draft has it's own issues - either overall lack of talent (07 draft wasn't good overall - if held over, Revere wouldn't make it to #28), few picks or injuries. And I think people seem to think that if a first rounder doesn't turn into an all-star it's a failed pick. It's not.

And yet, somehow, they've remained extremely competitive until last season. Weird.

Huh? Valencia, Plouffe, Benson, Dozier, Revere, Parmelee etc have all come up in the last three years. If you mean no hitter drafted in the last three years has come up yet, then I think you have to calm down a bit. It takes a lot of time for players to move through the minors and the Twins haven't focused on hitters. The 09 Twins drafted 4 pitchers before a hitter. The 10 team first hitter was the 71st overall pick (Nico Goodrum), Rosario was taken 135 overall. 11 we picked Michael (high A now) first (30th overall) followed by a HS prospect (EST).

Yeah, that's my fear, too.

I think you missed the point - mainly that the record in 30 or so games every year (in the is case against the East) is generally unimportant. I'm claiming that their record against the AL east is unimportant and, basically, irrelevant regardless of whether or not they've "had success."

Meh. I think the argument changes yearly. For example, our 06 team won the AL Central where the 3rd place team, the reigning WS champs, won 90 games. The 4th place team had a pyth 89 wins. We won .593 of our games overall, but .629 against the east. Toronto, who finished second in the east, would have been fourth. In 07, we won at a .488 clip but played .500 against the east. It's cyclical. For instance, the 02 West was loaded - third place team won 93 games, same number as Boston and one fewer than us. Twins went 19-17 against the west, winning all series except the Oakland one (we got that in the postseason though). Twins were 16 up during the season and had a bad little road trip to Balt/Bost (1-5), dropping them to only 13 games up. In 2000, the Yanks won the East with 87 wins, which would have finished 3rd in the central. The early part of this decade, the best teams were in the AL West, the Central took over for a few years 05-07 or so (In those four years only KC (every year) and Det (04) and Chi (07) had losing records against the East). With the Rays emergence in 08, East went on top. (And the NL was significantly worse than the AL) It seems to me that this idea that the Twins wouldn't be competitive in the east is a made up complaint to minimize actual successes this team has had. The Twins were constructed to compete against the central. If Ryan et al were building us to compete against NY, Bos, TB and Balt (assuming Toronto gets kicked out), the team would have been built differently. They probably would've loaded up on RH bats b/c of how they play in Fenway, Yankee field and Camden. Probably would've focused more on LH pitching then they have. Probably would have been even stronger advocates for revenue sharing. But that's not what's happened. We can play 'what if' games all the time. What if every team was forced to have the same payroll? Seems to me that's a bigger impact than scheduling.

I'm ok with sending Valencia down. He's not getting it done here for whatever reason. A 36 OPS+ makes Punto look like a power hitter. If he gets straightened out at AAA, they can (and will) bring him back. But the reality is, since 2011 he's posted a .238/.281/.369 (78 OPS+) line. That's horrible in every respect. And his defense is still below average.

The Twins played .500 against the Yanks several times. Red Sox fans complained about the dome almost as much as white sox fans. I just don't think 30 games or so really says much in an individual year.

Seems like the right thing to do at the time. I think Casilla's arm should be good enough for third. Walters is sorta intriguing. Seems to have a decent krate at least. Maybe he can stick.

Good point on Fernandez. Twins do a pretty good job of getting talent out of PR. I expect the Twins will also grab MN pitcher TJ Oakes sometime in the 5-7 rounds.