diehardtwinsfan

Not a good sign, I'd agree, but not with out precedent: see Morneau, Justin.

If anything, I think this should be a reason for the Twins to take it easier with him this year, and not necessarily plug him into the lineup every day (and given Park and Arcia likely on the roster, that should be doable). I'd imagine a lot of that stress gets brought out when the season gets grueling... call me crazy there. That said, it's year 3 now. Hopefully his brain has healed. He never had a ton of power, so hopefully that batting eye comes back and he can have a couple more .320/.400/.480 type seasons.

Not to get us back on topic But I have to think that (assuming there are no injury issues) someone gets traded this spring. I do agree that it isn't as likely as it should be, but plenty of teams need pitching help, and we have 7 capable starters with an 8th 1 year away from having to be on the 40 man. You can play an options game with Duffey, but I just don't see a scenario where one or both of Milone or Nolasco is with the team by June. Nolasco b/c quite frankly he's been bad and should be on a short leash, and Milone b/c he is what he is (though to be fair to Tommy, he's been pretty consistent in outperforming his peripherals for his entire career). If there aren't injury issues, I have to think someone would be more than happy to take Tommy off of our hands, and give us a nice prospect too. Going back to May, this is that whole short term/long term thing. He led the team in WAR up until the point he was demoted, and was pretty much lights out that month too. I think you have to look at his projectibility in the rotation as he could be a solid #2 for quite some time. To a lesser extent, that's Gibson as well (as his K rate took a big move in the right direction last season)... but that would hurt us in the short term (the pen in particular) for a much more valuable asset long term. We're pretty much stuck with Hughes and Santana (though in both cases, we probably won't feel 'stuck' with one or both next season). That leaves the last spot to whom I'd put Duffey... again, more projectibility there. That's not how it will happen though. What it should be: Santana, Hughes, Gibson, May, Duffey What it will be: Santana, Hughes, Gibson, Nolasco, Milone

Given where they are picking, this might be a good spot to grab a falling high ceiling guy who fell due to injury. You won't likely see a potential can't miss guy there, so getting a high ceiling would be nice. Other option would to grab a guy like Cody with the understanding he's going under slot and then get some HS guys in 2, 2b, and 3.

I'd like to see Tonkin get consistent reps in a low leverage role. He strikes me as someone who can be good, though he never put it together. I really hope that Arcia forces his way into the picture this spring. That would start by playing average defense to go with his bat (that hopefully is better in 2016 than it was in 2015). I really don't want the team to give up on him, as I think that could be dangerous.

I'm not sure 2/12 is the top of the market for catchers. Given that Weiters took the QO of 15.8M for one season (in which he only played 75 games), I think that might be a better idea of what the top dollar is for catchers. Looking at the other catching free agent signings, Suzuki's contract is a bit higher, but hardly in the "Good Lord how can you compete with that salary" category. Bottom line is that if Murphy and Hicks work out, and one of Turner or Garver breaks out next year, Ryan can dump Suzuki (if healthy) at the deadline for something decent, even if 2016 Suzuki is no different from 2015 Suzuki.

Thanks for not saying "goose this"..... grey goose?

I'm always a bit wary of the luck comment when it comes to players. Yeah, there's some there, but it's usually quite a bit more than that. These guys are very highly skilled, and there's very little that separates the good skilled guys from the bad ones. Simple adjustments can make a big deal, even it can look like random distribution. A real simple example is BABIP. If all pitching (minus the Ks) was simply due to luck, just about any one of us could go out and pitch. The reality is that our BABIPs would never normalize, because don't have the skills required to make it normalize. I think we lose that when we look at stats as it's often easy to say, that a player's problem is bad luck and just a little time will make things change. It's often an adjustment (even a minor one) that makes it change. Going back to Kurt, it looks to me in that photo that he's just a tad underneath the pitch (something he wasn't in 2014). Perhaps that's due to eye sight, but it looks like he keeps his shoulders more level and his wrists in a bit tighter when going oppo in 2014 vs. 2015. To me, I would think that's correctable. It's also likely what he's been doing his entire career. Sometimes old habits can be hard to break. By the way, just a side note, but average BABIP is usually around .300. A .310 BABIP is not exactly an outlier. It is in relation to his career, but I don't think it's unreasonable for someone to figure something out that normalizes that number a bit more. Suzuki wouldn't be the first person that this happened to. That said, it's one photo. Hardly enough to make a reasonable conclusion, and I'm too lazy to look That's why Parker writes all the good articles and I don't.

I just said something similar. These stocks will be real cheap by the end of the year. I'd advise taking that profit and waiting it out, or if you want, invest in ETFs that move inverse. Stocks are the last to catch up to economics, and all the leading indicators went down sharply months ago.

I'd be a bit concerned about them and Apple in the short term. Netflix is hitting it's saturation with US customers and Apple I think is going to get hammered as the recession takes hold. Might not be a bad idea to sell high on both and potentially buy back later. I have no complaints about Microsoft's performance of late (full disclosure, I work for MSFT), but even that isn't recession proof. I'd add that this bounce has been at best tepid. I think you're going to see another massive leg down in the next couple weeks. I'd definitely advise moving some positions to cash where you can buy back in much cheaper.

excellent piece.

Thank you, I assumed it wasn't black and white. It's certainly not fantasy baseball. It's just interesting to know what goes on in the front office.

The problem with that is that you get guys like Mike Pelfrey looking to make good due to injury or ineffectiveness. Good pitchers don't take short term deals.

Yeah... hehehehe.. I do think that this may cost them a few games in 2016. Lots of question marks in the pen and in the OF that only time will fix. The problem I see is that there's no way TR blocks those guys, so we'll suffer a bit in April/May.

I'm pretty certain that they expect some of the kids to step up and be on the roster in shorter order. Not sure many (other than maybe Rogers and Melotakis) have a chance to break with the club, but I suspect that is the plan, like it or not.

Let's not stir the pot please. You don't have to clean up the mess. Now on a more serious question. I asked earlier and I'll ask again. Could you go through the internal process of targeting and eventually signing a FA? I'd be really curious about how that works. I'm sure it's more than, "hey, let's go out and sign player X". Thanks,

I'm beginning to think that the Twins have been planning on Rogers taking that lefty pen spot. It isn't necessarily a bad plan, especially if it means giving Meyer another shot starting (something tells me that won't be the case either), but I think the Twins want him to step up this spring and show he can get major league lefties out. That high minors pitching roster with the exception of Berrios looks pretty weak. No one there I'm really excited about, but definitely lots of interesting names in A ball and EST. It's nice to see a second wave down there of potential top half of the rotation type arms that could be used to acquire needed pieces or supplement some of the contracts when they move off... As to the major league rotation, I'm oddly optimistic. I think Hughes bounces back and has a nice even year while Santana looks like Santana. I think Gibson really takes a step forward too. Not sure what they will do with Ricky, and I really wish Trevor May was in the rotation. It might be interesting to see what happens if Duffey has a poor spring. I could see him back in AAA to start, though I really want to see Milone traded if both Duffey and May are looking good this spring.

I think personally I'd prefer Buxton start in AAA unless he shows a new found ability to hit a major league curve ball. That's my 2 cents... but in terms of rookies coming north, I suspect at least one reliever will be there. I agree with Seth that Taylor Rogers should be on that list too. A lot of people were clamoring to make him that LOOGY that we wanted given his splits against lefties. I could easily see him earning that job in ST with a strong spring. He doesn't have that much left to prove in AAA.

I think you missed a couple of relievers. I think Mason Melotakis and JT Chargois are right up there with Burdi and Reed. I suspect one of those four will be on the major league roster to start (at least based on what we've picked up so far as relievers)

I do think he's a long term fixture here, but I suspect that he's going to take some lumps this year. Hope you're right and I'm wrong here, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if Rosario spends a month or two in AAA.

Like the Plouffe trade. Not a bad one in my opinion. You gave up way too much for Will Smith though, or were you thinking the actor was part of the deal too?

love the attitude. Hopefully he passes Berrios b/c Berrios graduated and did well

Yeah, I'd agree there. Only real issue presently is that there's a lot of question marks in the OF, and I'm not even sure I'd call Sano a sure thing at the moment. Sophomore slumps are real and happen. I think Sano will answer some of those questions about himself (and hopefully well), but the OF situation will take some time to figure out. If Sano is playing there for the time being, I'm fine with that. I'm guessing the reality TR saw this offseason is that he wasn't going to get much for Plouffe, at which point, keeping him was the better option. You may see Trevor traded for next to nothing next offseason b/c the team doesn't need him, but I'm not certain this team can say that right now.

Side note, there are a number of proshares ETFs out there that work inverse of the market. Those aren't bad investments if you can trade ETFs in your plans. TWM for instance, is up something ridiculous (about 40%) in the last two weeks as it does roughly 2x the inverse of the Russell 2k (which has lost about 20% in the last 3 weeks).

I've been doing a lot more trading of late, so I'll simply say this. What you are seeing right now is the beginning. You'd be wise to move your money into a money market for the bulk of 2016. The market is waking up and realizing that nothing was fixed from 2008 and now we've added a ton more sovereign debt to it... debt that some countries aren't going to repay. I wouldn't be shocked in the least if the European crisis comes back in full with defaults from some or all of the PIIGS nations at some point, and that contagion could spread elsewhere too. Cut your losses. You may get a small bounce here given the number of down days, but we are in a full fledge bear market and I wouldn't be surprised at all to see the market return to 2008 lows. Buy back in once the damage is done.