diehardtwinsfan

I'm with Nick here. Meyer was walking way too many hitters in AAA, and that number isn't going to go down in the majors. I don't think we want to see a kid coming up walking 5-6 batters/9, and that's what Meyer would likely be doing if he started the season in the majors, not to mention, he's yet to go through a full season either. I think the right choice is to give May the ball for now and see if Meyer can put it together in Rochester. Meyer can be the first guy called up during injury.

Speaking of 2012, I find it somewhat amusing that this was considered a very weak draft. I remember a lot of us being unhappy that we had so many extra picks in what was a week draft, and then being rather upset when the Twins went out and drafted a bunch of college relievers. In retrospect, it's beginning to look like it was a very special draft for the Twins. Buxton and Berrios look like they could be all stars, or at the very least well above average players. Walker is a wild card given his contact issues, but if he figures them out, he's a stud. Combine it with these college relievers, most of whom (at the least the healthy ones) have been very successful thus far in their roles and this is looking like a draft that could easily produce 4 or 5 regular players and a few more minor role players. That's pretty impressive when you think about it, as getting 3 big leaguers in a draft is typically considered successful.

Plouffe had a very good season, and I find it amusing that he's so underappreciated by Twins fans (in contrast to Dozier who's likely overrated a bit by us). He's an above average 3B. He's not an all star, but when you look at the total package, there's somewhere between 5 and 10 3B in baseball who were better than him. The real question is whether or not he's going to take another step forward. He was a bit of a late bloomer, so I'd say it's possible, but even with minor improvements to his defense and bat, he's a pretty valuable piece to have on any team. If Sano hits the ground running in the minors and Plouffe has the same season or better, I suspect Plouffe will be a very valuable trade piece and will likely bring back a top 100 prospect and change. If he's not traded, he moves to left. That's not bad either, cause I have to think he'd be an upgrade over what we have in the corners presently.

This. I know it's not fantasy, but I tend to do the same thing with late round fantasy picks. They aren't much different than what you get on the WW. Draft for upside. Sure, that kid might be a massive project with a low probability of success, but finding just one of those late round type gems every other year can be a massive boost for an org.

wow... Griffey will be the first guy taken 1 overall to get into the HOF. That's an eye opener. As for Mauer, I think switching hurts him. Another couple years behind the dish and I think he'd have been a no-brainer. What he did in the limited time he caught is pretty impressive, but baseball is littered with guys with shorter careers who did very well with them. Time will tell I guess. He may be one of those guys who is debated for many years (unless of course he puts together a couple of stellar seasons as a 1B, but I don't think he hits enough HRs to sway voters).

Keep in mind that 40 man considerations are different for college guys than HS guys, as the HS guys get an extra year before needing to be added. That said, so far, this is turning out to have been an excellent draft. Here's to hoping those guys force some tough decisions in the near future.

I'm not sure Gardy would score well in this particular metric...

Couple things I'm wondering. 1) Would it make more sense to look at the number of double plays as a percentage to the number of opportunities (i.e runner on 1st with less than 2 outs)? The number of opportunities should be distributed somewhat on a bell curve (at least for the guys playing the position all the time),but I'd think this would smooth out some of the irregularity. 2) What about heavy GB pitchers? I would naturally expect more double plays from a staff that has a GB focused staff. I'd think that would overstate the defensive effectiveness of those SS due to the opportunity issue.

at this point, I think they are guaranteed. They would have had to been not offered arb (i.e non-tendered) if they didn't want to pay him.

I honestly thought Duensing would be non-tendered in favor of Orouke this offseason. But against righties he still has quite a bit of work to do, so keeping Brian around for another season isn't necessarily a bad idea. But yeah, this kid is a LOOGY... I wouldnt' want more than one in the pen, but having a guy like this that you can bring in a criticial inning against a couple of left handed batters is very valuable.

I guess I'm on the other side of this debate, though to be honest, I wouldn't get worked up either way. We saw with the Span trade how easy it is to get a really good prospect when you have a reasonable contract on a player Dozier has done this 2 years in a row now, and Plouffe put together a pretty good season last year after teasing us with that Ruthian performance a while back. I'll be honest in that contract or no contract, I'm not sure I see either player spending much more than a couple years with the Twins. I'd add that I think both will be trade candidates as early as next season. Plouffe has Sano chasing him down, and there's some decent 2B options in Rosario, Escobar, and Polanco, all of whom are in the high minors/ML. You could in theory move one of them to that LF spot at some point, but beyond that, there really won't be room for either long term. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it will be the key factor in the true value of the contract. The question at hand is how reasonable it is for the player to reproduce that season and whether or not there is room for improvement. I think Dozier is a much more sure thing that Plouffe in that regards. He's done it for 2 years now, and I'd probably lean towards extending him. Bottom line is if he can continue to do what he's doing, the contract will be tradable. He's got 1 year at the league minimum followed by 3 seasons of arb. A 4 year deal with 2 options, or a 5 year deal with 1 is probably what you are talking about, and I'm guessing the total value of that deal would be something like 4/25 with 2 options or 5/35 with one (guessing the value of the options would be in the 8-10M range). Those are pretty reasonable contracts, and the Twins would have zero problems moving that if Dozier maintains his production. That would not be the case if they went year to year, as the extra year/options is what really makes that contract valuable. Given that Dozier has maintained this level of production for 2 seasons, and seems to have the work ethic needed to continue that, I say do it. As for Plouffe, that' a bit different. He has more of a "sure thing" chasing him down, and that sure thing (even with contact issues) still was quite impressive in AA in 2013. He's also only done this for a year, but unlike Dozier, he has some OF experience. I'd probably wait another year on him and see how things play out. That's me at least.

I like Meyer, but 99.99% is just asking for TJS in the spring... Do not anger the baseball gods.

I'm guessing that the team doing well will do wonders for traffic down the road... I'd imagine the same with VikingsJournal. Hopefully Minnesota sports picks up a bit in the next few years. Good teams will bring in fans.

I'd add that he got off to a pretty rough start. His first four starts were bad. Second were average. He was well above average from there on out. The overall numbers looked pretty good (minus the walks), and he largely corrected that as the season wore on.

Hicks does have one more option I believe.

is it official that Thorpe is out for 2015, or are you assuming he's going to get TJ?

I have to admit I didn't think Hughes would even be interested in this given the season he had. In that, I think this was a no brainer.

I don't think you are the only one on his bandwagon. There are a number of people on this board who really like him. I think the big difference is that while we all recognize he has undeniable talent, most of us recognize that he's got a few big issues that need to be mitigated if he's going to even make it to the big leagues, namely contact. He strikes out too much and walks way too little. Whether that is due to a hole in his swing or a lack of plate discipline (or both), I'm not sure. But bottom line is that right now, he has no chance of making the team and very little chance of being a productive major leaguer in 2015. I don't see how it's a slight to not invite him in this situation. He has a lot more work to do than guys like Buxton and Sano, and he's showed far less success than either of them in his league relative to age. Don't get me wrong, if he figures out the contact problems, he could be an absolute stud. He's still a very good prospect, but at the end of the day, he's not ready.

Necessary is the key word. I'd say no to the idea that the ace is necessary, but I'd be hard pressed to say it doesn't hurt. I also subscribe to the idea that there are about 10 true aces in MLB as well. I believe that most of us would agree that a rotation of 5 number 2s is better than a 1-5, and Ryan is attempting at doing that with the Nolasco, Hughes, and Santana signings as these guys are all 2/3 types (though Hughes pitched like a 1 this season and Nolasco... well didn't). That rotation of 2/3 types is also a lot cheaper than the ace, so there's something to be said about spreading the money around and getting better results overall, b/c if they piled all that money one guy, you are looking at more types of guys like Walters getting starts. The other thing about post season is the SSS issue. An ace can pitch well and the team can still lose if the offense cannot score or if the other pitchers just get beat. An ace will pitch twice in a 5 gamer and 3 times at best in a 7 gamer. And if you use all 3 bullets in the CS, it's likely the ace isn't going to pitch 3 games in the WS. Same goes with the DS/CS. That said, the Twins appear to building a nice depth of top end talent and have plenty of depth of guys who won't embarrass themselves in MLB as well. Their 3 guys under contract (I expect Nolasco to rebound) paired with Meyer, Gibson, May, and Berrios in the shorter term should be fine, and as those contracts expire, guys like Stewart, Thorpe, Gonsalves, and Hu all look like they could step up and pitch in the 1-3 range. They have plenty of other depth guys who look more like 3/4 type guys in Rogers, Duffey, Lee, Darnell, etc that could step in as needed too, though I suspect many of these guys get traded assuming the others remain relatively healthy. Back to the topic, a few of those younger guys could very well be that ace guy, but in the mean time, they should have decent pitching top to bottom... Of course, as dreadful as that defense was last season, I'm not sure how much it will really help unless their pitchers are striking out 20 guys a game. Even though he's lost a step, I'm hoping Hunter can teach guys like Arcia, Buxton, and Hicks the nuances of playing good OF defense.

in other words, this should end the idea that the Twins call up players too slow. There doesn't appear to be a correlation.

As for regression, they offense was pretty bad overall in the beginning of the year, yet they still finished where they did. The second half of last season, they were the best offense overall. That was with Suzuki regressing as it was. Regression: Suzuki, Santana, and Vargas Improvements Mauer, Plouffe, Dozier (I think the power numbers drop a bit, but the average goes way up), Hunter (improvement over what we had in LF), Arcia (I think he takes a huge step forward this year). Push Escobar. Hopefully the CF they can sign will play to the average of Santana and Hicks with better defense. I do think Santana will see a big drop, and personally, I'd slate him for work in Rochester on his defense anyways. That said, it wasn't like he was getting seeing eye singles. Everything he hit was on a rope, so perhaps there's some talent that could allow him to be one of those guys who carries a higher BABIP... Who knows. Could this team contend? If things break right, yes. I think the most realistic view of 2015 is that they are pretenders. They should give us a good season and keep the fans interested in baseball well into September, but ultimately fall short because they are flawed. What should be exciting is that there's a good chance we see Buxton, Rosario, Meyer, and Sano at some point this season.

I think the argument is to bring them up when they are ready. Most will struggle at some point, unless by chance they are named Mike Trout. But the reality is that you don't want to be wasting too much of their service time having them figure out things that they should be learning in the minors. The best case in that scenario is that they still manage to stay on the same timeline had they not been rushed. The worst case is that it takes much much longer (Gomez)... or never happens.

I think May will be fine. He showed quite a bit of improvement as the season went on. He gets the Ks, but was walking too many guys. I think that's more mental for him (especially given how well he limited them in AAA) and I think he settles in to a low 4 ERA with a bunch of Ks. That wouldn't be bad at all for his first full year. Meyer gets called up to replace the first injured guy. I'm hoping he takes a major step forward in AAA limiting the walks and never looks back when he's called up.

That's true, but you have trade someone or something (in that case Billy Bullock).

From a defensive standpoint, I don't like it, but with diminishing skills, is Hunter going to be worse than Hammer and Kubel? I'm hardpressed to think that he's gotten that bad. On the flip side, another good bat for the lineup that was 6 or 7th in producing runs last year (which is even more impressive given how bad they were at the beginning of the season)...