Jump to content
Twins Daily
  • Create Account

diehardtwinsfan

Old-Timey Member
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    15,174

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    22

 Content Type 

Profiles

News

Minnesota Twins Videos

2026 Minnesota Twins Top Prospects Ranking

2022 Minnesota Twins Draft Picks

Minnesota Twins Free Agent & Trade Rumors, Notes, & Tidbits

Guides & Resources

2023 Minnesota Twins Draft Picks

The Minnesota Twins Players Project

2024 Minnesota Twins Draft Picks

2025 Minnesota Twins Draft Pick Tracker

2026 Minnesota Twins Draft Tracker: Picks & Bonuses

Forums

Blogs

Events

Store

Downloads

Gallery

Everything posted by diehardtwinsfan

  1. diehardtwinsfan
    I'd recommend some caution with your use of absolutes. There are plenty of examples of players who peak in the 27-32 range instead of the 25-27 range, and I'm sure there are many factors to this. The big one I see is that physical peak doesn't necessarily correspond to a players development. While all the necessary physical capacity aspects of the game (strength, coordination, dexterity, etc) have peaked, many of the components that require a mental approach or additional physical tuning may not have. I don't see age as a reason to promote or deny a person. You bring them up when it looks like they can have success at this level.
  2. diehardtwinsfan
    I guess I'm more with Seth here. Polanco didn't exactly dominate AA. Having him up wouldn't be bad, but at the same time, he's got to play. It isn't as though baseball adds more positions after September. There's still only 9 positions and a DH to fill, and the infield is already croweded. He'd end up accumulating service time and maybe getting a handful of at bats. Could he learn from it? Maybe. I'm not sure how much.
  3. diehardtwinsfan
    Not quite sure if he's ahead of Meyer yet, but he's closed the gap. I don't see him heading north with the Twins next year though.
  4. diehardtwinsfan
    I'd argue that this it true of any decent offense. Runs score in bunches. That's not new. The goal is to score a lot of them, and that's something that the current offense does very well. I'd add that it is even more impressive when you consider the fact that they were a pretty poor offensive team earlier in the year.
  5. diehardtwinsfan
    Not to discount Vavra, but how does the ranking get determined? I'd have put Minier, Walker, and Garver in some order for 1-3. Vavra did well, but not as well as those 3, and he's quite a bit older for his league.
  6. diehardtwinsfan
    I think your oldest son is being a bit unfair to Escobar and Plouffe. Plouffe hasn't been a star, but he's been a top 10 3B this season, so solidy above average. Escobar has been above average both defensively and offensively. Santana looks like he could be better in boht categories (though playing CF isn't helping him), but I'd caution on using the term 'utility' to describe Escobar. He gets that term b/c he plays several positions, but he's played them very well. This team's problem is mostly pitching related, and unless Nolasco gets better, Hughes keeps doing what he's doing, and we see improvement from May and Gibson, the problem will continue to be pitching.
  7. diehardtwinsfan
    This is baseball not football. You cannot just cut a guy if he's not perforing. They are under contract, and baseball contracts are guaranteed. You also won't typically find much in terms of impact pitching out of the FA market. Likewise, the younger players take a lot more time to adjust and become good players. Very few walk in and suddenly become stars. That, to me sums up the big problems b/c Nolasco and Pelfrey in particular aren't going anywhere. Gibson and May will need time to improve. Meyer and Berrios aren't ready. The offense has been pretty good since the young guys have been brought in, and while it can always be tweaked (particularly in CF until Buxton is ready and a long term decision about LF), I think Nick's point is generally valid. What I find amusing about this is that the Twins did exactly what we asked them to do last offseason and essentially blow up the roster. They went out and got 3 pitchers. 2 of the 3 can only be described as failures (which I might add is not terribly unusual in the FA market) and one of those two has 3 years left on his contract. Now we ask that they go do this again. The problem is that there's about 40 million left on the books, and we cannot just recoup it by cutting the guy. I'm not a fan of the Pohlads by any means, but if we want a case study on why that doesn't work, we should go look at how the Cubs have been run for the past 50 or so years. It rarely works.
  8. diehardtwinsfan
    Vargas, Arcia, and Sano are going to make a very nice core over the next few years. I'm pretty excited about that as all of them. Combine them with Buxton, Santana, Mauer, and Dozier, and you have a pretty nice 1-7.
  9. diehardtwinsfan
    I would think they have to be tracking this someway. 60ish innings isn't that much. These guys have obviously had some sort of workload in EST. I'm guessing it's a non-issue. It isn't like the big league club is going to say 'don't play them'.
  10. diehardtwinsfan
    I have no problems going all in. You don't do it on a pair of 3s though. As others have said, you do it when you know where your weaknesses are, and you don't have that many. The likelihood of Scherzer finishing out his next deal well are pretty low... He'd provide his best years when the team isn't competitive, and his worst when they are.
  11. diehardtwinsfan
    It's also the downside. If they sign that contract now, you might be wishing 4 years from now that it was never signed.
  12. diehardtwinsfan
    I think the issue right now, is that the Twins need to figure out which core guys are core guys and which ones aren't. At the beginning of the season, if someone had said that we will be set at SS for the forseable future, that person would have been laughed out of here. Now, there's a lot more optimism given how Santana and Escobar have performed this season... enough that people won't be clamoring for a SS this offseason. The Twins have added some new guys, and some of them are going to take some lumps. Some will be good. Some will fail. It's still too early to determine who is going to succeed or fail. I think you let the kids do their thing... If they want an LF, I'm fine with that, but I'd look more to the young, cost controlled, high upside guys... but those are only available by trade and won't come cheaply, as they won't be asking for a Rosario, Duffey, Walker combo.
  13. diehardtwinsfan
    I suspect this isn't your conclusion goulik (I'm addressing conclusions being made off of the stats you posted here), but I think the idea that comparing a guy's year 1 stats to a year 2 stat and then saying "most guys don't improve after their rookie season" isn't a good way to look at things. I suspect improvement is a fuction of age and skill, and the guys who have been in the majors for a decent amount of time have careers that typically resemble a bell curve of sorts. I have a tough time believing that a guy will do what he does as rookie and then never get better. There may be some truth to that with a 28 year old guy breaking into the league for the first time, but even that is questoinable. Guys like Dozier show that it takes time. It's pretty easy to point to examples like Mauer, Morneau, Gomez, etc. who broke in much younger and got better as they aged. In a nut shell, context is a big deal and managing a team based on broad generalizations such as this one is not a good way to manage a team.
  14. diehardtwinsfan
    Me thinks Walker is turning into a controversial prospect. To be clear, I like him. He has star potential, which isn't bad for a 3rd rounder. He's also high risk. The big issue is contact. He dosn't make nearly enough of it. He's a great mistake pitch hitter, but those number of mistakes drops significantly as he moves up the chain. Letting him work on that in an area where he's not overmatched is wise. the A+ to AA is one of the hardest transitions to make, and while he's improved a bit in A+ over the season, he's still got some contact issues, and I really don't think these are minor issues at this point, and this isn't just a concern of the Twins, pro scouts are saying the exact same thing. I think the Twins know what they are doing here. As for your prediction, I'll drink to that. I don't think that smaller ballparks are going to have too much of an affect on K rate and contact rate. They might help a few foul balls that turn into outs stay out of play, but beyond that, if he drops is K rate 6% as lightfoot predicts, he's going to rocket up a lot of lists.
  15. diehardtwinsfan
    The problem is that these guys won't get you much. They could all end up being very nice pieces too, but right now, you won't find a difference making piece for one of these guys, which is why I agree with you that I'm not in favor of trading these guys right now
  16. diehardtwinsfan
    Brock is saying that trading prospects will likely delay the time when this team will be cometitive again, not improve it. One guy isn't going to make this team a contender, and by trading away prospects, you trade away the guys who will likely help aid contention down the road, thus delaying it. I'd add that while you would settle for Sheilds, that doesn't mean that there's going to be guys better than that available. You won't build a contender by a few FA signings and trading for some prospects. It doesn't happen very often.
  17. diehardtwinsfan
    I'm getting my trades mixed up...
  18. diehardtwinsfan
    They may think they have... I'm not really certain he's gotten a fair shake. Gardy doesn't seem to like him much. If Parm's a 4th OF/PH, that's fine, but I'm not sure how they can come to a conclusion when he rarely gets to play more than 2-3 games in a row before ending up on the bench.
  19. diehardtwinsfan
    ABW has a lot more work to do than most prospects, and he's not a 40 man candidate yet as well. I'd add he's not in AA either, and AFL players tend to be AA (though I get that there are exceptions). While I can see the merits of promoting him last season, I see absolutely no reason for him to have earned it this year. He's got some pretty big holes in his game that need adjusting, and High A has exposed that more and more. If anything, it shows that the Twins weren't wrong in letting him play a full season in the MWL. He has to work on his contact issues, and those are already pretty severe. It doesn't get any easier in AA
  20. diehardtwinsfan
    I think you are reading far more into this than is necessary. My guess is that this boils down to a communications goof up and someone jumped the gun.
  21. diehardtwinsfan
    I suspect Thorpe starts out repeating the MWL making a case for a midseason promotion. The big issue I see with him thus far is his walk rate being a bit higher. He's had no problems getting hitters to swing and miss, but that's something he will need to correct as he moves up the chain. That said, what he's doing as an 18 year old in low A is impressive.
  22. diehardtwinsfan
    I would argue that they need a 1 year CF stop gap. I'd probably let Parmelee audition for LF and move Plouffe there if he fails and Sano is ready.
  23. diehardtwinsfan
    Looks like Adam already pitched a game for NB... I don't remember seeing his name announced as the PTBNL for the Willingham trade.
  24. diehardtwinsfan
    Couple things I'd note is that Plouffe right now is in the 5-10 range for 3B. To me, that says he has value. The question at hand is whether or not that value is realized in MN or on another team. At 28, the other question is whether the Twins go year to year or get a cheaper extension buying out a year of FA. That might make him more palatable in a trade, assuming he continues to imrpove. I think there's value in that. Even as a utility guy, Plouffe could play a corner OF position, 3B, and 1B reasonably well. Heck, he could play up the middle (not terribly well) in a pinch. They could get a full season in for him in that type of role as a 10th man and justify the cost.
  25. diehardtwinsfan
    I like the idea of solving LF by putting Mauer there. I think he'd be a pretty good one. I don't mind Pinto getting some 1B time, perhaps to spell Parmelee in your situation, though I still think Pinto should be catching.
×
×
  • Create New...