diehardtwinsfan

I'm not sure Atlanta will send a nice prospect back. They are stock piling them. They will send someone who has limited upside or minor league filler for Nolasco and that comp pick, but that would be about it.

At this point, that is what it is. You can definitely remove some of them at some point, and even yet this year.

I'd leave Buxton down for a lot longer than a few weeks. That's just me. He needs to reinforce that approach. His K rate is still bad, but it's much improved in May (a good thing). But I think exercising impatience here is a mistake. Let him get some high minors at bats... and a lot of them. I'd probably slot him in as the 2017 guy with some sort of AAAA signing at CF in case he flops again.

The problem I think more than anything is too many of them to too long of contracts. Someone has to take the hill every 5th day. We needed pitchers now and there was nothing in the farm close to being ready.

I'm not saying I necessarily disagree with any of this, but I don't think it means what you think it means. You won't be going out and getting that 150M FA (and for the record, I'm not sure that's the right approach anyways as those contracts rarely work out). I've also noted that there's a huge contradictory view here on TD about FAs in general. No one respects the fact that when you guarantee a contract, that means the guy is going to be around. This isn't the NFL where we can just cut Rickey after two years of non-performance. He signed a 48M deal, and he's going to get paid that regardless. There's a time and a place for cutting loose (and I think we are getting very close with Nolasco), but one or two FAs, even well placed ones, won't fix this mess. And yes, to a good number of posters on this site, I really do think it's as simple as darned as you do and darned as you don't (to be PC). You may not be one of them, but let's not pretend that this is non-existent on these forums. There's plenty of it here, and it's pretty obvious. I have stated that the focus needs to be on drafting/development. The Twins haven't been that bad in the drafting/signing area really since Bill Smith. Development is a different issue, and I've been without question rather critical of Gardenhire in that area, and I'm really not a fan of how Molitor is doing it thus far either. I realize that those aren't the only two involved in the process, and perhaps there does need to be fundamental changes at the coaching levels all throughout the system. I don't really know; I'm no expert there. I do take issue with the idea that everyone is making better decisions. That's definitely true in some cases, but every team makes minor league signings. Only on TD do we complain about that. Just about every team does the dumpster dive/scrap heap signing. Only on TD do we complain about that. We ignore the ones that work (Abad) and complain about the process when it doesn't. Every team has people complaining about how fast/slow prospects get promoted, and somehow on TD we complain about both, despite the evidence showing that the Twins tend to be on the fast side of that. There's definitely some better decisions to be made here (I've stated on many occasions where I am with those), but based on all those plans we wrote out in November, we'd all still be looking at this same train wreck, with perhaps a few more wins at best. So yeah, I'll reiterate what I've said previously in that we really need to approach this with a little bit of humility.

I'm not sure I'm ready to blame Berrios' control issues on coaching... not yet at least. Did they coach Duffey the right way? People mature differently. People have different mental makeups. A 22 year old kid is going to be naturally more amped up than say a 25 year old. Not quite sure that's coaching. It's possible, but that's a damning conclusion based on nothing but supposition.

It would be nice to have Frank Thomas as a Twin...

Chargois has a grand total of 6 2/3s innings in AAA. I have zero problems letting him pitch a bit more in Rochester before going up. If he's still doing this 2 months from now, then yes, call him up. But this has SSS written all over it.

I guess I find some of this amusing. On one end, we castigate the Hughes extension and Nolasco signing (side note, Nolasco was one of the more desired FAs of his class with the most coveted guy being our own Ervin Santana). On the other, we want them to go out and get guys. FA pitching rarely works. For that matter, big FA contracts rarely work. We were in that situation to begin with due to the farm system's failure to produce decent pitching, and I really think a replacement for TR goes back to finding someone who can draft and develop decent players, with a big focus on the development given the sheer number of young players in the majors or high minors right now.

They want the season to end just as fast as we do.

The big thing with the Hughes deal is that moving out of that band box in NY to a pitcher friendly TF was supposed to help reduce his HR rate, making him a more valuable pitcher. In 2014, he looked like he took a step forward as well. His peripherals were also favorable, it wasn't like he did that posting a Joe Mays like 5K/9 while doing what he did. There was some dislike to the contract, but yeah, in general most of TD was pretty happy with both signings. Lest we also forget, pitching was pretty thin at those times as well. Tyler Duffey had a decent season in AA with a K/9 under 7 (no one expected his peripherals to continue to improve as he rose up the chain). Meyer was the closest to the bigs and even then he was a bit of a question mark with a high BB rate. May was in the majors after a surprise season in AAA, but was really bad. Berrios received a handful of starts in AA and watched his K rate drop pretty significantly. Like it or not, counting on all of those guys to progress (and not get hurt) is risky in and of itself. Hughes was the first decent pitching season we saw in MN in several years. This was, like it or not, a risk proposition. You can add 3 more years to a young pitcher at a reasonable rate. If he performs again, that contract is easily tradable. If he regresses, it's still tradable. Hughes fell flat on his face. That's the difference.

Generally, moderator warnings in a thread tend to be of the "let's knock off the bickering" You might get a little leeway if your post is time stamped within a few minutes of the warning, but if you just continue right after that, you're doing so at your own risk. It isn't a perfect system. We can miss posts. Posters can miss warnings.

Yankee mystique strikes again? Apparently it's able to inflate your offensive stats for your entire major and minor career with NY, but the moment you leave, they deflate. There's got to be a Tom Brady joke in here somewhere.

It will be interesting to see what they do with him. He wasn't very good last year, and he's dominated the minors before. I hot month though is impressive. I honestly think they let him do this for another month unless there's an injury to Park/Mauer. I think he could be part of a nice 3 way platoon between Mauer and Park at DH/1B/bench bat... problem is 2 bench bats during interleague play. I have to think though that if he's still doing this in mid June that he moves into a major league role at some point.

To be honest, I highly doubt that he ever had much value. He was signed on a one year make good deal. Any value he was going to have would have been contingent on him replicating the same season. I guy who had no value in April is not going to be worth a ton in July. We may have to agree to disagree here, but teams aren't giving up nice prospects to acquire a guy like Doumit at the deadline.

yeah, I do that all the time.

Not Fun with Numbers. I think I need to retitle that thread.

Not sure what is going on with May. Might not hurt to DL Jepsen. Wonder if he's going through some dead arm or something like that.

Well, Hughes and Rickey were signed at the same time. One had a fantastic year and a mediocre year. One has had two horrible years. Neither are pitching well. I would think (hope?) the leash is shorter on Mr. Nolasco at this point. Another year with an ERA well over 5 and at one point they just have to DFA him and eat the cost... like it or not, baring a decent string of starts, we aren't getting squat for him.

Wow. me too.

Well they had no one coming up to replace him, and then they traded him. Perhaps they should have let him go and found another 31 year old place holder? Or perhaps they should have gone out and dropped 100M on a guy who will now be one of those aging contracts that you cannot trade. I never said I agreed with every move they made, but you have to respect the fact that they still have to put 25 guys on that roster. If the value coming back in the trade isn't worth it, or there are no reasonable options in FA that offseason, then I don't think you just dump them. You still have to put something on the diamond, and yes, something can be a lot worse than Doumit or Suzuki. We all say Herrman and Butera take way too many at bats over the last few years, and guys like that would have (at best) been your starters. It's quite possible we'd have had worse options than that. I find the Doumit example rather odd given that he was traded. And while I expected Suzuki to be traded in 2014, the return obviously wasn't that good if Ryan was willing to give him 6M a year. That's not much for a catcher by the way... not that Suzuki has been excellent since, but he's not exactly playing massively below value either. But that's just my point about a rebuild. These are still rebuilding moves. The Twins had a few no bat catchers and Pinto in the pipeline (to be clear, I didn't favor getting rid of him, but he hasn't exactly proven them wrong either). They haven't hamstrung the team, Doumit got traded, and I suspect Suzuki will get moved as well for probably not much less than what he would have gotten in 2014. Simply put, their rebuilding doesn't involve nuking the whole franchise. You may not agree, and I get that (I'd have probably made some different moves myself), but denying there is no rebuild going on is ignoring everything they have done.

There's some truth to that, but most of the aces you find out there are first rounders for a reason. There's far more risk further down in the draft. I'll grant you that the risk for hitters is lower than pitchers, but I don't think that means you don't draft pitchers high, especially since good pitching prospects are the equivalent to precious metals in baseball.

I never said we did. I was addressing the idea that we shouldn't be drafting only hitters with our early picks due to excess risk. This has nothing to do with trading away a backup catcher, crying poor, or anything else. You've chosen to insert, yet again, your own pet issues into a conversation that has absolutely nothing to do with them. If you want to stir the pot, you're going to find yourself doing it somewhere else.

Yes, we got nothing of value recently for Butera, Doumitt, and Herrman. Oh, and TINSTAAPP certainly applies to any minor leaguer with the title "future ace." I've already been on record stating I'd do some things differently, but I'm really not sure what your point is given that the context I was specifically addressing is why I disagreed with the idea of not drafting any pitching in the early rounds of the draft.

OK, are we seriously still debating trading Sano and keeping Plouffe?