diehardtwinsfan

Well, my 2 cents, but the OP needs to re-examine what mismanagement is. There is only one example that I would consider poorly managed and that would be Buxton in CF to start the year. They had no good backup plan or perhaps they did with Sweeney but just chose not to use it... I'm not sure. Everything else here is defensible. No one predicted Mauer to hit this well, and like it or not, with 2 1B/DH types, one is going to sit when you go to the NL and Park is the right choice here. Was it mismanagement to expect Mauer to rebound? We would be calling it that if he had another crappy season with no backup plan in place as well. This looks more like nit picking for the sake of nitpicking. Sano is doing just fine, and as Brock pointed out the bat is working quite well. He's ripping the cover off the ball of late too. You might argue the 'not trading Plouffe' angle, except that we all saw the lackluster return Todd Frasier got not to mention the contract Freese signed. Plouffe had no value, and as such he was more valuable here as depth. We can be revisionist all we want, but he was under contract, and no MLB team would have just cut him or traded him for peanuts. Kepler was an injury call up. The OP is right that Kepler didn't earn the spot. It had nothing to do with earning it and everything to do with needing a body. That's exactly what the 40 man is used for, and for those types of situations, you have to pick from someone on it. Walker was just coming back from injury, and Kepler was the only other logical option. Park right now is looking like a steal. Yeah, he's got to adjust to MLB pitching still, and that will take some time, but he takes good at bats and has tape measure power. I don't have a problem bashing mis-management. It happens, and TR has made his fair share of mistakes, but let's actually look at areas of actual mismanagement instead of venting about anything and everything, but threads like these make me want to argue the other side simply b/c of how unrealistic they are. I wholeheartedly agree that you could make a case for mismanagement. CF obviously is one, and you could argue the bull pen (though I can see the other side of this too), but seriously... the team isn't doing well, and it's not poor management causing this. It is a crappy offense.

Seems as though that partnership has been fairly heavily relied on here at Twins Daily.

Meyer and now Berrios up, I'd say this is the blowing up. Wouldn't be surprised if TR is aggressively trading at the deadline if they do well the next few weeks.

Um, have we already forgotten that he was sent down to start the 2015 season? That move prompted a grievance.

Those comps also set some very unrealistic expectations I suspect as well.

I'm pretty sure you cannot develop the ability to hit a curve ball while sitting at a physical therapists office. Just saying. If Bryant had missed half of 2014 due to injury, I think I can say safely that he would have spent more of 2015 in the minors. How much more would have depended on the type of injury and how he recovered. Buxton got called up in 2015 after one hot month (after a cold start), and not surprisingly, he failed. The callup, I'd add was out of need as they had no CFs at the time. Sano was similar, though his skills were definitely more advanced, but even now I suspect his current slow start has a lot to do with this. Would I have insisted? I don't know. It was obvious though in spring training that he wasn't ready. What I can say is that players succeed and fail for different reasons, and that development takes time. I don't think there's a cookie cutter approach to MLB success, and I think that we drastically tend to minimize the importance of minor league time b/c we want our guy right now for all the wrong reasons and because we fail to understand just how big of a talent gap there is there (and in Buxton's case, we gloss over that he spent 2 months in AA and a week in AAA). I do know that posting good stats in AA or AAA is not indicative of MLB success, and when only viewing a player in terms of their production is a recipe for failure. I do know that those good stats can be good predictive tools of the player's future success, but that the prediction isn't based off of luck and regression but more on the idea that the player will continue to work out the kinks in his game. From this fan's perspective, Buxton's failure both last and this year were not of any real surprise. I'm not necessarily against giving him that shot like we did in April, but I'm more upset that there really wasn't a backup plan in place. Buxton could be Aaron Hicks 2.0, though to the Twins credit, they appear to be learning from that mistake. I personally would have rolled with Sweeney in CF to start (or acquired a 1 year stop gap in the offseason, but that's a different debate)

I think I was more in the 80-85 wins category again. Their start has certainly put that in jeopardy, but a nice week or two of "regression to the mean" could put them back on track too. They were a tad lucky last year, that I think we agree. They came on strong again near the end, with some young guys really stepping it up, which I assumed their improvement would help get us to a similar place in a non-lucky scenario. I still think that Murphy, Sano, and Dozier will turn things around a bit. Park should improve as well. The offense has a nice core forming, especially with Mauer and Arcia being pleasant surprises to go with some nice production from Escobar and Nunez. What I think will be interesting is what they do at the deadline assuming they are still well out of it. They have some nice pitching in AAA, which might take them a step back this year as well as Plouffe, who I have to think is moved either in July or January. This team should have some assets to shed, and it might even get better by shedding them.

So here's the question. Is 6-5 regression to the mean, or what this team is capable of with some real regression yet to come? Obviously, I think the start pretty much killed the post season, unless the offense goes nuts... That said, SP has been pretty good. The pen is pretty much what we expected. The offense has been way below expectations.

Both of the "outsider" candidates recognize the system is unfair. Neither have hit the nail on the head as to why. That's the problem with the parties. Real solutions involve marginalizing far too powerful people, and neither party will be doing that. Sanders won't do it. Trump won't do it. And for sure, none of the establishment candidates will do it either. More than anything else, this country needs new parties. The only joy I see in a Trump/Clinton contest is that the momentum for this may pick up.

I think people here are dismissing technology way too easily in its ability to create work. I agree that it will be eliminating a lot of positions, then again, positions like accountants could be largely eliminated by a simplistic tax code, so to an extent, some of that has to go. But manufacturing was supposed to eliminate jobs and it created them instead. Technology, more than anything, will re-distribute jobs. The problem, to be honest, is that it never happens instantaneously, and the transitions are rarely smooth.

Nah, if she brings back Jon Snow, it has to be sooner than later I would think. It was already written into the plot that the red god couldn't bring someone back who has been dead for a while.

I like the hot start, but no way would I be calling up Turner any time soon. He's never hit well, and this is a SSS nightmare waiting to happen. I'd probably call Garver up ahead of him, though truthfully, I'm perfectly fine letting each of them play out in AA for now with perhaps a promotion for one or both to AAA sometime later this year.

I'd DFA Fein right now. There are several promising options in the high minors that I'd work with, several on the 40 man. I probably wouldn't make a 40 man add just yet unless the guy I called up I was going to stick with for the remainder of the season. As for Ricky, keep pitching well and he's a deadline transaction. Take a decent prospect and cut your losses. Same goes for Tommy, though I'm not sure he's going to net much, if anything at all.

Gardy is going the Carew/Oliva route. He's done. I wouldn't be surprised if Molitor is gone in 2016, and I think Dougie M. is the candidate there.

I'm not sure planning better is the issue here, with the one exception of why Murphy wasn't added to the 40 man when Hicks was removed. Beyond that though, the 40 man roster exists for these reasons. It allows for callus when injury happens and those callus will come. What I suspect presently is that none of the guys Seth listed will be added. They will stay at 39 for now with the idea of perhaps stealing a waiver claim on someone at some point... who knows. I think if they need another hitter, I'd start looking at guys on the 40 man who can be called up for a cup of coffee. ABW might be a candidate here. Travis Harrison (who I believe is on the 40) would be another one. If they add a guy, I'll submit a wildcard name: Levi Michael. If they want a 3rd catcher, Centeno might be that guy.

I'd add that none of this takes health into account. One TJ surgery and all of this changes.

Reality is patience. There's 5 jobs and all are filled. I suspect that Milone is the easy one when the time comes. He may get traded for spare parts if for no other reason than to open a spot. He's year to year, and while he's not great, he's a competent back end of the rotation option that may teams could use. Nolasco might build some trade value. If he keeps pitching well and the Twins are out of it, a pitching needy team may enquire. That would allow for 2 of Meyer, May, Duffey, and Berrios in the rotation with my guess at the moment would be Meyer and Duffey if both continue to pitch well. I don't see Hughes and Santana going anywhere, not at the moment at least. I wouldn't be against trading either one of them, but the team (rightfully) values depth here, and there's not much there if they find room for Meyer, May, Duffey, and Berrios. Likewise, I'm not sure either is tradable with three years left on their deals. I do think that if Gibson does his yearly turn around and posts good numbers over the course of 2016, that he may find himself traded this offseason for a nice prospect or two. That would leave a 2017 rotation of Hughes, Santana, Meyer, Duffey, May/Berrios. I could see one of the youngers guys on the Rochester shuttle for 2017 and perhaps even 2018, for no other reason than to leave the team some good depth while they wait for Gonsalves, Stewart, and Jay to establish themselves in the high minors.

So he's going to Rochester and they are calling up Pat Dean?

The worst part about Walsh is that I told my wife he'd miss it a minute before the kick. But alas, 1998, 2001, 2009, Herschell Walker, Brad Childress, and the Blair Walsh project... Just get kind of used to it.

Sadly, I still think the Vikings do a better job making their fans cry.

hmm... no game of the thrones... milone pitching well enough to keep Meyer in the pen. Sounds like Master of Orion is calling.

Mr. Ed made an appearance?

If you get those, it means your team is so bad that WAR is broken.

The Vikings seem pretty good at it.

what's up with HBO... not running thrones until 12:30 tonight.... now they know why everyone pirates it.