diehardtwinsfan

As a catcher, I'd say no doubt about it. The problem so far is that he's aged rather poorly. A couple more Maueresque type seasons would make it a no-brainer. I look at it this way. If he had retired after that concussion instead of moving to 1B, or gotten glaucoma in his eye forcing him out... would he be in the hall?

Being a winner and QBs is one of the dumbest things the NFL does on a consistent basis. There are 53 guys on a roster, and just b/c a few of them have won a few more championships means they likely contributed. In the NFL, QB is the most valuable position on the field (that I get), but if it's only on the QBs shoulders (which is what the whole being a winner thing essentially says) then it misses the forest for the trees. If you don't see the absurdity in the being a winner argument, just watch how much it will change with Peyton Manning over the next few weeks, who up until Sunday was constantly seeing his accomplishments devalued for the simple reason of not being able to win the big game. The same is true for Walker. He's been on (and contributed to) a lot of good teams, which last I checked had a roster of around 25 guys (more when you consider minor league shuffling) who each made contributions to that team. Walker played his position well, above average even, but this doesn't somehow mean should use a completely subjective stat called 'winner' (usually at the expense of his other teammates I'd add), nor does it mean that we should throw out everything used to evaluate a baseball player. There are lots of players who we would call bad that have won championships. Even a bad player can play a niche role well. There are lots of good players who never got that ring. That happens too, especially when their supporting cast isn't very good. Now that said, I like Walker. If he figures out that K rate thing, he could be an absolute stud, but I don't think it's unreasonable to recognize that there may be problems with him in the majors. We are having the exact same discussion in another thread about a guy named Delmon Young, who hit about as many home runs at a much younger age, struck out a ton, and didn't walk. Is Young Walker? I hope not, but I don't think it's unreasonable at all to let Walker keep working on it. That is what the Twins SHOULD have done with Gomez and Young. Young's contract kind of forced their hand (along with PR reasons for both), but both players needed to work on that, and I suspect both would have had much better careers had they been given the chance to do it in the minors. Gomez at least figured it out. Young never really did. Be patient with Walker. That's my thought. He has 3 option years and will get some MLB at bats in 2016 I'm sure.

I'm really not sure this proves a fixation on RBIs. He's talking about Young's production in TB and thinking it can improve. RBIs do win games at the end of it. That doesn't mean this was the main criterion for evaluation.

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.

Yeah, barring resurgence, I suspect Mauer's role will slowly be diminished over the next few seasons.

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'd be careful, I'm not the one contradicting myself. I get that you think that the Bible was written by man to influence other men. That's an assumption that I do not share and not one you can assume that we do when framing this discussion. But in that, you just said what I've bene saying, that moral absolutes apply depending on perspective. That means they aren't moral absolutes. Post Modernity got that right when it developed a world view that had no God. The problem is that no one likes that outcome anymore than they liked the outcome with a God as no one likes survival of the fittest in practice. Instead, they try to have it both ways, even though it doesn't work.

And then you run into the other side of things, where your own thoughts are policed and a different kind of oppression is based off of power and majority. It's really no different Brock. Forcing the cake maker to make a cake for a wedding he doesn't believe in is just as oppressive. This isn't a government standing up and trying to oppress the rights of a race of people like it was 60 years ago. And even though I don't agree with homosexuality, I still have no problems politically with gays marrying (as I've said here on more than one occasion). This is about a business man making a business choice that most people here (plenty of which are white straight males) think is wrong. The problem with this debate is that we are looking at it all wrong. The purpose of the government is to protect the liberties of the people. It's their job to allow consenting gay couples to marry, just as it's their job to let those who don't believe it's right to say so. That's how freedom works. You would have a point here if the cake was an essential service in which the cake maker was denying said service based on sexual preference. But that isn't what is going on.

I know you didn't make it up Dave, but I don't think you see the point I'm trying to make. There's plenty of intolerance and bigotry that goes on, but it happens on BOTH sides of the debate, with (in my opinion) the least tolerant people often being the ones screaming tolerance. I don't find that argument very persuasive for that very reason. People often don't see their own intolerance. I do agree that choosing not to respect someone because they are an atheist or a Christian is not right, but that's a far cry for screaming bigotry or intolerance. For me, a lack of respect usually comes down to a body of work, of which all the remaining Dem and Rep candidates have none in my book (just to get back on topic)... and Packers fans never had any

It really doesn't matter how you see it. If there is no law maker, you cannot have a law, and I'm really targeting my statement on atheism, not agnosticism (which is what you're essentially claiming here). It is self-contradictory. But to be clear, if all we are is nothing more than a bundle genes that were created through random luck, primordial soup, and no divine help, then the only moral absolute would be survival of the fittest. I find that more amusing than anything, given that we've spent countless pages debating capitalism, when it's main premise from an economic standpoint is precisely that: survival of the fittest.

Can you post which of the site owners will be out there and when in the ST thread?

The problem with atheism is that everything boils down to survival of the fittest. There is no 'good' in that system because good and evil are all in the eyes of the beholder. They may not believe everything is meaningless, but that just means they are contradicting their own system by imposing meaning where it cannot possibly exist.

Ok seriously, the Newsboys are a downright awful band. That said, well said. There are certain ideas that I think are foundational, such as protecting the freedom of religion, speech, assembly, etc., but I'm largely in agreement here. We need good leaders, and unfortunately both parties are rather lacking as they've been bought and paid for. And like you, I'm fairly wary of anyone proclaiming Christ in the political landscape. I don't have a problem with them doing so, but I have a huge problem with Christians not holding them to a higher standard when it's clear that their actions and talk aren't lining up.

There's plenty of intolerance on this board... much of it is couched in the terms of being more tolerant. I always find this term amusing, b/c the people claiming to be more tolerant or open minded are usually just as (if not more so) closed minded than their opponents. If this is the direction we have to go to have a discussion, we're doing it wrong.

I'm just trying to figure out why we are having this debate in a country that supposedly values freedom. Let the cake maker refuse to make a cake for a gay wedding. It's his right. And when he chooses to exercise said right, he gets to deal with the consequences, which will most likely be a boycott at which point he'd no longer making cakes. These problems can take care of themselves much more easily than a stupid law which will do more to perpetuate the hate than it will to solve it.

I still don't see evidence that they've given up on him at 3rd. Bottom line, they want him in the lineup, and they aren't planning on putting him in AAA.

Sorry Nick, it really doesn't matter. This is a well documented no no in the classified world, one I'd add that would cost a normal person their clearance and quite possibly jail time. This is a big deal. I'd further add that secure networks are setup in such a way that this isn't possible without skirting the system. I really don't appreciate the double standard here, nor do I appreciate the fact that her supporters just want to play it off as nothing. It was something, and it's a slap in the face to those of us who handle sensitive data.

I'll agree on this. Ineffective government existed long before Reagan, and it will exist long after him too. That's not a Reagan thing. But make no bones about it, Regan was NOT a good President. His success as a Republican was that he was a POPULAR President, winning his re-election in a landslide, but I'm not sure his administration was as good for the Republicans as people think (though you will find no candidate that dares say this). He was in ideology pro-big war and a fiscal conservative, but in practice he was only a war hawk and a spender. The deficit skyrocketed under his administration as did the size of the government and military spending (to his credit, he did bankrupt the Russians with his Star Wars plan, which probably did more to end the cold war than anything else), but in the end, just about all candidates (Sans Ron Paul, his son, Gary Johnson, and a few more liberal minded Reps on the other side of the spectrum) pretty much try and mimic his platforms across the board. And that is unfortunate, especially as it's forced the Reps to cater to some of their more noxious base while pushing their Libertarian minded base further and further out of the picture.

I could see some players liking the idea too. Being inactive might allow for the occasional excused absence from the park.

Yeah, wasn't necessarily responding completely to you in my post I think the thing that bothers me though in this spend vs. not spend argument is that there's an undercurrent philosophy that says, 'you have the money, spend it'. We forget that to extent we did that when we got Nolasco, Hughes, and Pelfrey, and other than maybe Hughes, none of those signings were smashing hits. For 1 year deals at spots of weakness, I'm all in, but just understand the risk is low upside or high risk of injury. For long term deals with no imminent help in the farm, I'm definitely game (though I want a game changer here). I just get a little bothered when I hear the idea tossed about or implied that ROI doesn't matter. It is a business. It matters, and teams are a bit loathe to shed bad contracts, which is why Nolasco still dons a Twins uniform, as they committed 48 million to him, and this is hardly unique to the Twins. I wouldn't be surprised if he was out right released this spring (if he's bad), but he's got a spot on the team like it or not if he has a pulse this spring. You get a few guys like that, and suddenly real talent is being blocked or it's eating into real extensions.

he's got the tools, just needs to refine (particularly hitting curve ball). It's clear the experts think it can happen, which is encouraging. Hopefully, we see him take a step forward in AAA and force his way onto the major league roster at some point this season. He doesn't need to be a world burner just yet, but it would be nice to see him come up and look competent at the plate. I'd take that for an encore season from Buxton in 2016.

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.

Considering there are 30 teams, an average distribution leaves us with 3.33 prospects per team. 4 and BPro and 6 on MLB still give us an above average farm after the graduations. Not bad, especially with a wild card like Thorpe not listed. I do think that anywhere between 2 and 4 of those guys graduate this season. It will be interesting to see how that plays out.