diehardtwinsfan

Let's not stir the pot please. You don't have to clean up the mess. Now on a more serious question. I asked earlier and I'll ask again. Could you go through the internal process of targeting and eventually signing a FA? I'd be really curious about how that works. I'm sure it's more than, "hey, let's go out and sign player X". Thanks,

Just a moderator note, let's stick to the topic at hand and not use this to take personal shots at Joe Mauer or anyone else. I get that he's a bit controversial, but I don't think any of us can comment on his work or personal habits with any type of respectable authority, so let's leave the supposition out of it.

There is something about this discussion that's amusing. I wholeheartedly agree here. I have no problems with the Pohlads wanting to make money on the Twins, just as I have no problems with the players wanting top dollar as well. At the end of the day, it's a business. My main gripe though has more to do with asking the public to subsidize said business and claiming poor in order to do it. The Twins weren't bankrupt during the 2000s... yeah, they couldn't compete with the Yankees or really most teams (kind of like what the Royals are going through right now), but they were still profitable. Now, like everyone agrees, this is a mid-market team... perhaps leaning towards below average on the bell curve, but still quite close to the midpoint.

I'm beginning to think that the Twins have been planning on Rogers taking that lefty pen spot. It isn't necessarily a bad plan, especially if it means giving Meyer another shot starting (something tells me that won't be the case either), but I think the Twins want him to step up this spring and show he can get major league lefties out. That high minors pitching roster with the exception of Berrios looks pretty weak. No one there I'm really excited about, but definitely lots of interesting names in A ball and EST. It's nice to see a second wave down there of potential top half of the rotation type arms that could be used to acquire needed pieces or supplement some of the contracts when they move off... As to the major league rotation, I'm oddly optimistic. I think Hughes bounces back and has a nice even year while Santana looks like Santana. I think Gibson really takes a step forward too. Not sure what they will do with Ricky, and I really wish Trevor May was in the rotation. It might be interesting to see what happens if Duffey has a poor spring. I could see him back in AAA to start, though I really want to see Milone traded if both Duffey and May are looking good this spring.

If the beard is gone, he hits 20 home runs, gets the average back up to around .280, and gets his OBP back to .400. If the beard remains... well, let's not think about that.

I think that's what Sweeny was signed for. Add to it that he has a bit of upside.

not sure I'd part ways with Polanco, Cabbage, and Jones for Smith as it seems a bit high for a reliever with 2 or 3 years left, but I could see a scenario where we sent them someone like Burdi who better fits into Milwaukee's long term plans, and can provide that same upside for him. I'd give them Polanco straight up for him too. Also, Cabbage was just drafted in June. He's not tradable until next June if I understand the rule correctly.

I don't have the numbers in front of me, so correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't more balls hit to LF then RF in general? If so, I'd put the better defender in LF.

As I said before, I don't know if he's innocent. What I do know is that there's plenty of reason to doubt his guilt due to the handling of that investigation. It is this type of crap that put him away for 18 years for a crime he didn't commit, and it's this type of crap that puts lots of innocent people in jail. Innocent or guilty, he should be a free man right now. What is honestly lost on me is the simple fact that no one seems to understand what reasonable doubt is, and if you honestly think he should be in jail, I hope for your sake you're never on the receiving end of treatment like this being heard by a jury of people like yourself.

This pretty much sums up my beliefs as well (though I won't go so far as to suspect he's guilty, at least so far, and I've read through the list of things that weren't in the documentary to be clear). But whether it was of malice or incompetence, the fact that the investigation was done in this manner creates all the reasonable doubt he needs. The fact that a clear conflict of interest existed by many of the same folks being accused of malice or incompetence meets the standards of reasonable doubt as well, and should also be more than enough to remove these people from their jobs and in some cases punish them.

I'm sorry, but most of the illegal immigration we have today is fed by the under the table and dark economy action. Doubling minimum wage will not lower that type of immigration. If anything, it will accelerate it as more and more people will start hiring illegals to save costs. If people like Mitt Romney who can afford to pay minimum wage hire illegals, imagine what those with a much slimmer cash flow will do.

This would take care of a lot of those problems. You'd still need something in place to protect against unnecessary discipline (b/c it happens)... but on the flip side, it would be nice to actually have a mechanism to get rid of problem employees as well (b/c that doesn't happen nearly enough).

I think what's being missed from this conversation is that there was a time when a blue collar salary could actually pay the bills. Unfortunately, there's an economic system in place that has had a hidden inflation tax for nearly a 100 years now. Those said wages haven't increased fast enough to make up for it and it's left everyone fighting with each other over the scraps. I'm not sure unions are fighting for a higher wage for me or really anyone else but themselves. I get that, to a point, but to be honest, the real reform needs to be with the economic system that doesn't stack the deck against the poor. Unfortunately, only one politician in this election cycle even talks about this.

I do think he's a long term fixture here, but I suspect that he's going to take some lumps this year. Hope you're right and I'm wrong here, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if Rosario spends a month or two in AAA.

Like the Plouffe trade. Not a bad one in my opinion. You gave up way too much for Will Smith though, or were you thinking the actor was part of the deal too?

I didn't read the comic. It wasn't too hard to hate the character in TWD... but I don't think that translates to the actor. He portrayed it quite well. It's kind of like hating Jack Gleason b/c of Joffrey.

The Hobbit should have really only been a 2 part deal, not a trilogy. 5 Armies was nothing but one big fight scene that could have been wrapped up in about an hour at the most. Not sure I want to know what the extended version looks like, as I haven't seen that yet... But sorry, if you're going to pay for a movie and the absurd prices for concessions, I have no problems with a 3 hour film, and if you hit the jack pot with a could characters you weren't expecting (which surprises me a bit that they didn't think Rey and Fin would be that popular), absolutely give them more time. Don't necessarily cut out other ones though (unless they were weak to begin with).

That's a good picture of it. I'd add that Trump isn't afraid to say what a lot of people are thinking and what most politicians don't dare say. Unfortunately, I'm afraid he's going to win it all.

Making a Murderer is the first one I've watched on Netflix. A couple other keep popping up on the list of things I might be interested in, but they weren't exactly reviewed well (Hot girls wanted I think was one of them)...

You're getting lost in the conspiracy and not the facts of the case. The fact of the matter is that a conflict of interest was present. You may question whether a cop would plant evidence (that's fair) or if their motive to do so (also fair), but there's a reason that it was publicly announced that the Manitowoc police wasn't involved, and proper procedure indicates you distance anyone with a conflict of interest from that case. They had no business being there (it was said publicly that they weren't supposed to be there while these individuals investigated this murder), and their presence pretty much contaminates any of the evidence that they touched (which so happens to be all of the key evidence). It is not the defense's job to present a better picture of what happened. It's the prosecutions job to do that. It's the defense's job to establish a reasonable amount of doubt to what the prosecution said happened. Like it or not, there's plenty of that. The case was poorly managed from the get go, and people who should have had no business being involved were heavily involved from day 1. That stops any sort of fair investigation in it's tracks. You can question the motives of Netlfix (again fair), how the conspiracy over estimates some people or underestimates others (again fair), but it doesn't somehow make the facts they presented any less true. The fact that you even admit it reads like a bad crime novel and have made comments such as 'wtf Wisconsin' in other posts belays what I've been saying. The investigators dropped the ball from the beginning which has invited all of this. Right or wrong, they invited it. Had proper procedures been followed for collecting and securing evidence, and the right people never allowed on site, there would be no case for conspiracy, and whatever evidence they actually recovered would have been what was presented in his trial. But they didn't. That, Brock, is reasonable doubt.

The warning lights start flashing for me when it becomes very clear that no one understands what reasonable doubt means. I'm not sure there's really anything fun on this topic, because a man is in jail right now and shouldn't be.

love the attitude. Hopefully he passes Berrios b/c Berrios graduated and did well

No reason they cannot make it a longer film... gees...

I think the implication is more specialists personally. Teams will likely go straight to a 7 man or even 8 man pen in that scenario and you may find a career for guys who can hit decently off the bench... I agree that it won't mean an instant spot for a top prospect. The only way to minimize it would be to put a cap on the number of starting pitchers you inactivate (i.e. you can only deactivate last night's starter or something like that).

Yeah, I'd agree there. Only real issue presently is that there's a lot of question marks in the OF, and I'm not even sure I'd call Sano a sure thing at the moment. Sophomore slumps are real and happen. I think Sano will answer some of those questions about himself (and hopefully well), but the OF situation will take some time to figure out. If Sano is playing there for the time being, I'm fine with that. I'm guessing the reality TR saw this offseason is that he wasn't going to get much for Plouffe, at which point, keeping him was the better option. You may see Trevor traded for next to nothing next offseason b/c the team doesn't need him, but I'm not certain this team can say that right now.