diehardtwinsfan

Minor leagues are for development. I get that they guys want to win the games, but it's all about developing skills. Personally, I hope ABW doesn't see very many fastballs. I want him seeing a steady diet of curves until he figures out how to lay off the ones out of the zone and punish the ones in the zone.

What's that on your shoulder?

Gibby's minor league K rate was right around 8. I think he can bring that up a bit from 5.7. I do think Gibson will take a nice step forward this season.

I'm with you on this one. I think Roids used in recovery situations should never be off the table. We all take those from time to time. One really good example is Prednazone. Granted, prolonged usage can be dangerous, but that's up to the player and the doctor. Now side note, I'm no expert on this drug and whether or not it would be used solely for recovery, so I'm not trying to defend Santana. He knew what he was taking.

I guess that answers the question as to who is the one fascinated with the mediocre vets. Sorry TR, I really don't understand how Pelfrey is getting the starting nod over May... OK, I guess I do understand. You're hoping he and Milone can string together a good month or two and you can trade him at the deadline for a decent spec... I get that. Heck, I get Meyer being demoted... but goodness..

he had quite a bit of plate discipline in the minors, though he got away from that a bit last season. It sounds like that's something he recognizes. I'm far more optimistic than the TD writers are. I think he can hit much closer to his minor league career. .280/.350/.470 with 25+ home runs (leads team).

I think that Hermann is the guy sent down when Pinto returns. The options reason is one (Nunez has none), but also, who exactly is Herrman going to be a defensive sub for? You can use the other half of the Schaffer/Robinson platoon to swap out for Arcia or Hunter if there's a lead. I don't see Herrman being an upgrade over anyone in the infield either. Nunez at least has a bat. Now if Hermann plays like he played in AAA last season, that's a whole different story.

I'm familiar with these to some extent. Gets rid of a lot of internal toxins that your body doesn't easily process. You don't eat much, so you'll loose some weight. I know a few people that do them every year or two to kind of clean out the system. They work quite well in the short term. Not so much long term as your body goes into starvation mode.

I'm not thrilled about every choice, but concluding that the front office doesn't have a plan seems a bit over the top. 1) I'm fine with Pinto getting at bats in AAA to start. I won't be fine with it if he lingers down there and Hermann is as bad as I think he'll be. Perhaps he runs with the job (good problem to have if he does), but I expect them to be trading places by May 1. 2) Not happy about May... I'll leave it at that. 3) Hicks was the right call. The big problem in my opinion was not having a better plan A. I suspect this was the plan all along. Don't really like it, as I would have considered Rasmus over Hunter, and/or gone hard after Kemp but then again, who knows. 4) I don't see how calling up a guy before he's ready maximizes his value. If anything, I see it doing the opposite. Hicks is a great example here, accumulating nearly 2 years of service time with lousy production to show for it. He wasn't ready in 2013 and 2014. He might be ready now, but I think there's merit in letting him build up some confidence in AAA before sending him back to the majors. If you want to maximize their value, you do it when you know that they only thing they have left to learn is stuff they can learn in the majors. I think May fits that mold, and perhaps Tonkin/Oliveros, but Hicks, Meyer, and Rosario still need seasoning.

yeah John, gotta wonder a bit about your prediction there. He had a lousy spring, but his career to date says he won't be that bad. I think he cracks an .800 OPS personally, and Nick's numbers are probably closer. With a minor league OPS over .900, I really do think he could be a star in a couple years. I think the BA goes up and his plate discipline improves a bit. .280/.340/.500 25 HR.

Key word was 'hopefully' I'd like to believe at that age he's still improving there, but who knows.

Brock, I see your point, and I don't disagree. I think its wrong. I'm just pointing out that there's two sides to the Indiana law. What I find more amusing (living in Indiana), is that all the press about it is happening nationally, not really here. I know lawyers are chomping at the bit for someone to be dumb enough to refuse a gay person. I'm not sure anyone has the stones to do it (I hope not actually), but I'm not sure its the law that will end the practice. Well organized boycotts would likely be far more successful.

Point in your favor. I was referring to the idea that he seemed pretty lucky. The flip side, every time I saw him hit, he hit it hard. It's not like he was leggting out a few singles or getting some seeing eye hits.

It's hard to make sense of what he did in 2014. He posted an .825 OPS after never breaking .750 in the minors. His career minor league OPS is .702. That's acceptable for a SS, but not one with questionable defense. I have to think he's going to regress offensively, though in what few occasions I got to see him hit, he was tattooing everything. He's never been one for plate discipline, so I highly doubt that he reverses course here, though I think it would be beneficial for him to do so. Unfortunately, at the end of the day, I think he ends up in AAA after posting a >.650 OPS for a month while playing questionable defense at SS. I hope I'm wrong there.

So will he be finishing HS here in the states? How does that work? Do the Twins have a deal with a local HS in Fort Meyers to accelerate his learning while keeping him on the field? I've wondered about this type of stuff for a while. I remember reading here that part of the reason Thorpe stayed in the GCL was b/c he was still in HS. Just curious.

I hadn't heard anything about this signing until today. I'm really curious how he compares to some of the names that I recognize from this article. Where's he expected to play this summer? GCL? I'm always curious about adjusting to life as a 16/17 year old playing professional ball. Do his parents move here? How does that work finishing high school?

I miss my FIOS. I don't miss Verizon We'll just have to agree to disagree on your first point. Google has done plenty of things that I would think would be catastrophic to their PR. This is the same company that was using their vehicles to automatically enter into any wireless system that wasn't password protected and mine data. Not to mention choosing to blatantly ignore the default privacy settings when Microsoft set some default settings in IE to disable certain types of tracking (kind of like how the default privacy settings in Chrome are something that very few people would willingly accept). This is the same company who will never remove data you delete from their cloud. You may be right that this is more or less a push to show people that fiber is viable, but at the end of the day, I have a real tough time believing that this isn't a way for them to get their hands on more of your and my personal data.

Oh I understand where you're coming from. There seems to be a mentality that with a perceived problem (not saying gays are a problem here, just that people perceive them as such) that if you make it invisible, it goes away. That's not just with gays, we make laws forcing the homeless to different places too as well as anything else deemed undesirable. What the Indiana law also betrays though is that people don't want to be forced into who they can and cannot do business with. It's really a two sided coin there. I think it would be outright stupid for a business owner to refuse service based on a customer's sexual orientation (and I suspect it's more likely to backfire than anything else), but what you also see is people wanting their rights protected, even if it is their right to be stupid. The reality is that this stuff goes on all the time as businesses refuse service for various reasons from time to time, but at the end of the day, choosing to do so is going to cost them money, and potentially a lot of it... and that money will flow into the coffers of their competitors who don't have those same values. I should add that if consumers are allowed to boycott an establishment for various reasons, why cannot an establishment boycott consumers? This really is more than just wanting the gays to go away (though I agree that this is definitely an undercurrent here). Here's a really good example. I've been refused service at a restaurant here in town simply because I have children. No one there knows my children, and they had never been there in the past, but the restaurant has decided that they don't want kids there as it doesn't fit the atmosphere they are attempting to build. Is that wrong? I wasn't thrilled about it, but it's their right... and I voted with my dollars too. I don't eat there anymore. Do I need to campaign for a law saying they must serve me and my kids? Do they really need a law in place saying they have a right to refuse service to me? Like it or not, this is what comes with living in a free country. People can do stuff like this. The practice will end quickly when people decide not to do business with them.

I don't know about not understanding them per say, but there's a ton of debate on whether or not they are actually accurate in what they claim to represent, and there are plenty of well reasoned individuals who remain skeptical for that reason alone... And when the creators come right out and say you need multiple years worth of data for them to be considered accurate, well let's just say I'm even more skeptical. I think we all agree that the Twins OF was pretty bad last year. Eye test, metrics, whatever, it was bad. The question is how many runs did it cost us, and how many will be saved by upgrading Hammer with Torii and 2014 Arcia with a hopefully improved 2015 Arcia.

I think that's called a hangover... at least for those of you with inferior genetics

people were clamoring for the Twins to go out and sign some good pitchers. They signed several to multi year deals (which I might add is the only thing they can do when the pitcher is quasi-decent). Now people are upset b/c the Twins are playing these guys. Not sure you can have it both ways. The moment Santana was signed, there was going to be a logjam in the rotation... and that log jam is going to be here for a while. Other than Milone who can be non-tendered and/or traded relatively easily, no one is coming off of the rotation next year baring a trade, and I doubt there will be many teams lining up to take Nolasco or Santana off of our hands.... even Hughes for that matter. If they want both May and Meyer in the rotation, I'm guessing Gibson gets traded.

I.Dont.Get.May. Everything else didn't bother me that much. Hicks needs AAA time, and I think that's the right choice, even though his replacements might put up the same OPS. We've been saying for a while that things need to be earned, that goes for rookies too, and Hicks certainly hasn't earned anything. For that matter, neither has Rosario. Rosario has no business in MLB as he hasn't hit AA consistently yet. I see a lot of people calling for him right now who will be livid if (when?) he fails. May started out bad but got better. He was a pretty decent pitcher his second month. Does he have stuff to learn? Yes, but he's likely to be better than Milone right now while still learning said stuff. I'm a bit surprised there weren't a few younger spots in the pen, especially with what's coming up, but May is the one that I'm scratching my head on right now.

pitchers are dropping like crazy...

Plouffe hits 20 home runs in a torrid April and finishes the season with 65

I'll echo what Brock and Seth said here in that it's always a fine line and a bit of a gray area to police as a moderator. On one hand, we want dissonant voices, but on another, we don't want to see every thread hijacked with an indictment on the front office either. It's not always easy to police, though I think we are in agreement that it's reaching its limit. I do think that once the games get started, we will see things return to normal a bit, but if things continue to get out of hand, you'll likely start seeing action on it. In the mean time, definitely hang out in the game threads if nothing else. Lots of fun banter goes on there.