diehardtwinsfan

Of course, you still have the NFL, which isn't testing yet... Didn't you know that athletes have a higher concentration of these things in their blood to begin with? They need to be graded on a curve

I'd be thrilled if they got some AA talent with decent upside personally. Given the derth of pitching in this organization, at the very list pick something up that can help in 2014.

Seattle shouldn't be trading prospects for established players... Period.

regardless, those are good numbers... at 18, he's still going to add a few ticks to that fastball as he ages... So 95 in relief now might be 98 by the time he reaches the bigs... or it might be 94/95 as a starter at that point. Not going to complain.

the problem with the rehab policy is that it should have been put on the DL about 3 years ago. Yet they continue to trot it out every day and handicap the team by one policy on the bench... I'm guessing it will go on the 5 year DL around year 4 or so.

maybe so, but that's true of any prospect... You don't hang on to aging vets simply because a prospect might not work out. Given what Parm is doing, I'd say he's a better bet to work out than just about any prospect in the system.

This right here is a reason for the economic mess. A few things are going on here, and fixing welfare, abolishing it, or expanding it will not solve these. The middle class has no money for a few reasons: 1) Incomes have been largely stagnant for about a decade now 2) Inflation has not been. Using the cooked numbers (e.g. core inflation) posted by the government shows a decline in purchasing power during that same time. If you add real inflation for products that people actually by (like food and gasoline) that purchasing power has dropped even further 3) Crippling debt, which is partly their fault and partly not. Even today more than 40% of homeowners are underwater with their homes. They cannot sell to take advantage of the lower prices/rates. Fixing welfare won't fix any of these root cause issues, and creating incentives to work might help small pockets of it, but right now we are suffering due to debt and inflation. There are some ways where it would make sense to fix this, such as letting debt be marked to market. If the government was smart in 2008, they would have let rates rise and let banks fail. This would have been much better off long term because prices would have dropped across the board and debt would have been deleveraged. Instead, they handed trillions of dollars that we do not have to bail out the failed banks and told the people to keep on paying their debts. And not one person was prosecuted for this mess, which is sad. What we should have done was follow the example of Iceland. The economy would be much better off right now had we done so.

There seems to be a bit of a misunderstanding around here about super2. Gibson has yet to pitch in the bigs. If he makes it out of spring training, he will have 3 years of serfdom before he's arb eligible because at the beginning of season 3, he has exactly 2 years of service time. Super2 only comes into play when he plays a big enough part of that 3rd season to qualify... So, for instance, if he were to play only a part of next season, he'd be at risk for super 2 at the end of his 3rd season based on how large a part he played in that first year. If the Twins waited until say June/July to call him up, they could use this to essentially squeeze an extra half season of serfdom out of him, but that isn't avoiding super2... that's avoiding starting the arb clock.

I would think that by opening those 40 man spots the Twins could have decided to give Slama a chance for a month... What does he have to do to get one? He's certainly not going to be any worse than Jeff Gray at this point.

Just my two cents, but I'm trying to figure out exactly why Oswalt would want to hit Mauer in that situation. It isn't as though he was retaliating against something. That said, I don't have a problem throwing at someone, but I have a huge issue with throwing at someone's head where you have a potential career ending or life threatening injury. If you are going to do it intentionally, put it right on his thigh which will leave a nice bruise and slow him down for a game or two, but at the head is classless and should warrant a rather long suspension.

Berrios is apparently human.

I wouldn't call it over yet. He will play one game and then get sat for 2 more before going on the DL with a bruised femur.

everyone here does realize that the problem with our economy right now is not excessive unfilled jobs and excessive laziness, right?

My heart says yes, let him retire a Twin. My head says no. I think Morneau gets traded at the deadline if he continues on the path he's on now and Parmelee takes his place. That's the right decision unless they move Doumit back into a more traditional catching role and keep Mauer back there more too and give one of them a full time DH.

There's no way the Giants win that game if their defense doesn't step up... just sayin. The packer's offense was ridiculous and the Giants rendered them limp...

well, 18 in the GCL certainly would put him in the top 40 somewhere for the team. I don't know if the pitches are plus, but they are definitely better than his opponents. He's getting Ks down there too. No idea on the rest, but I'd have to say that with the wormburners and the K/BB ratio, his outlook is promising.

Eli's entire body of work might not scream elite QB in the Peyton, Brady, Breese class. But for a playoff run in 2007 and 2011 he was up there with any QB in the league. And funny how the the Giants are a medicore team while Eli is playing average QB, but then he guess crazy in the postseason and you have a Super Bowl winning team. Teams live and die by their QB's now a days. Hell who even cares about defense anymore, the two worst defensive teams in the league last season were the #1 seeds going into the postseason. If you don't have elite QB in this league you have no chance at winning a Super Bowl. The Giants went crazy when their defense came together. That may have helped Eli a bit, but it was that front four in particular that pushed them fringe to SB team.

Sometimes QB's taken in the top 5 aren't very good at football for example Rick Mirer, Akili Smith, Alex Smith, JaMarcus Russle, Ryan Leaf, Vince Young, David Carr, Joey Harrington, Tim Couch. I'm sick of 35 year old's finishing there career as Vikings, but that approach is actually very logical. Drafting QB's is like drafting goalies in hockey, unless they are hall of famers or close to it they are a waste of a pick. Is it that they are bad at football or other things. Wasn't it Montana or Young that said that they would have been a bust had the Raiders taken them instead? A QB will often shine if the system maximizes his strengths. As well, I'd argue that a lot of guys on this list failed not because they sucked at football and no one noticed, but because they had jack squat for a line and got their bell rung so many times that they couldn't play well. To me, this is teh danger of burning the first rounder on a QB. If your line sucks, you'd better have someone take hits for your QB year 1 until you can improve it. I agree that you shoudl sick of 35 year olds finishing their career in MN, as am I, but getting the sexy pick without fixing the line is far more likely to yield a Tim Couch than a Matt Stafford.

That's why I think only bodily harm to Ponder can save us. Wanna flip the coin for which one of us is Tanya Harding and which is Shane Stant? Funny story about this. I ended up working with Shawn Eckhart (though he had assumed a different name) for a brief period of time until he was essentially let go for incompetence... He died not long after that and his family threatened to sue my former employer.

Rogers was a first round pick... just saying... He was considered top 10 and fell. Brees was a 2nd rounder too, not as though he was a gem found in the 7th like Brady.

I'm sure some of it is mental and some of it is tougher hitting.

Agreed 100%. The pitching prospects weren't great this year (though I wouldn't have cried if the Twins took Appel and signed him). Buxton was probably the most talented guy in the draft. And it's going to be at least three years before we see him. A lot can change in three years. That's why you take what you feel to be the BPA. Filling needs on the ML roster with guys who won't be ready for a half decade is a good way to continually draft the wrong guys with lower upside. To comment on both of these for a bit. The problem DPJ is that there wasn't a Strasburg/Harper type talent in the draft. This is why Houston went with Corea at #1 overall. Brock, Buxton might have been better in terms of some sort of subjective BPA, but I doubt that gap was all that much as Buxton wouldn't have went 2 overall in most other years either. Appel/Gausman/Zimmer all of #2 type pitcher for their ceilings and could have started in AA if the Twins wanted. These guys could have slotted in nicely to help in 2014, but instead they best pitcher they took is a guy that won't help till 2016 at the earliest. I like Berrios, but this is a long term pickup, not something to help in the short term. I'm not quite as down as DPJ on some of the relievers. At the very worst, they will have a ton of hard-throwing bullpen help knocking on the door come 2014. It is a nice combination of upside/safety as I wouldn't be surprised at all if this draft nets 4 or 5 big league players, which is pretty good for a draft. However, if they can teach just one of those 2 pitch guys a 3rd pitch, they'll have also added a nice starter to that mix. It should be clear that it wasn't like there were some higher ceiling college arms availalbe at this point. The only other option would have been some high school arms that will be 5 years away. I woudln't have minded a better mix of them, but their strategy was far from horrible.

Diamond, Deduno, Duensing, and DeVries... All of the filler Ds in one series. This rotation is awful.

Especially aging mediocrity. There are a handful of late 20s starters hitting FA that are far more appealing than Lohse. More especially aging mediocrity that is moving from the NL to the AL.

if you want to do an interesting look at pitcher abuse points, take a look at how Johan was handled in NY vs. MN and compare to his injury history.