diehardtwinsfan

this looks awesome.

There is absolutely nothing confusing about this decision. ST stats may not matter for vets, but they most certainly matter for rookies who are trying to make the team. Had he raked this spring, I'd agree that this is confusing. He didn't. 
 
Bottom line is that there was a competition for the job and he lost. Given how little experience he has in the high minors, some seasoning in AAA is certainly warranted. 

There is absolutely nothing confusing about this decision. ST stats may not matter for vets, but they most certainly matter for rookies who are trying to make the team. Had he raked this spring, I'd agree that this is confusing. He didn't. 
 
Bottom line is that there was a competition for the job and he lost. Given how little experience he has in the high minors, some seasoning in AAA is certainly warranted. 

There is absolutely nothing confusing about this decision. ST stats may not matter for vets, but they most certainly matter for rookies who are trying to make the team. Had he raked this spring, I'd agree that this is confusing. He didn't. 
 
Bottom line is that there was a competition for the job and he lost. Given how little experience he has in the high minors, some seasoning in AAA is certainly warranted. 

I think hate is probably a poor adjective to use here. I think people think that he's the easy one to trade and get pitching (I doubt that personally). It's definitely a question as to whether or not he's in long term plans as I suspect Buxton probably is (or possibly moving Lewis to CF at some point)...
 
Eddie is a good but flawed player, so he's usually going to bring some consternation. He's doing better at taking pitches, but he still swings a lot at pitches he has no business swinging at and occasionally finds himself on the wrong end of an inexcusable play.

A couple notes... One pitched in the AL. One the NL. That's going to skew the stats a bit whether we want to admit that or not.
 
So I'm not sure I'd argue MadBum was the better pitcher considering he faced a pitcher in the 9 spot 2 times minimum per game.
 
The other thing I cannot help but notice is that Verlander had quite a few more innings. I'm somewhat curious if that was due to SF being more conservative with his pitch count (1800 innings in 10 years isn't bad) or if he spent more time on the DL during that stint...
 
Bumgardner isn't my first choice, but I do think he's not a bad option. The question to me is whether or not the analytics guys can find something to right the ship like Houston did with Verlander. 

I think hate is probably a poor adjective to use here. I think people think that he's the easy one to trade and get pitching (I doubt that personally). It's definitely a question as to whether or not he's in long term plans as I suspect Buxton probably is (or possibly moving Lewis to CF at some point)...
 
Eddie is a good but flawed player, so he's usually going to bring some consternation. He's doing better at taking pitches, but he still swings a lot at pitches he has no business swinging at and occasionally finds himself on the wrong end of an inexcusable play.

I think hate is probably a poor adjective to use here. I think people think that he's the easy one to trade and get pitching (I doubt that personally). It's definitely a question as to whether or not he's in long term plans as I suspect Buxton probably is (or possibly moving Lewis to CF at some point)...
 
Eddie is a good but flawed player, so he's usually going to bring some consternation. He's doing better at taking pitches, but he still swings a lot at pitches he has no business swinging at and occasionally finds himself on the wrong end of an inexcusable play.

I'm not sure moving Sano to 1st solves our fielding issues for what that's worth... It just moves a problem from 3rd to 1st and creates a hole at 1st. There's not much out there that could fix that, and I don't seen Sano as an upgrade over Cron defensively... He might be worse.
 
Also, if $40 is what it takes to get cole or something of that caiber... pay it... I don't think the Yankees do that much for a pitcher (for the record, Trout got this season $39M with endorsments), but the bottom line is that if our payroll goes higher to get him, do it...

I think hate is probably a poor adjective to use here. I think people think that he's the easy one to trade and get pitching (I doubt that personally). It's definitely a question as to whether or not he's in long term plans as I suspect Buxton probably is (or possibly moving Lewis to CF at some point)...
 
Eddie is a good but flawed player, so he's usually going to bring some consternation. He's doing better at taking pitches, but he still swings a lot at pitches he has no business swinging at and occasionally finds himself on the wrong end of an inexcusable play.

I think hate is probably a poor adjective to use here. I think people think that he's the easy one to trade and get pitching (I doubt that personally). It's definitely a question as to whether or not he's in long term plans as I suspect Buxton probably is (or possibly moving Lewis to CF at some point)...
 
Eddie is a good but flawed player, so he's usually going to bring some consternation. He's doing better at taking pitches, but he still swings a lot at pitches he has no business swinging at and occasionally finds himself on the wrong end of an inexcusable play.

I'm not sure moving Sano to 1st solves our fielding issues for what that's worth... It just moves a problem from 3rd to 1st and creates a hole at 1st. There's not much out there that could fix that, and I don't seen Sano as an upgrade over Cron defensively... He might be worse.
 
Also, if $40 is what it takes to get cole or something of that caiber... pay it... I don't think the Yankees do that much for a pitcher (for the record, Trout got this season $39M with endorsments), but the bottom line is that if our payroll goes higher to get him, do it...

I waffled back and forth between Harper and Hildy on the 40 man... went with Harper as he was surprisingly decent this year... He'd get snagged in a hurry if he was let go too... so unless he's traded, I think he's protected. You might be right about Smeltzer, but I'm not quite ready to turn starters into relievers at this point, especially with how many we need right now.
 
As for Cole/Strassburg... pay them what it takes...

I cannot believe they traded him... must not have thought highly of him... If he pitches like that for a couple years, he'd have gotten a kings ransom. 

yeah, not thrilled about them not being that aggressive... that's me personally. Perhaps they will show more this offseason. The core of the offense (minus Schoop) is set to return next year.  And they have reinforcements in Rooker, Kirilloff, and Larnach, so they should want to do something about pitching.

Since the Reverend is supplying the steaks and hospitality make sure you remember the 11th commandment when the game ends. "Thou shalt say little when you lose, and even less when you win"!

the problem with this is small samples... not to mention some of the career starts at other fields are against teams that no longer exist.

Well done as usual Heezy... Nice to have someone in the field posting here who can also explain this in layman's terms...
 
Side question, I thought stem cell treatments were all still experimental. My wife works for a company that's a couple years out from bringing a stem cell based product to market, but from what I understand, no one has anything yet.

I know Ottavino was a name a few of us tossed out. I remember a few people being on the Holland bandwagon too. If we had both of those, we'd probably have a couple more in the W column. That said, we're still in some pretty strong SSS territory. Plenty of guys could go out there and toss zeros in their next handful of appearances and look pretty good. I'll probably dust this off again come closer the ASB and see, but so far, it looks like the FO new what they were doing when they did nothing. I don't like that, but that's what the data says.

I know Ottavino was a name a few of us tossed out. I remember a few people being on the Holland bandwagon too. If we had both of those, we'd probably have a couple more in the W column. That said, we're still in some pretty strong SSS territory. Plenty of guys could go out there and toss zeros in their next handful of appearances and look pretty good. I'll probably dust this off again come closer the ASB and see, but so far, it looks like the FO new what they were doing when they did nothing. I don't like that, but that's what the data says.

This is probably 2 articles. Very nice...  
 
Also, you should throw a blog up about your journey into baseball and where you're from. I personally would be interested in knowing how you became a Twins fan. 

I'm drawing 2 conclusions from this article. First, signing free agent relievers is a total crap shoot, even with guys with decent track records. And either the Yankees are targeting the right players or they're simply better at putting them in a position to succeed. Either way, they're doing something right and I don't care for it.

Wow maybe they were smart to not sign any of these guys, other than the two with NY I guess... Still, we need pitching from *somewhere*

This is probably 2 articles. Very nice...  
 
Also, you should throw a blog up about your journey into baseball and where you're from. I personally would be interested in knowing how you became a Twins fan. 

hopefully, the Twins will at least wins ome games in the ALDS