Twodogs

Your first statement that he won this many gold gloves tells the story. However, he might get lucky if there isn't anyone else to vote for?

1992 twins won 90 games also, led by John Smiley, Kevin Tapani, and Scott Erickson. They didn't hit that many homeruns that year, but had a decent batting average.

I'd watch Kirby for sure, I think Mauer would be boring, he was great, but not very interesting other than being a really good baseball player. Plus they never won the big one with Joe, whereas Kirby was a part of and a leader in a team that won it twice.

The Reds have a lot of nice parts, a championship caliber team, but it seem like they have had nice parts a lot over that last few seasons, so my thinking is there must be a lack of leadership in that clubhouse or something? Something that brings what looks like a talented squad down. Not sure what it is, but I hope it continues on this year so that the Twins don't need to worry about them. As long as Yelich has a say, Milwaukee will be better than that.

Yeah, I really hope all those guys do great things. It's just that when someone doesn't, albeit I feel crappy for them, but I'm not necessarily surprised anymore. That's why I say, hey we know Eddie has done "this" year in and year out, and the Twins are in a window of contention right now, so I'd say don't rock the boat. Yeah, I hope to see those guys perform a little with an expanded roster, that would be great for them. Now if the Twins window was closing up, then yeah, maybe trade some guys, but I wouldn't do that right now. Plus I like Eddie.

I remember when Brian Buchanan and Michael Restovich were going to be the next super stars also. So a bird in the hand is worth at least two in the Busch leagues maybe three? Nonetheless, dang I really hope that Kirilloff and Lanarch become really good players one day, but I've see a lot of can't misses miss. Right now Eddie is a known quantity and as long as the Twins are in contention, I wouldn't want to fill our lineup up with question marks. Right now Arraez is still a question mark, he had 2/3rds of a great season, but so did Danny Santana a few years back. So adding more is not probably a good idea at this point in time. If Arraez goes and hits .300 plus again this year then you probably know that spot is no longer a question mark and you might take a chance on a new question mark. But right now Eddie is proven and he's proven to be pretty good and pretty good under pressure. I'd stick with him for now, and not consider trading him.

What I'm implying is that all anyone ever does is talk negatively about him, yet if this is what they think then why wouldn't other people feel the same way and in that case why would anyone want him in a trade??? I personally really like Eddie, my family and I had a great experience with him at a San Diego Padres game in San Diego a couple years back. Nonetheless, I feel Eddie is a good player and right now is a good fit for the Twins and I just get tired of everyone always saying we need to trade him, and then after saying we need to trade him, they then start to talk about everything he does wrong or does not so great. So my point was, if I try to sell you a car, and all I do is point out all of the flaws, then why the hell would you want to buy that car? I'm all for keeping the car (Eddie) myself.

Everytime people start talking about all of Eddie's negatives then they say that he needs to be traded. Who would trade for someone that only has things wrong with him, I mean OF is probably one of the deepest positions in baseball, no one needs him. Looks like we are stuck with him for a couple more years, and I am fine with it, I like him. Yeah I have a car I want to sell, there is a lot of rust on it. It starts well but doesn't keep running for very long, it's not very fast and it can be uncomfortable to look at while its in your driveway. How much you wanna give me for it?

I'd say September 1st then about 55 or so out of the 80 proposed games of the season will have happened, around 2/3rds of the season. Or no trades at all? I mean one side of the deadline is looking for prospects, they probably won't even be playing any of those games, so it will be hard to do a lot of trading when the prospects probably won't even be playing. No trades could possibly play into the Twins hands as the wealthy teams will be stuck with what they have and the Twins, however not great, have a lot of decent depth on their pitching roster. Obviously they have the hitters, plus depth in the field also.

How many more rules will they have to change to speed the game back up since this will obviously make the games longer. Plus I think it would negatively impact the Twins, I know that is a biased take, but, how likely will the Twins be able to outbid the Mets and the Dodgers for the likes of a Nelson Cruz??

The faster the owners get their product back on the market the more future income they could have if they draw new fans in that can't watch their normal sports that they like??

Yeah, I think that was about the same thing with Tommy Herr.

I definitely thought about Tommy Herr, that was a terrible trade; Brunansky for Herr. Another one that irritated me was John Smiley, he could have been good for the Twins in 92 but then was gone.

I could see AJ being hated by some of the teams the Twins played against frequently.

I have to agree that AJ is more on my favorites list rather than hated list.

I always picked the Bears on Techmo bowl.

I see what you are saying, I'm thinking maybe that they should have 9 guys who go out and play the field and maybe a different 9 can hit? Then every team could just throw a bunch of DH's out there. The hitting and the defense would both get better.

You are correct, in Donaldson they have someone who improves the defense at 3B over Sano. But to try and tackle being ranked 26th out of 30 teams on infield defense by spending 92 million on a 3rd baseman I'm not sure it's really the reason they got him. I mean if you are really trying to improve infield defense then you have to focus up the middle which, they might have gotten worse with Arraez taking over for Schoop and Sano taking over at 1st? That has been my point all along is that yeah they might wish they had better defense overall, but I don't think they want to sacrifice the hitting to do so. They would rather have weak defense and be able to mash than have great defense and have 3 holes in their lineup. So right now they are built around hitting and that is what they added. And again this is just my opinion, but I'm not totally convinced that Donaldson wasn't signed just because they needed to do something to show everyone that they are all in. To me, it's why the Twins play sooo many shifts. I mean some teams out there don't shift as much as the Twins do and there are probably reasons. Yes you are also correct in the fact that the pitching would look much better with solid defense behind them. Look at some of those slick fielding teams of the early 2000's. Some of those pitchers looked pretty decent as Twins, but most of them weren't very good. But because they could pick it, they were serviceable for sure. Nonetheless I'm pretty sure Polanco has SS locked up for a couple of years at least, due to his hitting.

Yeah, I don't think defense was really at the forefront of their minds when they signed Donaldson. I mean for starters he might not play 3B for them for the length of his contract. The fact of the matter is that he most likely will become the DH at some point in his tenure with the Twins so as to keep him healthy. It wasn't too many years ago that he missed major chunks of seasons battling calf injuries and such. Nonetheless he makes the defense at 3rd better, but I still don't think that was the real reason why. The Twins had no one at 1B, so either they get Donaldson, who is a tremendous hitter and they move Sano to 1B or they get some free agent firstbaseman and leave Sano at 3rd?? What were your options? They needed to make a splash free agent signing, were there really any comparable 1st basemen out there to a say Donaldson? So at the same time does Sano improve the Defense at 1st? I don't think so, at least not for a year or so, until he gets used to that spot. I mean what could be worse for the Twins than a potentially shaky defender at 1st? With Polanco and Arraez chucking one hoppers over there constantly? So as much as Donaldson does improve the Defense at 3rd, it was in my mind definitely not the reason they signed him. They signed him so the Twins can hit even more Dingers!!!! Which is cool, plus he is an on base guy, defense was simply just and extra that they got with him, because let's face it, at his age, most likely his defense is on the downswing, but as Nelson Cruz has shown, older guys if they take care of themselves can still swing the stick. Moustakis was signed on December 5th, he was never targeted by the Twins as they were trying to sign pitching at that point in time and Castellanos doesn't play 3B, he is a rightfielder. I remember discussions about Castellanos and posters were throwing around the idea of putting Kepler at 1B if they brought Castellanos on and that doesn't make much sense. Plus Castellanos at this point is not in the same category as Donaldson as far as hitting goes. Donaldson has hit 30+ bombs 4 or 5 years Castellanos has never hit 30. Plus Castellanos is like a .320 something OBP guy and Donaldson is like .369 OBP guy. So yeah Castellanos was a little cheaper, but he also can't hit as well, and he didn't play 3B. So I still don't think anyone really cares about defense that much anymore. Don't get me wrong, I wish they still did.

I really don't think any team out there really cares very much about defense anymore. That's why all the teams go to crazy shifts and stuff. I don't think Ozzie Smith or Omar Vizquel or hardly any SS from the 80's and early 90's would have ever wanted to play in a shift. Those guys could cover ground big time, but, sometimes they didn't hit the best, Ozzie, a hall of famer was not known for his hitting, he was known for his defense. That's not the case these days it's all about hitting. As long as Polanco hits, in this era of baseball he will be run out there somewhere, with Donaldson and Arraez I don't see anywhere except at SS.

Hopefully Kepler and Sano are dousing each other with Champagne in October?

I also thought using the spring training sites with no fans was a decent option. I mean why open up those giant ballparks with no one in them. So might as well play in the spring training complexes, plus there is a lot of workout and practice areas right there. So might as well at least start like that and then move back to their parks when that time is able to come. MLB really needs to think about this, I know this is going to seem egotistical, however, if the NBA or some other professional league gets back to playing before MLB then MLB will lose out on an opportunity to become the national past time once again. It seems to me that obviously the NFL and the NBA and maybe a few other sports have passed baseball in popularity over the last few decades. However, if MLB was the first professional league to get up and running everyone in the US would tune in to MLB especially if it's the only option for a period of time. People are dying to see live sports on TV and it would probably help people stay inside more. Now I'm not saying to do something that is unsafe. I'm saying that MLB has to be 100% ready to go when sports are given the opportunity to open up without fans. It just seems like they throw ideas around and they don't seem to have a for sure plan that they are going to implement when the opportunity arises. They need to draw something up that is safe and go with it and try to be the most prepared when they are given the chance to play. So that way they can beat those other leagues to the punch basically by just being all on the same page and ready when the government tells them it's ok. The likely hood of all states being able to all go at the same time is almost nill. So if they have an Arizona plan or a spring training plan it is way more highly likely that Arizona will be completely open way before New York will, and since we will only be able to see it on TV it really doesn't matter if they play in their home parks or not. Regardless, I can say that I am hoping for sure that at some point they can get started. Other sports too, I'd just like to see baseball get top billing for a week or two. Maybe guys like Ronald Acuna and Mike Trout or even a Nelson Cruz will become more of a household names once again. MLB could help their product out a ton by just having all of their ducks in a row and Uber ready to go when the ok is given.

. Those extra players wouldn't need to travel with the team. They could all stay back and keep playing practice games, etc... Only the guys who need to play would travel. If someone got hurt you could fly one replacement dude in if the road trip is a long one. Oh, I just re-read it and I see that you were thinking our 15 extra could play against the other teams 15. I was thinking the Twins could have their 40 man, plus another 15 guys that way they can stay back and just play scrimmage games against themselves. They they wouldn't need to travel with so many players.

I think Radke's numbers would be way better had he pitched on those late 60's early 70's twins teams because those teams were really good. I'm pretty sure Perry's numbers wouldn't be so hot had he pitched on those late 90's teams that almost got contracted. But better than both of those guys in my opinion is Camilio Pascual. He had like over 100 complete games which wasn't necessarily that big of a thing back then as a lot of pitchers completed their games but he had like 30 shutouts, so that's not just completing a game that's total domination. He had a lot of strikeouts etc.... He was Johan Santana of the 60's.

Yeah when you look at Gladden you'd think he should be on there for sure. But then when you pull his stats it's like not only were they not that great, but he didn't even really play very many full seasons. I'm thinking Gladden was that spark plugs guy, that guy that probably had a lot of that clubhouse factor that can't be measured in stats. I know everyone hates that because it can't be measured but it is there. I'm thinking Torii Hunter's last season with the Twins. With that squad they had an improbable season and he wasn't that good anymore, but they did much better with him than without him so he obviously had that leadership factor that many others don't posses. Gladden must have had some of that too. Too bad Mickey Hatcher didn't stick around one more year, he left in 86', had he been a part of the WS team in 87' he might be viewed differently?