Twodogs

So if someone picks up Upton they owe him 28 Million, but if no one picks him up then the Angels owe him 28 Million? That doesn't make sense? I was under the impression that if someone picked up a player who has been DFA'd that the former team still owes him the contract??

Not sure how DFA's work. But maybe the Twins could pick up Justin Upton, and then turn around and trade him and someone else like Larnach for one of their pitchers? I don't know what the Twins would be on the hook for with Upton money wise. But dang he hit 17 HR's last year in just over 80 games. Looks like he could still hit 25 - 30 bombs and, not that it really matters but has a great spring training line?

Trout has been hurt quite a bit lately. But he is still a .305 career hitter with a .419 career on base percentage. He has over 300 home runs and almost 1500 hits plus he has over 200 stolen bases and he's only 2 years older than Buck. Trout won the rookie of the year, 9 x all star, 8 time silver slugger 3 x MVP. If Buck were to become an All Star and win the silver slugger every year of his contract he still wouldn't catch Trout. Man I would love to see Buck win the silver slugger the next 7 years straight because that would mean the twins would be doing really good. But as much as I want it, I don't see Buck passing up Trout. Trout is probably almost a hall of famer if he retired now.

I'm glad to hear that the velo looks good. I was worried because he had that Thoracic outlet surgery that seemed to put Phil Hughes to sleep.

Oh of course, I'd love to see the next Doc Gooden step on the mound. It would be great if a few of these young guys panned out. All I was saying is I don't want the Twins to give up on them so early as they do sometimes.

I'm not trying to compare innings from back then to today. What I'm saying is that had they continued to hold Viola down in the minors and didn't give him a shot until he was 26 and he had a season like his first one he would have been done. He wouldn't have gotten any more chances. I think, especially in seasons where the Twins realistically aren't going to compete for a title, that these young guys need to be brought up when they are 22, like Viola. Give them a chance to fail, often times athletes learn how to do things better from failure. They work on the things that went wrong. But that's hard to do with a 26 year old as they are quickly passing their prime. So I'm saying let these guys have a chance. If they struggle don't be impatient, give them that chance to struggle and learn. Holding them down in the minors until they are 26 is ridiculous, at least to me. Give them a shot is all I'm saying.

I think as fans we need to be a little bit careful. People are very impatient nowadays. I mean in today's game would Frank Viola have gotten a 2nd chance? Like he did back in the 80's?? Take a look at his first years and that dumpster fire. I think in rebuilding years, it's best to get guys up when they are really young. Then if/when they crash and burn they have a chance to go down, because they are young enough, and work on what they learned at the big league level, then when they come back up they have a better chance of succeeding. It seems like the Twins wait so long to bring guys up that if they aren't successful right away they punt on them because they are already like 25-26. So either they slide into a bullpen role or they fade away. Now in years where the team is a favorite to do well they probably should go with more veterans.

I suppose it's too much to have the AAA rotation to be Balazovich Woods Richardson Duran Winder Strotman Sands I'm guessing we will end up with guys like smeltzer and Chi chi and guys like that??

So I used to follow things quite closely, probably between the years of the late 90's with contraction talks all the way up to about 2010 or so give or take a year or two. Now I'm still a fan but with my kids both playing sports and going to school I just don't follow things as closely anymore. So I was wondering, what some of you guys, who are in the "know," think will be the lineup and pitching staff of the Saints this year?? Let me know what you think?? Thanks

Does he have anything left? I mean what happened last year? He only threw like 19 innings.

I wonder if Falvey took a course on Hypnosis during the lockout. I feel like Pohlad's going to come too in a few days and cancel that check. ?

So I'm watching part of the spring training game between the red sox and the twins. Jeffers is catching and Sanchez is the DH. So in that scenario, which I am assuming should happen quite often this season, who will be the backup catcher on the bench in case of injury etc..... I hear all kinds of stuff about Story etc... But who are they going to have as that back up dude as they don't have Rortverdt, Garver, or Astudillo anymore?

Like I said earlier, I figured they traded Berrios because they weren't going to be competitive this year, maybe in a year or two. That's why the long term deal for Buck and a rotation of a bunch of young dudes to prepare them for next year or the year after But if you were planning on being competitive this year. Then I'm ok with the Petty for Gray deal, and then they should have kept Berrios and had a good 1 - 2 punch. But if they are going to be a middle of the pack to the back of the pack type of team then I'd rather have kept Petty and gone with the young guys to see what they can do at the MLB level. Because Gray, Bundy, and some guys like Dobnak aren't going to get it done. I suppose if they are in the back of the heap at the end of the season Gray can be shipped off to a contender for some prospects once again. But they won't really know what those prospects have so it will be like re-setting once again. JMO

On a low key note, because don't get me wrong I think Gray is a good pitcher and would have loved to see the Twins pair Berrios and Gray up together in the same rotation. However, now looking at it, is Sonny Gray an injury risk? I mean he only threw 135 innings last year and had a 4.19 era, that's even more of a red flag since he pitched in the NL and they get to face a pitcher a couple times every game instead of a Nelson Cruz type. I hope he's ok, but it's kind of concerning to me.

My thinking is why trade a #1 draft pick to be mediocre? I mean I like the trade if the Twins were really planning on winning something this year. But they didn't win last year with Berrios so why would they win this year with Gray? So let's say the Twins had kept Berrios and tried to resign him like Toronto did. And then they traded for Gray now I'd be like heck yeah! Let's go for it. But this move realistically puts the Twins right back where they were last season.

I also can't see either of those two in a Marlins uniform.

Always fun to armchair quarterback a draft from more than 10 years ago. However a couple of thoughts. Yes a couple of guys in each draft out performed the Twins pick. But my question is, how many guys that were picked before these guys did worse than the Twins pick. Also, I really hope I'm wrong, but after seeing teams like Cleveland and Tampa Bay develop so many decent young players who come through their system, I really wonder how a guy like Lance Lynn or Josh Donaldson would have turned out had they ended up in the Twins organization? I would hope just as good, but maybe these guys just had some guru help them out with something in like A ball that made the difference? Maybe the teams they were on had that magic opening that allowed them the extra playing time to hone their craft? Who knows, but seems like the Twins picks did ok, and who was responsible for those drafts?

I'd like to see the Twins go with their young guys. I know the Twins have a lot of up and coming pitching prospects. I know none of them will be able to pitch enough innings this year to man the staff with 5 guys. I was thinking if the Twins were really going to punt on this season, which it looks like that will be happening at this point in time. Then maybe instead of piggybacking guys together for 3 innings apiece maybe they should run out a 7 man rotation except throw Bundy every 5 days. Then have the other guys throw 6 innings, or at least push their pitch count to a decent level and then that guy will have 6 or 7 days off before his next start, along with moving a few guys up and down to St Paul, that should keep all of the young guys over all innings down. But it also allows them to go deeper into ball games so they are more ready next year to be quality starters next year? Just a different idea if they are planning to go with their young guys.

Who else are they supposed to sign right now?? Everything is always made out to be a big deal when I'm pretty sure this one isn't.

Well they hovered around the top 5 in salary for quite awhile. 1994 16th where you pointed out that they started their run. 1995 7th 1996 4th 1997 3rd 1998 6th 1999 4th. The year I pointed out, but the link shows them all. 2000 8th 2001 5th 2002 9th They were in the top 10 in every year of that run except that first year, and top 5 in MLB salaries in 4 of those seasons. Interestingly they went out and aquired expensive/aging starting pitching for some of that run? Hershiser, McDowell, Martinez and those guys did good, not great, not as good as they were when they were younger, but they won a lot of games between them. But yeah Cleveland is weird that they had good support for those 90's teams and not a lot of support for the more recent run? (I don't remember the attendance figures you put but I remember reading them), They had a lot of home grown ballplayers et.al. Lindor and such. Maybe there is some residual anger still in Cleveland from some fans due to the climate of their professional teams. The Browns, the Indians now Guardians, the Cavaliers. Like LeBron left them maybe the whole professional culture of the whole city has left the fans skeptical?? Maybe they have a hard time buying in with the way they've been treated in the past, I mean even the Browns left town once? These are just a hypothesis as to why Cleveland has less support of a winning baseball team, (which appears to have been kinda done the right way with a lot of internal development and such), recently as opposed to their winning baseball team from the late 90's? Don't get me wrong, my original post was I just wouldn't want to be Tampa Bay, not because of their development of players and such. They obviously have proven that they do a good job of that. I just don't want to be them because they hardly ever keep any of their star players. I know you can't keep them all, but like you pointed out in Cleveland they did a pretty good job of keeping many of them for quite awhile. Obviously not all but some, and some of them for 8 - 9 years. Are they going to keep Lowe for 8 - 9 years? Who knows, maybe?? They just signed their stud rookie to a long term deal; so maybe Tampa is starting to change a little, obviously not with their development, but maybe they are going to try and keep a handful of these studs for the near future so fans can get attached to them? I hope not? because I kind of like the fact that they feed the rest of MLB with great young players, but if they do I personally think it will be a step in the right direction for them as a franchise. I mean another thing that I think is sometimes overlooked, is team valuation. So in the years before free agency MLB teams weren't even worth 10 million dollars. Steinbrenner bought the Yankees for 8.7 mill in 1973. Now if you wanted to buy the Yankees you'd need closer to 10 billion. Obviously there are many many reasons for teams values to go up. But I think that player free agency, (player salaries), was a catalyst for driving up team values. Let me explain. You buy a house for 100,000 dollars. It has old crappy shag carpeting, Formica countertops, a dilapidated roof, a paint job that is peeling, etc.... You go in there and put in nice hardwood flooring, granite countertops, put a new roof and a fresh coat of new paint and what happens to the value of the house?? It goes up, right. So in my thought process you have player commodities on your MLB franchise, if all of them are rookies and they all make league min or close to it. And then you add a Mike Trout, and a Gerritt Cole, wouldn't the value of your MLB franchise increase also?? Do the owners really make that much money off of tickets and hotdogs? Or do they make more money on the value of the team itself? Just a thought to ponder as we wait for this lockout to end.

I just pulled up one year and in 1999 Cleveland had a 73 million payroll which ranked 4th in all of baseball at the time. The Yankees were 1st at 88 million so the dollars were a lot different back then. I just went to baseball reference and pulled up the 1996 indians stats and from there I paged back 2 - 3 year and I paged forward 2 - 3 years and the roster was amazingly similar from one year to the next with a changer or two every year. But not whole sale selldowns and such. Yeah Albert Belle left via free agency but his existence in Cleveland was somewhat contentious. He did not always get along with management etc.... Nonetheless as I paged through I saw names like Manny Ramirez, Jim Thome, Sandy Alomar, Omar Vusquel, Eddie Murray, Kenny Lofton who all were part of the organization for many years and yes some of them left via free agency, but not like what goes on with the Rays. Not to mention they definitely did not skimp on pitching. They had guys in there like Hershiser, McDowell, Nagy, Martinez. I mean these were some great pitchers of the day and most of them were free agents that they brought in! I mean Hershiser and McDowell were not brought up through the organization, exploited and then traded when they became expensive. They were already expensive when they were brought in? So I think you make a great point that yes guys get traded and let go at times. But not almost full roster flips like the Rays seem to do year in and year out. So there were a lot of players that the fans were able to get attached to. But occasionally you'll still need to make some moves. But I think your point misses its mark when you try to compare payrolls and attendance, because yes 60 - 90 million per year is nothing in today's game, but back then they were a top 5 or close to it in MLB in total payroll. https://www.fueledbysports.com/mlb-payroll-1984-1999/

The Tampa Bay Rays averaged 9500 fans per game last year. I wouldn't want to be anything like them. Maybe it's because the fan base has no one to cheer for or get attached to?? I mean Oakland has a similar situation, they are pretty darn good year in and year out but no one comes to the games. I mean the Twins set attendance records in the Metrodome in 91, obviously they won, but they won with players that Twins country identified with. Puckett, Herbek, Gagne, etc.... So I don't think the Twins set that record if they turned their team completely over every year like the Rays are doing. I mean look at the Cubs, even the Red Sox to an extent. How many years of struggle did they endure, yet their stadiums were packed, because they kept guys like Ryne Sandberg etc.... So yeah the A's and the Rays can teach front offices a thing or two about development probably, but I don't think I'd want the team that I cheer for to turn over their complete roster so often. Don't get me wrong, the Twins arent far behind, over the years I have felt like I was cheering for a minor league squad for the Yankees and the Dodgers. But the Twins have done just enough, keeping Puckett etc.... Keeping a few of those familiar faces to cheer for. I mean why is there more people in Tampa cheering for the Yankees than the Rays? It might be because a lot of people in Tampa Bay were originally from New York. Or it might also have to do with they know most of the players on New Yorks team??? Whereas year in and year out they have no idea who is playing for the Rays. So I feel that they don't even care about the Rays and then when they do good, it's kind of like a surprise about 2 thirds of the way through the season. Oh wow, our little minor league team over there is kinda doing good? Let's watch a few games on TV.

I mean they have 2 choices. Sign Rodon and Pineda then you'd have Bundy, Ober and Ryan to complete the rotation. Or you punt next year and see what they can develop. I mean 7 of their top 10 prospects are pitchers. Bring them up and let them fly. I mean next year won't be good but if you hit on 2 or 3 of those kids now you have a very bright future. But if you don't bring them up, then you never know what you have and the future is still bleak because you don't know and will continue to not know what they have. So either go with Rodon and Pineda or go with the young guys. If you go with the young guys you could run out a 6 man rotation to limit their innings and such. But do one or the other, I'd hate to see them half ass it again with a shoemaker type singing.

If the Pirates had kept their starting pitchers that they have developed over the last 6 or so years they would be a world series contender year in and year out. Not saying they wouldn't have a bad season mixed in but seriously 4 or 5 of those 6 seasons they would have been right in the hunt. Then it would probably be fun to be a Pirate fan! Now like you say, why even bother?

Here off the top of my head are some of the pitchers that have gone off the board. Syndergaard Kluber Gausman Gray Alcantara Who else is available, who would the Twins go after?? Just curious