jimmer

Hughes is best in the bullpen. Expensive bullpen guy, but that's his best role. Glad the Twins finally figured that out.

Two weird plays. The ball that gets stuck then the hit off the toe.

I'm nut sure that really means anything, but ok.

Based on that HR? Going into today, his OPS the last 7 days is .563.

I turned the game on right as Sano was swinging at that pitch.

Well, Jim Pohlad said exactly that. He said based on the record they had last year there was no reason to believe they wouldn't be even better this year. Oh, and he still thinks that was a reasonable assumption. Sees no fault in that way of reasoning. There were plenty on this site who thought the same thing.

I wouldn't bet against them this year.

Cubs ground crew kicked butt just now. Put the tarp completely on in about 3 minutes, if that.

The downside is, that it's Paris.

Plenty of fans (and apparently the owner and GM) bought into the notion that this team really was that good despite convincing evidence to the contrary.

I want to make sure I'm reading this correctly. Are you saying the Twins have the best people and the best evaluation methods?

people slam the Hughes extension because it was made after a career year, when there was plenty of player performance to believe it wasn't sustainable, and because it was made at least a year early, if it had to be made at all. TR took a good original signing and then blew it with the unnecessary early extension before seeing if Hughes could repeat, or come close to repeating, his 2014.

why? I rarely concern myself with groupthink. To me, and many people I chatted with at the time, the move was disliked the extension immediately after it was made. Same thing with the Suzuki move. And for some of the same reasons, like having unsustainable career years. To me it was clearly and obviously bad for the reasons given.

and if we felt we absolutely had to sign him for longer you at least wait another year to see if he can come close to repeating what he did in 2014. No rush at all to sign him after his first year of a three year contract. Also, Hughes didn't fall flat on his face last year. He went back to being the pitcher he had always been.

we didn't all love the hughes extension when it happened. Many people hated it because the chance for repeat was extremely unlikely. Also you forgot some options. We could have traded him if he had a good 2015. We could have let him go at the end of FA or made him a qualifying offer if he was worth it and got a pick if he didn't sign. Lots of options and our GM picked the worst one because he had an out of body season. Most GMs look at a players body of work, see a season out of character, and don't bet it gets repeated.@

Yeah, anyone expecting Hughes to repeat his excellent 2014 with his history was really just unrealistic. Bringing Capps to the 2010 team isn't why we won in 2010. Not at all. Rauch was more than doing the job. When we traded for Capps we had lost one game where he had come in to close and we won that division by 6. I doubt in the last two months, the difference between Rauch at closer and Capps at closer was worth 6 or more games.

I don't either and not only does he say he thought that, but everyone thought that. The GM who failed to really address his own #1 priority didn't even think that.

Can you elaborate on the bold statements in your post quoted above? Who is we? I'm pretty sure a good chunk of people certainly didn't think we should stand pat.Team was below average in most (some might argue all) aspects of the game. Standing pat would be bad even if every team agreed to stand pat too. But that didn't happen, not should anyone expect most teams to do that. Who said Ervin was the 4th best pitcher? Who was the Cy Young caliber pitcher we extended for 3/14M? Not sure what extension that was and we sure haven't had a real Cy Young caliber pitcher for a long time. And many thought Hunter was a bad signing. I still think it was. Again, who is we? The Nolasco signing was bad when people thought we should pay that much for a NL pitcher for that much with peripherals like his. I'm glad you think TR has done a great job with his signings/extensions. Seems the only one you take him to task for is Suzuki and then you really give him a pass on that one too. I think his FA signings and extensions have mostly been horrible. Hughes signing, first time, was a good risk. Extending him after an unsustainable 2014 was horrible. Park may end up being a good signing that Ryan didn't even think he would get but if it works out he certainly deserves credit. Problem is, the signing ended up making problems elsewhere. We came into the season with no one who deserved to be on a 25 man ALL AL Central roster. Below average pitching, defense and offense. And Ryan has been in charged again for 5 years. Worst record in baseball. Worst record in AL by a good chunk.

I think if you look at a lot of sites that look a lot deeper you'll find otherwise- Dave Cameron from Fangraphs, for example, said in a chat before the season started that he expected the Twins to be the worst team in the AL. ZiPS predicted them very low. Many places predicted them to have a worse record than last year. Of course, places that do surface like predictions said things like they are young and had 83 wins last year means they'll be better this year. In fact, Pohlad said recently that is what he thought and still claims there was no fault in that thinking. He thought that was sound logic. I had them at 78 wins myself. Turns out I was too optimistic myself.

should be a double and a one base error?

good.

And few doubt Hunter had some effect. How much is the question and how much was taken away by his poor play is also a question. Mentoring doesn't have to be by a player and players do obviously take blame. But you asked who was more responsible. Total System Failure, for sure, but Ryan put this team together and it was obvious this team wasn't going to be good going into the season. They shouldn't be THIS bad, but they'd still be bad even they were playing somewhat better and that's the point.

he didn't catch it.

So lets say we have some companies that go out and sign or train top notch employees Their training programs are top notch. They have great mentorship programs and innovative thinking. Their department heads are top notch. Then we have competing companies and those other companies have less talented employees who aren't trained as well and don't have good mentorship programs and who have bosses that aren't innovative and so on. Do the second group of employees get all the blame when the companies they work for go under, or is there an underlying problem?

anyone listening to Jack, Bert and Anthony right now? Slamming the team, pretty much, AND OF COURSE, Bert and Jack comparing their complete games to pitchers nowadays and they question why our guys can't have a ton of complete games too. And, haha, Bert just said Ervin Santana, Nolasco and Hughes could be pitchers like Jack and Bert. Guys you can be counted on to stop losing streaks and such. Stopper type pitchers.