one_eyed_jack

I think Puckett should have at least made the honorable mentions, but other than that, I don't have a huge problem with where the Twins players are ranked. There are some other egregious errors on that list, starting with Reggie Jackson at 55.

The fact that a guy coming off a season in which he was dropped from 2 different starting rotations, one of which was the worst in baseball, is getting a deal like this tells you a lot about the free agent market for starting pitchers.

---Haren wanted to go to a contender. He was pursued by multiple teams, but chose the Nats because he felt they had the best chance of winning a World Series. If that was his criteria, I don't see how Ryan was going to get him to come here. Nationals make Dan Haren signing official

---Well, I'm not sure it was clear from your original post that's what you were expecting to be addressed. So what would you have liked to see Ryan do, jokin? Give us some names and numbers. Should he have outbid the Tigers for Sanchez? Gone after Blanton or Dempster? Should be chasing E-Jax? Would you have supported him doing what Toronto did and trading young talent for Buerhle and/or Dickey? I'm curious because it seems to me you've been a pretty vocal opponent of Mauer's contract, and consider him to be grossly overpaid. Yet now it seems like you're all over Ryan for not overpaying other guys.

Uppity is a word that was once used by racist white people to describe black people who had the nerve to stand up for their rights and demand equal treatment as opposed to willingly accepting second class citizenship. Jackie Robinson certainly heard it a lot. Bill White made it the title of his book. So if uppity means calling out petty bigotry instead of letting it pass, then yes, you're damn right I'm being uppity. Garbage like this should be left to the cretins of the Strib comments section.

---God forbid we have a Nishoka thread without gratuitous references to his ethnicity.

---I don't know why that's surprising. They haven't signed him, it just says they're one of multiple teams scheduled to watch him throw. Also, just because Zumaya's comeback failed doesn't mean that all future attempts to come back from injury are doomed to fail. Each situation is unique. Again, what do the Twins have to lose by checking him out? If they sign him and pencil him in the rotation with no backup plan, then it's fine to start carping about it.

I'd hold onto Morneau unless it's a really good offer. I might even be open to the suggestion of signing him to an extension. I have a feeling that the Big Canadian is poised for a big comeback season in 2013.

Yeah I don't quite understand the hostility to gathering information. Suppose the Twins were not one of the teams watching him throw. And suppose he threw well, signed with someone else, and became an effective starter for them in 2013. There would be rants about how stupid the Twins were for not even looking at him because he was an inexpensive, low-risk way to improve the rotation, which was their prime need, and Ryan got outsmarted again.

All of those ripping Gardy's game management - you do realize that almost any other manager would make the same moves Gardy does about 99.4% of the time, yes? Sure, you have a few outliers like Maddon who go against conventional wisdom and do some unusual things. But if it's Gardy's decision-making that gets to you, prepare yourself to be disappointed by his replacement, because it's highly unlikely that he'll do anything substantially different in that area. I think the 20/20 hindsight argument applies here more than it does to trades. A manager makes thousands of decisions over the course of a 162-game season. Even if he's right 90% of the time, which is insanely high, that's still a lot of times where he's wrong. You try to make decisions that give your team the best chance to win, but inevitably, you'll be wrong sometimes. When you follow a team closely, those decisions that didn't turn out well tend to stick with you. And because your exposure to other managers is more limited, you don't tend to see that they make the same types of decisions Gardy does. I remember going on a Tigers site a couple of years ago, and the forum was filled with anti-Leyland posts, some even complained specifically about him getting consistently out-managed by Gardy.

It just says they're one of several teams that are going to watch him throw. At this point, I don't think that's such a big deal. When you've got an entire rotation to rebuild and don't have many marketable assets that you are wiling to part with in a trade,it doesn't hurt to at least kick the tires on a guy like Webb. What have you got to lose? Let's at least wait until they sign him and pencil him into a rotation spot before getting too worked up over it.

Guys ranked too high: 1) Reggie Jackson (55) 2) Pedro Martinez (41) 3) Chipper Jones (49) 4) Ivan Rodriguez (71) 5) Alex Rodriguez (18) - roid issues aside Guys who are ranked too low 1) Mike Piazza (78) 2) Rod Carew (53) 3) Carlton Fisk (76)

---If you re-read my comments, I think you'll see I was going beyond 'quibbling' in my disagreement with putting Jackson at #55. I don't think he belongs in the top 155. But that aside, you know what's unproductive? Polluting a thread with snide comments belittling the topic. The TD crew included rule #5 in the proposed comment policy to address this exact behavior because it was happening so much and it drags down the quality of the discourse. If you don't feel that player rankings are worth discussing, then simply don't participate in the discussion. Move along and find a thread on a topic you feel is worthwhile.

Oh he's not wrong in most of what he said. It's the timing of it. He knew this would provoke a reaction, to the point where it would likely become a distraction. Distractions during the season can only hurt the team. It is not in the team's interest to deal with this. How do you think Love's teammates feel about having to answer questions on this instead of about what's happening on the court? If he had done this over the summer, fine. But in doing it now, he put his own interests over those of his team. That's not what a leader and a winner does.

On one level I apprecite his honesty and willingness to go off script. On the other hand, the timing was very ill-advised. The team was just starting to play better, and Rubio is on the verge of coming back. It risks becoming a distraction. Keep it in house during the year, then air it out over the summer if that does work. Also, a couple of the things he said were kinda dumb. They should have tried it with Love and Jefferson? Really? Does that work often, having 2 starting front court players who either can't or won't play defense?

---Yeah the Puckett omission would be defensible if they had put another great outfielder over him. But Edgar, though he could mash, was just a DH. If you want to be considered one of the top players ever, you should be able to at least competently field a position.

Seriously, or is that sarcasm?

Anyone else been following this? ESPN's Hall of 100 -- Ranking the all-time greatest MLB players - ESPN I'm still working my way through it. I'm disagreeing less than I thought I might be. So far the only egregious error is Reggie Jackson at #55. May be the most overrated player in baseball history, criminally silly to have him that high.

So it says here. Vikings' patience with Chris Kluwe appears to be wearing thin | 1500 ESPN Twin Cities ? Minnesota Sports News & Opinion (Twins, Vikings, Wolves, Wild, Gophers) | Sportswire: Minnesota Vikings "Those distractions are getting old for me to be quite honest with you." says one coach. This from a team who hasn't gone more than a couple of weeks between player arrests in the last 10 years. Meet the Minnesota Vikings All-Arrested team - Minneapolis - News - The Blotter So to recap: you can drive drunk (despite the presence of the free ride any time program), beat up your girlfriend, get into nightclub scuffles, run over meter maids, and have a prostitute party, and that's all fine and dandy. But when the punter speaks his mind on a couple of issues, it becomes a distraction. However bad the Twins are, they will never be as ridiculous as the Vikings.

In case you missed it, K-Love went off on the T-Wolves in a recent interview, going as far as to call out his GM and owner: Kevin Love unsure about Timberwolves' future - Yahoo! Sports I've heard a lot of different takes, but most seem to feel that while some of his complaints have merit, airing them when and how he did was bad form. So he's taken some flack for it. I have a mixed reaction to it. On the one hand, I appreciate the honesty. Fans often complain about star atheletes answering questions with one cliched non-statement after another,but then when a guy goes off-script and says something controversial, they blast him being unprofessional and having bad judgment. You can't have it both ways. On the other hand, I think he came off looking like kind of a crybaby here. He demanded that the roster be upgraded. And he was right. Kahn did that. But now he whines that he comes back and there's a bunch of new faces in the locker room? Well, did you want continuity, or did you want change? He claims to be all about winning, but when the Wolves don't give him quite the contract he wanted in the interest of leaving some flexibility to sign talent to surround him with later, he whines about not getting more. And really? They should have tried the Love/Jefferson tandem to see if they could get it to work? Umm, no, having 2 members of your starting front court who are allergic to playing defense is not a recipe for success. This was the off-the-court equivalent of what he does too much on the court - yell at the refs for not getting a foul call when he should be getting back on D. In any case, whether appropriate or not, it would be interesting to hear some candid thoughts from Mauer or someone on what the Twins are doing.

Twisted though this is, I sent you a list. Will you be posting the entries after January 2nd so we can track progess?

I've always been a Gardy supporter. I think he's a damn good manager. Not an all-time great hall-of-fame manager, but a damn good one. That said, it became pretty clear to me this year that it's time for a change. Seth is right, Gardy hasn't changed, but clearly, his message isn't getting through like it used to. There was a time when the Twins actually did battle their tails off on a regular basis. It hasn't happened the last 2 years. A staleness has set in. Sometimes when the same voice has been speaking for too long, guys just stop listening. And each new generation of players thinks differently. He doesn't seem to connect with the Pouffes the way he did with the Koskies and Cuddyers. Maybe that's all just a byproduct of having a bad team that loses a lot. Losing tends to bring out negativity in everyone. But in any case, rather than make Gardy a lame duck, they should have just ripped off the band-aid, fired him, and started with a new managerial regime. Gardy would get another job in a heartbeat, and it might be good for him too.

This thread is depressing, but enjoyable on some level. Lots of good mentions so far. I'm going to go with game 1 of the 2006 ALDS, Santana vs Zito. That was heartbreaking to me because there was so much momentum and anticipation going into that postseason, but once we lost that game, I knew it was over. The various playoff losses to the Yankees where we had a late lead and blew it were all heartbreaking, but there were so many that they all just kind of blend together for me. The Vikings have broken a lot of hearts too, but you've at least got to give them style points for finding new, interesting and creative ways to torture their fans. I mean to say, taking yourself out of range of a game-winning field goal in the NFC championship game with a too many men on the field penalty?! Not just anyone could come up with that. With the Twins, it's the opposite. Losing to the same team. The same way. Every. Single. Year.

Speaking of the wildcat - I never thought I'd find myself typing this sentence in a jillion years - but the Vikings would have at least 1 more win, possibly more, had Tim Tebow been their starting quarterback all year.

He already does. Before the Buddinger injury and Love breaking his hand, ESPN picked them to finish 3rd in the West. I thought that was a little high, but if Rubio comes back playing well, nobody will want to play this team come spring. ---Bingo. Chase, Shved and AK47 were great pickups. Rubio coming back will make a huge difference. And if B-Roy can find a way to stay healthy and contribute, you're looking at a very dangerous team. In recent years, a lot of people didn't notice that the T-Wolves were still playing in the first couple of weeks of April because the Twins season had started. Next year, a lot of people may be too consumed by the T-Wolves in April to notice that the Twins have started their season.