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one_eyed_jack

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Everything posted by one_eyed_jack

  1. one_eyed_jack
    I'm open to the idea of trading Span, but it had better be for some quality talent in return. Otherwise, we should just hold onto him. Also, there should not be any rush to make a move, and I would have to think that the Nationals would not be our only or even our best trading partner on this. I'm don't buy into this idea that we have to deal him now because he's our most tradeable asset, we need to shake things up, and he's replaceable. I am not so dismissive of what Span brings to the table. He's a legit leadoff hitter and solid defensive centerfielder with a team-friendly contract. He can be moved, but it has to be a move to help the Twins either now or down the road, not just for the sake of making a move.
  2. one_eyed_jack
    Countdown to the "see, I told you the team is better off without Gardenhire" posts in 5....4.....3....
  3. one_eyed_jack
    Hey how about that? A win! Not exactly a convincing win, but when you're this desperate for W's, you take them however you can get them. Capps looked pretty good in the ninth. He keeps that up he may have some deadline value.
  4. one_eyed_jack
    And he'll probably strike out less than Clete!
  5. one_eyed_jack
    ---There have been examples of the Twins making bad decisions to sell low, but Young is the only name on that list I agree with. In 2010, you had the sense Young might be peaking. Lohse and Slowey had their moments, but neither was ever all that great. I don't know what you think we could have gotten for them. Hardy was only here for a year. I doubt he would have fetched much more during the season than after it. The guy I'd add to your list is Liriano, I would have tried to move him last year after his no-no. And as far for the anti-Gardy rant: 1) I don't ever recall Gardy calling anyone 'lazy' or a 'clubhouse cancer'. In fact, he usually gets ridiculed for saying more good things about players than they deserve. 2) He's a manager. His job to to manage the team. Not to be a publicist for the players and hype their trade value. 3) When assessing potential trade targets, teams rely on a lot of other things a lot more than soundbites from managers. What Gardy says has a negligible if any impact on potential trades.
  6. one_eyed_jack
    Agree with CDog. This organization in a bad place right now, but I don't think the article does a very good job explaining how we got here or how to get out of it. And yes, I too got a chuckle out of the attempt to attribute the demise to both the unwillingness to make an "over the hump trade" and the decision to make the Garza deal which was exactly that. Regardless of how we got here, the more relevant question to me is how to get out of it. I don't see an obvious answer to that one. I understand that it's not going to happen overnight and the cupboard needs to be restocked. But at the same time, going into "rebuilding" mode can be very dangerous. "We're rebuilding" can quickly become a euphemistic crutch for "we suck." Teams like Kansas City, Pittsburgh and Baltimore have been "rebuilding" since the Clinton administration.
  7. one_eyed_jack
    Dude, seriously, you need to find a way to relax. I have never seen anyone get so worked up over the inconsequential. First it was letting Hughes go. Then it was Gardy going to his daughter's graduation. Now it's a rescheduled AAA game. What's next? A 3,000-word rant about how the Willingham's decision to use cloth instead of disposable diapers for their newborn son is adversely impacting the Twins approach at the plate?
  8. one_eyed_jack
    I'm done refuting posts like this. There are reasonable arguments in support of changing managers, and I'm willing to engage in discussion of those. But the anti-Gardy stuff being thrown out here is to baseball debate what "Obama is a Kenyan-born Muslim" is to political debate. It is backed by blind hatred as opposed to facts or logic, and thus unworthy of being taken seriously.
  9. one_eyed_jack
    ---Wow, we're really taking the anti-Gardy thing to new highs (or lows as the case may be). Is this the new Gardy criticism? He cares too much about being a Dad? Nice try at the timeline, but I would withhold applying for any job openings as a travel secretary if I were you. Even if we were indulge your rather fantastic assumptions that 1) Gardy could manage a game in Seattle on Friday night and get to his daughter's graduation by 10 the next morning and 2) that the ceremony would not exceed 2 hours (both of which made me laugh as someone who travels frequently and has attended numerous graduations), would you care to explain to us how you propose he leave Marshall at noon and get to MSP in time for a 2:30pm flight? Does he just make the 150-mile drive at incredibly unsafe speeds? Travel by map? Apparate? Something involving a Delorean and a flux capacitor, perhaps? By the way, it's not like this is unusual in any way. Joe Maddon missed games to attend his then-girlfriend's law school graduation. Ozzie Gullien missed games for his son's graduation. Plenty of others have done the same. You'll need to come up with something a lot better than this to sway people to the anti-Grady point of view. This just makes you look like you have Gardy Derangement Syndrome.
  10. one_eyed_jack
    Good Lord is this depressing. A starting rotation that would get lit up by a lot of Division 3 college teams. A lineup the features at least 3 automatic outs every night. A closer that can't close and a defense full of guys playing out of position. Talk about a recipe for disaster. It's like watching a troop of drunken baboons trying to hump a doorknob.
  11. one_eyed_jack
    So that's what a legitimate top-of-the-rotation starter looks like.....
  12. one_eyed_jack
    Assuming the Angels hold on (i.e., absent divine intervention) there will be 17 teams with at least as many road wins as the Twins have wins. Depressing. I wasn't expecting miracles this year, but I honestly thought this team was better than last year, and certainly capable of playing better than .250 baseball. Oh well, maybe it's a blessing in disguise that we'll probably be out of it by Mother's Day. Now the front office won't be laboring under the illusion that we're 1 or 2 players away from competing this year. Barring a major turnaround, I'm thinking fire sale at the deadline, major overhaul in the offseason.
  13. one_eyed_jack
    ---Maybe some. And while some of the longer-tenured players have been "doing" fine (Mauer, Span, Morneau), "fine" doesn't win games in the big leagues. You need your top players to be better than "fine". Casilla has been the same erratic player he's always been. I was hoping to see Plouffe and Valencia take a step forward this year, but it hasn't happened. And you've got a couple of guys on the staff in Blackburn and Liriano whose performance has been about a hundred miles from "fine." I'm not putting this all on Gardy and the staff. In fact I think guys are playing hard, this isn't a case of a team quitting on its manager. And I'm not a knee-jerk "fire the manager" guy. It's an overused tactic in pro sports. You see it too often where a team goes through a rough stretch and management/ownership want to shake things up. Contract situations make trades a lot more difficult to make, so they end up canning the coach/manager because it's the quickest and easiest means of shaking things up. All I'm saying is that if this ends up being another 90+ loss season, maybe both the Twins and Gardy would benefit from a change.
  14. one_eyed_jack
    ---The explanation is that Gardy-hating is emotion-based, not fact-based.
  15. one_eyed_jack
    I don't see any firings during the season. However, if this ship doesn't get turned around by season's end, I think we could (and should) see a mutual parting of ways in the offseason. I think Gardy is an excellent manager, and I've defended him for years against the irrational and silly rantings of the rabid "Gardy Sucks" wing of the fan base. However, sometimes when the same voice has been speaking for too long, guys just stop listening. Especially today's players, who tend to have pretty short attention spans. I have a hunch Gardy and the staff may start to feel like they're ready for a new challenge too. I'm sure they'd have no problem finding jobs elsewhere.
  16. one_eyed_jack
    "I’m not particularly fond of how Minnesota treats its sports stars. The Puckett-like love affair is rare. More often, we pick nits. Kevin Garnett doesn’t score enough, or isn’t clutch enough. Joe Mauer doesn’t hit for enough power or doesn’t show enough leadership. Fran Tarkenton can’t win the big one, Harmon Killebrew is too quiet, Rod Carew is self-absorbed … the list goes on and on." I think that first paragraph pretty much sums it up. I've lived in a number of pro sports markets. I've never seen a fan base as whiny and fixated on the negative as this one. Not once did I ever hear a Cubs fans throw a tantrum over the fact that Ryne Sandberg was never able to deliver a championship. Bruins fans not only loved Ray Bourque but fully understood and appreciated how great he was, even though he had to go elsewhere to hoist the cup. Had either of those guys played here, all we would have heard about them is how they were overpaid and never won anything.
  17. one_eyed_jack
    What this all comes down to is that this team has zero depth beyond it's preferred lineup of 9. Absolutely none. Debating the relative merits of Burroughs, Hughes, Butera, Clete, etc. is akin to picking out the best smelling turd in a steaming pile of crap. Not one of these guys should be allowed in an MLB park without buying a ticket like the rest of us. It's a pretty sad statement with where things are when you start looking at pulling Jose Lopez off the Cleveland scrap heap as an appealing move.
  18. one_eyed_jack
    Urgh. That's the 4th one-run loss in the last 6 games. All games that we were one timely hit, one good pitch, one lucky bounce or one blown call away from winning. But that's the difference between being 6-16 and being 10-12. Here's hoping we can find a way to start winning these games and maybe catch a few breaks here and there ourselves.
  19. one_eyed_jack
    Good question to which there is no easy answer., don't see great options at the moment. I don't buy the Liriano-as-closer idea. He has closer's stuff, but I'm not convinced he could ever develop a closer's mentality. But if he keeps getting shelled, he's going to have to be pulled from the rotation. I think Pavano and Marquis will be OK, at least good enough to eat up some innings without lettiing the game get out of hand. Tonight's start from Blackburn was an improvement, hopefully he and Hendriks can get better. Giving Diamond a shot may be the best short-term option. I assume the front office is keeping a close eye on the waiver wire, might be able to grab someone there worth taking a flyer on. You're probably not going to get much in a trade now but if the Twins are out of it as we approach the deadline, Pavano and Marquis should both be dangled. By then you'll have contenders looking for pitching help. They might not get you a great return, but at least there should be more options.
  20. one_eyed_jack
    I still don't get the fascination with this guy. It's a strange phemonenon in Twins Territory: every few years there is an infielder who convinces a good chunk of the fan base that he's the long-term answer at his position even though all evidence points to him being nothing more than a fringe MLB player. Terry Tiffee and Brian Buscher had their share of fan boys too.
  21. one_eyed_jack
    Not as bad as it could be with a 6-15 record. This is a weak division that shouldn't be that hard to at least hang in for a while. It's quite possible that nobody will run away with it, and it will be there for the taking for anyone who can catch fire down the stretch. The bats have come alive. The bullpen has been solid. Defensively we're not great, but we're far better than last year. If the starting rotation can get its act together in time for the stretch of the schedule where we play Detroit, Cleveland and the Mighty Whities in a couple of weeks, we could get ourselves right back in the mix. I'm not expecting a playoff spot, but it would at least be nice to see the Twins playing meaningful games this summer.
  22. one_eyed_jack
    All good points, FDG. I think a lot of fans tend to overrate and overestimate prospects; they are eternally convinced the solution to everything is to bring of a bunch of guys from AAA. Some of them even want to move every veteran off the team and basically make this Rochester West. I'm fine with giving young guys who have earned it a shot, but when you blow the whole thing to smithereens and go in full-scale rebuild mode, it can be hard to get out of. Look at Kansas City, they've been the team of the future for 10 years now.
  23. one_eyed_jack
    6 outs to go. I may tear what little hair I have left out if we find a way to blow this one. He's no ace, but if Marquis can give us starts like this on a regular basis, I'll be happy.
  24. one_eyed_jack
    I enjoy watching him play. He's crazy fast. And he definitely busts his rear out there. That said, being an exciting player doesn't always translate into being an effective player. He can be a terror on the basepaths, but needs to learn how to get on base more often. I'd like to see him get better at laying off close pitches and fouling off tough ones, which would allow him to extend more at-bats and take more walks. He can chase down balls in the gap that nobody else can get, but the tradeoff is that teams will take the extra base on his popgun arm all night long. Unforunately, the position that's the best logical fit for him is LF, and that's occupied by Willingham.
  25. one_eyed_jack
    No, it doesn't.
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