Squirrel

Being critical is different than being negative. Twins fans have a lot to critical of, imo, and should be allowed to express themselves, including owners and other contributing writers. There really has been little name calling or disrespect thrown at one another just a lot of critical disappointment which I think is deserved at this point. And maybe there is some lack of patience in some of this, but sheesh, we've been patient for how many years now? I guess I don't blame posters if they can't wait until spring to be disappointed. As glunn said ... there isn't anything to infract. And if there is little to infract, I don't think we need to go looking for it. If we are going to moderate to make posters be 'happy' and 'positive', then we've missed the boat on moderation. My wanting to be done with all of this is a direct correlation to the team itself. I don't want to moderate a website when I don't really care much about why the website exists ... to talk about the Twins. Fix the Twins and it's much easier to discern truly negative and whatever, from critical. Unfortunately, the Twins are not going to be fixed soon. They aren't going to be better than last year ... even with or without positional flexibility or business know-how. Not sure we need more moderators. I'll leave that up to what others here think, including owners. And I don't think Doc Bauer should be held up as a shining example of the type of poster that we want others to be like. I honestly can't stand his posts and often skip over them as tl;dnr and a tad predictable and boring, but that is purely an individual preference.

I think both.

They aren’t planning for the future. They aren’t getting the best out there. Didn’t the FO themselves say that last year was a mistake having too many one year contracts on the team, that it made for a very noncohesive clubhouse? It’s a ‘We’re standing pat’ kind of move. This is not improvement. When there are better options out there, that we could have for more than a year, and we’re not making those moves, speaks volumes to me. It’s half-assed, imo.

Yes. Unless you’ve already determined you aren’t going to compete and are looking for potential bounce-back players to sell at the deadline.

Not only that, there’s a very real case of voter fraud being investigated in NC that could result in a special election.

That’s awesome news, Ben! Congrats!

Hah ... I literally just read that on FB, posted by none other than Mike Sixel.

We do have term limits already ... 2 yrs for House and 6 for Senate. It is up to people voting to vote people out. Keep the president at 2 terms and done, but I don't see a need for the rest. What needs to happen is re-educating voters that their votes mean something and to do their due diligence. This isn't about 'my side winning' at all costs, and all's fair to get there ... it's about voting and fairness and progress of our nation. Of course, getting the corporate and billionaire money out of politics would help, too. We also need to put forth better candidates, imo, but I do see some energizing on that front as we see how these midterms went; and on that front I am hopeful. If we want to talk term limits, I'd be for mandatory retirement for all house reps and senators. If they want to keep working, then go back to their private sector lives. But I'd think at age 70, that's enough. I also want to institute an upper age boundary on president, too. If you have to be 35 yrs old to be president, then there should be a limit to the upper realm, too. I mean, isn't 'You're too young' a form of ageism, too? But I don't want to limit someone, republican or democrat, to a specific number of years in office if they are actually accomplishing something. But, all of this is found under 'election reforms' ... doubtful we see any of that. But maybe, slowly, we'll start turning the tide.

I know fans who used to go to a lot of games completely skip the season last year. Why? Because why go? And I'm there, too. At this point I'm not even excited to go to ST ... even when I'm already going to be in Fort Myers anyway. Why bother? To me that doesn't seem to be a way to run a business ... run off a big chunk of your revenue source.

I find this disgusting. Wisconsin is one of these. Ugh. Not that our democracy was working all that well to begin with, but let's just throw it out all together now.

First of all, you are once again injecting your same old post, as you do whenever someone suggests aggressiveness, that they need a lesson in business without relating it to anything in this thread let alone anything with the Twins. You’ve been told to stop doing that. If you have something specific to add about the Twins or this thread, great. But don’t take it down the path of generalities of ‘You don’t know how businesses works.’ Because it’s my post, I’m not going to hide yours or assess a point, but if it had been anyone else’s, I would have. Secondly, I haven’t really laid out a plan, but this team has a lot of flexibility to go big. I’m not talking about a $200million payroll here, but they could spend equal to what they did last year and it would still be aggressive because they have that much flexibility. It’s disappointing for me to hear they didn’t even try for Thor, that they won’t be in on Machado (even though I know he probably wouldn’t have signed here anyway), and that they picked up Cron (ugh) as that shows me once again they have no serious plans to compete and I think they are missing an opportunity. Further, Pohlad seems to be laying out the excuse that it’s Sano’s and Buxton’s fault. Great way to say you don’t believe in them to put anyone really good around them and just go with average or less than average. Good way to lose your biggest source of revenue ... the fans ... and that can’t be smart, either. And good way to set in motion the possibility of two great players walking at the first opportunity. Maybe we’ll be happy with that, but there is still a very reasonable chance we won’t. But, the off season isn’t over, so I’ll give them leeway to see what we have in March, but I’m not holding my breath. Third, you don’t need to manage manage my disappointment by trying to dash my hopes. I’m an older adult and know how hope and disappointment work. However, I do happen to think that ‘hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.’ Calculated risk ... great way to put it. Thanks, Han Joelo.

Okay ... enough, all of you. Let’s refrain from the overly political innuendos in this thread. This is a thread to follow a ‘game’ we play and to acknowledge death. That’s it. Make your political comments in the threads provided below.

Thanks for alerting me ... I took my like away.

Because it was posted in the Non-tendered tracker article thread instead. http://twinsdaily.com/topic/31835-article-non-tender-tracker-avisail-schoop-among-those-to-become-free-agents/?do=findComment&comment=807305

I think they should still be aggressive even with the ifs that are Sano and Buxton. When will be the next time they will have this flexibility in payroll? I say take the bet that Sano and Buxton will come through and add big. Add like they are expecting them to. If they don’t come through we will be better off because we added something. If we don’t add and they don’t come through, we will be lucky to even match our wins of this last season. But if they do come through and we haven’t added, that will be another wasted season. There is no way to know either way, so take the leap of faith.

Yeah, just like Darvish ... woo hoo

And let’s hope we get a few of them ...

I'm not sure you are getting what I'm saying ... I'm saying we can and absolutely need to do better. It's not about either/or with Cron or Austin, it's not about how we can roster them both, it's not even about if either or both provide any kind of positional flexibility ... NEITHER provides enough improvement. I'll wait to see where we are at the end of March, but if this is an example of the moves we are to see this winter, (and I've got to believe better is coming, but also won't hold my breath) and nothing significantly better, the very small increment of improvement this move might make will make little to no difference to where we are now. You might say we are moving in the right direction ... I'm saying that movement isn't enough to matter right direction or not. Maybe we've moved enough so we aren't standing right ON the hornets' nest, but we still need to move significantly farther and away from it not to get stung.

But I pick you first to do play by play action for Twins games!

That's a good take ... and I hope that's the case. It's difficult to move away from 'In the past ...'

Lol ... https://www.facebook.com/TheGoodLordAbove/photos/a.608095492611491/2772338156187203/?type=3&theater

Heh, that doesn't surprise me ... it would have surprised me if he wasn't the one who homered on a pitch farthest off the plate. It wouldn't surprise me either if you looked at all his homeruns and the he would be the one who hit the most homeruns off the most different pitches.

Oh, and I want them to take the whole damn lot of them down with him ... the entire Trump family, Pence, McConnell and Ryan ... although to do that would probably cause too big of a rift that may do more harm than good ... but ... we aren't talking a simple crime here ... we are talking TRAITOROUS CRIMES.

I think in the Clinton case he became more popular because of what he lied about. After YEARS and millions of taxpayer dollars for not finding anything else to impeach him over. And I still wonder if there was some degree of planning around it knowing his, ahem, 'habits.' (But I still agree he needed his slap, even if it was a trap set for him.) However, I agree ... we need to make sure the ducks are there and in a row before doing that ... and tread very carefully. But I think you are already seeing the independents and socially-conscious and educated conservatives jumping ship. That was the trend in this election ... the conservative, yet aware and educated, suburbs turned blue, and if not completely blue, certainly no longer red.

But this is my issue ... is this even an improvement, even if incrementally small? I think it's debatable and no way to know. I also don't think an incrementally small improvement is the improvement the Twins need. An incremental improvement, imo, is not an improvement in the Twins' case. In this game increments might make the difference between top teams edging out the other, but a small incremental improvement does not make the difference for the Twins getting to the top. Even if it might nudge the needle, it's not enough. We don't need a needle nudger, we need needle pushers.