whydidnt

If I interpret correctly, he was ranking systems on talent that will help in the near term, so guys in the upper minors primarily. When you consider the dearth of pitching talent at the upper levels of the Twins system, 7 sounds like a pretty good number to me.

Just to add to the whole bit about Free Agents saying one thing and then doing another for money, years, etc... Anyone remember Greg Jennings saying the primary factor for picking a new team last off season? He said he wanted to go to a team with a good Quarterback. Somehow he ended up with the Vikings. I guess he just is a poor judge of QB talent, the big contract had nothing to do with it.

Have to agree that the proposed rotation is still pretty awful. How about the Twins sign all of Santana/Garza/Tanaka, forget about wasting 5+Mil on Pelfrey and then let the rest the guys you mentioned battle for the 4-5 spots. That would at least have the potential to be a decent rotation. There really isn't a financial reason the Twins couldn't afford to sign all these guys, and they would have instant credibility, and they all are young enough that they could still be around in 2015-16 when the minor league bats hopefully start producing a the Major League level.

And last year Grienke said it was all about money. Different guys have different priorities. The Twins may have to overspend to lure good players, but they have the budget to do so. Sometimes you have to take the loss leader approach to get good players.

I think the one thing we can say about both the Cardinals and A's is that they aren't afraid to move "prospects" or supplement their talent with Free Agents. I would say the Twins under Terry Ryan have an extreme aversion to both. Certainly not the only way to be successful, but I fear the Twins have fallen too in love with themselves and their philosophy and aren't willing to try new approaches. It seems to me that after three straight awful seasons, you might be willing to try a new approach, yet we just hear Ryan saying they are going to keep doing what they've been doing.

I like to think that perhaps Gardy was a good manager and still could be, but for whatever reason, he is not currently pushing the right buttons and his teams have been terrible for 3 straight years. IMO, Gary has never been a great tactical manager, but he had a track record of getting results out of guys. It seems he isn't doing that as well with the current crop of Twins. I don't think he is fully to blame for their results of the last 3 years, but I do think other managers may have been able to get a few more wins, especially in the 2nd half of the season, as it seems the Twins have completely imploded down the stretch in each of our lousy years under him. 3 straight horrible years is enough for me to say it's time to try a different approach. Really, it can't get any worse can it?

Things have been going so good with the Twins over the last few years, why wouldn't they want to maintain the status quo? Let's keep doing what we've been doing and hope for different results appears to by Ryan's plan for the Twins.

Agreed. It's even more depressing when you consider that 2014 looks lost as well, and the front office appears content to pocket money rather than try to improve.

FanGraphs published an article today that discussed the Twins historically low starting pitcher strikeout rate (spoiler-- it's the worst ever, when adjusted for the era). Anyway, I had to steal and share this fun with numbers thought posted in the comments by Ian R: Fun fact: Yu Darvish has as many starts with 14 or more strikeouts as the entire Twins rotation has starts with 7 strikeouts.

Well I guess even an old dog can learn something new now and then.

I don't think that this is exactly right. He has hit 3 HRs during that stretch, aren't those part of the BABIP calculation?

Well, I appreciate the time you spent looking at this, however, looking at 1 year out of 40 years of free agency is probably too small sample size to draw any meaningful conclusions from. I haven't seen any studies, so perhaps I'm off but it seems to me that having a higher payroll doesn't guarantee a spot in the playoffs or even a winning team, but it does greatly increase your chances. That's why teams like the Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers, etc. always seem to be contending, while teams such as the Twins, A's Rays, etc. have a few good years and then don't. Finally, as it relates to Free Agents and the Twins this last off-season. The Twins had money to spend, it wasn't as if by signing a big free agent, they would have gone over budget. Even if it didn't mean the Twins make the playoffs, it still would have made them a better more competitive team. As a fan that's what I'm asking for --That the Twins use every resource they have available to put a competitive team on the field. They did NOT do that last off season.

A couple of late thoughts to this thread. I have to give Ryan a solid D+ at this point. Yes the minors are better, but that was inevitable considering the draft picks and the fact we gave up two major league players. No, he gets a a D+ because he has shown a complete lack of ability to judge/build a quality Major league staff. Before the 2012 season, he said Starting Pitching was a strength of the team, and we all know how that worked out. Last off-season we heard Starting Pitching was the #1 priority and yet, 1/2 way through the season we are watching the same old junk ballers we have seen over the last few years. I hate to see what happens to the staff when it's not a priority to improve. The GM's job should be to field the best team as possible, not save as much money as as possbile, which is how he runs the team. There is no evidence that Twins ownership will put any savings in 2013 into a piggy bank for use in 2014 or years later. They just never have done that, always setting the payroll as a the same percentage of revenue. Not spending money on quality pitchers/middle infielders, etc. is why this team is and has been lousy for 3 straight years, at some point the people running the team have to address the issue with more than lip service. I get being excited about the minor league system, but frankly it doesn't seem to me there is much help for the SP on the way. May and Meyer have some potential, but it's almost a guarantee that one of them doesn't make it or washes out to the bullpen. Otherwise, there just aren't any guys in AA or AAA to really get excited about. If you think the Twins are going to compete with Sano, Buxton, etc. in 2015, you must think they are going to win a lot of 8-6 games because their just isn't enough here to build a competitive pitching staff. They are going to have to supplement what they have and I have serious doubts about Ryan's ability or willingness to do that. He is philosophically opposed to spending big $ on pitchers -- and for that he gets a D+.

The Twins have 84 fewer K's than the 29th Ranked team, the Rockies. The Rockies have 83 fewer strikeouts than the 12th ranked team, the Dodgers. But don't worry it's not an organizational philosophy, the Twins just makes sure to bring in pitchers that don't have a history of striking guys out. Good thing Ryan was focused on improving the pitching this off-season, think how these numbers would look if he had just ignored it.

I think this all comes down to an organizational philosophy and as usual the Twins take the most conservative, or safe approach. I think many of us look at guys like Benson or Robertson and figure that although they are worse today than many of the guys mentioned, they both had/have the physical gifts to be better than the players kept. For me, since all of these guys are fungible I would naturally keep the ones that have the highest upside, knowing full well that none of them will probably ever make it. The team is well below .500, the starting pitching is a wreck, so there isn't really any reason to worry about a contribution from Thomas, Butera, Richardson, Colabello, etc. this year. Why not drop one of them since none of them have any remote upside-- none of them will matter over the next couple of years when we hope the team improves. If there's just a 5% chance that Benson figures things out and regains what he showed in 2011, he's a guy that "could" help. For me that's really the only reason I don't agree with the moves. I don't think Benson is going to be "that guy", but do think he has a more realistic shot at that than any of the flotsam kept instead of him. Why not gamble on someone like him over guys that really don't have any upside, especially when the team isn't going anywhere?

It's encouraging that they are at least competitive against lousy teams this year. That is at least an improvement. I had low expectations for the pitching this year, and they've lived up to my expectations. What's been surprising is how mediocre the hitting has been. I expected more out of the lineup, so to be on pace for 70+ wins is probably better than we deserve at this point.

I don't really think Robertson had much of a future so, it's not really a big deal. Does anyone here think that Thomas had suitors lined up to grab him if the Twins didn't promote him? I find that difficult to believe with his track record. He's too old to be a prospect and we've seen enough of him at the ML level to know he's pretty replaceable. This is one of those moves that I don't really understand, because I don't see how Thomas helps the team, now or in the future.

You hit the nail on the head. I like to see the Twins score as much as the next guy. But, if you're going to build your staff around pitch to contact types, then you probably should make sure the gloves are up to it. If they had just a league average staff in terms of balls in play, though, putting a guy like Willingham in left isn't that damaging. You can afford to have guys in left or 1B that aren't great with the glove..just not when every ball is scorched to the field.

Well, he's given up 6 ERs in each of his last two starts, but before that I agree he was doing about what was expected. Look at the K's over the last 5 starts (in order) though: 5,4,3,2,0,1 - notice a pattern? Either he's got an injury we aren't hearing about or something else is going on with how he's pitching. If my memory is correct he was the worst LH starter in baseball last year when it comes to K/9 and he's a full strikeout+/9 worse this year. I do agree last year was better than most of us expected, but by appearances he's going backwards - isn't he young enough were he should at least be stable or even improve slightly? Is it all on him? Is there an injury? Is Anderson beating him over missing on some pitches so he groves one every now and then? It must be one of the above, and it seems like every starter the Twins runs out there this year has the same problem. To my original point - Is Ryan going to blame himself or make Anderson the scapegoat? Someone is going to have to take responsibility, aren't they?

None of us really know and I really don't think Anderson has much to work with, but... Diamond and Worley are both doing MUCH worse than expected, Pelfrey has just been plain bad. I'd argue that Corriea is doing just what was expected, his peripherals are all very close to his career average - except he's walking 1 less per inning (made up by 1 more hit/inning) and he's Striking out WAY fewer - 1.3 per inning than last year. I'd say he's been lucky that more of the guys that he's let on base haven't scored - and his stats bring me back to Anderson. Why are his walks and K's depressed this year? Is that Anderson's influence? Don't know, but based upon the track record it wouldn't surprise me. The common thread among all Twins starters this year is the K/9 rate being worse than at any point in their careers. Either they are being coached to pitch to contact OR Ryan and his staff did an awful job identifying how these guys would pitch coming off of injuries. Either way, someone is responsible and it's time for the Twins to TRY to fix what is broken. As far as guys not responding to Andy, isn't it his job to get the most out of players and to figure out how to get them to respond? How many guys need to not respond before you have to look a the coach?

Well, we should be careful what we wish for. I'm not a huge fan of the Pohlads, but we could always end up with someone like Loria who looks at the Marlins as his own personal piggy bank. There's no guarantee any new owner will be a big enough fan to commit more of the revenue to the team.

According to an article in the Strib about the Vikings Stadium its: In the case of Target Field, the public would get 18 percent of the overall sale price initially. But that amount drops by increments of 1.8 percent annually and reaches zero in 10 years. Link-- Stadium plan gives public less in Vikings? sale compared to Twins? | StarTribune.com No details listed, so I don't know if we are already in year 3 or if the 10 year clock started after the stadium opened.

We are approaching the end of May and it seems like every starter on the staff has gotten progressively worse as the year has gone on. Worley's start today is just the icing on the cake. We've had terrible pitching the last 2 years, and now this year is more of the same. Ryan brought in the guys he and his scouts thought were the best for the team, right? So who takes the fall? If we are to believe Ryan, he recognized there was a problem last year and upgraded in the off-season, so it' obviously not his fault. Seems like now is the time he tell's Anderson it's no longer working here and we need to go another direction. Either that or he has to admit he was wrong and should have been more aggressive about bringing in more options to start for us. At some point, someone, somewhere, in this organization has to own responsibility for how awful the starting staff is. Who is that person, and when are we going see a real effort to fix the issue?

I keep waiting to hear that Worley has a bum arm or something. There has to be some sort of explanation for how awful he's been this year, doesn't there? I mean even if you account for the change in leagues, it doesn't mean he'd be this bad. Hopefully he can get straightened out by the staff at AAA.

Just another example of how the current Twins staff/management still uses the "eye test" over statistics. Heck, these aren't even advanced statistics.