glunn

I saw the highlight on the MLB channel and Tosoni did start walking towards the pitcher with an angry gleam in his eye, but the punching did not start until after the benches emptied. It's difficult to fault Tosoni, because it was obvious that the pitcher was trying to drill him.

Thanks for posting this. I am very happy to see Morneau, Mauer, Colabello and Deduno all playing well so far. If the U.S, can win tonight, then the game against Canada will be worth watching -- Mauer versus Morneau.

And Deduno looks good in a WBC start -- see here for highlights.

Looking at the highlights, it seems like he has a lot of potential. I am rooting for him to get a chance in the majors at some point this year.

So if I were to call your position "absolutely ridiculous, poorly thought out and insincere", you would not view this as a personal attack, or disrespectful? Levi, you are one of our most intelligent members and I appreciate your ability to articulately question the enforcement of the policy. Please reconsider what I wrote above and feel free to private message me to discuss this further. Or if you want to debate this publicly, let's do it in the sticky thread that states the policy. I do not agree that debates are essentially the same as feuds, and would happily debate this with you in the relevant thread.

This is a great post. I very much agree about Gibson -- better to let him get up to speed in Rochester and not tax his arm and his confidence by starting him in the majors. I wonder what's up with Deduno -- the natural movement on his pitches is exceptional and it seems to me that he could be amazing if he could just develop more control.

Believe it or not, he monitors spend considerable time discussing among themselves how best to minimize feuds and personal attacks while not impeding passionate debate. But let's be absolutely clear that you can be as forceful as you wish as long as you are attacking a wrong idea, without personally attacking another member. Example -- "I believe that Member X's position on Issue X is completely wrong,because ...." Then you can destroy the other poster's position point by point. This approach makes for interesting baseball reading, and leaves open the possibility that you may change people's minds. But if you refer to another poster's position as idiotic, then the possibility that he/she will be open to your point of view becomes nil, because you have suggested that he/she is an idiot. Even worse, the other poster will then be tempted to suggest that you are the idiot, then things often get out of hand. This is not about policing words -- it's about keeping the focus on baseball and avoiding feuds that distract from that focus. There are plenty of places on the internet where people can shout at each other. TD is a place where we can passionately disagree, but we battle using evidence and reasoning. Obviously, we had a situation in this thread where a poster was being irrational and it annoyed some folks. And for the most part, other members showed admirable restraint. But there were a couple of instances in which we sent out polite private messages in the hope of alerting members to our concerns. Some people may think of us as word police, but to the extent that such characterization is accurate, then we are the most tolerant police on the planet. We issue a few very polite warnings by way of private messages, and I have yet to encounter a situation where I have even considered threatening to ban someone. Moderating is not an easy job. Like basketball referees, we don't want to call fouls unless we feel that we have to. We don't want to slow down the game. Fortunately, we are blessed with great members. Violations have been few and far between. And the overall quality of the posts has been excellent. So please feel free to tell us how you think that we could do better, taking into account that no one paid for us to go to moderator school.

As fans, it's easy for us to perceive defects in drafting. If a team's top picks don't pan out, then it's easy to criticize the people handling the drafting. What seems far more opaque is a team's ability to develop that players who the team drafts. I don't know how to measure this, and I could be 100% wrong, but it seems to me that the Rays probably do a great job at developing pitchers.

I like the idea of the Twins starting the season with Hicks in center and Benson in right, if Parmelee is not ready. The pitchers could benefit from their defense and maybe the two rookies could feed on each other's success. I am going to miss watching Revere play defense, but having two fast rookies in the outfield could be fun to watch. Yes this would be a "tad" aggressive, but it seems to have a decent chance of success and not much downside if it fails.

I enjoyed the article and love Buxton's back story and his attitude.

I like your analysis, and would add that if Deduno could improve his control, he could be effective.

It seems to me that Hendriks needs an effective "out" pitch. If that can be his slider, then I think that he can succeed. Last year I watched him pitch in Anaheim against the Angels in the game where Weaver threw the no hitter. It seemed like the Angels quickly adapted to Hendriks and kept fouling off pitches until he gave them something they could drive. It seemed to me that if he had a decent slider, then he could do a better job keeping the batters off balance.

Great post. I feel a kinship with Cubs fans as well.

Please consider this a caution to all posters that the word "idiot" is highly charged, and personal attacks violate the TD policy. This thread has had some great debate between people who totally and passionately disagree. Such debate is an important part of TD. HOWEVER, please keep the debate respectful.

I shudder to think what you would post if you wanted to be negative.

If two or three of them can perform at a league average level and Diamond can come back and be at least 90% as good as last year, then I am hopeful that the Twins can win 70+ games this year.

And add Diamond when he is ready?

He was probably not aware of our policy about this.

Interesting reading here. I agree with Dave that Clement would be a nice story.

It seems to me that Brad must have put a lot of effort into this blog,and a few of the responses have shown little respect for that effort. Most of our members are not professional baseball writers, but we want to encourage people to be creative and put their ideas out there to be discussed. When another member is clearly trying his best to provide an interesting blog, please respect the effort that went into it and try to be constructive in your criticism. Personally, a lot of this blog exceeded my statistical vocabulary, but the parts that I did understand were very interesting to me, particularly the analysis about how it's not easy to acquire Gagne level middle infielders. I am grateful to Brad for his hard work and hope that he posts more soon.

Great article. Gil, you might want to move those cards to a safer location. The heat and cold of an attic might be lowering their quality.

I am all for making the most out of a bad situation, but as a fan I would like to see the best guy out there on opening day.

It looks like Pelfrey had a smooth start, but Burton got into trouble. I wish that I could get this on television.

This homer is a welcome sign that Morneau is healthy.

You deserve your own TV show my friend -- that was hilarious!