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I want to see Buxton's right hand. If the laceration is not severe then a band aid would have avoided that missed catch by Rosario.

I hope that our batters spent some time in the cage during the rain delay. We could use runs in the bottom of the 8th.

At least warm up one of them and see how his pitches look.

I am starting to worry. Someone needs to be warming up.

Agreed. And clearly he know more than I do. This illustrates how we fans can be completely wrong.

I respectfully disagree with Erv coming back out. He looked tired last inning.

I would like him to stay in for his defense. I suspect that he may be injured.

Today would be a great day for lots of insurance runs. The bullpen is gassed and it would be nice to deplete the Houston bullpen so that they are gassed tomorrow.

Great final pitch by Erv. WHEW.

Erv looks tired.

It appears that the Twins may now be leaning towards Wright -- http://m.mlb.com/news/article/232496282/jim-callis-mock-projection-2017-mlb-draft/

I would be interested to know how McKay, Wright and Gore pitched when they were seniors in high school in comparison with Greene. I also hope that the Twins are spending a huge amount of effort studying the pitching motions of all of these prospects, with input from top experts to project durability as best they can. I hope that they pick Greene, but only if they determine that his pitching motion is consistent with durability and that Greene seems likely to be able to develop better secondary pitches (and a fastball with better movement). Greene is raw, but that also means that he may benefit more from great coaching, because he has had less time to develop bad habits. I live in the Los Angeles area and have friends who have some remote association with Greene, including a friend whose son is on Greene's HS team. I am hearing is that Greene's father has been proactive in protecting Greene's arm against overuse. If this is true and the kid has as good a makeup as some people think, then I would pick him, but only with a commitment to expend the resources necessary to give him the best possible development. However, I am almost certainly missing a lot of important factors, because I am not spending the hundreds of hours of hard work that, hopefully, the Twins are spending on this. It's fun to discuss this on TD, but the FO has access to far more information than we do, including slow motion videos that can be shown to multiple experts, and detailed research regarding each prospect's character and attitude, including discussions with their coaches and teammates. We see only the part of the iceberg that is above the waterline. Hopefully the Twins are sending people under the iceberg and spending hundreds of person hours studying every angle as to all of these prospects. If I were Falvine, I would want to know everything that might possibly be relevant, and have my army of scouts and analysts working 12 hours per day on this.

Moderator note -- some people are trolling in this thread. I have deleted their posts and we will start issuing infraction points if this continues.

I hope that the Twins are opportunistic. If they can make a solid deal then they should make one, but I would hope that it's for a player who can be around for at least a few years.

I missed all of this, but am liking the score. As always, insurance runs would be appreciated.

Wow!

Covered calls are not a day trader strategy.

You might want to consider covered calls as a relatively safe way to hedge your risk, if you are willing to give up some upside.

For me, the problem here is defining "ace." You have referred to four theories, then added an additional qualification, which is "a player who has shown consistency for multiple seasons while being a top pitcher in all of baseball." It seems to me that if you drop the multiple seasons test, then Santana is easily an ace. I would also argue that Liriano was an ace for one season. As a long-suffering Twins fan, I am just glad that we can even argue that a Twins starter is an ace. It makes me happy to think that we will have an ace on the mound at least once in every 5 games, so you sadden me a little when you question Santana's ace status. I also wonder when bad pitching for a while makes a starter stop being an ace. Here is an article about that: http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/true-or-false-its-time-to-worry-about-these-four-struggling-mlb-ace-pitchers/ Perhaps the solution is to break this down into two categories -- current aces and long-term aces?

Out of my entire post you pick this to respond to? The fact remains that it made sense for him to identify with Puerto Rico and want to play for their team, and that MLB encouraged this. It also makes little sense for the Twins to "punish" a player who has a reputation for being a very hard worker at his craft.

This seems like speculation to me. I have seen nothing confirming that Berrios is being "punished", and it seems more plausible to me that he is being held down due to concerns about his development. If the FO felt that Berrios was ready, then I doubt that they would hold him back to punish him. Such punishment would hurt the Twins as much or more than it would hurt Berrios. I also see no reason for Berrios to apologize for wanting to play for his national team. As others have stated, the official position of MLB is to encourage such participation, and so long as he was doing his work I don't see why he needed to do all of it in Fort Meyers. Also, everything that I have read has suggested that Berrios is exceptionally diligent in his training and devotion to becoming a better player.

Nice writeup!

Moderator note -- please tone down the personal squabbling.

I love your optimism and hope that your dream comes true.

I would nominate this for the best game thread setup of all time.