twinstalker

If you were a programmer of some kind, it would be awesome to get the box scores in there. Maybe something like this (Baseball America's Prospect Report), but just for the Twins: TEAM PLAYER, POS (that game) AB R H BI AVG Beloit Sano, Miguel 3B 4 1 2 2 .324 2B(3) HR(2) Ft Myers Michael, Levi SS 3 0 1 0 .273 2 BB and similar for pitching

I don't trust that the ownership has any clue as to how to go about doing the right thing. I basically agree with you, I just don't think it will help. And you should have written this Friday morning, because declaring the sky is falling after three losses is both easy and non-credible. Again, not that I disagree with you.

Most of these replies fit with what I was going to say, so I'll omit my Bullock for Diamond comment. Sure it looks bad now, but where was everyone when the trade was made? Oh! That's right! We all knew it was a stupid trade then. Which leads me to my point: The Twins have done way too many stupid things through the years to deserve to win anything. What really happened was they got lucky. They got lucky that a certain group of players (Koskie, AJP, Minky, Hunter) had the right stuff. That at the same time these guys were developing got lucky that tthree draft picks were MVP-caliber. Still they made great decisions on Mauer, Morneau, and then Santana in Rule V...but they got lucky. Most good teams get lucky like this, so it's not a denigration. They also had a great manager in Tom Kelly. When Kelly left, he had them ready to win. Add in the MVP-types, and you get a decade of success in a poor division. But besides getting lucky, an organization has to do smart things all along the way. Gardenhire was a consistently poor manager, Ryan consistently a poor GM, and Smith maybe the worst ever. Ryan has some redeeming qualities...almost exclusively in the scouting and development areas, so if he never makes a major league move, it's an optimization of his abilities. Let's face it. Everything lucky thing happened at the right time...when Cleveland went downhill, and Detroit was floundering, Chisox mediocre, KC just pure sucking. Now Detroit and KC will be strong for years, and the Twins don't have the players, the smarts, and certainly not the manager to really be able to compete on a consistent basis...there might be a lucky year in the next ten. I expect the football Gophers to compete better this decade than the Twins will.

I'm careful about evaluating the hitting of any one particular player after a few games, but the team as a whole? That's more telling. The one thing we now know for sure about Carroll is that he is extremely slow down the line. That's my speed. The Twins as a whole should have asked opposing pitchers to throw them breaking balls and changeups in spring training. Seeing them for the first time in the regular season just isn't fair.

I just couldn't wait to hear from Dick B. that the Twins ran into a pitching buzzsaw. But then Bert put it beautifully after today's game: "Great pitching beats great hitting every game."

This isn't a Gardenhire-only problem, we're just lucky enough to have a consistently horrible manager who, when he finally has bad teams, leaves us with no delusions as to whether the Twins might actually be good. Thank you, Ron, you make everything crystal clear.

I was impressed the majority of the balls dribbled past the pitcher, though I'll admit it was close.

Parmelee euphoria, I love it. Where solid rationale goes out the window. I won't go into the minor league numbers, which were extremely consistent and everyone knows (K rate high, hit rate pretty low). Parmelee was all along touted to be an eventual major leaguer. He's fulfilling that promise right now. But he's pretty much been projected to be a second division regular if everything goes his way. Justin Morneau was projected to be an all-star. To even put them in the same sentence, unless that sentence starts with "Due to Morneau's inability to play first base..." is blasphemy. Parmelee's upside, meaning if everything goes right (which they usually don't) is hitting like Cuddyer. Problem is, Cuddyer's numbers were not good, not first-division, for a 1st baseman. And make no mistake, it's highly unlikely Parmelee ever plays much OF.* In 2008 Denard Span completely "found it." In 2011 Trevor Plouffe had something click that hadn't shown itself before. And then in September Parmelee had a good month. Unfortunately, good Septembers happen to a lot of eventually mediocre players. He's followed that up with a very good spring training...again, not normally the basis for sound projections. So...here's my thought based on all the evidence: Most likely scenario is that Parmelee is a mediocre, below average 1B. However, we have no evidence that the Span-type light didn't come on. The Plouffe AAA sudden explosion. In other words, there's hope that something special clicked. I hope so, too. But realistically, Parmelee is going to be below average as soon as MLB pitchers discover how to pitch to him. Here's crossing our fingers. *Almost the only way Parmelee plays in the OF is if he's in the lineup with Morneau, Mauer, and Doumit, AND Mauer is at 1B. In other words, I don't think it's going to happen all that often.

A .900 by itself doesn't project to anything, really. I'm not interested enough to look up his numbers, but I would guess he has a high strikeout rate, among other negatives. I'd speculate the Phillies just didn't have room for him, didn't project him to ever hit enough MLB-wise, and put out a notice on the MLB Swap Board that they had a guy who was available for best offer. This looks strictly like a Rochester move, and if he's good enough to put up okay numbers at Rochester, the Twins are happy because they want Rochester to like them. Rochester stopped liking the Orioles because the Orioles were giving them the type of crap the Twins also have been giving them the last couple of years. That's an independent business and needs to survive, and it sucks to be dependent on a big league club that's not coming through for you.

Billy Bullock? Oh, that's right...

I can think of three off the top of my head...Baker, Mauer, Morneau. No three guys are more ready to celebrate a division win after already celebrating clinching a playoff spot. %2006%

Ideal Scenario: Wimmers will start 2012 back at Fort Myers. Assuming he has regained his control he should end the season in AA New Britain. I would say that's the realistic scenario. I wouldn't expect Wimmers to spend much time at A+. He's likely going to stay only until it warms up in New Britain. The hoped for scenario wuld be that he spends a couple months both places and ends up at Rochester.

If Revere were having a bad spring, I could see him getting some burn at AAA, but I pretty much beside myself that Willingham needing to play LF is going to decide who plays and who doesn't. If this is the case, it's another instance of crappy homework done by the organization. If this is all really just a way to say Parmelee >>>> Revere, then maybe it's okay, as long as Revere actually plays LF when he plays. I don't trust a thing this organization does or any decisions they make, from Terry Ryan to Wayne Krivsky to Ron Gardenhire to Deron Johnson. Sorry, mini-rant. Nice scouting on Terry Doyle.

Given that Terry Ryan is worried, I am worried. (Though I should point out that we rarely agree!)

Baseball America is seriously downtrending on Appel. They don't like his strikeout rate for a college pitcher...and isn't that what we're really looking for? OTOH, they're really high on Zimmers from USF. Just because someone once used "Verlander" in a sentence with "Appel" and "potential," I'm not convinced he's the guy. It does seem like the Twins are going to take a power pitcher, though. The safer (and also necessary due to one of the worst trades in Twins history) pick might be Mike Zunino, C, Florida.

I'm thinking it's the Giants 3Bman we picked up in the minor league phase of the rule V draft. Bucher? No-look. Edit: Hughes is a good guess, too. Thanks, Ben.