Dave The Dastardly

I'd offer all the Twins "O"s; Polanco, Gallo, Celestino and Solano. for a talented catcher. A trade like that would also open up a few spots for deserving rookies.

Baffling. I guess we'll have to wait for the Pipeline Guru to descend from the mount and share his wisdom.

Interesting, but I find it confusing when you used different statistical categories to evaluate Yankee hitters; bWar for Judge, OPS+ for Rizzo, OBP for Torres for example, then went totally subjective when comparing Yankee hitters to Twins hitters. Regardless of methodology, I agree with your overall assumption. There is no reason, other than a self-constructed mental barrier in the minds of Twins players and coaches, for their continued embarrassment at the hands of the Evil Empire. But that's my totally data-deprived personal opinion. In other words, probably not worth much. On another matter, I find your comments concerning Donaldson being an "albatross" for the Yankees and the organization unable to find any other team willing to take him off the Yankees' hands telling. Sometimes the best trade a team can make isn't so much what the team "gained" but what they got rid of. Kudos to the FO for sticking the Evil Empire with Donaldson.

Super-utility equates to jack of all trades, master of none. Manager's job is to learn where each player plays at his best and leave him there. It's not a question of where he "can" play, but rather where he excels.

Fragility is not fixable. Nor is it predictable. So parking Buxton on the bench for scheduled "rest days" when he's feeling fine does nothing but lose one more game on the field for him, the team and fans. Play the guy when he's healthy and rest (repair) him when he's not and hope we can squeeze 100 games out of him between IL stays.

The boys down at Kelsey's passed the hat and raised $75 to buy out Carlsson. Guy doubled his money overnight. Shrewd. Wall Street's been calling, wants to hire him as a consultant.

Lee being forced to play 3rd with CC at short? How about the older guy with the bad wheel moving to 3rd to make room for the younger, healthier Lee?

I have a blindfold over one eye and rose-colored glasses on the the other. Ouch! Riding the rail can be painful.

What's those Gallo numbers mean in American?

The modern day average sports fan is into scoring. Instant gratification. Look at pro basketball, the basket's been at 10' since the average height of a player was around 6'. Now a 6' 8" player is called "Shorty", yet the basket is still at 10'. Why? More dunks, more scoring and traveling is something you do in the off-season. Pretty soon game scores will be up around 200 points and BB fans will be wetting their pants with excitement. Pro Football; old enough to remember when the Vikings with the Purple People Eaters and Fred Cox won games without scoring a touchdown? Boring! Now defensive backs can't even look at a receiver without drawing a penalty and footballs are flying through the air like artillery shells on the Eastern Front. Why? Higher scores. A 2-1 baseball game? Boring! The weak-minded need more excitement. So, juice the balls so they fly out of the park. Defensive skill? Counter-intuitive. Ability to hit home runs? Atta boy! The longer, the higher, the greater exit-velocity the better! Okay, go with the flow. Drop the Manfred Man and instead have each team send their top three homerun hitters up to the plate, set-up a pitching machine on the mound, set it at "meatball" speed and run a home-run derby. The team with the longest home run wins. I can hear the "oohs" and "aahs" already. Name it after me; "The Dirty Dastard". Has a certain ring to it... ring to it... WWE?

Jeez! Gordon has either played or been suggested to play at every spot on the diamond. Can we use him at manager, too? How 'bout Front Office?

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Golden Corral. Kind of sounds like a rich man's stockyard with the same intent; eat all you can and gain weight. Cows wind up being slaughtered, repeat human customers undergo the surgeon's knife and the investors reap the gold. First visited one in North Carolina; very good food. Even got to overhear the guy on the next table tell how his brother's wife tried to run him down, missed the husband but demolished his newly completed 6 foot high cedar fence. Said the husband was more upset about losing the fence then losing the wife. The teller was dead serious but me and the family couldn't help laughing. Good food and free entertainment. Hard to beat. We visited a Corral when we got back to Minnesota; food was horrible and nobody made us laugh. Gotta be a moral in there somewhere...

Gotta agree with your list. Though I'd go with Shane Bieber over Dylan; though Dylan will probably never Cease to amaze me. Sorry, couldn't resist.

We eat healthy at home and "sin" on the road. Still got clogged arteries from our last MacDonald's stop, a mortal sin committed back when Ryan was still in knickers. Went down in the Big Book as a mortal sin. The Road To Hell is paved with Big Macs.

The wife and I once dined at a TGI Fridays on a Saturday. Turned out we were a day late and a dollar short.

Desperate Twins fans clutching at straws. What's next, junior high pitchers from Kalamazoo?

As stated in the above title, I have undertaken this semi-scientific study for two reasons; both inadequate. Number One: as an experiment on publishing a chart on TD without losing the format I painstakingly created, and Number Two - no, not that number two, although a comparison could be made - as yet another way to kick around a few numbers, calculations, and problematic propositions in order to stave off complete insanity as the plunging thermometer frosts all windows, bars all doors and somehow mysteriously drains all liquor cabinets. Unless of course one had the perspicacity to adequately prepare for the end of the world. Justification... uh, justified, allow me to explain my line of thought, or as we like to say in the middle of January, catch my drift. A little winter humor there. Runs, you see, (no, not the runs that often originate from over imbibing, but the runs scored, or not, on the baseball diamond) determine winners and losers. You score more runs than the other guys you win. It therefore behooves (always like to use that word - sounds kind of... horsey) a manager to construct his lineup so as to maximize run-scoring opportunities. Now in the old days, I know, that's so last century, you constructed your lineup so batters that had a knack for getting on base batted before guys who had a knack for driving in said on-base guys. Sounds like your Aunt Helen; simple, but in truth (which if you can believe my wife, I often tend to stray from; "Yes dear, this is only my second drink") it is not as simple as it sounds. At least until I undertook this analysis. I have therefore attached a chart depicting the Twins top-ten RBI generators from the 2022 Fade Away Season. You will probably astutely note that the Top Ten RBI Chart only lists seven players. That is a deliberate "mistake". Since three of those Top Ten RBI guys from '22, like our chances of making the playoffs last year, have faded away and therefore are of little value in contriving 2023 batting line-ups, I have excluded them. The chart ranks the players by RBI; mostest on the topest, leastest on the bottomest, the latter not to be confused with bottomless, as in the depths Minnesota sports teams have plummeted. Column headings, I believe, should be self-explanatory except for the last; "RBI/ManOB%". I'm sure there's a stat somewhere that better categorizes this but basically it shows the percentage of RBI's delivered with runners on base without hitting a homerun. I debated naming it "Clutch Hit" but that would've been too easy. I know, I know, there's all sorts of factors that could go into these calculations but I'll leave that to the stat guys who either have more or less time to waste than I do and can better define it. Suffice it to say, according to my chart Miranda is "Mr. Clutch" as he is most likely to drive in a run with men on base. Polanco comes in 2nd and Gordon is 3rd "clutchiest". Surprisingly, Buxton comes in dead last. Though I would suspect that batting 1st or 2nd in the lineup, nobody on, and hitting a homerun accounts for that. But Jeffers coming in higher than Kepler and Correa? Holy Balls, Batman! Anyway, looking at the chart, how would you organize these seven in a lineup to maximize scoring opportunities? Quiz on Friday

TD Posters aren't reknown for their perspicacity. Just as all other sports prognosticators, TD Posters' opinions run the gamut from right on to somewhere out in left field, which is were I'd put Gordon as my starter. I think he's earned it. But then there's Rocco, whose predilections have managed to mystify all, as the joker in the deck. So if a majority of TD Posters leave Gordon out of the mix for lead-off, it only makes sense then that Gordon will be the manager's choice. Odd that I would then be on the same wavelength as Rocco... well, maybe the same wave length but at a slightly different frequency. Errrrk! That's me, turning the dial.

Rocco's going to go with Gordon.

Stick around. You will be amazed.

The fact that a pair of Charmin toilet paper rolls from the Front Office's Covid stash come free with a purchase of 3 of those 14-year old Dome Dogs wasn't mentioned. No toilet paper for a two-bagger as statistics say a spreadsheet and a bottle of Pepto-Dismal will suffice. The guys who go for four dogs take it in the shorts.

This well-written article makes a case for keeping Buxton packed in cotton for the first half of the season and not let him on the field until after the All-Popular game. That way he might still be around to help clinch a play-off spot on the road over the final months of the season. Or maybe give him Rocco Rest Days for all home games throughout the season and only play Buxton when the team is on the road, the hell with what Dorothy claimed. It's either one of those options or send a bodyguard out on the field with him if we want Buxton available for the play-offs. Just thinking out of the Box (one of my favorite taverns).

Interesting. I also shied away from those with fewer innings. Otherwise I might have scored Ryan higher. But I agree with your premise, we don't need more of the same quality.

Quick guess: 2,3,1,4,5,6 I'm into WHIPs, (don't get the wrong idea there) SO9 and ERA, not in any sort of priority.

The "bad knees" argument doesn't hold water. The Twins were just ecstatic about signing a "bad ankle" guy to a six-year contract for $260 million. Potential injuries are therefore not a factor. And given that the supply of "top of the rotation" pitchers out there doesn't meet demand I don't think we're going to have trade partners lining up at the door, unless some team has a "top of the rotation" pitcher with a bad shoulder or a tweaking elbow. We are very familiar with those sorts of acquisitions. Even if we could make a trade for a top pitcher, we'll soon be whining about not scoring runs and the "trade" fanatics will be arguing we need to trade one of our starting pitchers for somebody who can bat .300. I agree with MABB1959. Constant rebuild doesn't "build" a team. We've got a supposed minor league "pipeline". Use it. And I don't mean for trading away our best prospects.