ewen21

A couple of weeks ago I watched sort of a highlight reel of Baldelli as a player. His stance and mechanics were eerily similar to Buxton's

I agree. STAR to me is if he can do what he did at the end of 2017 through an entire season. We are six weeks into the season. Can we wait and see where he is as we head into the dog days of summer? Last year he hit about what I weighed as a sophomore in high school. The stench of that is quickly subsiding, but can we pump the breaks on needing to label him STAR?

If he doesn't know how to bunt effectively yet then it's probably too late to push it on him now. It's a lost art and guys just don't make that part of their routine. It's been hard enough having him figure out how to hit and now that it looks like he might be there we are going to ask him to bunt? No way. Carlos Gomez felt the need to bunt under the Gardy regime and he was a complete basket case with that. I don't want Buxton thinking "should I bunt here?" No. Go up there thinking about a pitch and drive that thing hard. Would be nice to see him use the right/centerfield gap more but one step at a time. At least he has a few hits and well struck ones at that

Wayyyy too early to got on Rocco. Look at what Gable Kapler did in Philly last year and they were ROASTING him in April

My biggest takeaway are the doubles Buxton has hit, specifically the last one. He had two strikes on him and he SMOKED the ball Enough of this talk about having him bunt and beat the ball on the ground. Hit the hard and often.

Berrios has a few great games against Cleveland. Reminds me a little of that lefty from Veneuela

Doesn't mean they were able to execute a plan, doesn't mean they are right

I won't criticize the FO for not being aggressive trying to build a bullpen this year. They TRIED last year with some veteran signings and it just did not work out because bullpen arms are so streaky from year to year. I do not feel the need to criticize this aspect of the offseason because relievers to me are a crapshoot 90% of the time. That being said, what is wrong with the criticism here? The bullpen was not good last year and they did not take a whole lot of action. You said you don't criticize the FO. Is it your policy to just give them a pass? While I am not interested in this discussion I actually like the passion and I think good points have been made. It is good reading to me. What is the point of pouring cold water on the discussion? It's hot stove talk. Let if live and try not to let it irritate you so much.

I am sorry, but if he sufered the injury during some sort of raucous celebration (for a winter league WS) then that is sheer stupidity. I was on board with Miguel totally when I saw the pic of him and Rocco and was very complimentary of his turnaround. Call it an accident if you want, but when these "accidents" go on around him often enough at some point it ceases being a coincidence. That is about where I am. Kid needs to wise up. And I don't want to hear about "we were all 26 at one time" Right. We all were. But he is in a position of amazing privilege and with that comes certain responsibilities. That's all there is to it.

Not sure how much longer anyone can say "it's just bad luck" for Sano. It was just bad luck that he ran over that cop last winter. Just bad luck he was accused of something by a female reporter. Just bad luck now after getting cut during a winter balll championship celebration? Honestly? What kind of celebrations are the norm in winter ball? I thought it was for conditioning and working your game. A "championship" in winter ball doesn't require champagne and dancing. Not sure how exactly that injury occurred, but the sky is the limit. Sounds like a really odd injury that haopened in a raucous environmnet. Poor judgment at best.

The average salary for a baseball player in 1998 was 1,398,831 per year. In 2018 it was 4,250,000. That is nearly a 300% increase in salary for the average player over the last 20 years and yet there is talk of a strike looming? Please.....OK.....please

I try to amuse

Rock oh ball deli.

We signed free agent relievers last winter. We could have easily done the same thing and had the same lousy results. Relievers are generally a crapshoot. Very few of them are consistent year to year so I can't pretend to know who we need to get in the pen. I suppose we could have thrown money and Juerys Familia at guys like Andrew Miller and that would have made everyone happy, but how they perform is in 2019 is anyone's guess and some of the best relievers in the game in 2019 can be guys no one here would ever know to name. This is why I will leave the complaining about the pen to others. My focus is on our young position players and the rotation right now.

I don't understand all the consternation about the bullpen while our system has developed practically no starting pitching for over a dozen seasons until Berrios finally emerged. Isn't this a far bigger issue than us not raiding the reliever market this offseason? TO me it is. We rolled the dice trying to build our bullpen last season and some of the deals looked good at first and they turned out to be crap. Relievers are not a set commodity. THey are so up and freakin down it's ridiculous. See Brad Lidge. Relievers, for the most part, are failed starters. To carry on about getting veteran reliever X and Y seems like a waste of time when we can't develop pitching ourselves. Maybe I am not on this bandwagon to grouse about adding relievers is that I am not expecting too much out of this team. I want to see certain players develop and then if that happens I would like us to be more aggressive at the trade deadline. I know some posters hate this philosophy, but quite frankly, signing a Boxberger or some other ham and egger reliever isn't going to get me pumped and it won't turn us around. What is the solution? Dump most of the bullpen and replace them with new guys? I like the idea of Romero starting in the pen. I will hope Hildy and Reed can do better than they did last year. I am not going to go crazy over the pen. In 2002 we had Romero, Hawkins, Fiori (and Santana some of the time) all emerge to make for a solid pen. Very few relievers are to be counted on to perform at a consistent level year after year. I am far more worried about the rotation and everyone else should be as well

Hard to say Hildy or others like him need to "bounce back" when he only pitched 42 major league innings prior to last season

Yup. Lose.

No thank you. Why look bother analyzing. And when you say things like this: Fangraphs has never advocated Dozier to receive anything approaching $46 mil for a single year of his services What are you really saying about this methodology I need to look at more closely? To what end? If it doesn't serve too deal terms applicable to reality I cannot bother with it. Moreover, how can you use the Michael Brantley example over and over again to give it validity when you say what is in bold above? I will try to answer all your questions but you have ignored all of mine thus far Have a good day. Maybe we can pick this up next week. I have things do as I have an extended weekend and places to go

As great as Mookie Betts was last year are we going so insane as to believe he is worth $83 million for a 1 year deal in the open market?

You are isolating a detail of little consequence and ignoring the fact that I already acknowledged 20 million was Max's alleged value in the market. Why keep pursuing this?

FWIW, he would likely be on the sideline with Manny and Bryce waiting to get his money. Seven years for Max Kepler after last year? The Twins clearly like him and trust him. I can't see him getting that kind of security from an organization that didn't raise him. This contract is unique. We could benefit enormously from it, but I cannot agree with anyone who says he'd get 7 years in the open market. Not until these kinds of contracts for 25 year old guys who hit .224 the season prior become the norm.

I did clearly express this value assumes Max in the FA market so it is perplexing to me why you would feel the need to explain this to me And it is still the average salary. If you want to subtract out all players that are pre-free agent eligible you actually further my case

Player salaries resemble to me the way homes were priced in the mid-2000s. The way the stock market was as we moved toward Y2K. The writing has been on the wall for a while. These contracts just don't work and corrections happen. FanGraphs has a valuation model that needs to be adjusted because in no way does it reflect REALITY when it comes to what players get on the open market as free agents. This begs the question..... How much longer did player salaries need to increase at ridiculous rates? Average player salaries increased by over 100% from 2001 to 2015. Was this supposed to continue until the end of time?

I could care less about the methodology used to arrive at this absurdity. When they are telling me that Dozier "could be worth" 46,000,000 dollars in the open market for a one year deal I stop listening. It has nothing to do with reality no matter how clever and detailed it might be.

A right fielder averages about 2 putouts a game. They can go weeks without having an opportunity to make a great play in even then it isn't a guarantee it's a game changer. Defensive value among major league outfielders really is difficult to pin down. A great outfielder doesn't get to do that much more than an average one, whereas a great hitter has so so many more opportunities to shine. Defense is definitely important, but a single player rarely gets to change games with his glove and Max Kepler isn't that guy to me. I became increasingly concerned with his bat. A .224 average or whatever he hit last year isn't good from any angle. Kind of odd that he gets this contract after that kind of season, but whatever