ewen21

Getting Park and keeping Plouffe were two costly roster moves that had a very negative domino effect. I remember at about this time two years ago some of the boys invited Park over to watch the Bachelor as some kind of team bonding thing, They didn't take him fishing or bowling or for beer.....Nope. They had to show everyone they watched the Bachelor together. Hughes and Plouffe were very integral in that. Even Dozier was mixed up in it and he was AWFUL out of the gate that year I don't think Vargas would have been down to watch Bachelor. And, thus, according to Terry Ryan, was not very good of "chemistry". Too bad we lost Jason Bartlett's number. He was great for team chemistry

Who is going to be an "ace" I'm 2018?

I am so tired of hearing this term. What does it mean? The term is so loosely thrown around to the point where people think Yu Darvish or Chris Archer are considered "aces" Not in my books. No way. All I can say is take a look that the 2003 Marlins team that won it all. Look at that staff. Then go look at what that staff had accomplished before the 2003 season. Not a hint of an ace going into that season. Not one hint. And they win it all. IN NY, no less. It all depends on who gets hot and who has the stones at the right time. This franchise never had the balls, talent or luck to do anything in the post season during the Gardenhire years. An ace would not have been the panacea for those teams. We couldn't hit worth a damn. Go look up what we did in all the post season series during the Gardy years. We pretty much averaged less than three runs scored a game. I don't care who you have on the mound. You ain't winning jack with that kind of offensive production

I don't get the logic here. Dozier is absolved even if insists on batting leadoff? Of course, Paul makes out the card, but if Dozier insists on hitting leadoff he is giving Paul a conundrum. Dozier is supposed to be a leader and you would like a guy like him to be more pliable, "Sure skip. Wherever you feel I should go" He shouldn't make a big deal out of it.

I don't doubt that Molly has done some bootlicking for Dozier and Joe

I can totally see 20 home runs coming out of Jorge's bat. For some reason, I always saw him as having a little bit of Robinson Cano in him. Don't know how or why his options got burned up so quickly.

Trust me when I say it is actually BETTER than it used to be when they had Derek Sanderson

You ever heard the Bruins announcers?? YOu want to talk about the biggest homers ever

If I see Grossman DHing just once I might go postal

One reason I like the deal is that it sends a clear message to Mauer: "If you want to come back in 2019 you are going to need to earn it, big fella" Seemed a week ago Joe had the open invite to come back so long as he wanted to. That may have changed and I think that is a good thing.

We can look back and say great career, but these last four seasons we have not seen anything resembling "great". We watched him become one of the league leaders in taking strikes. It is maddening to watch him stand there and take strikes the way he does. He seems to do it more with runners in scoring position. Very frustrating to watch, considering he is supposed to be a "juggernaut". We have watched him get crippled by an opposite field shift. Not sure why he has ignored the right field corner. I would like to see him scorch some balls down the right field line. Is that something he can no longer do? Odd. I think any HOF aspirations are out the window at this point. His career took too much of a nosedive. He cannot be viewed as a catcher any longer. We can't line him up against Berra, Piazza, Carter, Bench, etc....those guys caught their who career. Mauer has spent too much time away from the position and can no longer have that chip in the HOF lottery. It is what it is. As much as we might want to see him in the HOF we don't dictate the process Finally, our market is like 3% of the league. What we think here is all but irrelevant with regards to the HOF. I personally feel he would need to have a two or three year renaissance. The HOF is for guys who have a track record of durability. As an offensive player, you have to put up the numbers. Joe doesn't have the power numbers so he really needs a high hit total That is all I have to say about Joe Mauer and the HOF. I really do not care about the Hall

I get what you are saying and I am not making excuses, but the bats didn't give us a chance either. Johan needed to shut the Yankees out for us to win our last playoff game. We only scored two runs that game. As big an issue has been the pen, in my opinion. I guess I REALLY want to see us raise our own pitchers for once. It has been frustrating watching the litany of starting pitcher FA signings we have made. SOmeone like Cobb or Lynn would be a couple of clicks above the Ponsons, Marquis, Corrieas, etc.....etc....we have signed in the past.

The term "ace" in baseball doesn't have a definition, but I define an ace as a guy who can take the ball and give you seven or eight solid innings a whole bunch of times. An ace tends to take you to the set up guy then the closer quite often, so a true ace, in my opinion, is rare. Some guys have good stuff, but labor a lot. That isn't an ace to me.

I get it, but we have not hit in the postseason 2010 7 runs in 3 games 2009 7 runs in 3 games 2006 7 runs in 3 games Those are the facts, ugly as they are. Ace or not, we ain't winning if we don't do some hitting in these pressure games and the fact is we have not. Scoring just over 2 runs a game isn't winning you anything. YES, it would be nice to have an "elite pitcher" but can we for once raise some decent starting pitching? Other organizations do it and those tend to be the teams that go places.

"An ace" pitches every five days. There are only about five or six true aces in the league and Darvish sure as heck isn't one of them. Neither is Archer and I don't think Arrietta is now. He said a "balanced rotation" I would rather have that than an ace and a couple of question marks at the bottom of the rotation. I believe that is what he meant.

I wonder if he's gotten an offer from a Japanese organization and is just going to say CYA!

I would love nothing more than to do that. Thank you for not insulting me

Yes, he is fast and that is a fact. His OPS is still under .600 (also a fact) Let's hope he continues to hit. Let's hope he is figuring it out with the bat, otherwise his speed is only a novelty. Hate to take this slant on it, but we have seen a number of "Byron Buxton is fast" articles. I want to see a "Byron Buxton can HIT" article someday.

He deserved the criticism for being an awful hitter for almost 700 at bats. I will not apologize for the criticisms I made a little over a week ago. Nor should anyone else. He has been one of the worst hitters in the major leagues over the last three seasons. That is not a take. It is a fact and it isn't mean spirited or wrong to point it out

The common rebuttal I have been given for sending him back to AAA is, "he won't learn anything down there" Oh really? Like he's learning anything up here? One thing anyone should notice with Buxton if you watch his game and listen to his quotes on hitting is that he is not confident and he has literally no though process behind his at bats. He also has tinkered and messed with mechanics over and over. Currently we have a player who is deserving of a promotion even though his name doesn't have the cache Buxton does. What are we really trying to do here? Can we at some point as fans admit that he just is not ready to step into a major league batter's box? I will admit I was part of a large crew of folks who thought it was best to call him up in 2015 even though he was rushed. I felt that way at the time because I hoped he would show flashes and that he would fill in bad spots with more flashes of goodness until he eventually became solid. Well, it's now three shots he has had and he is not even close. In my opinion, he has to go down. NOW. In the name of his development AND accountability this cannot go on any longer. The team has surprised us this year and we are near the top of the division in July. Why not send him down and call up Granite? Too "kneejerk"?? Please. Maybe Granite can prove he belongs and now we have another outfielder to consider. It's best to set up some competition. I don't think it is a good thing to give one guy special treatment (coddling) it is starting to become that with Buxton. Send him down like you would any other player and hopefully he goes to Rochester and picks up the pace. You cannot let a guy experience this much failure and pretend it won't have long term implications on the mental part of his game. You also cannot give one guy endless rope while another deserving player stays down. It is not a good thing for an organization, Most of all, confidence seems to be an issue with Buxton. The mental part of the game is something that can prevent a guy from becoming a major leaguer and he isn't going to get it by continually failing at the major league level.

Buxton has 16 defensive runs saved this year, but he has just 32 runs produced this year with his offense and that is flat out terrible. I am not saying defense does not matter. It certainly does. However, compared to pitching and offense defense is a distant third

This. So this. He is a liability as far as I am concerned. Yeah, yeah....I know he is fast and I know he is a good center fielder, but as much as people keep saying his defense makes him worth it that simply is not the case. No way is he saving as many runs as his bat subtracts. He has a WAR (according to fangraphs) of 0.2 and that is terrible. We are almost in Nick Punto 2007 territory where you have people looking at the sizzle (those diving catches) without even looking for the steak. And you are right. This is in no way on any coach. At some point, this comes down to the player and that point is now. He's gotten a free pass to be a terrible hitter and people are providing reinforcement for him not to fret much about it. This notion that so long as he is fast and covers a lot of ground in the field and "the hitting will come" really is beginning to become a problem. People I know and respect think he needs to spend the rest of the year up here even if he doesn't get another hit. I'm so against that school of thought it isn't even funny. If we are trying to build a culture that applies accountability and gives players their place based on merit, you can't do that. No way, no how. It costs the team games and it costs the player mentally. It holds back players who are deserving. It isn't fair and it isn't necessarily the right way to develop THIS PLAYER. Buxton simply is not mentally ready to step into a major league batters box. Still! We are supposed to overlook that? I understand his talents and athleticism allows him more of a leash, but this is starting to become absurd.

Brant Alyea and Chris Colabello were all world for a little over a month. I'm concerned about Buxton.

Pretty much this. We as Twins are grossly overrating Dozier and have not accepted that the market for second baseman is not wide open. The Dodgers weren't sweating us at all. They found a solution in Forsythe and will probably make more moves to improve their club. Our guys? They seemed stuck on this one to the point where they couldn't do anything else. They could not come up with a single trade this winter? Hard to explain that one away.

That was supposed to show us that those guys were leaders. The favored veterans taking in the new guy The culture needs to change.