ewen21

Let me apologize for being a naysayer. This was intended to be a fun thread and it was a great breakdown from Captain...... Perhaps I am becoming the curmudgeon I never wanted to be

Let me respond to this first: I am sorry, but this is far too fiscally irresponsible. How do the Minnesota Twins operate like this? Forget any other question you want to ask me since this is your proposal. I will answer your questions after you respond to this. First, please explain how it is remotely viable for this team to pay a single player 40% of its payroll for the next eight years--specifically a player who both pitches and plays full time. I get that he is unique and currently he is awesome, but no way he maintains this level of play for more than a couple of years. Historically, no one has ever done what he is doing right now. I get that a lot of people love Ohtani here, but he's not coming here for less money to not play on a west coast team.

I respect your opinion. I just would have liked to see him get himself out of that inning because he was cruising

This makes no sense. How many pitches had he thrown? What are we saving him for? Maddening!

Eduoard slices, dices....even makes Julien fries (I am dating myself there)

This is the perfect example of LEAVE HIM IN So long as he is moving along let him go!

Myyyy ,,,,,,,a lot of weather we've been having

No, the Twins should not get Ohtani. What he is doing is not sustainable and it would be highly risky to sign him or any other player to such a contract. We'd be paying him for what he did in Anaheim, which is not realistic to expect beyond at best a couple of more years. I know he's beloved on this page, but as impressive as he is, I do not think he would be a good signing for any team if he gets when we are hearing. I am far more interested in raising our own starting pitching. It would be nice to have cost controlled young arms for a change and it appears we finally have some of that.

When he quit in 2007 he pretty much admitted the game had passed him by. Then he came back! You are correct about Souhan. We probably care a whole lot more about this team than he does. I will never understand how some complain about fans who criticize the team. If you don’t have the stomach for fans who criticize then toughen up. I live in NY state. Souhan ought spend a month someplace in NY or somewhere in New England to get perspective. The players play for the fan and as far as fans go Twins fans are polite and loyal! Without a loyal fan base the team gets contracted. Does he not remember those days? Twins fans are mild in that they dish out. Let a guy like Buxton play in NY, Chicago, Boston, or Philadelphia. I would understand an article like this if Twins fans booed the team or ranted daily on the radio like some fans in the markets I mentioned do. The criticism is limited to outposts on the internet and it is pretty tame if you ask me. I’m probably on the extreme end so he must be talking about me!

This article reads like “how dare you criticize this team you snotty person” I am not offended but don’t appreciate it as a fan because he is talking about fans criticizing this team. It’s basically a piece saying that Twins fans can’t make valid criticisms. Souhan is no better than fans here he’d pass off as rubes. There is a disconnect in the media that covers this team. They are not asking the right questions and they are putting their energy in the wrong places. We’ve had this Buxton situation carry on for months without anything concrete about his knee. If they are doing their jobs they are pressing to Twins on this one. This is allowed to go on because our press corps is weak. How about that? How about they start asking the tough questions and stop going for the low hanging fruit. Who does this team play for if they don’t play for the fans? They don’t have a career without fans.

All this talk about Gallo. He is a one year rental and we all pretty much agree that he needed to be DFA'd weeks ago. How about Buxton? https://www.startribune.com/byron-buxton-likely-out-of-the-twins-lineup-until-september-rocco-baldelli/600297521/ Evidently, his return is "not imminent" and we have five more years of this! By all means....slam Gallo. He is dreadful. HOWEVER, we need to have a conversation about Buxton and this should not be deemed what Jim Souhan called "cork sniffing" fans being snooty. This guy was supposed to be a core player

You are not being ignorant, but this team isn't going to bunt its way to the WS. Sadly, it is a lost art. I can recall Dave Kingman being a good bunter simply using the element of surprise and his above average speed. Correa likely cannot lay down a decent bunt in live action. This kind of thing just isn't part of the game anymore and a big reason why is sabermetrics. I honestly do not know why any lefty with speed doesn't drag bunt. I do not think Buxton (and some other Twins with speed) are capable of learning how to do it at this point. It just isn't something coaches teach anymore

Another upstate NY guy here. I am surprised to see a few of us here. My story won't make much sense, but it is the only way I know how to explain it because it is all true. I grew up in a small town in between NYC and Albany. My dad was a Yankee fan, but my dad's brother, my uncle Matt, part-owned a small warehouse in Queens and had an in with Mets tickets. We were not a rich family so when my dad could get tickets from uncle Matt he'd pounce. My first Mets game attended was September 23, 1972 when the Mets beat the Phillies 5-3. Too bad it was not the September 24th game. That was Seaver vs. Carlton and a player name Lute Barnes got a couple of key hits off Lefty to win. 1972 Steve Carlton was nasty. Wish we could have seen that one....Anyway the next year the Mets went all the way to the WS on a wild ride which I was there for as a seven year old. I can recall one day during the summer watching the Mets get destroyed in Montreal like 19-7 and I was seething. I think Bob Bailey drove in like 8 runs and hit a ball into the swimming pool outside of Jarry Park. I cried when Wayne Garrett flied out to shallow left to make the last out in the WS. I was all in with baseball by then and was playing midget baseball the next summer. In 1974 and 1975 the Yankees played at Shea Stadium and I did see one Yankee game there. Jim Bibby pitched a one hitter and my uncle left my brother (born Christmas 1964, my cousin Joe born December of '65 and me, born April '66 unattended for about seven innings). Sometime around the second inning he bolted and he came by sometime after the 7th inning stretch. He had "a thing", I guess. He is 94 now and living in Florida. He doesn't remember that. I remained a Met fan until about the early 90s, but I always had the Twins in me. For starters, my first favorite player was Rod Carew. My older brother and I had Baseball Digest delivered from about 1977 to 1982 and we had a paper route in from 1977 to 1979. I followed Carew and watched him whenever the Twins played the Yankees. That was when I read the sports page and became obsessed with baseball stats. The Sunday Edition of the papers showed batting averages! I vividly remember reading about Carew in a 1977 Sports Illustrated and I felt bad for the Twins when he went to the Angels. Since I was a Mets fan I was not against teams beating the Yankees. I'd quietly root for the Twins whenever they played the Yankees (so as to not upset my dad)! I loved Bob Casey and the old Met. Loved the way he'd announce a player called Jim Holt. First base! Jim! Holt! 🤣🤣 Sadly I can recall Danny Thompson dying. It was a Monday Night Baseball game and Howard Cosell announced his loss. When I collected baseball cards I always looked for Twins. By the time I was playing pony league baseball in middle school I was following Roy Smalley and oddly enough my pony league team was THE TWINS! We played some real barn burners against a team called The Brewers! They were undefeated, but we had them on the ropes twice! Some of the Twins at that time wore their stirrups low so I tied my stirrups around my foot to wear them low. I even saw the Twins play at Yankee Stadium in 1980. They won 1-0 in 11 on a Ken Landreux single to center ( I should also say he hit a kid right in the face with a line drive during batting practice. Literally happened ten feet from me and it is one of the sickest sounds I ever heard). On that trip, I think I heard the song "Cars" by Gary Numan about 4 times in my dad's '72 Galaxie 500 on the way to and from Yankee Stadium. Shocked we stayed for the whole game but I guess my dad figured we were in high school now so.... Being a Mets fan and in college by 1986 I saw the Mets win it all in Oneonta. What a party that was. Obviously, the Twins in '87 played the Cardinals the next year and I absolutely HATED those Cardinal teams because the Mets struggled so bad with them. I was all in with the Twins by then, but still mostly a Met fan. I have to tell you there was a play at the plate where Don Baylor was called out and I went completely bonkers. That was about where I was a dual fan and plus the 1980s teams had so many likeable players. Cut to the early 90s and my interest in baseball started to wane for various reasons and the Mets were plain dysfunctional and awful. Then the strike happened and I pretty much switched to being a hockey fan and said F-baseball for a few years. It was not until 2000 with the Subway Series where I got back into watching baseball, but I honestly couldn't stand the Met/Yankee dynamic in NY state. I also wasn't partial to big payroll teams any longer. To be honest, I was posting regularly on the Twins page at the ESPN cite in 2000, but no real in depth stuff. That was the season I followed them every day. By 2001 I was crazy into it and posting up a storm on the ESPN Twins page, hating on Guardians fans. Brock B was Rocketpig and he probably was my favorite poster. When Chad Allen broke his leg some moron Indian fan came over to take a dump on our page. I was not having that! On ESPN I chose a stupid name: Haljaliakakik (how'd you like a kick?). That 2001 team doesn't get enough love, in my opinion. My brother, who is a huge Yankee fan took me to a belated birthday night game at Yankee Stadium in May of 2001. Eric Milton pitched a three hitter and we won, Dougie Meintkiewicz was hitting about .400. By 1998 I had moved to a place closer to the city (only 75 miles and my brother even closer). I still teach in a school maybe 50 miles north of NYC and then 9/11 happened and I stopped posting on ESPN like that. Snap your fingers I was gone from posting until the 2002 season started. Sadly I did not go the series in NY in 2002 (probably because of 9/11, I am not city guy). I would say from about 2004 to pre-COVID ( I do not care for NYC anymore) I would make the hour and a half train ride to Yankee Stadium from Poughkeepsie (often alone wearing Twins gear) and watch us lose about 10 in a row, all the way until 2015. I saw no less than three blown saves, the worst being Joe Nathan in 2009. I was at the first game at Target and went to about six or seven games at the Dome from 2004 until it closed. Not sure if this makes sense to anyone and congratulations for getting this far. I see lots of parallels with the Twins and Mets and the number of pitchers who pitched for both teams in unbelievable. That could be a thread all on its own

Cruz TRIED to rub off on a few Twins with his quiet leadership and the one who listened got traded.

He shouldn't survive. All this hand wringing over Gallo because Falvey and Levine just cannot square the idea that that he's been an disaster. The saving grace is that Gallo is only a one year deal. Once he is gone more attention will be on Buxton. What in the world are we going to do with him? If Falvey and Levine can't pull the plug on Gallo imagine how bad it can get with Buxton?

This veneer of mystery as to what’s up is important to note. Talk of the knee didn’t start until he went into a slump. Even as he entered this slump he was stealing bases and doing his thing. Remember, DH thing was a way to keep him healthy. He stole a bunch of bases in May and there was talk about CF as the slump progressed. Once that talk got to be too much Rocco spouted off saying “he can’t play CF” Then talk about the knee intensified. Patterns are sometimes hard to fathom, but in the case of Buxton when he slumps usually he goes on the injured list. It almost feels to me like the knee isn’t the issue as much as it his between his ears. His uncanny lack of consistency and deep deep slumps are problematic. When he goes into these deep valleys the speculation starts The assumption becomes: he must have some physical ailment. What if that isn’t the case? Since there is nothing concrete from Buxton himself or the doctors it leaves the door open for speculation and that’s on him. The 10 day for the hammy is genuine, but I’m not so sure about the knee. Rocco is the type of manager who’d run cover for his guy. Falvey and Levine openly admitted in early 2019 that they needed to repair the relationship. Rather than actually get to the bottom of this Buxton and the Twins just won’t get specific and leaves room for an excuse. I hate to say it, but that might be what’s happening here. Would not surprise me I have officially become suspicious. It is highly possible the Twins are running cover and Buxton is going through something personally.

Every single team in our division besides us has made it to the WS in the last 20 years. Just sayin

I wish Michael Cuddyer understood this after the 2010 season. He proclaimed 2010 to be a "successful season" because we "won the division" This was a guy who the organization relied upon heavily to spread the message to the press and the fans I saw red when I read that quote. This mentality reared its ugly head again when we were swept by the Yankees for the third time. Rocco told the press, "I am not frustrated at all" These kinds of tone deaf comments from the clubhouse tells me all I need to know. The goal has been to reach the playoffs. The rationale being if you get there you have "a chance" The problem is, if the goal is reach the playoffs then it is safe to ride off quietly into the sunset, because as Michael "Voice of the Twins" Cuddyer told us; winning the division = successful season With that mentality winning in the playoffs is all but impossible. In 2010 we had the deepest roster we'd had since the WS winning teams and they literally wilted to the Yankees without putting up a fight. It was disgraceful for Rocco to say what he said after that series. Sure, he wasn't frustrated since that was his first gig and he had no connection to the painful history.

Fair enough. I think they got the suspension right, actually. As was said in the Barretta theme song back in the 70s “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time”

I saw Mike Pagliarulo when I saw your screen name🤣 All good

Anderson raised his hands first so I do not see where Ramirez ought to be included in the bolded part. When someone raises their hands that means only two things: fight or run. Ramirez did not run and he was not wrong to fight, in my opinion. I understand your point of view, but unfortunately I have lived these situations more than I care to think. Thank the lord it's been 30 years since I had one of those!🤣

I do not agree in this case. This is an example of the players governing themselves and one player being held accountable for, as Ramirez pointed out, ".... disrespecting the game for a while" As other pointed out he has been provoking some of the younger Guardians with his antics. He got decked for it and I do not have a problem with that. Anderson has not only had a bad season on the field, but he has behaved poorly on and off the field. He cheated on his wife and had a child out of wedlock with another woman, He's been notorious for chirping on the field and this time he did everything he could to start something. He deserved what he got and this doesn't make Jose Ramirez a jerk, Ramirez at least told his side of it. What has Anderson done? He went on Twitter making bizarre posts. The guy has problems and if he continues the way he has do not be surprised if he ends up on the deck again. The White Sox clubhouse is horrible and I don't doubt that he is a big reason for it

I enjoyed watching Anderson fall on his can.

Not sure how this applies to anything I’m saying. Joe was pretty extreme in his inability to launch balls into right field. Nearly everything he pulled was on the ground. Most right fielders shaded about 30 to 40 feet toward CF, giving him the entire right field corner. Is this not a fair comment?

These are not the reasons why I offered up my opinion. It is not personal. I spoke at length about his approach and refusal to adjust to one of the most bizarre shifts in baseball history. His unwillingness/inability to turn on a baseball and drive it during that contract was a problem for me because curtailed his production. Additionally, his close & late and high leverage batting averages were 20 to 30 points lower. In 12 playoff games he was always on the losing end and in those contests he drove in only one run. He went from 2008 to 2017 without a walkoff hit. Correct me if I’m wrong on any of this. He also was a first baseman/DH during a very large portion of that contract. This about Mauer AFTER the contract. Please refer to information posted here if your baffled as to why I’d say he didn’t live up to the contract. After all, that is what this is about. It isn’t personal or that I’m being hard on him because of his personality or because he’s a Minnesotan. That’s got nothing to do with it