nicksaviking

I love what I'm seeing and I think he will continue being a very good player. That offseason extension is looking really, really good right now. It's so unproportionate to his current numbers, I'm going to feel guilty if the Twins don't renegotiate in his favor if he turns out to be the player we are seeing now.

What's this "we" stuff?!? I finally got one!

Schedule a parade?

Excellent game thread. Let's go show the Yankees that no one is wiping their feet on the Twins anymore and they'll have to go and get themselves a new doormat. Preferable from Cleveland.

I think those 160 innings are projected to come in one epic late September game where Jose Berrios comes out with the win after Miguel Sano launches a walk-off solo shot in the bottom of the 160th inning off of Kluber to wrap up the AL Central for the Twins

I wouldn't want to lay it all on Gardy or anyone else, and I also wouldn't necessarily label it defeatist only because I can't say what those guys were feeling exactly, but whatever it was, there was a bad aura around the club that EVERYONE felt, fans and players.

I think that would just set a baseline for what the team would expect to get once they open up bidding to everyone else. Then they wait another month because time is on their side.

I feel a lot better about playing the Yankees and any of the other teams the Twins have laid down for in recent history now that the people running the show both on and off the field have basically no ties to the prior leaders. I'm a stats guy so this is going against the grain for me, but I always felt the Twins history of losing to the Yankees was only due to 30% having inferior talent and 70% having an inferior attitude. Oh, I guess that was a stat after all.

I wouldn't mind a non-rental starter, in fact I'd probably prefer it based on the status of the 2020 rotation. I'd like to see about getting Jon Gray if the Rockies struggle, if he or that team had any intent on an extension I'd think they would have done so already seeing as they extended Marquez. Another name that sounds blah, but I think could be good is Anthony DeSclafani. He's having a good year now so they probably couldn't get him for peanuts like they could have in the offseason, but he looks encouraging to me and like the kind of pitcher the Twins have been targeting. Like Kyle Gibson in 2018 and Martin Perez this year, he really lowered his two seamer and increased his four seamer usage. Also like Perez, he brought out his cutter, a pitch he didn't throw since 2016. And a name that will probably turn stomachs, Jeff Samardzija has rebounded. He's lost velocity, but like DeSclafani and the Twins pitchers, he's decreased his two seamer and increased his four seamer usage.

Who would trade for Reed or Pineda? Reed is almost certainly going to be DFA material if the team is no longer able to stash him on the IL.

Yeah it will be amusing when magically 10 teams find themselves in need of his services. Problem for me is that I might think he'll only get or maybe even want a one year deal and I've lost confidence in pitchers joining a club this late; I'd only want him on a multi year deal as I wouldn't expect him to be very good in 2019.

6-1 score and orange uniforms. I thought the Twins were done with the Orioles this year. Keep putting them on the schedule!

I only take issue with making the argument personal by calling someone's position "laughable". As to how the record should be viewed, there are plenty of viable arguments and I'm not going to tell anyone theirs is undeniably incorrect..

Well as far as I can tell, players aren't getting shunned from the HOF because of expansion or small ballparks. No one's stopping you from supporting the players that used or are using PEDs, but those players willfully gave themselves and themselves only an advantage, while the pre-integration, expansion era and small ballpark players played under league mandates, none of which they had any control over. Lambasting people who view Maris as the HR king isn't very becoming.

Maybe, I wasn't too interested in seeing him and I was going to criticize the promotion, but I guess a plus changeup would set himself apart from the rest of the bullpen. It used to be a bread and butter pitch of the entire organization, but currently the only reliever on the 25 man throwing one regularly is Hildenberger. If the bullpen isn't going to be all lights out fireballers and killer sliders, I guess I'd like it to be as diverse as possible to give the other teams different looks. Still, I'd rather see Reed, Eades or my guy Cody Stashak.

While I enjoy that more classic style of baseball, our Twins were built to compete in the HR derby-style game. So, I'm going to have to pass on any changes if it's going to make the Twins obsolete once again, because I enjoy winning more.

I'd guess most fans are pretty anti-their TE, but if the only thing holding back the Vikings from having a statistical stud at that position is the individual's athletic ability, I'll probably be more than happy with Smith.

I feel better about renaissance pitchers when they have plus velocity and/or strikeout potential. But like I said, I’d take a chance on Bumgarner.

Yeah, don't get me wrong, I like the tape I saw on Smith. I just think the system is going to put a ceiling on what that talent can deliver. Rudolph isn't fast nor terribly athletic but he's still an above average TE, and still producing about the same as when he was faster and more athletic. That makes me think that whether the TE is Rudolph, Smith or Morgan, there's probably a very narrow floor to ceiling differential that all three would slot into as far as production goes.

I don't want Dyson, but I'll take Smith. I didn't want Bumgarner in the offseason, and he's looking pretty average right now, but it looks like his velocity and movement haven't regressed as expected. I'd take a chance on him, though I wouldn't count on him pulling a Verlander-esque renaissance to slot himself toward the front of the rotation. I'd be setting my expectations at a left-handed Kyle Gibson benchmark. I'm cheering for the Rockies to fall out of contention early. I can find a few arms on that staffs I'd like to try to get. Same with the A's, at least as far as the bullpen is concerned.

I don't have any numbers, and I'm not a great offensive play-calling mind. It just seems to me if you get a TE in round 2 and his production is that of your typical Kyle Rudolph, Austin Hooper or Evan Engram year, no one is going to notice or much care and we'll already be pining for better options despite these guys being top ten players. And I don't think it really has anything to do with the players themselves. Eric Ebron and Brandon Pettigrew were studs coming out of college. Ebron proved he was the athletic freak everyone expected, but he didn't do anything with it until he found himself in Frank Reich's system and he got the Zach Ertz treatment. Good luck to TJ Hokenson but either the Lions system, or more like Matthew Stafford, just don't look the TE's way to make him more than an average producer. OJ Howard still looks like the stud everyone saw in college, maybe he'd put up numbers under Andy Reid or catching passes from Tom Brady, but he's an afterthought in TB. Is the TE going to be featured in a Stefanski/Kubiak offense? Maybe, I guess I don't know, Kubiak hasn't seemed to be much of a TE focused play caller in the past. Seems to me in a downfield passing league the TEs end up getting primarily check down looks but now they're fighting for those with the slot receiver and now the RB since every team has pass catching backs. Anyway, probably what I should have said to avoid the gibberish above, I think successful TEs are a product of the system. I don't think you're getting a Zach Ertz or a Travis Kelce unless both your offense and your QB are trying to push the offense through your TE, and I don't think the Vikings are.

Probably not in overall targets since the passing games have increased overall volume to such a large degree, but in percentage of targets I'd think so. You only ever have three or four meaningful tight ends each year, and usually only about two of them are year-in and year-out difference makers. I mean we're talking about replacing Kyle Rudolph, who for the past 8 seasons has probably been overall a top 5 TE, and most people have seemed bored with him for most of that run. I find it hard to predict something better than top 5 league-wide production from any draft pick. And I'm not trying to promote Kyle Rudolph, just that the drop off from the number 5 TE to say the number 15 TE probably isn't all that great. If you don't have one of the few truly elite TEs, all you have is a regular TE.

How hard does Jax throw? He's not missing many bats.

Funny, I was going to post the same thing about NE. Trading a guy they planned on cutting for a conditional draft pick before trading for another TE is a total NE move. My perception of the TE position stems more from a league-wide view though. Fantasy football isn't typically a great barometer of real football, but in the case of who's getting targeted, it sure seems to show that the league has gone from about a dozen dozen or more teams who regularly feature the TE as a primary receiving option to about four or five teams. Except in only a few cases, it's just not a big part of the gameplan.

Keep up the good work! Both Ober on the mound and goulik with these writeups!