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nicksaviking

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Everything posted by nicksaviking

  1. nicksaviking
    I don't mean to make this about Hiura, I just have never gotten the hype. He looks like a solid every day guy but not much ceiling. You so rarely see 2B rated so high, you'd think he'd have a huge bat and/or elite BB/K skills. His hit tool is good, not great. A 20% K rate is good but it's not elite for the kind of hitter he's supposed to be. Kirilloff has a 14% career K rate for instance.
  2. nicksaviking
    How about 1 year? In 2017 Sano was good for a half year, then stunk, then broke his leg likely due to his lack of conditioning. Buxton was good for about two months, the opposite months that Sano was good no less. Polanco and Kepler were disappointingly mediocre at best. Berrios looked good until he tailed off at the end. Which left Eddie Rosario as the only guy who showed any semblance of consistency, which has happened two years in a row now. If more of these guys than not flake out again to start 2019, yeah, I'm sure Gibson is moved mid season. If these guys want the front office to make better moves, then they need to start showing they can be counted on. We didn't get the prospects we were promised for the last decade. I don't know where the failure is with that, but so far it has been a failure. Honestly though, I think an enthusiastic young manager can improve the team in intangible ways. So despite the pessimistic prior two paragraphs, I think Baldelli can get a majority of these guys to turn the corner. I have higher hopes that guys can reach their potential now than I did the last couple of years.
  3. nicksaviking
    Yeah, that's typically what happens with rebuilds. Sano and Buxton didn't turn into Lindor and Rameriz or Betts and Bogaerts or Correa and Bregman. It sucks but that's the hand we were dealt. Fingers crossed they somehow become elite and the other young players become consistently above average. I'm all for acquiring young talent any way we can get it if you're referring to trades. Aside from Machado and Harper I don't see a lot on the free agent market that really falls into that category. As far as the current roster, I don't see anyone other than Rosario and Berrios worth an extension, though I'd absolutely promote one for both of them at this time.
  4. nicksaviking
    Surprised Kirilloff didn't go higher. One might say a guy like Adell might stick at CF so he gets a bump, but if position is inflating rankings, I still can't wrap my head around Keston Hiura in the top 10. Everyone knows he's just a 2B right?
  5. nicksaviking
    But if the young talent flops it's not like there's enough free agents to carry this team to the championship let alone the playoffs. So far the refrain has been about the money, but they spent money last year and their free agents this year haven't been exactly cheap. I don't think it's about saving money, I think it's about saving roster commitments beyond this year. Which tells me that they are NOT counting on the current crop of young players at the MLB level to be reliable, and I don't blame them. Aside from two, they have all been very unreliable. I know no one likes it, but I think the front office is waiting until they see a cohesive core. They don't want to go all in with albatross free agents if the young guys who are supposed to be the base of the team are this flaky and unpredictable. I don't see a Hunter/Koskie/Jones/Guzman/Pierzynski/Santana kind of core here. And definitely no Puckett/Hrbek/Gaetti/Brunanski/Viola. Yet.
  6. nicksaviking
    I still don't think either would commit ten years of their lives to Minnesota without taking the area for a test drive, so I'd think if the Twins were to get one, it would be on a big money short term deal or something with an easy opt out after a year or two. But if we're finger-crossing, I'd prefer Harper, though I sense most of the board would rather have Machado.
  7. nicksaviking
    Our view of Gray is significantly different. He looks like a swing man to me. That road split everyone was excited about was smoke and mirrors. He had 12 road games last year and half were against Baltimore and Toronto. One start was against the White Sox and another against the Twins (where he was chased after 3 innings). He had four road games against non terrible teams and had two OK outings, one bad outing and a butt whipping by Boston. His improvement wasn’t on the road, it was when he got moved to the pen, where his ERA dropped by a full run the last two months of the season. That’s where he belongs, just like everyone predicted when he was drafted. He proved everyone wrong for about three years though, albeit playing in a pitcher’s paradise in Oakland.
  8. nicksaviking
    Is it too late to get that (with the TC logo) on t-shirts for the Winter Meltdown?
  9. nicksaviking
    Asdrubal Cabrera is less than half as valuable as Jonathan Schoop I guess?
  10. nicksaviking
    I've never been a Sonny Gray fan and after last season I couldn't believe the Yankees had any leverage to get anything for him. I've never cared for Brian Cashamn, but he did some good work there forcing teams to bid on Gray's road splits. I'm pretty surprised the other clubs didn't laugh at him until the asking price was in line with his actual performance.
  11. nicksaviking
    Seems to me if the 100 have different priorities, it would be much easier for the Twins to say "Well sorry you can't come to a consensus, now you get nothing." 100 sounds like a large focus group, likely by design. More people get to feel like their voices are heard, but the Twins can justify the cheapest suggestions even if only a minority support them.
  12. nicksaviking
    What's "crazy"? I'm for extensions, but only for Berrios and Rosario. Buxton and Gibson if they're very team-friendly.
  13. nicksaviking
    In the minor league levels, I'll take the heat. A pitcher's delivery can be changed, the velocity really can't.
  14. nicksaviking
    I'm on board with Stashak (he was my adopt-a-prospect last year) and thought he had a chance to get taken in the Rule V draft. I'd also like to see most of the guys hoping for the 5th starter spot start getting bullpen work, either with the big club or in Rochester. They all can't stay starters if they have hopes of playing for the Twins, I'd rather find out who's stuff best translates to the pen now before it's too late and the team is pressed into uncomfortable 40-man decisions. I really dislike when the team is forced to DFA one of these back-end starter types before they gave them a real look in the pen. It should be a full season too, not just a month here or there, those guys seem to need a year for the transition to show results. And the role change is not required to be permanent.
  15. nicksaviking
    No, I think they’ll keep who they still like, obviously everybody isn’t going to go. But so far, Rosario and Berrios seem to be the only proven reliable foundation pieces. Aside from all of the systematic front office clean up that was needed, they needed to fill out the MLB roster and four minor league teams in the way they wanted, and overhaul the coaches and manager. The former was going to take more than two drafts to rectify and the later was being hindered by ownership. If Terry Ryan had this team primed to come out of a rebuild, he wouldn’t have been fired in the first place. With how stubbornly loyal ownership has been, even they must have known Ryan was nowhere near having the organization on the right track.
  16. nicksaviking
    I agree, except about that the rebuild should be coming to fruition. I think we have to consider the initial rebuild an utter disaster which is why the guy overseeing it was fired in the first place. The new guys weren't going to want to build a house from the debris left behind by their predecessors, they were going to want most of their own material using only the useful pieces still available. I think we didn't know it at the time, but we started a new rebuild two years ago and it only started in earnest at last July's trade deadline.
  17. nicksaviking
    I can't imagine the Twins are any different than any company on Wall Street. If you make a billion and 1 dollar in 2017 but only a billion dollars in 2018, it's a loss. Whatever the team is currently netting, I can't imagine they're satisfied if it's the same amount every year, they'll want that number to continually increase. If revenues aren't increasing at the same rate as expenses, typically expenses start getting shedded, and players equal expenses. This sport needs significantly better revenue sharing to fix the stagnant player salaries and the tanking. The owners need to stop saying things like they need to stay financially competitive. As far as the fans are concerned, no they don't, you don't have to keep up with the Jones', you don't have make sure you made as much as Toronto or San Diego. I've never seen a trophy given out to the best MLB CFO.
  18. nicksaviking
    Kind of like how Harlod Baines happened to get into the HOF the same year that two of his former GMs were voting?
  19. nicksaviking
    3.5 million I don’t care about, that money isn’t changing anything. All I care about is changing his repertoire. If they do, I’m on board. If they don’t I’m not on board, cut him before we break camp please.
  20. nicksaviking
    For one, a guy who throws a sinker 50% of the time with this infield defense is probably going to give up hits unlike anyone else in the league. But that should be clear as day to everyone, so hopefully he stops with that nonsense.
  21. nicksaviking
    I know it. My detest of sinkerball pitchers may be unmatched here. I absolutely loathe the pitch but it seems to have a cult-like grip on pitchers who swear by it. But, then I have to acknowledge that they have a greater chance of improvement if they finally stop drinking the Kool-aid and realize that it’s not a good idea to intentionally put the ball in play.
  22. nicksaviking
    I’ll be the lone wolf on this one. I don’t like Martin Perez as we know him, but he is dang near a Kyle Gibson clone. A once top prospect with a boatload of pitches, good velocity but a deluded reliance on his sinker which likely caused his uneven career results. If someone can talk sense into him and point at Gibson as the reason to be smarter about his pitches, maybe he can finally realize his potential. Zero leash though, if he still stubbornly uses his sinker in spring training like he always has I don’t want him in the rotation to start the year.
  23. nicksaviking
    Strange that there’s so much more chatter on Machado than Harper at the moment. Conventional wisdom would suggest he won’t sign until Harper does since Harper is expected to get paid more.
  24. nicksaviking
    Yeah, there’s been enough talk about getting creative with pitching this year. Ditching the traditional closer role sounds quite plausible.
  25. nicksaviking
    I think you are projecting too much financially assumed goals on these people. I admit that I might not be a majority, but I wouldn’t commit 10years of my life to living summers in central Florida for a 10-20% pay increase. Nor would I Cleveland, Detroit or Baltimore. Yes, I’ve been to all these places. Yes, my perspective may be skewed by sample size and preconceived ideas. 2-4 years for a life changing deal? Yeah, I might be swayed, but a whole decade of my prime years? Forget about it. Maybe money drives most of these these guys above all else, but not all of them, and I’d guess not most of them. I hope that everyone can distinguish that I am differentialating these long term life changing deals from the more modest shorter term deals presented to lower class free agents.
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