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nicksaviking

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Everything posted by nicksaviking

  1. nicksaviking
    Boy, you know we've been starved for any kind of meaningful Twins news when a one year stop-gap signing brings this many hot-blooded points of view to both sides of the debate! $20 bucks says that in ten years someone's going to say, "Hey, remember that time the Twins brought Torii Hunter back for one season? That was so extremely......uneventful."
  2. nicksaviking
    Yeah, I actually think this is actually a no-trade-clause that indicates a trade is even more likely. Demanding a full-NTC means Hunter wants control of where he goes, and if Hunter insists on the final say of where he goes, that likely means he wants to be playing in the playoffs ten months from now.
  3. nicksaviking
    Fruit from the Drew Butera trade tree. Edit: No, that's not quite correct. Butera was half of the return for Luis Castillo who in turn was the result of a trade for Travis Bowyer and Scott Tyler.
  4. nicksaviking
    DeShields seems to have a poor mental make-up from reports. Though perhaps that's exactly the kind of reason the Twins would want to bring in a Torii Hunter. I guess it's also easier to use the 25th roster spot on a guy if he's regularly a late inning defenisve replacement and the first choice for pinch runner.
  5. nicksaviking
    Sorry I missed that. I'm in the minority I guess, but I like that strategy. I guess I sound too much like Earl Weaver. Hope I don't teach my kids too many naughty words.
  6. nicksaviking
    Yes, his bat should be a plus, it seems well suited to TF. The defense was so bad last year that it seems no one cares about anything else. No one has even broached the positives and negatives about his addition to the lineup.
  7. nicksaviking
    Great stuff Parker. Still, Hunter catches that fly ball in TF. That is unless he started out playing two feet off the warning track. Comreica needs a rangy RF, Target Field has less need of one.
  8. nicksaviking
    Well I'm hoping the new regime is past the days of the players dictating where they play. Willingham should have been in RF, Mauer should have also learned to play corner OF and Delmon Young should have been happy to have a spot anywhere on the field. My money is on Molitor telling players who demand certain positions, "I'll take your suggestion under advisement. Now get out of my office and get back in the batting cage where I told you to be ten minutes ago."
  9. nicksaviking
    That sounds like trying to treat the disease instead of actually curing it. Pharmaceutical companies love that stratagy, but it doesn't mean you're any less sick. People need to stop and consider how silly putting this much weight in defensive metrics are if we are using them in a bubble. Using any common sense should show that Hunter is a better defender than Josh Willingham, Chris Colabello and Oswaldo Arcia, he's clearly a better athlete and he's played the position for decades. It's not a coincidence that his defensive numbers went in the toilet at the same time he moved to Comerica. It was the ballpark and I don't know how this is clear as day. Dislike the move because it departs from the youth movement, the defense was upgraded, even if it wasn't improved to an elite level that some may want. That just wasn't happening without sacraficing offense, and I'm not giving up offense for defense.
  10. nicksaviking
    That's wholly surprising but I see that WAR and ERA+ back that up. I liked Radke but he never seemed more than a really good pitcher to me where as Kaat was a really good pitcher who also seemed to have a handful of elite seasons. Radke's traditional numbers surely were inflated pitching in the steroid ERA which were then nutralized with the more advanced metrics. Still, it just doesn't seem to jive. Eleven of Kaat's 13 seasons with the Twins and 18 of his 25 seasons total his ERA was under 4.00. That just seems like great pitching no matter which era you threw in, though perhaps today's numbers should outweigh history.
  11. nicksaviking
    I agree, I don't want him on the roster. I am often critical of the front office, but I'd still guess that he'd be among the first head on the chopping block should the Twins need to clear more 40-man space.
  12. nicksaviking
    I like option 1 the best. There's still too much unknown at this time, can his defense improved to a passable level, can he improve his contact rate? His offense still looks promising enough to make him worth the trouble.
  13. nicksaviking
    They haven't given him a spot on the 25-man yet, they just bought themselves time to evaluate the situation further. $1 million salary isn't going to be enough to stop someone else from winning the job away from him.
  14. nicksaviking
    The marketing team did the math and decided the Hunter jersey would be the biggest seller this year. They then casually mentioned to the Pohlads that if the deal was only for one year, those jerseys would then be obsolete after only one season, just in time for people to buy Buxton and Sano jerseys.
  15. nicksaviking
    Nunez's arb salary is still going to be pretty minimal. I doubt he's going to get paid enough to promise him a roster spot. Just because they offer him arbitration, doesn't mean he's going to be on this team opening day. He's probably the favorite to get the utility job, but the Twins are just paying him to be a safety net at the moment. Plus, if he does get $1 million+ but the Twins decide he doesn't warrent a roster spot, that just means he's less likely to get claimed if the team tries to pass him through waivers.
  16. nicksaviking
    No but at least he won't have the wall to deal with. If Arcia doesn't improve, he's going to to be a liability no matter where he plays.
  17. nicksaviking
    Actually I think Winfield was less of a gimmick, the team was pretty good in 1992. Winfield was old but just came off a really nice season with Toronto and the Twins were trying to replace Chili Davis. I would say Molitor and also Terry Steinbach felt like gimmick signings at the time, however, as far as Molitor goes, he really was one of the only reasons to even remember that era of Twins baseball. I loved his chase for 3.000 hits and he played damn well for being in his 40s. Molitor and Steinbach might have been to entice fans to a terrible product, but Twenty years later, I'm still glad they did it. I'm happy to have had those guys in Twins uniforms in what we already knew was going to be a long season.
  18. nicksaviking
    It's a one year deal and Rosario and Buxton probably aren't quite ready, so I'm not upset. There seems to be quite an overreaction to Hunter's poor defense though. IF they put him in RF, his defense is going to be just fine. His awful -18.3 UZR last year was caused entirely by his -18.4 range factor, meaning if it weren't for his decreased range, his defense would have been decent. Clearly his range was going to be magnified in cavernous Comerica Park, if they stick him in RF at Target Field, he'll be moving from one of the parks that demands the most range from it's rightfielder to one of the parks that demands the least. Arcia's problem in RF wasn't his range, but the terrible angles he took and his confusion with the wall. His range factor was only -4.4. That should indicate one of two things; either Hunter's range problems are 4x worse than Arcia's, which sounds completely illogical, or the difference between ball parks has an extremely large impact on the perception of the outfielder. I want a young team, so I wasn't too interested in Hunter, but this is going to be far from the disaster movie it is being made out to be.
  19. nicksaviking
    WTF! Did I blackout again?! I don't remember posting this, in fact I don't even like Jay Bruce and remember saying I wouldn't trade for him, possibly even in this thread. Please tell me there is some kind of IT issue here and I'm not schizophrenic!
  20. nicksaviking
    I'm not sure what the next "Era" will be, but I'm guessing John would be included in the Post 72 ERA that will someday be evaluated with the likes of Steve Garvey, Ted Simmons, Keith Hernandez, Dale Murphy, Lee Smith, Don Mattingly, Alan Trammel and Tim Raines, assuming those last four don't get in on the regular ballot.
  21. nicksaviking
    Yes on a short term deal. Alas, surely he won't be agreeable to one. Doesn't every Twins fan have the illogical worry in the back of their mind that if the Pirates know how to fix Twins pitchers, the reverse process is very possible? Also, I'm not a fan of pitchers who's strikout numbers and walk numbers seem to be so inversely linked. Seems like they must have a very thin margin of error.
  22. nicksaviking
    Yes, I'd prefer they stick with Arcia, though I think he's more of a liablilty in RF because of the bad angels he takes and his confusion with the wall. I'm not big on defensive metrics, but looking at UZR, almost all of Hunter's terrible UZR was made up of the Range component at -18.4 where as Arcia's Range contributed only -4.4 to his subpar UZR. If all things stay relatively similar in the OF, I'd prefer Arcia in LF where his borderline adaquate range won't hurt as bad as his mental screwups with the unorthodoxed RF. In other words, if we want to keep Arcia in the lineup (and I do) I think the OF would be better improved by moving him to LF and simply finding a capable RF that doesn't lose his mind on line drives than keeping Arcia in RF and finding a rangy LF.
  23. nicksaviking
    Well that's fine by me, as I've stated before that range in TF seems to be much less important than playing the wall and not taking bad angles, things a veteran should be fine at. I'm not endorsing Hunter, just agreeing that defensive metrics seem flawed when applied to rightfield at TF; it's simply a different job than playing RF at the much more spacious Comerica Park.
  24. nicksaviking
    This is getting really old. You make it sound like everybody but Hunter would have turned down the Angels offer because everyone else would refuse to be overpaid. The contracts you list have the Angels offering both more years AND a higher annual salary. Not sure how many people would actually turn down a 100% pay increase to perform the same job they were currently doing. Most statistical evaluations would also say Hunter had his two best seasons in 2009 and 2012 though none of thos metrics used would be based on RBI. Also, the Twins never made Hunter an offer.
  25. nicksaviking
    I find some of the other names speculated a bit interesting. Edinson Volquez, Francisco Liriano, Justin Masterson, Brett Anderson, Jake Peavy. Volquez and Liriano huh? So are the Twins trying a Reverse Searge? That's when you GET a couple of productive pitchers from the Pirates and turn them back into pumpkins. The article actually only says the Twins talked to Greg Ganske, the agent for Liriano and Anderson. I'd guess Anderson is the guy they'd be interested in seeing as Liriano has a QO and no other players with a QO have been linked to the Twins.
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