nicksaviking

Let's find a way for Hughes to skip that start at Yankee stadium. He's pitching well and I'm not much in the mood for gambling on his confidence by fighting a ghost and possibly losing. Give the start to Pelfrey, with Corriea pitching the previous day, getting slaughtered once again at Yankee stadium in back-to-back daytime road games might be enough to give the dynamic duo the hook.

No arguement that walks aren't a negative, but it seems in Twins territory that walks are the epitome of bad pitching. There are worse things, like singles, doubles, triples and HR.

Strikeouts are probably accurately appreciated these days as opposed to the previous century of contact heavy pitching. Strikeouts take luck, chance, fate or whatever you'd like to call it, out of the game. The strikeout prevents the seeing-eye-single, the Texas Leaguer, errors, sac flies, moving runners over, missed calls by the umps, Jose Canseco noggin homeruns, Milton Bradly tossing balls to fans with two outs, Steve Bartman and any other unpredictable play that could occur on the ball field. Preventing walks on the other hand is highly overrated. People (Gardenhire) act like a BB is an apocalyptic play, even worse than a hit. It's not. A walk doesn't bring a guy in from 3B unless the bases are loaded. No runner ever went from 1st to 3rd on a walk. This is why WHIP is such a pointless stat. Why would anyone give a walk equal weight to a single, let along a double, triple or HR.

I know this wasn't your entire thought but just because the Twins messed up with Pelfrey shouldn't dictate they do the same with Correia. This is a sport and these are millionaires. The goal is to win, not to make things fair for each player. Bottome line, if May, Meyer or Darnell are better pitchers and there is nowhere you can put Correia, he needs to get DFA'd. Sorry if it's not fair for him, but there are 24 other players on the roster who may not think it's fair that they are losing games they may otherwise win with a better in-house pitcher.

This makes sense except the Twins don't seem to consistantly make the right choice when they have options lately. In fact in the case of Bartlett/Presley, they made the wrong choice when no one though there was even a choice available to be made. Of course if May and Correia are both "deserving" the vet, Correia will win 100% of the time here. Even if the rookie is more deserving.

I took it to read as I'm sure Nick inteded. Great article.

Interestingly he has Justus Sheffield, Jacob Gatewood, Monte Harrison and Michael Gettys lower than pick 46. I'm still inclined to think guys like this will be gone, but maybe the Twins will have a shot at one of these high upside HS kids.

We saw it with Albers last year too. Looks like the typical junkball lefty stuff. Guys who strikeout more batters than their stuff indicates by outsmarting batters and keeping them off balanced. Seems to work better against AAA/AAAA hitters who natually struggle with offspeed stuff. Sometimes it translates to the MLB level, but usually not.

Well I hope there is some explanation and it's not a permanent expectation. I'm struggling to find other MLB level pitchers with a strong strikeout rate that had a poor one in A ball. Anyone with examples would make me feel better.

Still only 3K's in 6 innings; 6.45 K/9 now on the year. I like the success but not how he's getting it. Why is he struggling to miss bats in Low A ball? These guys swing at everything down at this level.

Yup, I like Holmes. If the top three pitchers are off the board, I'd be good with him. I like Toussaint also, but Holmes seems to be underrated.

Good call. If you hadn't brought it up, I'm not sure I could have remembered which thread this was!

I think your sentimentality toward Radke is getting in the way of the obvious. Those two pitchers at their peak were not on the same level. There were multiple levels between them.

I love Brad Radke, so I hate that he was brought up as an example. Let's change the example to Bronson Arroyo to end any kind of negative analysis of why this type of pitcher shouldn't be anchoring a playoff staff. A rotation of Bronson Arroyo's would not win a championship. If Bronson Arroyo was on the Tigers, even in his prime, he would be lucky to be 4th in the rotation. I'm having a really hard time understanding how this is even debatable.

If the Twins starters were better than "just fine" they wouldn't have to score a ton of runs. Runs are hard to come by when you're facing the other team's ace in October. Something the Twins probably should strive to emulate. I find it hard to believe that anyone here thinks the Twins can compete in the postseason if they are only aiming for a "just fine" rotation.

Great message for any kids out there.

I guess I'm in the minority in thinking that running Brad Radke out for game 1 of a playoff series is not on par with what the Tigers, Cardinals, Rays, Yankees, A's, Red Sox, Braves, Dodgers and every other playoff regular will put on the mound. My opinion is that even the Twins can afford pitchers like Radke in free agency. They did after all sign him to a reasonable extension during the Metrodome years. They're not getting an ace in free agency though, so you better aim for them high in the draft. Maybe somehow Nola can miss some bats at the MLB level but the odds are against it with a 91 MPH fastball and no exceptional breaking pitch.

I don't think his mix is very good, but what are people expecting, he's a HS kid who throws 100 MPH, obviously he's going to throw what he knows. His secondary stuff will need development but it seems odd that such an obvious concept is only now a concern of front offices around MLB.

The Twins might win more games, but they won't win more games in the post season picking noodle armed control pitchers. Johnson is doing it correctly. Maybe they're not as good at identifying power arms that can translate to the MLB level (no mabye about it really) but that doesn't mean it's any less of an mandate for a champion. And as much as I like Brad Radke, he was nowhere near the talent that Josh Beckett was when he was anchoring World Series rotations. I don't care about Doug Fister's nice little career, I wouldn't draft him at #5, nor would I Wade Miley, Brad Radke, Scott Baker, Kevin Slowey or 2008 Nick Blackburn. Even the Twins can afford to get those guys on the free agent market. Sure they can be part of a World Series rotation under the right circumstances, but under what circumstance could they or should they start game 1? Or game 2? This high floor/low ceiling stuff is BS. Guys with a low ceiling will ALSO have a low floor. If you're not able to miss bats, you have a much smaller margin for error. You can't rely on you'r defense for 80% of your outs, it's uneconomical. Why would you want to anyway? The Twins don't need to find guys who can throw a good 200 innings. They need to find good pitchers. Pitching 200 innings is a byproduct of good pitching. Good pitching isn't a byproduct of pitching 200 innings. Most of the guys who are able to manage strong strikeout numbers ARE among the league leaders in innings. It is accurate the Twins need guys who can miss bats. If they have trouble finding the ones who can also hit the strikezone, that's on their scouting or player development. 29 other teams don't have a problem in this area.

No doubt, but only one was "the most MLB ready pitcher in the draft," why would 20 other teams pass on that. Unless "the most MLB ready pitcher in the draft" is either a poor indicator of talent or not nearly as important as projection to the other 19 teams.

He had surgery in early May, I'd think he'd be able to pitch most of next year. In fact the start of the rookie leagues would line up pretty good with a return. I'm not advocating a Hoffman pick but I wonder how much underslot you could get him for now. I want BPA, but those who like the idea of going underslot and saving money for a high upside HS kid in round 2, Hoffman may be your guy.

Those are nice pitchers, but aside from Garza for perhaps a year or two, none of them are going to anchor a World Series winning rotation. None. And if they aren't going to be able to afford to buy an anchor, this is how they have to do it. I have no complaints with Boer, Boyd or Summers. Keep them coming, maybe we'll hit on one at somepoint. There is no chance a 6.0 K/9, 91 MPH pitch-to-contact guy is leading this team to the promised land. Wimmers was not a good choice at 21. He was safe, and people projected him for the first round only because he was safe. Every other team seemed to be looking for upside as evidenced by 20 other teams passing on "the most MLB ready pitcher in the draft." Had the Twins not be uber-cautious and instead went for high-upside HS talent, they could have had their choice of Jesse Biddle, Zach Lee, Aaron Sanchez, Noah Syndergaard and Tijuan Walker. Cam Bedrosian and Luck Jackson round out the seven HS pitchers taken next after Wimmers and every one of them look promising. This "Safe" and "MLB ready" stuff is crap and unpredictable. You can't play the hindsight game with your draft picks, but you can play the hingsight game with your draft pick philosophy. This is a sport, taking risks is a necessity to winning, picking "Safe" and "MLB ready" over upside is loser mentality. I think it's over. It better be over.

I could barely look away from the Smalley bedroom eyes to read the number on his jersey. I'm going to assume he thought he was getting his picture taken for Tiger Beat and not for a baseball card, though I don't know that that sultary stare was appropriate for either audience.

There weren't many options. The move is fine I guess but are we certain that Herrmann is a better pinch hitter than Tonkin?

Perhaps the talk of improving the defensive philosophy should take a backseat to the pitching philosophy? It seems pretty backwards to me to try to find eight plus defenders to compensate for the lack of strikeouts from five pitchers. Shouldn't it be the other way around? I think I prefer the Tigers/Cardinals model.