nicksaviking

That was kind of my point. I didn't think it was fair to judge Anderson based on the original list of players and I could just as arbitrarily list guys who would seem to be on the other end of the specturm.

It would be hard to dispute Thrylos' figures pitcher for pitcher because the Twins lose more pitchers than they sign in free agency. The Twins are much more likely to promote from within. I also don't mean to advocate for Rick Anderson, he's a great guy but I'm not sure he's getting the job done any longer. That said off the top of my head I can think of Burton and Gray who have improved with the Twins. The same goes for last decade stalwarts Nathan and Guerrier. It would be hard to pick starters for his defense as the only free agent starters this team signs are veterans on the downside of their career, though you could argue Pavano has had his best success with the Twins since his couple of decent years a decade ago. As for pitchers who pitched worse after leaving the Twins, I can think of Eric Milton, Mark Redmon, Juan Rincon, Boof Bonser, Eddie Guardado, Carlos Silva and while still good, not as good Johan Santana.

Teams are already signing their draft picks (and Scott Boras is complaining to everyone who will listen:)), the Braves have signed their top five in fact. How long do the Twins have to start inking their players before people start burning down this site with fire Terry Ryan threads? It would be nice to get these guys signed now so they can get them to GCL in a week and a half when it starts.

I'm for giving Morneau a few extra days at DH. He has an .850 OBP as DH this year opposed to .765 OBP when playing 1B. He might still be working on getting comfrotable in the field.

That's the problem, it IS enough to contend in most years in the AL Central and Ryan knows it. The division is weak year in and year out and Ryan knows he just needs a couple of servicable arms to compete for the Central title. Cleveland's rotation is pretty poor and of similar talent caliber to the Twins. Unfortunately, the Indians somehow got enough effort out of their crappy starters to stay in games while the Twins pitchers, with a similar historically mediocre track record got destroyed and pulled before they got out of the 4th inning. It easily could have gone the other way in which case the Twins would have been around .500 and the Indians in the cellar. Before the season started, no one would have said the Indians rotaion of Lowe, Jimenez, Gomez, Tomlin and Masterson was significantly better than Pavano, Liriano, Blackburn, Marquis and Diamond/Hendricks/Walters. They are even composed of the same mixtures of Vets, high upside/high bust, and arbitration eligible pitch to contact guys. But being able to contend next year is a problem. We know all too well this approach only gets you to the playoffs but does not help to advance in them. If Ryan indeed thinks the Twins can contend again next year, it means he thinks he can patch together another 1st round exit caliber playoff team with "servicable" innings eaters. It would take a mulity year overhaul if he has set his sights higher. So personally, I hope they make some drastic changes. Signing an over-acheiving, end of the line vet like Derek Lowe sure as hell isn't going to get the Indians anywhere if they make the playoffs. The Twins need to think bigger and put together a staff the right way next time they plan on competing.

Any chance the Twins hang on to Dalton Hicks? I didn't know anything about him until the draft, but his size is awesome and he was named to HS All Star teams with the biggest names from the 08 high school class.

I actually think the Dodgers will be sniffing around Morneau. They are in need of a replacement for James Loney who will likely be non-tendered after the season seeing as he is 4th year arbitration eligible and is possibly the worst offensive 1B that continues to get the opening day starting gig.

It was probably more likely he experienced Bryant McKinnie syndrome. He was basically told his sevices were no longer needed despite the fact he played a position of need for a bad team and saw his career flash before his eyes and refocused his energies to prove he could still play, and got himself in (somewhat) better shape to convince a new team he was worth a shot.

Only 6 of the 25 guys picked today were SR or juco 2nd yr players. Shouldn't expect to see many of these guys in uniform this summer as none of these guys can be offered much of a bonus, unless there is some dynamic about the new draft rules we have yet to figure out.

Any way the Twins can engineer some kind of high profile prostitue bust with some of these high upside high school kids to scare the colleges into pulling the scholarship offers?

Maybe the smarty pants already graduated. Timothy Robinson, the HS guy the Twins just drafted was good enough to have a profile on the MLB site, sooooo safe bet he's not signing.

The Twins must just be killing time. Either that or they know something about the signabilty of these guys. They've only drafted 1 college SR and 2 2nd year juco guys today. I wonder what this stratagy is all about. They can't possibly believe these guys are going to sign.

This Justin Jones is a left handed pitcher, same as the Justin Jones the Twins got for Doug Mientkiewicz. Dougie should have been able to fetch a little more than that guy. Never got above AA ball.

The White Sox just picked a 6'7" pitcher named Storm Throne. He's a junior so hopefully he's going back to school, because that's way to cool of a name to go to the White Sox.

Three of the last four picks for the Twins are catchers. Certainly these guys wont make it, but the slew of new arms are going to need someone to catch them.

I see the Orioles just drafted a 1B from a Maryland HS named Ryan Ripken. Might be some nepotism going on here!

I did a google search for Dalton Hicks. He was on the MaxPreps 2008 all-american team. Not too significant but also on the list was Danny Hultzen, Garrett Cole, Kyle Skipworth, Eric Hosmer, Tim Beckham, Casey Kelly, Matt Hogood and the Twins very own BJ Hermson and Aaron Hicks. Some pretty impressive company, so if he's still any good he'll probably be going back for his SR year.

There are plenty of these kids that have no intention of going to college though. Some know they wouldn't make the grades, others just want to play baseball no matter what the pay. There will be many players who have told scouts they are planning to go to college to try to leverage a better draft position and slot but were never seriously considering school.

The Twins did not want to be part of the book from what I've heard. Obviously the Twins version would not have been called "Moneyball" probably something like "Smallball." But the big question is, would Brad Pitt really have been able to play Terry Ryan? He would have had to go pre-teen Benjamin Button to pull that one off.

The video didn't show him topping 88 MPH. He had more than a 3/4 delivery which I'm sure will be very difficult on lefties.

Ha, probably because they have some pretty decent BP talent in the minors and they are going to run out of room for them all. Some arms need to be moved along becaue while the Twins bullpen is fine, there is hardly anyone up there who can't be replaced easily without any regret unlike the many arms with upside in the minors.

I guess there's more to these guys than the numbers seeing as the stats say Duffey gets drafted first. I wonder what puts Chargois over the top. The "experts" made it sound like Duffey also may have the ability to start where they all said Chargois is surely a bullpen guy.

Another Rice closer, we got them both.

I'm feeling less worried about all the reliever talk. Listening to the guys on MLB discuss every pick, it is pretty clear, they think EVERONE is a bullpen arm. It seems no starters get drafted after the 2nd round if you listen to them.

Ha, the profile video for him on MLB's site is only of him taking uppercut swings at fastballs. So not sure about his pitching ability. Pretty big upper body for his height it looked like.