nicksaviking

No one would claim Nishioka and even if they did, the Twins would have to be thrilled about losing the rest of his salary. I'd like to get another look at Slama, but I understand the hesitation. Aside from the fact that his fastball may or may not have any movement, he does not have a high velocity. No movement plus average velocity does not translate into K's at the MLB level and since he is a K heavy, all or nothing kind of pitcher in the minors, he may have to radically adjust his approach at the next level.

As soon as Comerica Park opened, Tigers fans cried about it being imposible to hit out of. Everyone agreed with this and only after two years they moved the fences in for the 2003 season. Although 2002 saw the Tigers with a poor total of ony 124 HR, only 63 were hit on the road while a similar 61 were hit at home. When 2003 came around the Tigers increased their HR total by 29. Unfortunately for the fence moving crowd, they still only hit 67 HR at home while they hit 86 on the road. On the flip side, the pitching was actually worse. 2002 saw a terrible Tigers staff with a team ERA of 4.92 who gave up 61 HR at home. The 2003 version with the fences in moved in, had a team ERA of 5.30 and they gave up 95 HR at home. The 2003 team was the historic club that lost 119 games. We can't go about solving a problem without having a firm understanding of the cause. The actual dimensions are fair, so is the problem caused by the wind current? Is it due to the game-time humidity or temperature? Or is it due to the fact that Mauer and Morneau are line drive hitters and the RF wall is higher than the trajectory of the balls they hit regardless of how hard they stroked it? For the Tigers, moving the fences in didn't have much affect on the offense until they got better players like Maglio Ordonez, Carlos Guillen, Placido Polanco and Curtis Granderson, while the already poor pitching got rocked on historic levels. The fences at Target Field may need to be moved, but two years is not a long enough time to evaluate the situation. At this point there is no way we can even think of every factor that could be affecting offensive output, but we can be reasonably sure that soft tossing flyball pitchers will not benefit from a change.

Moneyball didn't take into account that a team might employ a left handed #3 hitter that slaps a high percentage of his balls to LF which prohibits runners on first from moving past 2nd.

Sigh, back to reality.

Yes, can we hire Superman to turn back time so we can convince Bill Smith that the Twins needed to be sellers at the trade deadline last year? Seems to me AZ turned out to be interested in Jason Kubel after all. I'm assuming one of those prospects is Tyler Skaggs. I was just looking at what kind of draft picks would have been available had the Twins kept Johan Santana and gotten the draft picks after the 2008 season instead of getting fleeced by the Mets. That year the Angels lost Mark Teixeira to the Yankees and Franscicso Rodriguez to the Mets. Had Santana's Elias ranking been higher than Rodriguez following the 2008 season the Twins could have stolen Mike Trout from the Angels, if it had been higher than Teixeira's, the Twins could have snagged Skaggs too. Obviously there are a ton of variables that could have influenced these picks so don't pile on and rip me, I just found it intersting and thought I'd share.

Well the atmosphere when he was up at the beginning of the year was dismal. Now that the young pitchers are holding their own there is an air of positivity. I'm not sure why decent pitching seems to be contagious, but seeing as Hendriks seems to be a better prospect, and just as (in)experienced as Diamond, Walters and DeVries, I'd think a better showing would be in store for him when he gets his next shot.

Maybe not but there have been a lot fewer poor base running decisions at 3B since the Twins replaced Ulger with Liddle a couple years back. This is one of the first times I've actually thought about the 3B coach in a long time which is probably a positive thing considering they only get noticed when they screw up.

All these numbers are fairly vague for a reason. Two years is too small of a sample size. Let's wait five years and see what kind of patterns emerge. Turning Target Field into a hitters park when your 2013 opening day pitching staff may have less than 100 career starts may not be great for confidence building either.

Plus it was always a convenient exuse for the A's considering they didn't have base stealers at the time. Coco Crisp lead the lead the league in steals last year.

I just read an article that mentioned the Twins have the lowest OPS by their firstbaseman in the AL. I thought, Wow, Parmelee must have really dragged that figure down because, though not playing to their potential, Mauer and Morneau don't have flat out awful OPS's. As it turned out, neither M or M do have terrible OPS's....except when they play 1B. Morneau's OBP when at 1B has been .683 compared to .842 when he's the DH. Mauer has an OBP of .951 as DH and .883 as C but a dismal .569 when he's at 1B. What is going on here? Does no one want to play the easiest position on the field?

Whether Target Field plays fair or not for hitters doesn't change the fact that the perception is that it is a pitchers park. Seeing as Jason Kubel was interested in leaving last year due to his view that it was a difficult park to hit the ball out of, the Twins may have a difficult time recruiting and keeping sluggers who have the same feelings about it.

I think this may speak to the lack of leadership from the veterans. It should be obvious to everyone on the team that the best scenario for the Twins is to move Josh Willingham or Denard Span to right so the best hitting option in the outfield grab bag, Ben Revere, can play. Michael Cuddyer volunteered to play which ever postion would most benefit the team. Despite Gold Gloves in six of the past seven years, Kirby Puckett was fine with moving to right field in the middle of 1993. I think Span and Willingham need to be held to some degree of blame as both have been reluctant to move although it would be in the best interest of the rest of the club.

The closer he gets to the majors and the bigger his reputation gets, the louder the cry from the average fan will be to call him up. If the team is still losing and attendance still hasn't recovered they'll call him up before the All-Star break in 2014 simply to get fans excited and back in the stadium. Right or wrong, they will cave into the pressure of a stronger financial bottom line, don't think for a second that this is not the main concern from this ownership.

I love vollyball!

Can I split the diffrence? He seems more like a #4 to me. He could be better than the #5 guy who is often a swing man but being a # 3 would mean he's one of the best 42 pitchers in the AL and I don't quite see that. Edit: I voted for fifth starter, but maybe being a top 40 pitcher in the AL isn't that far fetched when you stop and think about the guys filling out some of those rotations. Considering the laughable staffs in the AL Central, a case could be made for Walters and Diamond to be top 10 pitchers in the division so far this year. How Derek Lowe has six wins and a 2.15 ERA when he has a 2.3 K/9 and 1.415 WHIP is a question for the ages.

I think everyone needs to take a step back for a second. In this thread, Mark Trumbo has been compared to Cecil Fielder, Mark Teixeira, Ryan Howard, Troy Tulowitzki and Adam Dunn. Trumbo had a .768 OPS last year, combined, the four players listed above had two full seasons where they had an OPS that low. One was Fielder's final season in the league and the other was Dunn's historic disaster last year in which his OBP was still higher than Trumbo's. Trumbo's had a good month and I could care less about the K's but he does not get on base enough to be compared to other elite sluggers.

Trumbo is having a fantastic year, but even last season when he finished 2nd in ROY voting he had an OBP of .291. Even though he was a slugger all through out his minor league career his minor league OBP was only .330. I like the guy but I think he may turn out to be frustratingly inconisistant over the course of his career as he does not seem to have the ability to draw walks like the great sluggers do.

Unless people think the Twins will be able to win without an ace, the only way to get one is by trade or free agency and the Twins don't have a whole lot to trade any longer. The Twins only drafted and developed a true ace two times in their history, and none since Frank Viola. Next year may not be the ideal time to spend on an ace as the team is still a couple years away, but front end starters are becoming more and more rare on the free agent market as teams are becoming wiser about extending young arms. They could pass and hope to get a big arm in 2014, but hoping Tim Lincicum, Josh Johnson or Johan Santana all make it to free agency and are still healthy may be more of a long shot.

I could care less when the Twins pick next year. My main concern with winning is that the Twins will remain in the grey area long enough that Terry Ryan gets gun shy as Bill Smith did last year, and won't make the deals that will help this team in the future. If the team gets hot enough that it's clear they can contend great, but the situation they found themselves in last year can't happen again.

The past couple of years the Twins have had success by out-bidding other teams for international players. Those days are over, now with the alloted international signing allowence, the bidding for top players will probably come down to a difference 100k or so max. I haven't heard anyone speculate on this, but I fear the Twins reputation for intentionally delaying service time is going to kill them in the bidding. Even if the Twins top another team by say 200K, the player is going to choose option B knowing that with the Twins, he will almost certainly have to wait five or six years before making it to the majors at which point he will have to wait another six years before he can get his first free agent contract. Yoenis Cespedes is different because he was MLB ready, but he picked the A's because they were only requesting a four year deal and he was counting on outproducing his paycheck and cashing in again much sooner than had he signed with the other clubs insisting on a five or six year deal.

Morales' unproductiveness continues. While he has collected 3 hits in last 2 games, that total matched how many he had in the previous 8 games combined. Over his last 10 games he has 14k compared to his 1 BB. His + defense isn't going to carry him much longer. A difficult decsion may very well be in the cards for the Twins on this young man.

Anderson's case is hurt by the simple fact the Cuellar's AAA/AAAA starters are showing up Anderson's veteran starters by miles. He's been a great Twin and for awhile was considered the best pitching coach outside of Dave Duncan, but I don't see how Anderson will survive into 2013 especially considering a promotion is probably well deserved and overdue for Cuellar anyway.

Dipping into AAA has been the best bet so far. My vote is give DeVries a shot.

Tate was lauded much more than Buxton is now, he was supposed to be the best athlete in the draft. If Strausburg wasn't such a no-brainer Tate may have gone #1. The 2009 draft class was very strong, while everyone agrees this one is not. Tate may have off-field problems but it isn't affecting his playing time. He looked good on paper but he is not producing against competent talent. His power all but disappeared.

Mauer's salary is not affecting the ability to spend. As everyone pointed out before they signed him, his money was mostly based on the revenue stream Joe Mauer himself was going to bring to the team. Does anyone here really think if Mauer's yearly $23M came off the books the Twins would spend that extra $23M on other players? No way. Maybe an additional $10M would go back into the payroll, the rest gets pocketed.