bighat

Thanks for this series! Great stuff.

It's never happened in the history of mankind.

I posted something like this on a thread a month ago and have been thinking the same thing all season. The Twins can't just "reload", they do have to rebuild. Is there any team getting shafted more than the Minnesota Twins during this stoppage? This is like the '94 Expos. Twins were lucky to pick up Nelson Cruz's option, grabbed that backup catcher, this was supposed to be THE YEAR. Poof, those guys are both gone, we get nothing. Pineda, get nothing. Odorizzi? Bye-bye. Plus we lose a year of production from Josh Donaldson. 2020 was supposed to be the year we got the most out of his contract, by the time 2023 rolls around he's going to be Albert Pujols and that's not what we paid for. Devastating, could be another 20 years before we see a Twins team like this.

One of my favorite Twins, he was always a tough out and played stellar defense. An above average MLB career, did well everywhere he played. Sad to see a player like him leave the game.

THANK YOU! Not thrilled. In the first round the Twins take a first baseman who can't play another position? Means his glove is very suspect. I saw some projections saying he's a future DH - which is fine I guess.....but in the first round? This guy is going to have to be a 30-40 HR player to stay up at the MLB level. Twins must have thought he was the best player available. Very strange pick IMO. Not a fan.

Baseball will always be my favorite sport and I do want to see it in 2020 - although if it's just going to be a shell of a season with players wearing hazmat suits, I'm not sure I would be interested....but I digress. Overall I'm utterly embarrassed for the game right now, especially in light of what all the other sports are doing. Take, for example, what's going to happen with football. This NFL season will draw more at-home viewers than ever. From a marketing perspective, they're going to get creative as heck: more mic'ed up players, online interaction, all sorts of "virtual experiences" and whatnot. It's going to be revolutionary and it's going to be such a hot topic.... Meanwhile, baseball had the chance to do it first. And they're too busy arguing! Owners look greedy and players look like awful cry-babies (just look at their tweets). The players, in particular, look bad here because they're the names we KNOW. Quick: who owns the Oakland A's? The Kansas City Royals? Most fans don't have a clue and they don't care. But we do know the players, and we listen to what they say, and all we're hearing from them is "NO". Even worse, baseball isn't a contact sport! So football, the most contacty-of-contact-sports is gonna put their product out there, meanwhile these guys in MLB won't budge an inch. And it's all surrounded by "union discussions", the mere mention of which bores the public to tears and makes people lose interest in the process. All in all the whole situation is a witches' brew of bad optics for baseball. Again, the best word for what's going on: EMBARRASSING.

I am with you. A 50 game season is the new idea they're trotting out there. 50 games? Seriously? And you're trying to tell baseball fans that this is a "baseball season"? That's a slap in the face. If they are really going to give us a 50 game season, I'd rather they just play a week-long exhibition tournament in Orlando or something, so it gets over with quickly and we don't have to watch for too long. Because 50 games is an absolute joke. 114? Not ideal but I'll take it. Less than 100? Joke city. Several leagues, including European soccer, the NBA and the NHL are all getting back to playing and are getting out there. The NFL is without a doubt going to play. For baseball to be the only sport (a non-contact sport!) to somehow fail to put a real product on the field is just embarrassing. Shame on all of them.

I feel uneasy discussing "what 2020 baseball will look like" because I'm still not certain we're going to see any baseball. Counting my chickens before they are hatched makes me nervous!

Duffy is vastly overrated by way too many people on this forum, at least in my opinion. Sure, he was solid last year. Solid. Not amazing. He was 5-1 with a 2.50 ERA. That's pretty much what you want from a middle reliever. So whoop-dee-do, he didn't suck - that doesn't mean he's Ryan Pressley all of a sudden. And let's not forget, the Twins were putting him in very low-leverage situations quite often last season because of his terrible past. Remember that? It was only in 2018 when he pitched to the tune of a 7.20 ERA. And before 2018 he was also, frankly, terrible. Duffey has shown he can be awful and has a few seasons to prove it. He's shown he can be solid, but he's only done that once. Nothing tells me he's elite or even in the conversation of elite relievers. Rogers is far and away the best bullpen arm we have and should get the ball in the 9th when the pressure's on. Not even a question.

So when I was fresh out of college, I got my first sports writing gig as the Sports Editor at a small, local weekly paper in the horsey suburbs of Orlando, Florida. It was 1999, I was 24 years old and I thought I'd hit the big time. It just so happened that my first week on the job, there was a big MLB dust-up regarding the umpire strike. I was young, watched ESPN all the time, and I figured it would be great for me to write a full-page opinion piece for the paper about this topic. After all, I was a big time sports writer now! I wanted my voice to be heard alongside the big name reporters and networks. As you can probably guess, absolutely nobody who read the local newspaper gave a rat's behind about my opinion. And my publisher chewed me out. Why? Because that was a national story and I was supposed to be reporting on hyper-local topics, like the local swim meets and park board meetings. If our readers wanted to read national news stories, they'd buy the USA Today and turn on the network news. I think you get where I'm going here, Nick: there are a million places we can go online to fight/squabble/preach/complain about the situation going on in Minneapolis and around the country. I'm not saying you don't have a right to voice your opinions here - it's your site, your choice, and in some ways the whole point of this topic is to make yourself heard. That said, we can find other places to go down this wormhole. Most of us come here to talk Twins, to talk baseball. And we are very loyal to this site because we LOVE the Twins discussion topics here. We have a very diverse set of political opinions here, but the cool thing is that we don't get into that on TD. We can all be on the same team - when we fight, it's about Eddie Rosario and where he should hit in the batting order, rather than about political stuff, which can run deep and hit some toxic levels on all sides. Just some food for thought.

I know we need to be safe. Players need to be safe. The public needs to be safe. I get it....but jeez. Players sitting 6 feet away from each other, in the stands, with no high-fives, no touching....that's unrealistic and frankly just plain stupid. Sounds good on paper, but just picture it in your head for a minute. How are the players going to get up to the stands? Gonna build steps above the dugout? Or are they all going to sit behind the plate? How long will it take for a guy to get back up to the stands after a ground out? And with all those measures in place, they completely go out the window the second the pitcher touches the baseball. Because the catcher will also touch the baseball, the shortstop will touch the baseball, the first baseman will touch the baseball, and the ump will touch the baseball. They're going to be touching the same surfaces. So why do all that BS above? Just to somehow signal to the public that you're "doing the right thing?" I'm 100% for having baseball this year, if it can resemble the game we know. I was feeling hopeful a few weeks ago, but with the owner/player clash and these awful new rules...ugh. I never thought I'd say this, but I'm beginning to side with the folks who say they'd prefer to have no season.

My main issue is that NL pitchers' stats get inflated. They're guaranteed easy outs and more strikeouts. When you replace a guy like Nelson Cruz at the plate with a weak-hitting guy who bats .046 at the plate 3 times per game, just think about the advantages. Let's say a pitcher gets 20 starts and gets to face, on average, weak-hitting pitchers 2.5 times per game. That's a total of 50 easy outs that his AL counterpart isn't getting. That's 17 innings worth! Meanwhile, it's not like his AL counterpart is getting to face average hitters - instead, he's facing THE BEST hitter on the opposing team. So he's getting 17 innings against very, very difficult hitters like Nelson Cruz or JD Martinez. I'd just prefer if both leagues did the same thing, for continuity purposes. Then again, at this point I'd just be happy with regular old baseball without any changes! Here's hoping they play ball this summer.

That would be interesting. If there's a runner on 2nd with less than 2 outs, they could play multi-screen broadcasts like they do on RedZone. MLB TV used to have that option (and I think they still might) where you can stream 4 games at a time, quad-view, but you have to pick and choose the games yourself and kinda weed through it. I really like that feature, especially if you play fantasy. It would be even better if you could enter your fantasy lineup and whenever your player was pitching or batting, that game would automatically pop-up in your viewer.

His arm is fine IMO: That entire video shows some great defensive plays. Is he Ozzie Smith? No....but shouldn't we be okay with that? We should keep our expectations reasonable. As others have commented, with his age and talent and contract he's going to be the team's shortstop for a while. There are plenty of things to worry about, Polanco's defense isn't one of them.

As long as he hits .300 and continues to spark this team with the bat, the Twins only offensive All-Star in 2019 can play anywhere he wants. Polanco's a special player. I've always felt that people who pick on his defense haven't watched him play shortstop. It's the most difficult defensive position in baseball and errors are gonna happen. He gets to a lot of baseballs and is very athletic. He's made some huge defensive gems late in ballgames that have saved games for this team.

Luke Hughes, the Aussie.

Paul Sorrento, anyone?

I'm going to start running a simulated pottery season. Attempt 1: Began with a pile of clay, ended up with something resembling an oblong ashtray. Poor start to the season. Attempt 2: Got overconfident, spun the wheel too quickly while attempting to craft an orangina-bottle style vase, resulting in catastrophic failure. Stay tuned for more!

Dude this is exactly what I was thinking and came to the comment section to say this! Dear author, don't you dare equate Sam Deduno with Cole DeVries, they're not even on the same planet.

I'm over all the distraction-based stuff. The video games, the "All Time Teams", etc. I know the league (and pages like TD) have to do something to keep the conversation going. But frankly I just can't get into it. The only type of discussion right now that I'm interested in are the possible start dates and possible scenarios (ie: Grapefruit/Cactus leagues, etc). Another issue we should start talking about is what's going to happen with all of these player contracts. For example: the Twins are possibly going to only get 3 years out of Josh Donaldson instead of 4. And we were thinking his first year would likely be his best. Just a brutal scenario there. Also, what about Jake Odorizzi and his 1-year deal with the Twins? Instead the Twins get zip and have to go out and find another guy. Mookie Betts to Los Angeles? Maybe the Dodgers get nothing out of that deal. Ouch.

Yeah, I mean I do understand why the players wouldn't like it. And one thing that worries me: what if they start the season, and then Nelson Cruz, for example, tests positive. What happens then? Do the Twins end up "quarantined" and can't play ball for 2 weeks? Now what? Maybe make it voluntary? You want to play, let's go. You want to sit home? No prob, go ahead. Frankly I think most players are OK with it, but their wives/families are not. Eric Sogard's wife tweeted she was 100% against the idea of the AZ/FL season because the kids wouldn't get to see their dad for a few months. That kind of backlash is going to make it hard for some guys to choose to be out there. On the other hand, I am guessing fans are 100% in favor of getting something going ASAP.

At this point I'm assuming that if we get baseball, empty stands will be a given.

Shortened seasons, Grapefruit leagues, Cactus leagues, games in front of no fans.....I say bring it on. If MLB can play ball this year, I'll take it. If it's done responsibly and it makes sense from a health perspective, I would 100% be ready to sit down and watch and discuss. I get online every morning before work. I see articles featuring death tolls, political squabbles, and places like facebook and twitter are just a nightmare of negativity. Everyone's just gnashing their teeth and growling about damn near everything, it's just so depressing. Instead, if I could get wake up and chat about Miguel Sano striking out 3 times, or Eddie Rosario misplaying a fly ball, or Buxton running into a wall or Maeda getting blown up I would take that in a heartbeat. This ain't about a World Series, this is just about having a positive distraction that would be much welcome in many Americans' lives ASAP.

Best Twins team since 1991 will never see the field. Pretty depressing. I know it's for the good of mankind and all, but a gut punch nonetheless. Damn.

Very good point. I initially thought they'd just re-do it, but considering the flight changes, date changes, etc it could be a mess. Season ticket holders: ouch. FWIW I agree this is the right move. Slowing down the spread of Covid-19 is what's best for our citizens right now. Hang tight everyone, stay calm. I know it's hard with the news, especially with all the yelling voices out there. Deep breaths.