Note to Twins.

[twinsnorth49]

I like to bi+ch when the team does horrible. It makes me feel better. Just like cheering when they have success makes me feel good. That does not mean that I don't understand two games does not make a season. It means I care and I expect a better product out of coaching and management. Both are underperforming. That's not opinion, it's fact. They truly are to blame.

 

Partly agree, but the players do have something to do with it as well.

[Dr. Evil]

agreed

[Richie the Rally Goat]

I am certainly realistic enough to know that this year’s team is not a championship team…it’s all about the development of the prospects. I wouedl add Hicks to your list of hopefuls.

agreed, and I think Deduno has a place with this team in the future, but not as a starter. I think it would be a good sign for him to get his role figured out.

[cmathewson]

It's a long season. It's never a good idea to draw conclusions from the first week of play. Teams go from playing in 70-degree weather to playing in 30-degree weather. Guys react in varying ways to that. I have maintained that we don't know what we have until June. Feel free to draw sweeping conclusions. Until then, I am content to watch them play and try to figure out what we have.

[jokin]

You said yourself it may just boil down to semantics, but in the over/under thread everyone is over on the win total, jokin posted pitching stats that everyone agreed with and were about as statistically bullish as can be reasonably held, Seth did the same with hitting projections, and I could go on. There have been multiple threads deriding "negativity."

 

Sorry, but I find it a bit odd that people are feigning this idea of "well of course they're bad...everyone knew that!" From the tenor of many posts here it would've been hard to glean that opinion.

 

Not that two games should confirm/affirm anything for anyone. We're a long way from that.

 

It is possible to be positive about aspects of the team compared to year's past teams- in my case- the pitching staff, yet still hold realistic views that this will still likely be a bad team. And I haven't moved one iota from this perspective after the first 4 games. After the SP signings, I predicted 70-74 wins- a "bad" team by any measure. And I'm not ready to abandon my pitching projections at this juncture, either- way too soon to push pitching panic buttons at this point.

 

When it became obvious early in 2014 that:

 

the Twins were "done" upgrading the offense,

Bartlett and Kubel were going to make the team,

Sano went down with TJ,

Meyer and Buxton appeared to be on the slow track,

 

I considered scaling back my W-L number, hence, an even badder team than what I'd already admitted to. But I think there were enough positive signs in ST from Hicks, Colabello, Pinto and Santana to surmise that 70+ wins is still feasible.

 

But you're right. Now 4 games into the season, not one trend is confirmed for how the season will proceed. Lots of starting pitchers around the league, many better than anyone on the Twins staff, have had even worse first starts than anyone on the Twins staff. And on the positive side, guys like Willingham, Kubel and Plouffe are at least showing signs of a pulse at the plate. If Gardy finally figures out that he has to get Pinto playing in some capacity more than twice a week behind the plate and can get Deduno into a better-defined, better-suited role, things can improve even more.