Berardino: Mastroianni Out Awhile + My Twins Med Staff Rant

[drjim]

Interesting that from those quotes you came to those conclusions.

 

I think Ryan is more talking about Hicks breakthrough in AA than performance in spring training and he went out of his way to say it was a competition throughout the spring.

[jokin]

By addressing service time exclusively regarding the decision to rush Hicks to the majors, Ryan disdained any other arguments by default.

 

Also, isn't there at least some conflict in your appraisal of the situation? Which appears to be this...

 

Ryan believed so strongly in Hicks that he asked him to make a level jump so difficult that only one Twins hitter, a likely future Hall of Famer, has managed to make it successfully in the past 20 years.

 

And yet Ryan was so down on Hicksie's ceiling that he didn't give a hoot about how much his continued presence will cost the team in the future? Doesn't sound right...

 

And Ryan conveniently ignored the easy-to-examine Hicks learning curve, as apparently did the sports press. His history had demonstrated that he has struggled the first year at each successive level jump, and now he/they seriously expected that Hicks could seamlessly jump two levels without significant adjustment difficulty? Shame on him and shame on the local media who shamelessly went along with the Ryan ruse by annointing Hicksie as fully in the process of making the unencumbered and nearly unprecedented jump to the Twins, as their very own "Next Big Thing".

[jokin]

I don't remember this conversation but I'm pretty sure we could make 7-8 spots with very little trouble.

 

Also it is a small point but you use the 60 day DL at the same time as adding to the 40 man.

 

There is a regular and ongoing overboard concern on how the Twins can somehow...some way.... come up with a 40-man spot. Entirely non-consequential Alex Burnett was the latest Twins "casualty".

 

I agree with your premise, creating extra roster spots on a team coming off of 195 losses, seems to be something that the FO could do while:

standing on their head...

while half-asleep...

underwater.

 

Just look at all the detritus that Fracona swept aside in one offseason on the Tribe.

 

And no one was saying make an immediate move to the 40-man, I simply just made a request that the local media push the Twins harder on obviously looming developments. They don't even need a direct quote, just an unattributed background comment for us Twins junkies to get a feel for which direction they might be headed.

[LaBombo]

 

I think Ryan is more talking about Hicks breakthrough in AA than performance in spring training and he went out of his way to say it was a competition throughout the spring.

Yes, numerous references were made in the offseason and spring training about an open audition for center field, by both baseball writers and Twins managerial types, and nothing I quoted or inferred was inconsistent with that. But it doesn't change the fact that spring training was the deciding factor.

 

If you need more evidence, I'll keep chipping away. Here's another one:

 

Hicks, ranked as the No. 98 overall prospect by MLB.com, also knows that nothing will be handed to him this year, especially as a rookie. He's making the jump from Double-A right to the big leagues after a Spring Training performance that impressed general manager Terry Ryan.

"He certainly earned the trip north for us," Ryan said. "He did a lot of nice things for us in Spring Training. He played well to earn that. If he struggled, it might be a different story, but he didn't struggle much down there at all."

 

From the previous Ryan quote about the Span and Revere trades, it seems pretty clear that based on Hicks' 2012 season, the Twins were expecting and hoping to make him the opening day CF.

 

But it's equally clear that they relied on what they thought they saw in spring training to make the final decision about where to put him. Whatever stock Ryan put into Hicks' 2012 season, it wouldn't have been enough to override a spring training line resembling either his dreadful .113/.229/.127 April or even his widely acclaimed .176/.250/.431 breakthrough May.

 

Believe whatever you want, but there's plenty of press to support the depressing conclusion that the Twins mistakenly believe that a few nice exhibition AB's support their scheme to rush Hicksie.

[LaBombo]

...the unencumbered and nearly unprecedented jump to the Twins...

And when the difference between 'nearly unprecedented' and 'unprecedented' makes the top 20 active player list on BBRef's Hall of Fame monitor, it makes the 'nearly' even nearer.

[drjim]

Yes, numerous references were made in the offseason and spring training about an open audition for center field, by both baseball writers and Twins managerial types, and nothing I quoted or inferred was inconsistent with that. But it doesn't change the fact that spring training was the deciding factor.

 

If you need more evidence, I'll keep chipping away. Here's another one:

 

Hicks, ranked as the No. 98 overall prospect by MLB.com, also knows that nothing will be handed to him this year, especially as a rookie. He's making the jump from Double-A right to the big leagues after a Spring Training performance that impressed general manager Terry Ryan.

"He certainly earned the trip north for us," Ryan said. "He did a lot of nice things for us in Spring Training. He played well to earn that. If he struggled, it might be a different story, but he didn't struggle much down there at all."

 

From the previous Ryan quote about the Span and Revere trades, it seems pretty clear that based on Hicks' 2012 season, the Twins were expecting and hoping to make him the opening day CF.

 

But it's equally clear that they relied on what they thought they saw in spring training to make the final decision about where to put him. Whatever stock Ryan put into Hicks' 2012 season, it wouldn't have been enough to override a spring training line resembling either his dreadful .113/.229/.127 April or even his widely acclaimed .176/.250/.431 breakthrough May.

 

Believe whatever you want, but there's plenty of press to support the depressing conclusion that the Twins mistakenly believe that a few nice exhibition AB's support their scheme to rush Hicksie.

 

Maybe we don't disagree all that much. I would agree with you that Hicks wouldn't be on the opening day roster if he didn't have a good spring, but he wouldn't have been in that position if he hadn't had a breakout year previously in AA.

 

I also don't understand who you can be critical of Ryan for saying he wants to win and then backs that up by keeping Hicks on the opening day roster. Perhaps he should have had a veteran in on a one year deal, but the options for that were very limited last offseason.

[LaBombo]

I also don't understand [how] you can be critical of Ryan for saying he wants to win and then backs that up by keeping Hicks on the opening day roster. Perhaps he should have had a veteran in on a one year deal, but the options for that were very limited last offseason.

Fair enough. Clearly there are intangibles and subjective elements to consider when a GM pulls the Godfather strings on stuff like this. It's probably difficult to take measure of those events even for the people who live through them.

 

That being said, it's really hard for me to believe that the Minnesota Twins somehow became obligated to start Aaron Hicks in center field and bat leadoff on opening day because of a few good AB's in spring training which made him indispensable to one of the (predictably) worst teams in baseball.

 

And it's even harder for me to believe that if they didn't anoint Hicksie the next incarnation of Kirby , Joshua Willingham might lose faith in the supposed 'win or die' mantra of the franchise and become so distraught that he might put up a crazy, zombie horror movie .197/.359/.393 line in the first quarter of the season.

 

Which he has.