Dantes929

The what if's are easier for me and a little less big picture. What if Littell had just pitched like he did all year (after his first game) and shuts down the Yanks in the first game. We have the lead and now it is Duffey, May and Rogers rather than Stashak and Gibson to close the game. What if we left Dobnak in to get out of the jam in game 2. What if any of the guys came up with a big hit and bases loaded in game 3?

Pineda? Downside is the 60 game suspension but for the most part losing Pineda and gaining Wheeler would be a zero sum to me.

So for half the season he was our best pitcher and would have been our #2 pitcher in the playoffs and you all think of him as the 5th starter if he resigns? Odorizzii is currently the headline of the offseason. If we sign Pineda I and rely on two of the young guys I think the young guys can exceed what Gibson and Perez gave us last year so I would not consider the offseason to be a fail but rather a C+.to B- since I was afraid we would lost them both. If we resign Pineda and we sign just one of those 2nd tier guys (Ryu 4th in Cy Young is 2nd tier?) I would be thrilled. If its Hamels or Wheeler I wouldn't even make a distinction between Berrios, Odo, Pineda and new guy in terms of spots in the rotation. If its Dobnak or Graterol I'm not sure you would even distinguish 1 from 5.

I've never been in love with the long ball. I don't want to see home runs hit off the handle no matter how strong or how much bat speed is created. I used to love watching Mauer hit and the 28 homers in 2009 was just a bonus. For those that thought he would continue with those numbers I pointed out that most of those 28 homers appeared to clear the fence by about 3 feet and most of them came in the metrodome. Rather than leap to all the other variables with Polanco or any other batter I would start with how many home runs he would have hit if the ball carried 20 fewer feet. That takes into account bat speed, launch angle, what field the ball was hit toward and hard hit balls from history and applies it to a non juiced ball. 20 feet is totally arbitrary. I just think that if 20 of your homers are upper deck those will be retained. If 10 bounce off the top edge and go over the fence you will probably lose those.

"I don't care how the game ended, this moment was baller as hell." I cared! I still can't believe Hicks was even more ballerer as heller after that. Twice! I am hoping Sano works just as hard and comes in healthy. His plate discipline was exponentially better than it was in 2018. As far as defense, I think his future is and probably should be at DH. I suspect that future will be somewhere else though so am not fretting about it much.

Career 4.04 ERA. I'm not so sure that puts him in top of the rotation territory. Then again, he wouldn't be facing Max Kepler anymore so that might drop his ERA and increase his self esteem substantially.

I'll take some issue with that. Berrios gave up 1 earned run in 4 innings. The pen gave up 7 in the next 3 innings. Dobnak gave up 1 run and left with bases loaded and the pen let in those three along with 4 more. Odorizzi gave up 2 earned runs only because of bad defense in 5 innings. Relievers gave up 3 more is the next 4 innings. Within these stories are more stories. Berrios should have been out of an inning but Cron dropped a DP ball. Relievers might have been a different story if Littell just did what he did all season. Lets not forget that the offense missed many opportunities and averaged 2 runs a game. Starting rotation wasn't great but relievers, defense and offense were just as much if not more to blame.

Two of our three starts were ok and that is without Pineda or giving Dobnak a chance to work himself out of a jam. Our pen performed less playoff worthy and our offense was less playoff worthy still. We scored less than 2.5 runs per game and a few of those were late and meaning little. The teams that advanced averaged around 5 a game. Ok, that said, yeah, I agree. We need starting pitching most of all. Rendon is pretty awesome though.

I won't feel good about the rotation if we sign Odorizzi and Pineda but I will feel a lot better. I have no illusions that we are going to sign Cole or Bumgarner. The other names thrown out there are not as good as Odorizzi or Pineda. I am ok with relying on our young guys and actually want us to rely on them to fill a spot, just not 4 or 3 spots and preferably not 2 spots. I just feel like Dobnak, Schmeltzer and Graterol are just as good and potentially better than the guys listed in this post. I thought Lynn and Odorizzi were very good signings in 2018 even though they didn't work out that year. If we can find another guy like that along with Berrios, Odo, Pineda and Dobnak it will exceed my expectations and yeah, I would then feel pretty good about the rotation.

Add Delmon to the list. I never thought Grossman was bad but Gold Glove consideration?

I figured this is what you were thinking and it really concerns me. Why are people assuming we will keep Odorizzi (and Pineda). I will feel much better when they are signed even if that is all we do. Its not ideal but my fear is losing those two and replacing them with two lesser pitchers and still having to rely on Dobnak, Graterol to fill two spots.

Not Odorizzi? I thought he was better. I also assume Johnson works with the relievers but I can't really say for sure what effect Johnson has had. I do think coaches CAN and often do have more impact on a team than managers but it is really hard to judge the impact. Consider that Rick Anderson was once considered a top pitching coach. Hitting coaches have the same ambiguity. They should have some positive impact or they shouldn't be employed. However it is hard to believe that several years ago when our backup infielder was by far our best hitter and everyone else was performing at career worst levels and this year when we set offensive records that the difference is the hitting coach.

Ok sure. Pineda, Berrios, young arm. That's three. Who are the other two? As far as Rosario goes, what makes him a bad outfielder? Below average speed? Bad routes? Bad glove? I used to think he was a great left fielder a few years ago. What happened?

I believe in chemistry but it has nothing to do with race, age, position or experience. It has to do with individual and collective attitude. I was on a team once with 2 players I knew to be generally negative people but the rest of the team had positive, upbeat and supportive people and the two negative players bought into it and we had a great season. The next year we lost a couple of the upbeat players and added a couple of talented but negative players and with the two negative players we already had the balance shifted from upbeat and supportive to sulking, criticizing and finger pointing. We lost in the first round but who cares? Its not a team I enjoyed playing with even when we won. Now a team full of Nick Punto's is not going to beat a team full of Delmon Young's over the long haul but given equal talent the upbeat supportive team will probably beat the sulking fingerpointers. Does it matter if you fail and you have teammates that say "nice try, you'll get em next time" vs a negative or no comment at all? I think it does. Has nothing to do with diversity of demographics. It just has to do with are you a good teammate or not.

Sorry. #1 draft pick before he matured and became dominant and I might add coming off a decent season in 2015 and so so season in 2016 with a losing record and a NL WHIP worse than Berrios, Odo, and Pineda this year. That is kind of the definition of diamond in the rough. Diamond being the #1 pick. Rough being someone according to one of the writers here that could have been obtained by after the 2017 by Nick Gordon and a lesser prospect.

Yeah, the actual quote ini the MVP article was "Eddie Rosario, last year's Twins Daily MVP recipient, received only one sixth-place vote, despite putting up 32 home runs and 109 RBIs. The misleading nature of his raw totals didn't fool our panel" Maybe not hate but totally dismissive of his contributions. I defended him there and will add here that he has an OPS in the playoffs of 1.103. That wasn't powered solely with 1 meaningless home run.

I don't know. Cole was the diamond in the rough less than two years ago. I'd like to find the next one. There are probably a few.

Did I miss something? Have we signed Odorizzi and Pineda already? If Wheeler and Buamgartner aren't better than Berrios then they are not better than Odorizzi and proebably not better than Pineda. Get Odorizzi and Pineda signed, then get one of those other guys and roll with Graterol or Dobnak. Then get one good reliever. I ask for this with knowledge that the likelihood is they will do less. Asking for 2 or three aces every year ignores the history of what the team has done, ignores the fact that there just aren't that many top tier pitchers and ignores the fact that there are 29 other teams that also want quality pitchers. My fear is that there are a couple dozen GM's that are targeting the same guys mentioned on this board including Odorizzi and Pineda.

I think I had Kepler as my number one a few weeks ago and also said there should be a little more love for Odorizzi. I am curious about the "misleading nature of his raw totals didn't fool our panel" comment about Rosario. I probably don't have him real high either but more because of the performance of the others rather than his performance. No matter how you cut it 109 RBI is a lot. His defense wasn't great but he still had the best and most crucial throw of the season. think he deserves a little love.

Well, major driver of course but if the pitching is top 10 and the defense is bottom 10 I think we can make two assumptions. First is the bottom third defense is the reason the Twins moved to middle of the pack in run prevention and 2nd that If we had a top 10 defense we would also have a top 10 for run prevention. Run prevention being the major goal. The staff gives up 4.18 runs so of course that is the major driver but if the defense turns that 4.18 into 4.65 that if pretty significant. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 8 wins a year. Every team has unearned runs but the difference between the Twins and the good defense is about 4 games a year give or take a few. For example, bad defense vs good defense was probably worth about 6 runs against the Yankees. Good chance we would have lost those games anyway so you could make the case that there was no impact on the outcome. However, if the offense and pitching were better it would be conceivable that bad defense vs good could have cost us all three games. Thats without even considering what good defense vs bad means to the pitcher.

More power would be great but I don't think it is essential. I compare and contrast to Ben Revere. Revere was a .320 hitter in the minors and a .287 batter in the majors. Pitchers did go after him because of the lack of power but he wasn't as disciplined as Arraez taking around 5% of his at bats for walks. His .287 average was better than average didn't play great because his OBP was only .319 and with no power. I always figured Revere would be a very useful player if he could get his OBP up to around .350 but he couldn't. Arraez has taken nearly double the rate of walks and is already 70 points higher in slugging percentage. Lets not talk about him as if he has no power. There were 15 guys with 200 at bats and Arraez OPS was 6th on the team ahead of Cafe, Castro, Adrianza, Turtle, Gonzo, Buxton, Kron, Rosario and Schoop. Its not great power but if pitchers attack the zone with the sole intention of not walking him the guy will hit .360 with an OBP of .410 and 40 doubles and 6 homers. It is still in their best interests to pitch to the edges to keep him down to a very useful .320 avg and .360 OBP

Buston won't make up for the whole defensive deficiency but he can make up for the outfield deficiency. Much like getting one good pitcher aids in slotting every other pitcher getting one great center fielder has a trickle down effect as well. Now Kepler becomes a good right fielder instead of a mediocre center fielder and plugging in a mediocre right fielder. I truly believe the infield guys can get better with instruction, hard work and pride. If we really think Adrianza has become a good hitter do we believe he can be average or better defensively at shortstop? I think I would like to see Polanco upgrade 3rd base, Adrianza upgrade shortstop and Arraez get better at 2nd. Rocket arm helps at 3rd but I would rather have agility and a quick release..

Fingers crossed on Graterol.

Kepler isn't 6'7 with a 7' wingspan on a liner with short air time. I'm not sure any other right fielder in the history of baseball makes that catch. I might be overstating it but that was what I thought when seeing it live.

Yeah, I mostly agree. I just think the Yankees took good at bats, they played good defense (Judge is the only right fielder in baseball that gets that Sano liner), and they pitched well. They played all phases well with respect to their abilities. Twins did not defend well, they did not pitch well and they did not hit well (how many 3-2 counts did they swing at ball 4?) They played all phases below their abilities. I just don't buy that they were out manned so much as outplayed. I would prefer a #1 that is better than Berrios but if Cole can't find his best pitch like Berrios couldn't find his curve ball or can't find the plate like Littell then he is not going to singlehandedly win anything. We saw that with playoff veteran Greinke. That's baseball and that's the playoffs.