mlhouse

I am not imagining the finger pointing of self righteous idiots who think removing a statue solves any of the real problems in the United States. AS far as the "segregating" players issue, big deal. 1964. That is the year I was born. Segregation in the South was still alive. What is more important about 1964 was that my favorite Twin player of all time started his career with the Twins that is still ongoing: Tony Oliva. AS far as being "strongly opposed" to taking down Griffith's statue, it is ridiculous to be offended by something that was said more than 40 years ago by a man who was born more than 100 years ago. If your life is looked at in such a narrow manner, you would not pass muster either.

Calvin Griffith was not a racist. In fact, for his time he was rather cutting edge. His baseball teams were fully integrated and he was cutting edge in signing Latin American players. The fact he grew up and lived in a completely different era than we do today does not make him a racist. ALL OF THESE HOLIER THAN THOUS POINTING FINGERS AT PEOPLE ARE THE REAL PROBLEM.

This is dumb and shows that this new movement has not concept of what racism is. The Twins are ignoring the TOTALITY of Calvin Griffith's life and only focusing on one incident that occurred around 50 years ago. Expecting that a man born in 1911, like Calvin was, to behave and use the same language as a person more than one hundred years after his death is idiotic and unfair. Times were different and unlike a lot of these racial-grammar editors, Calvin Griffith was in many ways a pioneer especially in the promotion of Cuban and other Latin American players. Tony Oliva, Zoilo Versalles, Camilo Pascual, José Valdivielso, Pedro Ramos, Cesar Tovar, Rod ****ING Carew. The later era Washington Senators and Minnesota Twins have always been an integrated team to the fullest extent. Calvin Griffith was a baseball owner of a different era. He wasn't a tech or banking billionaire who invested in a professional sports team for the prestige, tax write offs, and capital gains. Baseball was his business. Removing his statue from outside of Target Field for some drunken remarks he made 50 years ago only brings into focus, what mistake or foible are they going to get to use against you.

While they have some down farm prospects like Enlow and Jordan Balazovic, if the Twins want to keep in the competitive level of MLB they are going to have to utilize the value of their farm system to add a top of the rotation level arm. They need to manage the "surplus" bats they have at these corner positions, identify the players that have real value and the highest value and magnify the value of the ones they think are lesser values. One way of magnifying the value of a prospect is to move him up the minor leagues rapidly. A 20 year old performing average at best in AA is much better trade bait than the same 20 year old doing really, really well in A ball. Don't believe this? Look at many of the trades the Twins have been as the selling party, the Johan Santana trade in particular. The high salary teams like the Yankees and Dodgers do this consistently.

I guess that would be great if you had eligibility left. Most of the players that will sign as UDFA will be college seniors without leverage.

Cal was never going to sign Rod Carew to a new contract. People are not monolithic. Not everything they do can be judges by racial factors alone, and even those racial factors are never black and white (no pun intended). Griffith was way ahead of his time in finding Hispanic and Cuban players, and for its time the Twins/Senators played black players at least as much as any team in the league. What Griffith said was inappropriate. But it was something that someone born more than a century ago said more than 4 decades ago. It has no bearing on what is happening today.

I don't know what they are basing the claims Jeffers is a good defensive catcher, I have seen him play several times in Ft Myers and he isn't very good defensively. One thing is for sure is that they are not planning on signing Eddie Rosario after 2021, if they do not move him before that. I would have to believe they would love to move Larnach into LF this season if they could make a deal. And while these GMs have made a deal with prospects, they are still very conservative with them.

I would have liked to have seen them draft a college pitcher in round 1 and I thought there was a lot of value there when we selected. I think we really need to start looking at using the system to bolster the 3-4 starters in the rotation because as Kepler and others move towards the end of their current contracts the finances might get a tighter and the opportunity to spend money on that part of the rotation will not be available. I also have some concern that the top players in the farm systems are going to start to converge on each other. This has been a problem for hte Twins in the past because they rarely trade minor league prospects. This becomes especially problematic when those players do not have much positional versatility. Larnach, Rooker, Kirillof, and Jeffers (maybe he can stay at catcher). Even Royce Lewis staying in the infield is questionable. Now you add Sabato and Soularie as two more positionally limited hitters to push quickly through the system.

It is what I assumed but it isn't 100% foolproof. I assume that Rosario will be a rather easy signing because he is not going to a high end baseball school. But Maya seems like he might be more expensive than that slot with a Texas Tech commitment.

Are the two HS players they selected signable?

https://ps-baseball.com/prospects/marco-raya/13220/

I think college arm was the better choice. Several good options out there.

Although baseball drafts are really hard to predict, this is my round 1 and 2 prediction for the Twins: Round 1, Pick 27 Clayton Beeter, RHP Texas Tech I think the Twins go with the guy shooting up the draft boards two years in a row. Many claim Beeker has some the best stuff in the draft with 4 pitches graded 50 or above. Round 2, Pick 59 Kyle Nicolas RHP Ball St. Big kid with a 70 grade fastball that you move into a relief role.

I lived in North Carolina in 1999, so after the Twins drafted Garbe I went to Danville to watch him play. What a disappointment. He was supposed to be a great athlete, but he really had a stubby body and you could tell he did not have the bat speed. I thought Kevin West was a better prospect. The best player in that game was teh Danville Brave reliever Tim Spooneyberger who made it to the majors. I so wanted the Twins to take Ben Sheets in that draft.

I don't think the Twins draft strategy is that complicated this year. It is almost a certainty that the best player available at #27 is going to be a college starting RHP. TAKE THAT PLAYER AND DO NOT GET CUTE. Mlodzinski. Cavalli. Cecconi. McMahon. Cole Wilcox. Bobby Miller. Bryce Jarvis. Clayton Beeter. Tanner Burns. Whatever order the draft board ranks them, take the top guy from that list. I would assume that every one of those players would sign for the #27 slot value and this pick is going to be solid value because this is a good deep class of college arms. The outer picks are pretty much dictated by our slot positions and lack of a 3rd round pick. Even if we rescinded our 4th and 5th round picks, there isn't enough money there to put together a strong $2 million level bonus to buy a high school player out of his college commitment. So, target more college arms and perhaps a college catcher like Kevin Parada. The high upside players are going to be found in the undrafted free agent search although that will almost certainly be limited to college 4th year players.