jay

You could say it's more of an indication of the quality of your starting staff when your closer is 1 K behind the team lead.

Definitely enough to start asking questions about his current performance. Not enough to damn his entire career.

Pull in $14M/year and I bet your wife lets you grow a 'stache too!

I think it looked a lot like this... http://movieboozer.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/free-candy-van.jpg

That was the one thing I didn't agree with in the article. Flipping heads 5 times in a row doesn't make you more likely to flip heads again the sixth time. Granted, it's probably not a 50-50 equation like a coin, but the concept applies. I don't think 5 years gives you much predictive value for a specific round, but certainly more so for overall draft strategy and tendencies.

?????????? Haven't you seen his ERA??????? </sarcasm>

http://stmedia.startribune.com/images/ows_136850206848846.jpg Anyone else notice that beauty filling in? Surely, it's not coincidence that he's also 13 for 27 with 11 ribbies over the last week...

I get your point, but who exactly did the Twins hold back and give that playing time to in 2012 to win a few more games? Maybe Parmelee should have gotten more time to work things out, but sending a player back to AAA after struggling isn't a unique approach. I'm not really seeing any other examples that stand out to me.

First off, 40 question marks is a bit extreme. We probably would have gotten the point at 3 and it's not like the poster claimed to have solved cold fusion in his bedroom. Despite Worley's struggles in EIGHT starts this year, he has actually pitched in his life a few times before that to give us an idea of what else he is capable of. He has some concerning trends (decreasing K-rate) and he might in fact need some AAA time to figure it out, but that level of exasperation is a bit ignorant of both his past and the current SSS.

Prognosticator of the Day Award Winner.

Mauer is the ideal #2 hitter. Dozier hasn't shown it yet at MLB, but he was a high OBP guy in MiLB (.370) and batted leadoff plenty. He is probably the best of the currently available bad options. I think Escobar or Carroll in the lineup would be the only other options until Hicks shows he's ready for it again and I wouldn't call either of them a big upgrade over Dozier.

Interesting stuff. Definitely shows an effort to get more pitching in the system. Twins have drafted the highest percentage of 'Arms' over the last 5 years. You can clearly see the preference for college over HS pitchers at an almost 8-to-1 rate. People blast the Twins' MI development, but they draft them right on par with the rates of other teams.

The Twins lost 195 games the last two seasons. Time isn't running out on ANYONE who shows semblances of being a capable MLBer. Even projecting rapid promotions to get 'the wave' up here next year gives every single player mentioned plenty of time to either figure it out or become a part of baseball's natural attrition.

The one other advantage to a six-man rotation would be the additional opportunity to assess the long-term value/potential of our borderline options -- Walters, DeVries, Deduno, Hendriks, etc. A few more MLB starts out of that group would be welcomed to give the F.O. some evaluation time. However, I have to agree with the current majority. We just don't have the talent to force a six-man rotation and we'd be left short somewhere else.

I happen to agree with this model as choosing which young players to invest in from your own organization would inevitably have to be more efficient than the free agent market. It didn't work out so well with Blackburn, but plenty of people (rightfully) argued immediately after the signing that he wasn't the right kind of target.

Fun: - Aaron Hicks and Adam Dunn are tied for last in BA among qualified MLB batters (.137). - Jeff Keppinger (who some advocated for as an MI option this off-season) is the only qualified MLB batter without a single walk. He is also last in OPS by 68 points, trailing one rookie-CFer named Aaron Hicks. - The White Sox, at a lowly 9th in the AL, have generated 46% more strikeouts than the Twins (last in AL). The Pale Hose team ERA is 2nd in the AL at 3.40. - The White Sox are last in the AL in team OPS at .650. Only Alex Rios is above the AL average of .733.

Right. Who? How? My point is I don't see a ton of options the Twins missed out on. We can maybe cherry-pick a couple, but I don't think this was some huge mistake. I wouldn't expect them to trade prospects this off-season for a leadoff guy and decent FAs that can leadoff tend to be overly expensive (see: Bourn, Michael).

I hope they DFA T. Wood shortly and at least get Colabello on the 40-man so they can bring him up in spurts when they can do without an extra arm for a bit. Walters, Deduno, and Thomas are the only other options I see right now.

I'm wondering what a "solid plan" would have looked like. If the Twins had every roster position and the batting order perfectly determined, it probably wouldn't have been a 90+ loss season last year nor had low expectations for this year.

It's good to see a little more depth to the pipeline behind Mauer. Between Hermann and Pinto, we can hope for at least one decent 2nd catcher and perhaps even Gardy's ever-preferred 3rd C option on the roster at a cost-controlled salary.

I guess I don't find the Twins production vs MLB at leadoff particularly relevant at this point. We could do this same exercise for any other spot in the lineup that Hicks had been primarily consuming. All we're really doing here is pointing out that Aaron Hicks has struggled badly.

Chris is rolling on an 8-game hitting streak right now. During that time, he is 14-for-32 (.438) with 4 multi-hit games. His season triple-slash is sitting at .339/.397/.591 for an OPS of .988. He is top-10 of the Int'l League in runs, hits, HRs, RBIs, AVG, SLG, and OPS. Impressive!

2014 MLB Free-Agent List Not many options at SS, maybe Brendan Ryan to come play some top-level D before he gets too old. More options at SP that would presumably be in the Twins range if they are looking for a mid-rotation option. MLBTR has a 2015 list also, but that's too far out to really gauge and lots of guys will get extended by then.

Fangraphs also happened to take a look at the exact impetus of this thread -- WAR for Marte vs Harper season-to-date. I agree in full that the defensive metrics need to continue improving, but I think there's also some validity to the point that it's much easier for us to quantify offensive contributions in our minds than it is to assess defense or baserunning (which is how Marte is so close to Harper in WAR). Here's what Dave Cameron published yesterday looking at removing various defensive components to see if it made WAR more accurate (it didn't): WAR: Imperfect but Useful Even in Small Samples | FanGraphs Baseball