TheLeviathan

Good thing one belief or opinion being stupid isn't a bar we use here at TD to dismiss people or we'd all have no one to talk to.

You can hate an opinion without hating the person. Hell, its important to do that so you can work to change their mind. Fiercely defining a person by one mistake or one belief is a dangerous, and more than a bit preposterous, stance.

I will greatly miss the Funkadelic, it actually relit my interest in the Wolves a bit purely by how likable Flip Saunders was. He and Barreiro made for some excellent radio and that segment will be sorely missed. Barreiro's tribute show was excellent, it's another reminder how spoiled we are by that program and we rarely celebrate it for what it is.

It was a very good career and I hope retirement serves him just as well.

Well, that wasn't my argument at all. My argument (and it was stated pretty clearly) was that the best thing you can do is upgrade your 25 man roster and you should do that however the availability of talent allows you to do that. Don't fall over yourself for one position, but do what adds the most for the money you have. So no, that entire middle paragraph is a strawman. And I don't "think" this is true. The stats say it's true. Pull up the playoff stats for pitchers and see for yourself. Here are the three best starters from the last few years: 2015 - Estrda, Kuechel, Kershaw (Worst: Hammel, Cueto, Price) 2014 - Bumgarner, Lynn, Ventura (Worst: Shields, Kershaw, Peavy) 2013 - Lester, Lackey, Verlander (Worst: Buchholz, Lynn, Peavy) 2012 - Vogelsong, Fister, Sanchez (Worst: Bumgarner, Wainwright, Gonzalez) 2011 - Carpenter, Colby Lewis, Gallardo (Worst: Grienke, Verlander, Scherzer) 2010 - Lewis, Bumgarner, Lincecum (Worst: Sabathia, Hunter, Sanchez) It's all over the map. (Approximations) Guys go back and forth, in and out, every year. Colby Lewis twice kicked the crap out of the playoffs. Ryan Vogelsong pretty much won a World Series himself. Guys who are good often suck terribly. Sometimes they're as great as advertised, sometimes not. The same goes with hitters for that matter. The point is that there is no silver bullet. The best thing you can do is field the best 25 man roster you can and not worry about how many aces you have. Spend what you have available to make as robust a team as you can, you never know who is going to step up and be the hero if you have enough capable dudes on your team.

Oh? You have some evidence of that? I see plenty of variation. There are plenty of aces that struggle and lots of the Ryan Vogelsongs of the world. If you have some sort of mass study on it I'd love to see it. Otherwise it's easy to see just from pulling up this playoff year (and it's true for most you look at) that being the "ace" of your staff doesn't mean you won't be outperformed badly by dudes like Marco Estrada. Every postseason is littered with dud performances by aces and surprising #3 guys that carry their team. And it shouldn't be a surprise. The playoffs are just a grandiose small sample themselves.

I look at this: Hicks-Mauer-Dozier-Davis-Sano-Rosario-Catcher-Escobar-Buxton and see a lot of upside in that lineup. Very solid defensively, good power, good speed, good balance and it manages to have some serious upside too. That, to me, is where to invest the money. And we have plenty of money to do it.

It helps the odds to add better players, that's for sure. The problem is that people believe that having an ace is a prerequisite for even being considered a contender. The Twins need a better 25 man roster and there are many ways to skin that cat. Personally, right now, I don't think all in on an ace is the way to go. Ride the excellent fielding outfield, pay up for Chris Davis, and find a way to upgrade the catching spot. Let the kids play.

And Price is one of many "aces" you'll find out there with horrific post-season success. People seem to forget we had one of the best pitchers in baseball for much of our last run and it guaranteed nothing. I'd rather have one than not, but I'm not going to fall over myself in FA to get one if my dollar could go farther on, say, Chris Davis or Matt Wieters.

All that matters is that you get good performances. Who that comes from varies wildly. Just ask David Price. Or San Fran's other big hero: Ryan Vogelsong. It's a cute phrasing, but all you have to do is go look at actual box scores to see it isn't that simple.

I really hope this doesn't go down the "you have to have an ace to win in the playoffs" path. It's totally incorrect and massively overrated. But having an ace for the regular season grind is beneficial and the team should be on the hunt for one. Personally, I'd rather invest our trade assets and money into offensive players at this stage in the rebuild.

I think you're looking too hard to find alternates to the easiest explanation: the Twins targeted high control pitchers for a long time. In part it was a smart strategy: those pitchers could be had more readily and were more generally undervalued. Plus, if you emphasized a good defense behind them you could squeeze out really nice results. It was a Beane-like move that paid off for the team. The problem (much like with Beane) is that if you go too far in on only one kind of player you can get yourself in trouble. For too long we seemed like we only wanted that kind of arm, rather than just targeting the market's inefficiency.

I'm not sure how picking out a few guys makes your case here. It seems clear that high velocity correlates very well with effectiveness - a few counter examples hardly makes that claim a myth. You seem to be taking the stance that people have said ONLY high velocity arms can be effective and I'm not sure I've ever heard that argued by anyone. Only that it sure helps a helluva lot at the thing that DOES matter. (K Rate)

There is a correlation with velocity and strikeouts and with strikeouts and effectiveness. While it's true not everyone has to have velocity to get strikeouts, it's just rare. It's important to note that high velocity doesn't equal high strikeouts necessarily, I think the notion that we've busted some sort of myth is overstated.

Maybe this will get the running game going enough for the offense to start moving things. They looked really good handing it off and opening up holes.

10/200 for Jason Heyward? Good god no, he's the poster child for how WAR can overinflate value. He just hasn't been good enough or consistent enough at the plate to deserve that. Let some other team make that mistake.

Unwritten rules are the worst precisely because they are unwritten. They're left that way to give a lot of room for butt-hurt jerks to employ them at their own discretion. Written rules are written precisely to avoid that same latitude of interpretation. That's what makes them effective and not jerk emboldening.

What this season does is give the Twins all the reasons in the world to be aggressive about their chances in 2016. Let's see if the GM does that whenever this pleasant ride is over.

Gardy...is that you? It'd make a whole hell of a lot of sense on a number of fronts if it is

He's the closest thing to Troy Williamson I've ever seen in the outfield.

Certainly. Reasonable people can disagree about the merits of their decision about Berrios, but it has nothing to do with Duffy.

I'd feel a lot better if we worked them out ourself and not waited around for it. Seems like a more sustainable way to get things right.

I would argue making the decision he would be a non-factor in September before the season even started was the silly thing to do. It was apparent in July that Berrios could be a factor - his innings could have been curtailed then. The more rational explanation for why they weren't is that the Twins actively intended for him not to debut in 2015. It literally has nothing to do with where he is in the pecking order relative to Duffey. The real issue is the merits of deciding Berrios shouldn't debut this season.

Even if you buy Duffy being ahead of Berrios, the innings could have still been managed to make him a possible September weapon to employ. Tying those two things together is really contorting yourself to miss the point Chief is making.

Yeah, the Santana and Rosario comps have to stop. They just aren't applicable comparisons. Rosario may face some adjustments next year, but I think he's already gone through a major part of that adjustment. Even if he never increases his OBP by all that much he's still been a very nice addition to this team. Any OBP increases are just going to be gravy if he can keep up playing defense like this and hitting for the kind of power he has.