Ctwink

Really should have a qualifier in the title "...of the last 30 yrs". You can't have a list like this, call it the best prospects in HISTORY and ignore the first 30 yrs of Twins history......

These players are paid to play ball. They aren't paid to force their opinions down our throats. I don't care what the subject is - do it on YOUR time - not during MY game. Just like Hollywood actors, I don't care what an athlete's opinion is - it won't sway me one way or another - so shut up about your pet project du jour. I don't care. Just like this opinion - we all have one and they all stink. Just because you are Lebron James and are a gazillionaire doesn't make your opinion more valuable than mine. This elitism has led to the downfall of Hollywood as the actors/directors care more about making "meaningful works of art" and telling the unwashed masses what to think than entertaining their audiences and then charging us $15 for a ticket to see their crap. I don't care about how you are planting trees in South America or your newest electric car or what your purple/pink/blue/gold ribbon signifies while you talking on the red carpet. If professional athletes aren't careful, they will kill the sport in the same way. If you care more about making a statement than doing your job, you are going to piss off a major portion of your fanbase. I already have turned off ESPN radio because other than Dan LeBetard - who understands his show is meant as entertainment and a vehicle for MAKING MONEY - the rest of cast of fools think I need to hear from one athlete after another babbling about their opinions. No - I listened to ESPN radio FOR FREAKING SPORTS!!! These people need to understand who are paying their millions.

You missed Trevor Larnach at #78.

I know your post was about saying "have fun and collect cards - its neat". Which I agree with. However, the economics are upside down and you could/should have done a better job of underlining this. To highlight pictures of your "lottery tickets" where you got cards that are worth more than the pack that you bought is a rarity and finding a card that's worth three figures is close to 1 in a million. If I was talking to someone who had never collected cards, I would want to underline (several times) that they need to do it for the love of collecting because 999 out of 1000 people won't find any card worth more than $5. Considering a pack can be $15, this is not a way to make money. Collecting sports cards hasn't been about making money or stocking up an investment at any time after 1985. I buy a pack of cards a couple times a year just for fun and haven't found a valuable football or baseball card (worth more than $5-$10) since like 2001. Instead if you love baseball AND you want to collect cards of value, I would suggest that people get into collect cards prior to 1979 - especially if you are interested in baseball or football history. Not saying collecting cards SHOULD be about making money, but too many people open up pack after pack after pack hoping to find that golden ticket that never shows up and then they get burned out with their stack of worthless cardboard. No one should be getting into card collecting to make money.

I’d make this trade for days. Fair mention, Diaz is playing well this year (for once) and has been at AA for a month. However, I can think of several guys who are 40 man eligible at the end of the year who are farther along or more talented than Diaz. This is a phenomenal trade for the Twins. You add a serviceable reliever, get a good AA starter AND you get a ptbnl all the while clearing a name off the long list of players you have to make a decision on in October. What’s not to love? Diaz was probably the most expendable “blue chip” prospect the twins had. Not sure who is runnin the show in Miami - they must have REALLY liked Diaz to trade three players for him. 1B/DH types are not hard to find...

If Falvey gives up that much in a trade for Bumgarner who is clearly just ML average at this point, no matter who the reliever is that is tossed in with him, he should be fired...

Still think we should go after Max Scherzer. Yes, we'd have to give up alot, but if you can't produce that #1 starter type you have to get him from somewhere. And by slotting that #1 guy in, moving everyone down, sticking Pineda in the pen for the rest of the year (where he can rear back and just fire away and the Twins can limit his innings), and getting rid of whoever is the worst reliever, you strengthen the whole team and then the hitters don't feel like they have to win every game 9-5. You can also use it to thin out the 40 Man Roster herd. So we send them Trevor Larnach, Wander Javier, Jhoan Duran, Lewis Thorpe, Nick Gordon, and Stephen Gosalves. You get 6 top 20 guys that are either ML ready or who have a high ceiling and we take on ALL of Scherzer's salary and call it good. That's the kicker in all this - his salary. Sure if we asked the Nats to pickup part of the out years part they'd want Lewis and Kiriloff to just start talking, but we are also taking on all the stupid parts of Scherzer's salary.

*Sano strikes out against probably the best closer in the league* = "not a viable hitter". Boy he sure was lucky to hit those 4 moon shots in 5 games. Just how empty is your glass...? There is one thing to be a bitter MN sports fan, but another to completely dump on what the team is doing. You know our players can make adjustments too, right?

Alyson Footer at MLB.com drives me crazy with her Power Rankings list. The Twins had been languishing at #6 (and lower) and now that we have the best record in the league and hit 1000 more HR's, this week she moved us all the way up to... 4th. Granted, no Twins fan would put the team in front of the Dodgers or Astros, but polling regularly below the Cubs, Braves, Brewers, A's, BoSox, (and even the Indians!), et al was frustrating.

Why in the world would we trade for ANOTHER washed up first baseman with a bloated contract - AND - give the Angels and actually good, cheap player to boot? Uh, ok....

Yea - I'm pretty much a jerk. I know you guys write for free and do it for fun - and - I read you every day. I apologize about my post. I'm not sure why I wrote that. Oh that's right - I'm a jerk...

Hopefully this works out for both parties - because the Pioneer Press' sport writing largely is the weak sister as compared to the Strib's (besides Berardino) and their website absolutely, positively sucks. So your content on their can't help but improve the page...

I've always thought the Twins should take flyer on Drew and then if the roof caves in, flip him before July 31. Now that the season has turned up rosier than than some of the most positive projections (with much of the starting rotation acting like blind fools), wouldn't this be a perfect opportunity? Give him a one year contract with a mutually approved option year (or years) and sign him up. Although you lose a pick (even if you couldn't work out the "magic" with Boston that's been discussed above), you've instilled the fans with a little of "Hey, the team is doing something to build on this success" optimism which would certainly be worth more at the gate that one draft pick. Then when reality sets in, you trade him and try to (further) recoup the 2nd rounder that you lost. Seems like win/win to me...

I've been going AG.com so long that I had no idea how I got there. Pretty sure it had something to do with Bat-girl, but not sure if AG directed me to Bat-girl or vice versa...

and Max Kepler?

Someone needs to do some quick research to see if this is the first time a team has "hosted" the playoff-clinching game for three separate MLB teams. Think that says all you need to about this season...

How can you have a "complete" review of prospective Twins managers without discussin Steinbach. He's probably the MOST obvious choice! Come on...

I just did a Google search of "big trades" and "best young baseball players traded" and I could find none that involved the young stud (similar to Stanton) traded for prospects. Most of them were like the Smoltz or Pedro trades - a prospect that turned into a stud traded for another player who was the "name" guy.

You have a mean Coon Rapids joke? Where are you from - Anoka?

I think we'll have to agree to disagree Jim. It seems obvious that the problem is only going to get worse because of the upcoming classes: Glavine, Maddux and Jeff Kent next year; Randy, Pedro and Smoltz for 2015, Griffey & Billy Wagner in 2016, Vlad, Posada, Manny, Varitek, and Ivan Rodriguez in 2017, and Chipper and Omar Vizquel in 2018. All could eventually get elected which will further spread the votes around to a continually growing pool of players as all the holdover players continue to get enough votes to stay on the ballot. Factor in writers who throw out stray votes for "their" guys (like a Twins writer putting in a vote for Jacque Jones) or players like Mike Mussina or Luis Gonzalez garnering vote percentages in the teens and 20's, but who will fall short of being elected to one degree or another, and you have a growing problem where you don't have enough slots on the ballot to vote for everyone who is a legitimate HOF candidate. In addition, you have a slam-dunk guy like Maddux or Randy Johnson who is voted in on the 1st ballot and consequently, everyone else's vote totals will drop. And you have guys like that almost every year. It isn't getting better any time soon.

There will most certainly be more years in the future where no one is elected. You have this huge backlog of "cheaters", 95% of whom are only guilty by association, who will never be voted in (because all the sanctimonious voters have decided that they should be made an example), but who remain on the ballot because enough other people vote for them. When you continually add in more retirees, you only add to this list. Whether voters can put 10 people on the ballot or 15, even slamdunk candidates won't be elected in their first couple ballots. It's the 40's and 50's all over again (although for obviously different reasons) where guys like Hank Greenberg took 9 yrs to be elected and Joe Cronin 10. The only ways that this is going to solved is for A) MLB or the HOF to come out and officially say that unless someone is a convicted/admitted steroid users, steroids were not tested for or considered against the rules at the time they were playing so they should be considered innocent, just the opposite - everyone who played from 1995 to 2005 is considered dirty and we shouldn't elect anyone (even the people we have annoited as "the nice people" like Bags, Biggio and Maddux - everyone). Since you can't tell who did it and who didn't, everyone is assumed guilty and you can't vote for any of them (even if the guy, or C) all the "assumed dirty" guys fall off the ballot on their own. Bottomline is its a mess and it isn't improving.