COTwinsFan

The glaring omission, especially when you also include the contract is Nick Anderson.

After an RBI single in the 5th inning of LAA’s 11-4 loss against the Houston Astros, Albert Pujols passed Alex Rodriguez for the second most RBI in Major League Baseball history with 2,087. He now trails only Hank Aaron who posted 2,297 career RBI Pujols is actually 3rd place. Babe Ruth is 2nd with 2214 RBI's. It seems Babe Ruth is turning into a myth, that might be his most impressive feat.

My name is Justin and I was wondering how many MN Twins fans are located in Denver CO. I was hoping to get several watch parties at a local brewery/bar for games this year. If there is already a bar/brewery that caters to Twins fans we could do it there, otherwise I was going to start asking around. If anyone is interested, please let me know.

Turn this around?? The Twins won 101 games. Our culture this past year was one of the best in baseball. I do think it is interesting that 5 out of the last 6 World Series Champs had at least 1 starting pitcher making a minimum of $20 million annually. I think this is a clear indicator that to truly win at the highest level you have to spend on high priced, high impact pitching. I don't necessarily think the Twins need to sign Cole, but I believe spending $36 million annually on Gerrit Cole is a much better investment than $20 million annually on Madison Bumgarner.

I think the Twins are stashing money to sign a big-time pitcher (Wheeler/Bumgarner/etc). My guess is the Twins front office views Marwin Gonzalez starting the year at 1B as acceptable if they get a big ticket item as a pitcher. Gleeman and Bonnes pretty much nailed this one on their podcast.

I also view everything under the lense of the Twins and I don't think Grandal would be worth that contract to the Twins even if we didn't have Garver. I think the Twins need to take all of their risk on upside pitching. The Twins have proven to be able to develop and find above league average hitting through both the minor league development and short term contracts to veterans.

This is something that I have evolved on in the last few years. I do agree that you can't be afraid of the downside risk, but for me personally I think a team should take those risks on elite pitchers and not on position players. Obviously this is clouded by the recency bias of the Astros and Nationals success, but I do think position players are just more replaceable. My position could change in the next couple years, but it seems like pitchers are just much more important especially in the playoffs and thus are more worthy of the risk.

My question with Grandal would be that he is 31 years old. How much longer is he going to be a catcher, if he isn't a catcher, is he really worth this contract? Very few catchers are able to stay at that position into there 30's.

Corbin got 6 years for $140 million. AAV of $23.3 million.

I completely understand the interest in John Gray, but I think it is highly unlikely that he gets traded and if he does it will include a consensus top 30 prospect imo. The proposed prospects in this column seem significantly underwhelming. I live in Denver and the Rockies seem to consistently overvalue there own players and rarely trade the guys who develop through there minor league system.

I have seen multiple people reference a 5 year $90 million contract, to me this seems incredibly optimistic as a Twins fan. I will be shocked if his AAV is below $20 and I would expect it to be closer to $23 million. If you are skeptical of signing Wheeler for 5 years at $90 million you are realistically not even in the bidding for him imo.

I would let Odorizzi, Perez and Gibson walk. I would attempt to resign Pineda to a 2 year deal, I would even sign him for more per year to not have to go 3 years. My guess is it would take something like 2 year/36 million. For next season I would be prepared to start Thorpe, but pair him with a right handed opener (Littell or even Dobniak). One of the things that I wish the Twins would have experimented with is the opener, it looks to be a pretty big weapon that isn't being properly used by hardly anyone other than Tampa Bay. I think MN could possibly have two rotation spots that use an opener next year, possibly Littell/Thorpe and Smeltzer/Dobnak.

Completely agree with this. It seems Law's biggest misses are generally shorter starting pitchers.

I personally pay a lot more attention to Keith Law's list as he has his own individual opinions and doesn't get caught up in the group think of most other lists. I think the bigger takeaway is how high he is on Jordan Balazovic. Due to the anchoring effect of draft position, Jordan Balazovic had to out perform to an incredible level just to even make the top 50.

I appreciate the response. I am always curious in the variations between different lists. In reality those variations are a good thing as they are the opposite of group think.

I find it strange that Keith Law lists Jordan Balazovic as the 3rd rated prospect in the Twins system and he isn't even in the Twins Daily top 20. I do realize that Twins Daily tends to keep older players as top prospects for a longer period of time than most national scouts. Just curious what some of the people who created the list think either they or Keith Law are valuing so differently in regards to this prospect. I also realize that every list will differ between authors, it just seems that this is far more extreme than most years.

You may want to check out Mike Trout's AFL #'s, they are remarkably similar to Buxton's. I will be shocked if Buxton is not in MN for at least September of 2014. The year after Trout's AFL performance he was up with the Angel's from mid-July. The Twins have not had a prospect of Buxton's ilk since Joe Mauer, comparing him to Hicks is nonsensical when you realize Hicks took a total of 3 years to complete Low and High A ball. It took Buxton 1 year.

Sounds like Perfect Game works for Deadspin...on a serious note, thanks for the heads up on the article.

I think that if Buxton keeps hitting .400 with pop he will be in Ft Myers by mid May. I believe the Twins would have promoted Sano last year if it were not for his horrible defense and Buxton should have no such concerns. I have been a Twins fan since I 1987 (I was 6) and I have never been as excited about a prospect as I am about Buxton. With a little luck, both Buxton and Sano could be big league regulars by the end of 2014. If that happens we need pitching ASAP, that is why I am hopeful that we end up with either Gray or Appel. I hate the idea of Manea, anytime a pitchers stuff decreases drastically at 21 it just screams that he is hiding an injury. Go Twins!