clone52

Just stop. If Garcia had started for the Twins on August 4th, it entirely possible the Twins would have lost that game instead of won it.

His ERA with the yankees is 6.32. Thats WORSE that Kyle Gibson's. Don't even get me started on ingoring the worst start. I tried doing that a couple months ago with Belisle and got crucified on here for suggesting he was a pretty good reliever with a couple of rotten outings.

Seriously? Garcia has been awful for New York. That was a fantastic trade of a rookie ball pitcher for a decent looking AA and AAA starter. Trading Kintzler was more questionable, but this 20-20 hindsight is ridiculous. #1, at worst, it's cost us 1 game so far, and thats assuming that Kintzler wouldn't have blown a save himself. Most people thought Kintzler couldn't keep producing like he had with the Twins, and now they are freaking out that the front office got something of value for him. Not to mention the fact that 99.99% of Twins fans realize that this is not the year they are going to win it all. They are building for the future and keeping a couple of players who are either fringe players or leaving at the end of the year to try to squeeze into the playoffs is a bad idea. Plus, they didn't fire sale. It sounds like teams made offers for Santana and Rosario at least, and the front office didn't pull the trigger. That shows me that they weren't just making trades to make trades. They were making trades where they felt they got back more value than they gave up. Plus, you can't discount that maybe this was a Rachel Phelps moment. The team was playing awful before the trade and playing fantastic after. Maybe a fluke, or maybe the trade lit a fire under the rest of their asses.

The reason teams didn't trade for him is because of the prospects they'd have to give up. If teams want to sign him, they don't have to give prospects. Just imagine last winter, if the Twins offered Dozier and a 4 year $60 million extension to the dodgers for nothing. Would the Dodgers have made that trade? Abso-freaking-lutely.

Yeah, you don't bench a guy with a 1.024 OPS in August. I love Adrianza though. Wondered if they'd trade Escober because of Adrianza.

Don't compare him to Nolasco. If they sign him to a contract extension in the offseason, then you can compare him to Nolasco. You're getting him for basically nothing. I bet the percentage of guys who fit the mold of Ynoa making the majors is less than 5%.

Well, comparing it to a second round pick is stupid. They spent $800K on a 15 year old who threw 91mph. There is no comparison to the draft because you can't draft a guy that young. They have had 2.5 years to see this guy up close and personal. Maybe the Twins now view him as a 5th round talent or a 10th round talent. Do you really want a front office who holds onto a guy "just" because they spent $800K to sign him 3 years ago, even if they don't view him as a high end prospect anymore?

More than fair, in my opinion. I don't want to trade Gordon, but would for a great pitcher. I would not sell low on Buxton.

I don't want Cole Hamels, but if you consider his last 3 seasons a decline, I think 99% of major leagues would take that kind of decline. This year looks bad but it might be injury related. And no, he is note owed $30. He is owed $23 million in 2018 and most likely $20 million team option in 2019. I really wanted him when he was with the Phillies, but I'd pass on him now. I'm on the Sonny Gray bandwagon.

I'd do something like this. Not sure if it would make it happen. Rosario (or Granite if the A's demanded it) One of Gonsalves/Romero/Jorge) Wander Javier

I lot of other teams also released Arcia, so its not like the Twins were alone in their thinking. Also, Vargas is not a terrible 1B. A team could live with him at 1B. (In fact, maybe the Yankees would trade for him).

Ramirez over Sano. He's having an amazing year. Not having Santana on the pitching staff? That's moronic. He should be in ahead of Fulmer or Carrasco.

I imagine there are a lot of reasons they'd put more in instructionals. Maybe they wanted him working on another pitch and didn't want that happening in real games. Maybe they wanted to give him 6, 7 or 8 days rest between pitching, which would really hamper the roster of a minor league team. Who knows.

Its not a choice of switching him back and forth between relieving and starting. I'd be an innings limit thing. Its entirely possible that with an innings limit, he only has 7 or 8 starts left this season and he would be shut down. Would it make more sense to give him 4 or 5 more starts, then 10-15 relief appearances at the majors? Other big time starters have gone that route (Price, Sale, Scherzer). It wouldn't be the craziest thing in the world.

Its not a blanket statement that pitchers can't succeed right away, but what if they see some of the same things in these guys that they saw in Berrios before he came up?

Regurgitating an old thread. I'm not anti-Mauer, but if they did let him go, they'd have other options. One would be moving Kepler to 1B and flling out the OF elsewhere (Granite, Grossman, Rooker, whoever develops in 2 years). Really, though, its way to early to think about 2019.

How do we know that Tampa won't give him an offer above slot?

I'm going to guess that Leach isn't going to sign for much under slot, if at all, especially if he was talking that he wanted to go to college. Maybe they will spend money on him. Seems to have a good scouting report.

Dozier is way ahead of where he was on this date last year, amazingly.

Yeah, I looked extremely stupid in this thread.

Journeyman? This is really only his 4th year (other than a few outings in his first 2 years) and his first 3 years were really productive. Plus, its not like he was ever released. He was traded to the Rangers. I always kind of assumed "journeyman" was a guy who bounced around to different teams via free agency. If I were the Twins and could get him for a good price, I'd take a flyer on him.

My only concern on boosting the offense of the catchers is whether the catchers are the main reason our pitchers are competing.

For example, Tampa Bay is currently 10th best bullpen ERA in baseball, at 3.72. If you remove their 2 worst games, their ERA drops to 3.10.

Thats a fair point, but I doubt many other team have 2 games where their bullpen gave up 22 earned runs. I'd be willing to bet that if you dropped the worst 2 games on every team's bullpen, the Twins would still have a Top 10 bullpen.

I honestly don't think the bullpen is a question mark at all. Currently they are 18th in baseball in ERA and have a 4.18 ERA. Pretty mediocre, but look beneath the numbers. The Twins had 2 travesty games. If you take those 2 games away, the bullpen has a 2.95 ERA good enough for 4th best in baseball. Taking those same 2 games away, Matt Belisle has a 1.25 ERA in 16 games instead of a 7.80 ERA. Taylor Rogers has a 1.22 ERA in 20 games instead of a 3.52 ERA. Even Haley would have a 4.2 ERA instead of 6.60. That really gives them 5 very solid guys in Kintzler, Duffey, Breslow, Belisle and Rogers. Really, Pressley is the only hole in the bullpen and even he has looked good the past few games. Adam Wilk as well I guess, but they probably need him for mop-up duty with such a thin rotation.