Cris E

After Crain and Gueereruier went through these flat spots they eventually faced long lasting injuries. And in his past Burton has had serious bouts with the injury bug, losing most of 2010-11. For him to blithely say "I'm fine, it's not physical" after stinking the joint up last summer, rallying for a few weeks and then falling flat ever since sort of raises a flag.

Mauer has had 57 PA and even with the strikeouts his OBP is still .388. If you want to play small samples and chasing endpoints, how about five multi-hit games in his last eight? How about the fact that he struck out in all but one (including two strikeouts in four of eight?) Does any of this mean anything? No, it's mid-April. This is not a thing.

Two guys parked on the bench watching the pinch hit opportunities roll by makes me wonder: if they'd won today would they still have done this? I like to think they would have, but regardless it's good to see injured guys getting replaced. Too bad Arcea didn't own up in time to get another hitter up here for today's game.

Barreiro and Reusse are tired, lazy and need to produce sounds for hours at a stretch almost daily. Mauer works for their purposes because he's well-liked enough to draw defenders and disappointing enough to make some people pause. When people blame individuals for team failures they are over-simplifying, especially over a series of 160+ game seasons.

That's what you want 'confirmation bias' to mean...

I think if they move any bullpen guys they'll keep Swarzak (homegrown) and move Burton or Fien, probably Burton since he's got a better track record so he'd bring a better return. If Willingham is toast it'll be obvious by May and he'll be sitting in MN on August 1. At that point there's little reason to play him or trade him until Sept, when his playing time will be more valuable in the hands of the kids. My guess is that is if he bombs we'll see more Kubel, and if he bombs too by the end of June we'll see the end of the Eddie Rosario 2B Experience and the dawn of Rosario: LF. When his 50 games wrap up they'll tune up his bat and have him go stand in LF, defense or no.

Lots of pitching injuries this spring, so some guys that you wouldn't consider in Feb start looking more plausible as April rushes towards you. I'm thinking OAK, TEX, ATL, for example. Diamond would be a great #4/5 if you have a good enough bullpen to keep him on a short leash and can score enough runs to make his starts worthwhile. Basically a good team where you're not quite ready to bring up the kids but you lost 170 innings to Tommy John. He's a cheap replacement level starter who seems like a solid citizen. He'll find work.

"50 game suspension to start the season." Yes, but he is allowed in camp until the games start. The real issue is that he's been out of camp for "personal reasons". Honestly I don't particularly care what they are, but it is a bad year to be missing a heap of playing time. He was on the verge of getting a major league cup of coffee as soon as this Sept, and the team is short on both middle infielders and hitters. I hope all is well in his life, but the timing was unfortunate.

Reality check: The more moving parts there are the less likely it is to happen. In this case there are more starters than roles, so the easiest path to clarity is a simple move like sending Diamond to OAK. He gets a chance, they shore up the rotation, MN picks up a prospect (hopefully a MI.)

If there was any gentleman's agreement, it certainly would have included some sort of expectation that Kubel or Bartlett wouldn't be utterly terrible. You can hear the discussion already: "Jason, if you'd given me any excuse at all I'd have made a place for you..." The team isn't at a point where they can be fine tuning the 25th man selection. It's still in a raw rebuild state and these guys are not moving the team forward. I like the idea of placeholding with easily discardable oldsters from happier days, but there are actual players to evaluate and the old guys are not filling the places.

A real SS prospect would be very welcome. All the guys mentioned there are glove-first, maybe-enough-bat or probably-a-2B guys rather than genuine top shelf SS talent. Eventually one of Hicks and Rosario should be packed up and send out for a solid SS. A lot will ride on if missing a third of this season affects Eddie's progress at 2B. He's still got work to do and if he wants to be part of the action in 2015 this was a really bad time to sit out.

It's a silly premise for an article. <Inflamatory Strawman Title?> No! Perfectly reasonable action in context, and no one is saying this at all. But if they were this piece would be refuting those arguments.

I'm still wondering if Rosario sticks at 2b after missing 50 games. There's a very real chance that a fast start by Polanco puts them both at 2B in CR in July, and if Eddie doesn't come out playing well he might not get first pick of the available innings. The organization could take a hard look at things and let Rosario's bat develop in LF and Polanco at 2B and be done with the discussion this summer.

I think Law has said that Sano's issue is contact, too much swing and miss, but that the glove should play at third. As he faces harder competition and keeps growing he has to prove he can keep the average up, otherwise he'll just be another Three True Outcomes guy instead of a true monster.

"Circling back" = call Tanaka one more time: "That 7/$155m still sitting OK with you? Gimme a call if you want another crack at 5/$65m. The midwest is a great place to play." EDIT: It's Johan and/or Pavano. They won't touch the draft picks and there's not much else out there at this point.

Mauer said, “That sounds a little funny!” I have to object to one thing: Joe Mauer has never said anything in his life that ended in an exclamation point. Other than that, sounds like it was a good time.

>The only thing not to like about this kid is his terrible taste in movies. This caught my eye as well. Very concerning...

The amount of OF's we have is a strength and will be good leverage in future trade talks. Only if Terry Ryan ever considers trading a minor leaguer... (Or were you saying we have leverage in talks with our own players because we have so many minor league OF piling up and "We've got guys willing to play for nothing if you won't take it"?) Whatever, more options are good, but wasting careers by not playing OR trading players is just selfish. Ryan has to find roles for these guys, and trade bait is a noble use.

We've got herds of starters and Florimon at SS, so while Drew may not be the specific name I say we need another SS. There's got to be a guy out there worth a two year deal to play until it becomes clear a genuine long term SS is in the system or not.

Not quite. I forgot about the standing ovation, but that game from 1986 was linked earlier in this thread, and the Twins won.

Attendance Fun April 6, 1982 52,279 First Game Ever at the Metrodome April 7, 1982 5,213 Second Game Ever at the Metrodome Poor Calvin.

The truest, most Metrodome game I can recall was against the White Sox on Saturday, October 4, 1986 (http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/MIN/MIN198610040.shtml) Greg Gagne hit two inside the park HR and a triple, mostly off of Daryl Boston in CF. Boston looked like he was trying to freeze the puck against the fence on all three, but to his credit the ball was bouncing around pretty good and he did keep Gagne at third on the last one. (These weren't isolated incidents, as Mickey Hatcher had hit a CF triple in the first.) Eventually Boston hit one out against Blyleven to narrow the gap to 7-3, but it was all over. It was a wonderfully representative game because of the ties to the 87 team, because of old school names like Hatcher and Ron Washington in the lineup, because both MIN and CHW were 20 games out (and ahead of SEA) and because the field affected play so strongly. (Also fun because future baseball mgmt like Billy Beane, Ron Washington and Ozzie Guillen all played.)

1994-2013 includes a lot of bad Twins teams with a graveyard full of bad starters. 56 pitches is injured or blown out, not tired or time for the pen. As mentioned above, count awful starts (<3 IP?) and either show the number or exclude it from the study.

I was thinking this too. They've got essentially no outfielders. If Willingham doesn't get them going we can dump anyone from our parade of RF last year: Doumit, Parmalee, Kepler (if they want to pretend that the future matters) and even send along an envelope to grease the wheels if that's what it takes. They shouldn't have any money issues, but you never know what will make an GM smile.

I wasn't high on AJ because I don't think he's ready to sit down and watch a younger player take his innings, and particularly one who is going to have growing pains and go through stretches where AJ is clearly the better player. Once AJ accepts that he's not a starter anymore I think he'd be a decent guy to have in the mentor role and resident redass, but 2014 is not the year and parking him on the bench could lead to corrosion and failure.