Cris E

How different did Hunter or^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Span look the day they were drafted? Top picks go to bad teams, and #2 is going to be worse than most. (EDIT: Hunter wasn't a top pick.)

John, back in the 90s I would have bet money that steroids and all the related compounds were running wild in baseball clubhouses. I could not have proven anything, but too much was changing too fast for any simpler explanation and I like simple explanations. (What's more likely: some subterfuge from the head office somehow being kept under wraps by the entire industry, or young, impulsive, competitive athletes latching on to promises of huge increases in performance at little cost?) Look at how the shape and size of the players changed between the 1991 Twins and the 1999 team. Look at how hard pitchers were throwing compared to a decade earlier. Look at the number and distances of HR and ridiculous spikes in what guys were accomplishing. As evidence, I wouldn't take it to court with me, but if any pro athlete tries to tell me he added 30 pounds of muscle by lifting weights and getting his rest I'm not going to believe him. Everyone I know believed they were doing something to get huge, and the only question was where the cheating line was at any given time. Other sports had proven that these drugs worked and baseball was merely catching up. I think everyone on this board thinks there are a significant number of players cheating in the NFL, and in retrospect it's kind of quaint to believe that somehow the guys that played baseball were morally above similar temptation.

What do you think some of the former Twins players like Dan Gladden and Jack Morris would say about that? I think they'd go into the same shell that Dan Serafini is in: guys in the game (or who want to be in the game) have to live in the baseball community and won't own up to anything specific. It's only when they've moved on that they talk about this stuff. It no coincidence that the only ones talking about this are completely out of professional baseball.

Tom Verducci's latest piece in Sport Illustrated goes deep into Dan Naulty's career and how much of it was enabled by steroid use. It's rather stunning. Thirty-three players appeared in at least one game for the 1994 Fort Myers Miracle. Only six of them reached the majors long enough to earn $500,000 in their careers. Half of those players are known PED users: Naulty, outfielder Matt Lawton (who tested positive in 2005) and pitcher Dan Serafini (who flunked a test in '07). There's quite a bit more, including a several other Miracle players who admit to steroid use. The notable exception is Dan Serafini, who doesn't see it as cheating at all (and he's the only one of the group still trying to stick in pro baseball.) Read more: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/magazine/05/29/baseball.steroids/index.html

Ryan decided to go cheap and scrape the bottom of the Barrel, resulting in the total waste of 3 million dollars. I think they really felt that Marquis is a healthier guy than Bedard and stood a better chance of throwing 180-200 IP. The money was probably secondary given how much trouble the team has had with health over the past few years, and doubly so with Baker's elbow being a question mark over the winter. The problems with this roster have more to do with assumptions and evaluations than with cheapness.

Liriano to the pen means Burnett is on notice! So how did Burroughs look this week? Ready for a call up, or does Plouffe get a week to claim the job?

btw, this is sad news. He is one of the great players of all time, and this sucks. I don't know, when a team is losing they have to consider trading just about anyone. Capps is no different. Oh, you mean about Rivera. Yeah, that was pretty rough.

I mean it to the Twins, who seem to think that once a random team sprinkles a guy with Magic Closer Dust (capital MCD), they’re forever a different guy. Small point: As an organization, and one with a tremendous amount of continuity over the past couple decades, I have to object to the MCD comment. Going back almost 30 years to the days of Ron Davis and Keith Atherton, all of the the Twins' team leaders in saves came to the team with fewer than 10 career saves until Jon Rauch and Matt Capps popped up on Bill Smith's watch. (And Rauch was covering for Nathan and wasn't intended to be a closer.) This organization typically doesn't believe in the Dust. Capps was kept on because they had the money, he was a known commodity and it saved them a trip to the open market. But trading a talented young catcher for him was awful, and Mr Smith has had his keys taken away from him as a consequence. (OK, there were other things too, but the mindset has been rejected.)

There are two aspects to covering a team: reporting facts and providing analysis of them. And there are two kinds of facts as well, those that come from seeing events and looking at the record and those private events that are only known by the people involved. Anyone can do analysis based on the facts. The quality will vary depending on the talent of the writer, how much time is devoted to research or thought, and the quality of the facts being considered. But in general it takes no special access to form an opinion and spew it out there. And these days a lot of the fact reporting happens on its own as MLB churns out game reports and stats on the internet for free. So the only realm left that requires access is the behind the scenes stuff that pros like Mackey dig out. I know I'm in MN, not Florida. I'm in my car or office, not the clubhouse. I talk to the idiots sitting around me, not Terry Ryan or players or TK. I form all sorts of stupid opinions based on, well not a heck of a lot, honestly. But that's what people have been doing for decades out in the bleachers or down at the bar because that's what we're supposed to do. Players and reporters and others in the know have been ignoring us for a hundred years. But now, through the power and majesty of the glorious internet, my water cooler-grade opinion is available to the entire world and is harder for folks to ignore. I'm sympathetic to Mackey's complaints, I guess, but honestly, people in the game have been putting up with this stuff for ages. It isn't new and it isn't fair and it isn't any different from what players have said forever about columnists who couldn't possibly know the true story etc etc etc. There's no accountability and we couldn't know and, well, shut up and do your job Phil. It's how things work no matter how frustrating you find it. Move on.

They dont need to to play any games for a smart fan to see the Marquis, Carroll, and Capps signings were disasters!! They'd be a problem if these guys were blocking prospects, but none of the kid pitchers are blowing away the field and the closest thing we have to a MI candidate needs to spend some time at AAA. The deals are short, and only Capps sees himself as a premiere full-time guy, so when the time comes to have a talk with any of them it should go pretty well. These are not bad deals. If you want a situation where Ryan can really mess up, wait to see how he handles the logjam in the outfield, and particularly CF, in the next year or two. If he over-values Revere's hustle or feels compelled to stay with Span after the point when Benson or some other youngster has passed him by then you can call for his head. But signing journeymen to paper over holes for one or two years is what you need from a GM in this situation.

More likely is the idea that they want to get a good look at him now. During the season Gardy and his guys don't get to see minor league players, so they're probably spending as much time as possible now to learn what they can. He'll go to Rochester to work on things until someone can't cut it or gets hurt, and then he'll come up to play full-time until the crisis passes.

The only billionaire. The only Dutchman. The only root beer magnate. The only MVP. The only one without a food stand at Target Field.

Nelson tore up Colorado Springs, so don't be too fast to overlook his career .254/.284/.376 in a couple hundred ABs with the Rockies. That said, we're looking for a glove guy who can be comfortable with a bench role, so he could still be a good fit. I'm for anyone, in the system or not, who has a solid grasp of defense at a number of positions. It would be swell if Nishi figured this out by mid-year, but I'm not confident he'll learn more than one position any time soon or be able to settle in on the bench at any point at all.

But, if you're down to your last $10, just about out of gas, you spend the $10 the $10 on gas that can get you to work, not on 10 lotto tickets. That was the situation Ryan faced, That's not a good comp because 800K will only buy you about a thimbleful of gas. The signing of Z was total lottery ticket and didn't affect any real plans. Who were they going to get for that money that is likely to be better than Ontiveros or Bulger or whomever? Certainty costs money, and as mentioned by a lot of people above, there were structural holes in the bullpen and Ryan had to make a choice. Perkins should be solid. Capps only really sucked when he was hurt in the middle of the year. After that there's the herd from last year and the lotto tickets like Wheeler and Coffey and Zumaya and whatnot. My guess is he looked at everyone on the market, his bullpen budget, the guys on his roster, and didn't see much that projected better than what he had. Not much certainty can be bought for what he spent, so he just sat on the cash. Ryan seems to be betting that Capps isn't the mid-season guy that pitched thru pain, but could be a solid closer if given normal rest. But if the rest of the pen is no good he won't be getting that rest again and he's likely to hit the same sort of rough patch. If there was $13m for Nathan then there should probably have been something more available for the seventh inning, and that's where the second guessing should come in. The Zumaya signing was a symptom of the bad decision, not the problem.

That list is the product of some automated process that's at the mercy of infrequent data updates. Here's a quote from the site: A disclaimer like that tells me not to waste a lot of time at that site; after all, the developers couldn't be bothered to. Either fix the formula, refresh the player info more often or shorten the lists to where they start becoming accurate. But lobbing a "yeah, it might not be real good" on there is not much different from letting weak content stand. By the way, it not just freshness that's an issue here: Alex Wimmers was "seemed a little wild at high-A Fort Myers last year".