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tobi0040

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Everything posted by tobi0040

  1. tobi0040
    Cuesto and Silva signed for $175k and $200k each. I can't find Molina's. But those numbers are equivalent to the draft slot for a 7th round pick in the draft. We can play Monday morning QB on each pick. But it just seems like we have not made a significant investment in the catcher spot in 15 years. That seems like a lack of strategy to me. The biggest thing we did was tried salvaging the value of Hicks by flipping him for a career .620 OPS, 25 year old catcher. It is one thing to have a plan and see it fail. It is another not to have a plan at all.
  2. tobi0040
    I think we should do what is best for his development.
  3. tobi0040
    I remember the TD faithful being up in arms when we didn't even contact Maddon. Myself included. Of the three people who interviewed, quite a few including myself would have preferred Luvollo. Maddon likely would have signed with the Cubs anyway, but if I was guessing I think 70-80% of the faithful here would have rather had him than Molitor.
  4. tobi0040
    I understand BPA. But these are facts: Catcher has been a black hole and we have literally no talent in our system there because we 1) Have not invested in the position with first round picks, larger dollar international signings, or free agent signings. and 2) Have shown no ability to draft them later and develop them into league average catchers. So what if the next five drafts don't have a catcher as the BPA for the Twins? Do we just field a .500 OPS catcher for the next decade? And we can talk about the JJ guy next year. But we may slip to #5 and not have a chance at him. And we can't rule out our scouts falling head over heals for another toolsy prep SS or CF
  5. tobi0040
    Buck is really turning it around in AAA. 17 games. .310, .372, .535, .907. 5 doubes. 1 3B, 3 HR, 7 BB, K rate below 25%. This by no means is a guarantee of MLB success. But it is about as encouraging as it could possibly be.
  6. tobi0040
    In reading through the comments, factual stories, etc. It is difficult to conclude that this regime has any shot at putting together a sustained run at a winning team. These guys are plugging away at their typewriters while the competition is letting the Watson crunch numbers.
  7. tobi0040
    Sounds like Craig is a 1B/DH that could arrive quick. It would come down to whether or not he could play a corner spot to me. He is 35 pounds lighter and almost the same age as Sano. So probably has a better shot.
  8. tobi0040
    I almost think it is the opposite. If top draft picks could be traded I think it would give Boras more leverage. He could say to the Nationals, Harper is not signing with you and will only sign with New York, Boston, etc. Then the agent would be brokering deals in order to get his guys more money. Even with a slot penalty, a team like the Yankees could justify adding a real top talent and giving up a late first round pick the next year.
  9. tobi0040
    Since Mauer moved to 1B, the Twins are 28th in WAR at the catcher position with a WAR of 1.6. I am guessing about 90% of that was Suzuki’s first 2-3 months here. So it is safe to say we have netted zero in almost two years at the position. Only one team was negative, so this is far from a breakeven. In fact, the D-Backs have the same 1.6 WAR at the catcher position in the 44 games this year alone. We ranked 25th offensively and 29th defensively in WAR according to fangraphs. I think it begs the question, why are we putting up with Suzuki’s .610 and .527 OPS if he is literally one of the worst defensive catchers in the game? How much worse would Turner or Garver be at the plate? The other conclusion I can draw is this is another area where the Twins have left wins on the table. In a game where almost every team wins between 65-95 games, these decisions matter. Just like the 3 losses we project with having Sano in the outfield. This team is never going to be good enough to spot the head start most teams have over us.
  10. tobi0040
    Agreed. Buck needs a month in AAA
  11. tobi0040
    I just looked up JJ. .332 average and 18 HR with the Gators as a freshman in 2015. He will do. Still hoping for a better stop gap the next two years, hopefully in FA
  12. tobi0040
    But wouldn't a late round catcher take more time to develop than a first rounder? Real good catchers don't hit FA. And we don't use high picks on them. And we don't sign them internationally So I just don't understand the thought Process.
  13. tobi0040
    I know this will never happen. But looking out at our system, it would be an easy sell to take a college catcher and make an actual investment in the position. I know they take the guy at the top of their board and they skew toward HS players. But this approach has not yielded a good catcher in 15 years (when we had the top pick). So if we see a catcher 18th on our board, grab him. The alternative is paying a guy like Kurt Suzuki 6m a year to be terrible
  14. tobi0040
    What is your read on Okey? Will he stick at catcher and how far away is he from the big leagues? Where do you see him being drafted?
  15. tobi0040
    But the biggest issue. He has dropped 3 mph of velo and throws the 89 mph heater 75 percent of the time. The only option is the pen so he can regain the velocity. But the Twins don't understand sunk costs so his salary locks him into 180 innings a year with a terrible ERA. We compound problems with incompetence
  16. tobi0040
    Neither extreme is good. You are right. But if I had to pick I would take the owner that cares so much he meddles and is quick to replace people that are incompetent. We have a guy that has not run a thing in his life who is either in denial or afraid to fire someone. At least Jerry Jones and Daniel Snyder have their heads in the right spot and are competitive to no end. You have guys worth billions who get upset about their team losing and think they alone can fix it. And I believe I heard the other day that since Jimmy Johnson left, the Cowboys were a .500 team. That is a far cry from where the Twins have been.
  17. tobi0040
    Yeah, hire a really smart up and comer from another organization that is more well respected than the Twins. We could throw out about five really good examples and another 10-15 that would be an improvement upon today. When you do that, they tend to know other smart, well respected people and bring them over too. Sign me up. Watch the guys let go either retire or take lesser jobs elsewhere. Similarly how nobody is beating down Gardy's door. Tommy Milone's door. Casey Fien is in AAA. We paid Duensing $6M the last three years and he has yet to throw a pitch somewhere else. And so on. The Gardy coaching tree, or front office tree of Terry Ryan is not exactly blooming.
  18. tobi0040
    He was hired as a PR intern, then PR assistant, then media relations. Skills that are in no way valuable to a GM. He learned how to scout from Terry Ryan and hoped Terry would stay in his role a long time (not a good sign when you replace that person after a bad run). He scouted amateur players and worked on contract negotiations. Assistant GM from 2007 to present. The core of the winning 2007-2010 teams had been established and this was a well oiled machine. 2011 to today has been terrible as you noted. Bad trades. Questionable succession planning at several positions. Rushing prospects in order to save face (Carlos Gomez). A real lack of vision about where the franchise was. I am going to take a pass on this one. http://www.startribune.com/souhan-from-intern-to-vp-antony-still-enjoys-ride-with-twins/241113151/
  19. tobi0040
    [quote name="Hosken Bombo Disco" post="478640" timestamp= I don't want this thing blown up (yet), I just want them to start making good decisions. Good quote. I don't want to see Sano, Buxton, or Berrios traded. But the silly decisions need to stop. I won't name them because they have all been beaten to death. And they aren't a hindsight thing, almost every one was predicted by 90 percent of posters on this site.
  20. tobi0040
    I get why it is more difficult to rock the boat. But this should be so obvious. This is why second generation businesses fail. You take someone who started from nothing and build a net worth of a few billion dollars, they would make the right call here without hesitation. I just hope the current group cashes out.
  21. tobi0040
    This is the part of the article that had me completely lost. Why on earth would it be hard for the Twins to go outside their circle for a hire? Clearly, the team in place is not getting it done. It could not be any more clear.
  22. tobi0040
    So it looks like the Twins going outside for their next GM is near unanimous. I worked for Target when the last CEO was fired. He was fired because sales were slumping, the data breach and his awful response, Canada was a complete debacle, and they were falling behind their competitors in the most important aspect of retailing (driving sales using mobile devices). The #2 person at the company was in the running for the job. She was by any metric respected, very smart, in many ways capable . At the same time, they absolutely needed an outsider to come in and offer a fresh perspective and that is what they did. The Twins need the same. One could make a case that Goin would offer something drastically different than Terry and I think that is true to an extent. But at the same time we could pluck an external SABR person as well. One from a team that is farther along than the Twins. That would be the best of both worlds in my opinion. The other benefit of an outsider is this front office and field team needs some turnover and it is much easier to do that when they are not golfing buddies.
  23. tobi0040
    "i would have confidence in Rob Antony, Brad Steil and Jack Goin as potential GMs. Antony has great respect in the industry as a negotiator. He has a high-level of respect from the agents. He has the respect of the scouts and evaluators. Brad Steil has changed things up quite a bit since taking over for Jim Rantz as Twins minor league directors. He's definitely analytical. He's under 40. We've seen an aggressiveness in terms of promotions compared to Rantz. Jack Goin is very smart and obviously it's his job to be analytical. He definitely gets the other aspects, scouting and such. He probably hasn't done as much in terms of contracts, but he should be a consideration based on us wanting more analysis." To be quite honest, I am 50/50 as to whether this article and comment represent actual opinions or intentional red meat for frustrated fans. The notion that the Twins could possibly hire an internal person to replace Terry Ryan, or that someone would be "allright" with that person being Rob Anthony or Brad Steil is really hard to swallow. If there was ever a team that needed a respected outsider to come in, clean house, and drive change it would be this franchise.
  24. tobi0040
    MLB in 1973. His OPS was .697. Joe Morgan had a WAR of 9 with an OPS of .899. Looks like the league averaged an OPS+ of 93. Schmidt's was 92. http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/NL/1973-standard-batting.shtml
  25. tobi0040
    With regard to Plouffe. It sounds counter-intuitive, but the Twins would have been better off letting Plouffe walk for nothing and put Sano at 3B. They would gain 3 wins by not having Sano play RF and pick up a huge edge offensively at 3B (I think Sano is struggling in part because of shaky play in RF). I am guessing we could have traded Plouffe for a reliever. Some dispute that. But had we shed ourselves of that $7M, we could have sure as heck signed one. Good reliever plus Sano not in RF would be a team that wins more games than Plouffe at 3B, no reliever, and Sano in RF in my opinion. As Mr. Brooks noted above, it sounds like we shopped a guy around the league and could not find much for him. So then why are we holding onto this guy, who is 30, and moving a 22 year old franchise cornerstone to RF? We have this completely backwards. Just as we have May to the pen so we can hold onto Milone, who also has no value around the league
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