Doomtints

That's the trade. When the trade was first announced, the Twins were slated to get nothing which left all of us scratching our heads and scrambling to find more information. When asked for an explanation, Ryan said that time ran out and they let the trade go through rather than scrap it for everyone. Within a couple of days, Justin Jones was announced as coming to the Twins in the trade. The assumption was that the league let this part get added after the paperwork was filed. How the Cubs figured out Jones was a bust by age 19 is another part of the mystery, but the Twins did not give Jones their usual patience either and released him when he was 21.

Mauer did not do well when batting leadoff for whatever reason. In the perfect world, you would put Buxton at leadoff but he needs to learn how to hit in the majors first. Right now I think the best bet is to try Polanco at leadoff. Kepler does not have the OBP to be so high on these lists.

They already played the self-contract card. I think that ship has sailed.

There was a multi-team trade about ten years ago where the Twins got NOTHING in the trade. They got themselves involved in this multi-team deal but could never decide on who they wanted. The deadline was coming up and rather than spoil the party for the other teams involved, the Twins traded a player away for nothing in return. The Twins are officially Bad At This.

Definitely some power there.

You are still reading the Terry Ryan playbook, I see.

Bautista is the best possible mentor for Sano on the market. He also upgrades the bench and adds depth at DH, 3B and OF. The Twins should consider this regardless of what happens to Dozier. One problem -- Bautista is also talking to several other teams, some of which are serious contenders. I would not spend too much time thinking about Bautista becoming a Twin unless you think the Twins will outbid everybody else, probably by a significant margin.

That's only because Rosenthal was working on a large impasse in the bathroom.

Make no mistake about it, it will only be the Twins who will lose. The Dodgers will be a favorite for the NL pennant with or without Dozier, and the Twins will remain a team with 100 loss potential unless they make a change.

Barring a trade with someone else, Stephan Drew or Kelly Johnson would be top choices for 1-year stopgap solutions. They could also roll the dice on Munenori Kawasaki or even Daniel Descalso. And, obviously, they could simply stick with what they already have. Hernandez isn't a complete bust. I don't know what they have ready in the minors, if anything. Utley's age probably makes him the last choice.

OK, but that phrase is silly. No one ever says, "Its not a car until it's a car" or "It's not a dodecahedron until it's a dodecahedron." (Though for the latter, maybe people SHOULD say that more often.)

I disagree. When the Twins put out the survey a few years ago asking which type of car the Twins should be, the door was forever left open for this sort of thing. As for which Twins would most fit on the Trump cabinet, which of the players are against public service? Those would be the guys, but I don't think those players exist. The organization takes great pride in what it does for the community. Historically you could probably go with Jon Rauch, Kenny Rogers, or our favorite Delmon Young. Knoblauch too, but he might be too obvious, and I honestly don't think he was always a bad guy.

If De Leon has 10 wins in 6 months, and Dozier is hitting .210 as he is prone to do for long stretches, why not? Heck, just take a dollar to complete the trade.

Losing only 85 games with the worst pitching staff in the bigs would be a huge accomplishment. Realistically we are looking at upper 90s in the loss column again. Personally I'm perplexed that Twins are not doing whatever they can to improve the staff. Just take the current deal and add a PTBNL/Cash rider on it. Work out the marginal B.S. later on like other teams do. It seems incredibly unlikely that the Dodgers would balk at that, unless there really is no deal on the table.

This conversation will go on for as long as Dozier is a Twin, and not just in this thread.

This is not how SDI works. It does not blend numbers at all, there are no "ratios" as you suggest. SDI literally adds the numbers from other defensive systems together. Think of a stock index. The Dow Jones reflects the price of every stock in its index added together. Now what would happen to the index if it started adding in IBM five extra times? What if someone decided to add together the Dow Jones and the S&P indexes to make a new index? Many companies would be counted twice, other companies would be counted once. This would be complete rubbish and it would be mocked. What if you are an accountant and count dollars from one division and dollars from another division, without realizing that both divisions have counted some of the same things? You would either be fired or you would go to jail, depending on how the result was used. This is SDI, which is why it has "index" in its name -- it adds together every common defensive system it can get its hand on. It does not massage the result in any way. This is what indexes do. I think you could call the SDI application of indexing, "Poop."

Or position players for that matter. A cheaper, looser ball probably doesn't carry the same way. I would think that the economy of scale would render the "cheaper to buy" argument moot pretty fast. The MLB is already making the balls. If they use the same balls, they would become cheaper for everybody.

Between 7th street and 5th street = Between 7th street and 5th street.

Most likely Grossman is neither the bad defender he was in 2016 nor is he the great hitter he was in 2016. He is going to regress on both ends.

When it comes to the names mentioned, we have been hearing about them for so many years now that they all seem like spare parts. These names are really not enough if the Twins want to be taken seriously.

Maybe you should, because that's the basis of this entire discussion. If Dozier is traded, he is going to be traded for prospects.

SDI is bunk, unfortunately. SDI adds the results from other defensive systems together -- heck just about every defensive system you can think of is taken and all added together to form SDI. Some systems count some things that others do not count, but there is considerable overlap. Any stat that has overlap (or is counted in multiple systems) will thus be counted multiple times by the SDI index. For example, with SDI, one error is suddenly counted several times inside of various algorithms that are trying to put forth a theory as to what an error is actually worth. So rather than SDI figuring out what an error is ACTUALLY worth (picking the best theory), SDI simply takes every definition of an error's worth and adds them all together. Suddenly an error's value is inflated into the stratosphere. So if a player happens to be outside the norm on some trait that is counted in multiple systems, SDI explodes that value out. But what if a great, important trait is only counted in one or two systems, and the player excels at it? It's buried in the mess. SDI might be the most comical baseball statistic ever and I'm a bit amazed that the SABR guys aren't embarrassed by its existence.

Yep. He was added on 9/11.

Q: What's Holding Up The Dozier Trade? A: Nothing is holding it up. It fell into the swamp a month ago.

There is no universe where any team ever trades off a prospect like Bellinger. There is no way the Twins even bothered to ask for him. Alvarez, a future elite closer, is no doubt not on the table either.