Doomtints

Now is a good time to make up a nice Dozier to the Dodgers rumor!

If you're a fangraphs guy, you have seen that the Twins have gotten $42.7M in value from Sano while paying him $1.7M. He's not due free agency money for another four years and he is only 25. He came back from Tommy John surgery and he is still recovering from leg surgery. If you are worried about his future, you're erasing a lot of history.

It's the same as it always was. Dozier is a good player to build around, a good guy to have on a team with other solid players. However, he's not a star who can move the needle on his own. How many games did the Twins lose when he hit 42 home runs? Another team will be thrilled to have him and he has more good games left in him, but he still won't be a star on his own. He will look *really* good on a player with some great players.

Yeah. The problems this year really look like management problems.

Garver had a slump in May, otherwise he has been fine.

I disagree. Baseball is a team sport with individual metrics. This is a disconnect more than anything else.

Baseball is a team sport. Everyone stumbles and it's OK. The others lifted him up like they are expected to do.

Don't forget (I've been saying this for nearly a year now) -- last year was an unusually down year for the AL. We shouldn't read too much into the Twins performance last year, nor the lack of performance this year. The Twins hitting right now is similar to what it was two years ago, and last year many thought the ball was "juiced." The Twins are on pace for 72 wins, and this is before pieces start being sold off. Didn't most of us have them pegged for around that many wins last year?

New SP inconsistencies aside, the Twins would have been fine this year if the people who were expected to hit the ball had actually done so. Morrison was a terrible pick-up, which was obvious all along, but no one expected Dozier, Sano and Buxton to be terrible (maybe one of them, but not all of them). Also no one expected to be without Polanco for most of the year. No one expected Castro to be as bad as he was either, nor Garver. This is the second year on Molitor's watch where the hitting took a nose dive, and yes this team could actually do the unfathomable and lose 100 games again. Sure the front office made a blunder or two (Morrison? Really?) but the front office wasn't wrong to expect half of the hitters on the team to simply perform as they had performed before.

But baseball "eras" aren't defined like that. And if they were: - You had to omit one year in the 70s to get that result (cherry picking). - If you want to omit the best season in the 70s, lets omit the worst one too. After doing that, the team is .500 for the 70s. - Without cherry picking any years, the Twins were under .500 in the 80s, 90s, and 2010s (so far), with the 2010s being on pace to be the worst decade of the franchise in MN (and it's not close). - Overall, the Minnesota Twins are under .500 since 1961. If we can roll W-L totals into arbitrary decades, we can roll up the entire shebang too. In any case, the Twins were at .500 or above six times between 1971-1979. That is *not* a bad "era." The actual bad eras are: - 1981 - 1986 (High water mark: .500 (once)) - 1993 - 2000 (High water mark: .481) - 2011 - Present (High water mark: .525 (at or over .500 once))

Nah! 1972: 77-77 1973: 81-81 1974: 82-80 1976: 85-77 1977: 84-77 1979: 82-80

I know this is a little off topic, but I like talking about it. The Twins were built to have a dynasty in the late 60s which never materialized, but they were close. In today's playoff format they would have probably won a championship or two. The Twins weren't bad throughout most of the 70s. If Griffith were alive today, he would tell you there were three things that killed his ability to run the team: - The AL adopting the DH rule. Griffith said the stats used to sell the DH rule were bunk, but he only figured that out later. Griffith later contended that the DH rule hurt more teams than it helped and he regretted casting the deciding vote. - Leaving the Old Met to go into the Metrodome. - Free Agency. I would throw in the following: - The player's strike in 1981, which sank attendance until 1984, the year he sold the team. - A weird loyalty to Billy Gardner, a terrible manager who could not manage relief pitchers. - Griffith was masterful at building teams with top tier infield defenses which became worthless after moving into the dome, especially with the original turf. (The Twins, particularly Hrbek, figured this out, and began hitting balls directly to the ground, 10 feet in front of them, and watching the balls sail another 200 feet over the heads of the middle infielders after the bounce. However, this took a couple of years to figure out and exploit.) What sank the team under Griffith? The dome. Griffith didn't like free agency, but FA was one of the minor factors. The Twins held on nicely throughout the 70s until they moved into the dome in 1982. Griffith is on record as not liking free agency so people focus on it, but the reality is that the Twins went from a "Near Dynasty" to simply "A bit above average (in an era of some VERY good teams)." The team didn't sink down to nothing until leaving Met Stadium a dozen years after their last year in the playoffs.

Seems like reality set in for the players on this team.

Yes. Historically, the Twins Way has been to get young guys and older guys, but fully miss that time in the middle when the player is actually above average. Many Twins fans follow that ideal too, not sure why. I can fully buy into it that Gibson is a late bloomer. It happens. He doesn't look that different on the mound, he's just pacing himself so he doesn't run out of gas in the 4th or 5th! If the Twins have a teamful of Gibsons, yes, by all means, trade the guy. But: - all but one of the starters are worse than him - all but two of the starters won't be around much longer - many of the starters are older than he is - he is a bargain at his salary. There's just no good reason to trade him.

This is why we can't have nice things.

Maybe, but it's the Twins way. A certain Twins GM lost his job for this very thing.

Molitor has been down on him for years. The Me Too situation he created for himself certainly didn't help things. We don't know what the conversations were on that topic between him and management (and the MLB) but we know they weren't good (and we know the conversations went on for a long time). Throw in surgery and a new bionic leg that he can't push off on or run well on anymore, and what have you got? There is little reason to keep him around at this point. He will either bust the rest of the way or he will get a fresh start somewhere else. The Twins may as well try to get something out of it.

I disagree. It has happened many times where someone with a history like Dozier struggles in the first half, gets traded, and good things happen. The Twins will get a return for Dozier and some of the others.

This will be a sad trade deadline and offseason. We had such high hopes for this year, and next year will have a different set of faces.

Seemed like Gibby used to fail some time in the 5th inning. He's no longer doing that. He learned to pace himself. Good for him.

Ron Gardenhire & Co., the group who Twins brass ran out of town after said Twins brass gutted the franchise, are currently doing more with less. Just sayin'. Is Molitor "still learning"? He shouldn't be.

I said during the offseason, probably more than once, that it looked like the Twins were building themselves to do one thing: Beat Cleveland. They are accomplishing that goal, generally. Unfortunately the Twins need some right handed hitting to beat everyone else. Having said that ... these Twins *are* better than last year's Twins. But remember, last year was a down year. The only teams over .500 made the playoffs. That's not normal.

Tell that to the accountant.

It *was* spent.

It's a business move to offset Hughes' salary. It won't get spent. From a purely utilitarian standpoint, a draft pick in the 70s range isn't worth $7.5M, so the Twins are making the move that most benefits the team. Be that as it may, the money will be earmarked to offset the lost salary.