Doomtints

We used to accuse Smith and Gardenhire of favoring certain players. I think this new group does the same thing. There's a bit of the "bring the band back together" thing going on ... but with former Rangers players ... and I really don't understand how they choose which young guys to play.

The stuff I read on this topic is always interesting. "Spending money doesn't pan out...." "The Twins could never spend like the Yankees anyway..." Those two statements don't jive. Either it doesn't work, or it works but the Twins can't do it like the teams it works for. Which is it? (Hint: It's neither. The Twins could spend a little more and spend it smarter than the other teams.) Cash may not be guaranteeing championships for the Yankees, but spending money keeps them in the conversation every year. Simply being in the conversation is extra revenue, and when you make the playoffs anything can happen. Just ask Gene Larkin.

The Cubs replaced Arrieta with Darvish. They spent the same amount of money they would have spent anyway. When the Twins move on from a high dollar star, they don't replace him at all, they pocket the cash.

Not giving Mejia his due chance would be a mistake.

I am "taking the move for what it is." I just finished saying he's a #5 in a long string of franchise #5s. Clearly I am under no illusion that he is an ace.

Rosario wasn't good the last half of the year and Kepler is stuck in second gear. We know about Buxton's troubles. I agree that signing a vet to back up these guys is an excellent idea and increases the likelihood that they don't all tank.

I don't know who the Twins could possibly trade for Realmuto. Besides, "hard hitting catcher" is near the bottom of my list of things to improve on any baseball team. It's pretty much what you work on dead last. Put defense at C until the other positions are taken care of unless a home-grown catcher can hit and play good D too.

Here's the Twins biggest recent misfire. Paul Molitor. Though I was (mistakenly) of the opinion that Gardenhire had gone stale, truth be told 2014 was the last year the Twins hit the ball really well and many of the hitters on the 2014 team never hit the ball as well ever again. The 2014 pitching was terrible, but we know now this wasn't Gardenhire's fault. Without Santana and later Berrios, Molitor's years would have been at that same catastrophic level of starting pitching. Firing Gardenhire was a mistake, I'm sorry to say. His absence was felt immediately.

The Twins weren't THAT bad at hitting last year (sans the bench) and the pitching wasn't that bad either. It really would have been a different season if Buxton and/or Sano had played well, though that's getting to be an old/tired narrative now. The rest of the team was pulling its weight, generally speaking, they were just lacking their "stars."

The Twins are the only team I know of that perpetually signs nothing but #5s. It's not just that they won't sign aces, they won't even sign #3s (apart from Ervin Santana, who worked out very well and played as a #1/#2 for most of his time in MN). For every #5 that turns into a 1-year wonder (Pavano, Hughes), there are half a dozen complete flops, and those 1-year wonders end up causing headaches when the Twins lock them up for more years before they crash back down to earth....... Have to give it to the fans who stay optimistic about this stuff, but come on. If the Twins are good this year it won't be because of Martin Perez. (And Mejia deserves a chance, damnit, don't Kennys Vargas this guy.)

Well, of course they are talking about it. I'm sure this is one thing they talk about all the time, so doing it should not be that much more effort from talking about it, right?

I don't think the 87-09 time frame is exactly right as there were changes during that time period. Still, that's the general look anyway. And yes those were my favorites. My least favorite is the 72-86 uniforms (which again I think changed a bit over the course of the era). Even back then the uniforms seemed unprofessional compared to (most of) the rest of baseball, and blue is usually a color I like.

The Vikings can no longer lay claim to being in the worst superbowl of all time. Hooray?

I'll be the one to say that casting off Austin will prove to be the worse of the two options.

All of this is impossible to know, of course. But if the Twins had $23M left on the table at the end of last year and are spending $20M less this year, they just found a way to double their profits in one year.

An internal bean counter probably produced the theory (and likely the metrics to go along with it) stating that the perks don't entice anybody to buy tickets. As season ticket holders, you would have bought the tickets whether they had the perks or not, right? The Twins don't dare raise ticket prices to keep the perks going with the teams they are fielding. Frankly, the family who owns this thing just doesn't seem to be very interested in baseball. They're not bad people (they do very good things in MN) but the baseball thing is pretty meh.

The Polar Carfax will go down as one of the worst marketing campaigns in history. Anyway, the forced air furnaces in Chicagoland just aren't the same beefy ones in the Twin Cities. Mine really struggles when it gets cold. Number one, it's on the small side, number two it's not designed in the best way possible. The plate on it says it was manufactured in Oklahoma and I believe it. In spite of being fairly new, the system can go into a death spiral when the temps are under 20 for more than a couple of days: - The flame itself is pretty small, like the furnace itself - It only pulls air from the outside (which I think is standard now, but it wasn't when I lived in the Twin Cities) - When it's very cold, the flame can go out but the rest of the system doesn't get the message and keeps on chugging, but not blowing hot air. This usually happens when we are all asleep, of course. Usually when the flame goes out the system can figure it out and re-lights it, but not always when it's extremely cold - Eventually, the intake motor overheats from running constantly which causes the system to shut off - However, the system then immediately restarts, which restarts the pilot/flame (yay) but it can't blow very long before the intake motor overheats again and shuts the system off (boo) When it gets to this last step, you get this interesting thing where the heat runs all the time but it can't keep up with the outside temp anyway and the temp in the house slowly gets colder. How did I fix this? I stuck a fan in there to blow the heat off the intake motor. The previous owner took the face plate off the flame so it also pulled in air from inside the house (like the furnaces I remember), which probably solved the issue of the flame going out reasonably well, but I worry about it becoming difficult to breathe in here if I do that.....

I can see Romero being an elite set up guy now and perhaps a closer someday. None of us know what the Twins are thinking, though.

Of the three things, the most possible one is also the most counter-intuitive one for most of us: - Rosario had an .800 OPS in 2018 in spite of having just two good months and five terrible months. This sounds very much like Buxton to me, so sure, pencil it in. Hopefully those good months are not August & September, though, because the Twins might not wait that long with Buxton. - No one questions Sano's power, but perhaps we should because having a metal rod put in your leg has to be a big adjustment, an adjustment he hasn't made. We can blame his weight, sure, but what if that's not the problem? - No one questions Berrios's ability but the infield defense might not be there for any Twins starter to have a sub 3.00 ERA.

Also, A 'bounce-back' for this dude is getting back to 100 ERA+. Hold onto your seats!

They cut De Jong for this? Really? Building for the future right there. Let's just cut all the 24 year olds. Cue the Mariners picking him back up in 3... 2...

Exactly, the "We'll spend money once we have a player full of superstars already" script is circular nonsense. If they are making the best out of having a cheap boss, that's something we would understand, and truthfully that's probably what it is. The two of them pretending it's something different and that this is part of a master plan, well.... And I honestly don't think these guys know how to improve on the margins. They need one or two OBP guys to complement the current team.

We had better hope this doesn't happen. Nationwide it took fans ~2 years to get over it and start watching baseball again after the last one. I myself didn't follow baseball again until 2000, and I was very reluctant about starting to follow it again. I went from a hardcore baseball fan to a non-fan, and I imagine the casual fans of the day didn't come back in Twins Territory until the Twins started doing interesting things again. It wasn't really the Metrodome that almost caused the Twins to fold, it was the lost revenue and fans from that stupid strike.

Lip service. They are doing a hell of a lot of one-year deals for a team trying to build. They are not locking up any of the core homegrown players to longer deals, which again doesn't seem like building. The way this team being managed right now is just nonsense. Agree or disagree with Ryan, Smith, and Antony, at least you could see where they were coming from and they were making moves that fit with their respective stated plans. The strategy for this group seems like it changes daily, they're all over the place. Calling them outright dishonest about their plans might not be a stretch, as uncomfortable and volatile saying such a thing would be. In spite of what they say, they just don't seem to have a vision. They seem to be trying to fit random players together and hope for the best, all while hitting the reset button every year.

The degree of the injury can vary based on the fitness of the person. There was one person who survived the car crash that killed Lady Diana -- a bodyguard who was a bodybuilder. This is certainly not the only example of a fit person surviving something that would kill most people. Of course, we're not talking about death in this conversation, but it's also true that broken bones are less likely to occur when someone is more muscular.