Doomtints

No one show this to Buxton.

Without looking I would guess the numbers support this, but what's going on is probably the opposite. Average (and below) hitters probably hit worse when the team is behind, at least in general.

Did the Twins exploit the extra year of control just to trade Buxton away? I would guess no, at least not at this point. Besides, why trade when you can DFA and THEN trade? Much more fun.

It seems like the very best players skip AAA or are only in it for a blink of an eye. Finding those players is the "huge" success. Over half of any given AAA roster is filler with limited MLB potential, no?

Hm. When I look at his numbers from 2018, I don't see any down months at all, in fact he probably outperformed any Twin in any given month. If he had a slump, it was no more than around ten days in length and he more than made up for it. It's a shame he was hitting around .200 for a week or whatever though. Seems like a positive that he adjusted as you describe, and still managed to hit 37 dingers and had a .905 OPS by year end. We seem to tolerate our "stars" hitting near .200 for longer stretches with nowhere near this performance at the monthly or yearly levels, so I'm having a hard time seeing any negatives about Machado.

His agent(s) say the reported numbers were inaccurate and low, and they were very upset this got leaked because it affected their ability to negotiate with the Yankees who were prepared to open the checkbook much further. I suspect the numbers are accurate and this caused the Yankees to rethink what they had on the table...

I plan to show up anyway and press my nose against the window while shivering until someone lets me in.

Machado would immediately become the best and most reliable player on the team. I think this tells us all right there it won't happen. The Twins only upgrade on the margins. We're talking about signing a potential hall of famer who is about to hit his prime years, and in free agency of all things. He has 34 bWAR and he's not even halfway through his career! He is worth 2-3 times any player on the current roster. But, have no fear, if the rumors are true we will all get to see him hit dingers at Target Field often, just in a White Sox uniform. The Twins will also have a nice reitrement ceremony for him to celebrate him dominating the Twins all those years like we saw with some recent retirees from other teams. It'll be fun for all.

For a 22nd round draft pick, his 2018 is probably closer to reality than his 2017. It's also true that he was not playing well at all in the second half. Whether he was over-used or whether he was unhappy about the trade deadline moves is impossible to know. I suspect he was over-used. Hildy's sample size is so small it's just really hard to know what we will get in 2019, but he certainly has earned a fair chance. Let's hope the Twins are patient and let him play should he have a slow start. It took him a couple of weeks to get going in 2018.

I think this trade can make sense if the Twins are in a "win now" mode. Trade away the guy who (probably) still has to develop for 1.5 years to sign a guy who can 'contribute' right now. However, the Twins are not in a "win now" mode -- they don't even want to spend anything -- so they should have kept the guy with the higher ceiling and who the team could control until 2025. I'm not upset about this move but these are the types of things that got the team in trouble under Bill Smith. It really would not surprise me if Curtiss gets a WS ring before he retires as the likelihood that he peaked already with only 15 MLB innings under his belt and such great numbers in the minors seems unlikely. Obviously this is just my opinion, and clearly the Twins have a different opinion.

Large organizations assign dollar values to cross functional resources. You want access to a business analyst? That'll be $135 an hour. The BA is by no means being paid even half that even when including benefits, but the company expects to get more value out of the resource than just what they are being paid, plus there are opportunity costs, thus the high rate. I would be surprised if the Twins do anything like this, so we should be careful when we compare the Twins to corporations. In baseball, free agents get paid their full value to the organization and the other players get paid a fraction of their value. Other than professional basketball I am not aware of anything comparable to how baseball pays players.

(Curtiss has a higher ceiling than Parker.)

What I said was that I have zero social or financial problems. Please go back and read it. Let's table this discussion as it's going off the rails.

Why does he look like Manny Ramirez? /scandal

It's amazing that Milone's slow-motion pitches and delivery, and the results of it all, are still kicking it. Good for him. He may just end up playing for Seattle as they have very poor depth. He's probably their #6/#7 guy. One or two injuries and he gets the ball (for a while anyway).

Curtiss is too young and too successful in the minors to be giving up on, especially for a team looking for a bullpen. He only has 15 innings in the majors. I can see Curtiss falling into the ace set-up man role, and those of us who remember Romero and Rincon know how much of a luxury that is to have.

The intent behind me posting my personal background was specifically to make you, personally, understand that I am not approaching this issue from a position of racism or classism. I am not blaming a group other than the group I am firmly entrenched in. And no, I don't hate myself nor do I hate my peers. I am acknowledging the mess we've made and are continuing to make. I assumed if I posted personal info on myself you might be able to understand. *shrug*

Actually, what you typed is exactly how I feel. Whether you are a better writer than I am or a worse reader, I don't know, but in any case we are on the same page. I don't blame my ancestors for giving me what I have. I acknowledge that I have acted in ways that I was completely unaware of and it's on me (and us) to change the future to be more inclusive. If someone wants to say my group screwed things up (and continues to screw things up) they are not wrong. Acknowledging this is important.

Not blaming. Taking responsibility. I am white and I grew up privileged. As an adult, I make six figures as a certified PMP (which is very much one of those tests that the privileged are more apt to pass) and I married a Stanford grad. My family has been in the Americas since Jamestown. From 1900 on my grandfathers worked in the oil industry with, yes, close ties to the Kochs. As whites, let's stop calling it blaming. Let's stand up and take responsibility. We set the course in this country. It took me damn near twenty years after I set out on my own to get all the privileged bull**** out of my head, I don't see why the rest of us can't do the same. We are Americans, we are humans, and as a rule the whites in this country don't see it that way. (And though the first inclination is to feel defensive to such a statement and to dismiss it, before reacting ask why it's so offensive. It's threatening even though it shouldn't be. Sharing resources? Big deal....)

Yes but that's not nearly as funny.

Many people assume that if a latinx doesn't speak English, he or she is an immigrant, when the truth is many of them have been here for generations. Texas has Spanish speaking communities dating to the 1800s, and we have to listen to pundits on TV tell us these US citizens (who have been here longer than the pundits have, in many cases) are somehow less than human. New York, Chicago, and probably every major city also has these pockets of Spanish speaking communities that are older than all of us. We really just gotta stop the xenophobia. None of us know the stories of the people we see and try to put into a box. The vast majority of "undocumented immigrants" in the US are people who were here legally but overstayed their visas. A wall won't help this, nor will a militant ICE organization. ICE was born out of post 9/11 paranoia and the sooner we get rid of it the better. I have never heard a valid argument against immigration or a valid argument against immigrants. Our social and economic problems are caused by whites, full stop.

The Twins will spend their excess cash in the Rule 6 draft, which is when the front offices get together to parse out which expensive bottles of scotch they can get from the Commissioner's stash. Pohlad likes to pick early in the draft as he considers himself a connoisseur, and it is after all a long season.

Shucks.

The pundits who publish pieces stating May will be the next closer are probably right. As for the original question of "Can this team be competitive with this bullpen?" Yeah, they can. They were near .500 last year with THAT bullpen, which I would call being competitive.... At this point I'm done asking if the team can be competitive or win the division. The only question I ask is can this team win a playoff game or a playoff series. The answer is still no. The headline of the decade.

Jake Reed was great for the Vikings.