Doomtints

When asked to explain his throwing errors when he was in the minors, Polanco said he likes to throw the ball as hard as he can every time. Wasn't this Eduardo Nunez's problem too?

Argh, I had another one last week. :/ This one isn't as bad. I don't feel like I'm 90 years old this time, and today I feel pretty good. The recovery last time was 2-3 months. I think this time will be more like 2-3 weeks.

The point is the Astros knew how to rebuild and the Twins didn't. No one wants to hear the old excuses why. The point is no one should be surprised when a former player says he is surprised at how much better the Astros coaches are, no one should doubt his sincerity or motivations or make excuses. THE ASTROS ARE BETTER. THIS SHOULDN'T SHOCK YOU.

The Astros and the Twins started rebuilding at about the same time. There is zero question the Astros did a better job of it. Pressly's quote shouldn't surprise anybody. I see some people saying we shouldn't read too much into it, but come on, look at the records of the two teams since they first started rebuilding.

I bet he didn't. What you are saying is this conversation happened: "Yelich, I like that guy. He is going to have a 1.000 OPS this year for sure." Of course, no such conversation happened because no one predicts such things. They would be run out of town if they did. The Brewers were looking for consistent a .800 - .850 OPS hitter, which is still cream of the crop, and that's why they gave up what they gave up to get him. So I repeat: No one expected Yelich to do what he did this year. My point still stands: The Brewers had a nice bit of good luck with this trade.

There is a lot of luck involved. No one expected Yelich to do what he is doing this year. You mention Lorenzo Cain and he's doing well but the #2 is really Jesus Aquilar, with his .890 OPS and 35 home runs. Much of the bullpen and the aforementioned hitters were acquired via trades and free agency, Twins fans.

Rosario has better defensive numbers than Kirby Puckett. Every player has "gaffes."

Fair enough.

Interesting response. There were 11 players this year with an OPS of over 900, and only two of those players were corner outfielders. So you want the Twins to pick up either Mookie Betts or Christian Yelich? That's the entire universe of players that fit your criteria. Best of luck with that.

In the past 1.5 seasons Polanco has 31 errors at SS. He had 35 errors in one year in the minors, 28 errors in another. Before this year I thought he could get better at SS. He can't. You just don't want him out there late in a close game, and that sucks because you also need his bat. His error rate at 2B in the minors is just as bad. We keep throwing 2B out there as an option (probably because a few scouts have thrown it out there as an option), but it's not a solution. He sucks at throwing the ball, period. At SS, he's next to Sano who also has a high error rate. That's a big hole. At 2B, he creates a hole where you definitely don't want a hole. If we are concerned about keeping Polanco's bat in the lineup -- which seems to be the concern in this article -- trade Kepler and move Polanco to the outfield. The problem there is you are trading Kepler's power for an overall better bat but with less power. That's fine, the Twins are sure to have some power over the next few years. Let's face it, Polanco profiles closer to Denard Span than he does Derek Jeter.

I could see it and I was screaming it from the rooftops. All for naught. It was quite annoying for it to dawn on people later on.

In the US, yes.

I imagine every team is always searching for a Joe Nathan, no?

The Twins had a really nice set of relief pitchers in 2018, but for some reason they chose to use arms that were not as good. They didn't know who they had. I'm not sure what metrics they were looking at but it wasn't anything common and each move made the staff worse overall. Maybe Molitor going will fix the problem. I would give caution to the team to not overreact but I suspect overreacting is the plan. They should add two relievers but they don't need a complete overhaul. They still need a top shelf starter and a couple of nice vets to slap the ball around.

A much needed and unsurprising win. The Vikes tend to win these regular-season rematches after they get bounced out of the playoffs. I'd rather they win in the playoffs instead, but whatever. They still have some work to do but they are on the right track.

The 24 hour news cycle fools us yet again.

I saw a tweet once where someone said their grandmother had asked them about Instagram and how to get on it. The tweet said something like, "Nah, your generation was on Facebook for a blink of an eye and we ended up with Trump." I don't think it's that simple, but this is a factor. In the last couple of months before the 2016 election, it was clear to me that the propaganda on FB was foreign-born. I have always been focused on politics but I never saw narratives like this before, almost always in poorly-written English and it very strangely mimicked what the earlier Brexit propaganda looked like. It's amazing the older generation fell for this so much, but then again they're probably sitting at home watching FOX all day.

We don't really have tribalism. The right dislikes anyone who does not agree with them 100%. They have a news network that portrays them as victims, always under attack. They have trained their constituents to dislike everyone outside of their circle, that any statement from outside of their circle is an attack on them. People in the north just don't know how bad it is. Southerners are trained to believe that Democrats are satanic, therefore any bad thing a Republican does is still not as bad as a Democrat. Senator John Kennedy (from Louisiana) went on FOX to state that the Republicans understand the Kavanaugh issue because they were raised on mother's milk, and Democrats don't understand because they were raised eating raw meat. What he is saying is that all Democrats are satanic, that the #MeToo movement is satanic, that every disagreement with them is coming from the devil. This can't be stated enough, and I really don't think people in the north can get their heads around it. On conservative radio in Texas I once heard someone call another person a murderer, a rapist, and finally, a Democrat. Only the latter got a response. The person was incredibly offended and angry at being called a Democrat, went on a long rant, and if they had been in the same room together there would have been punches thrown. Those in the South who are not staunchly religious are trained to distrust both sides. I can't count the discussions I had where someone says both sides are bad ... but then they always vote Republican anyway. Why? They never could quite say, but it seemed to be that if Democrats are for social justice, why are they making money. I'm ranting a bit of course, I have a lot of frustration when so many people in journalism (generally based in NYC) completely misunderstand what's going on because they have never parked themselves in the South for any length of time. Then they start mumbling about "Both sides" before they understand what's even going on. It's a farce and it's going to kill this country. And, much worse, people who follow mass media to stay "informed" are being fed this ignorant narrative and we have pointless discussions like this one. It's not both sides. One side is completely over the edge and the other side is trying to play by the rules.

I dunno, man. There is footage of him doing batting practice in DR for prospective teams. He had a huge entourage, even then. That's a red flag. Which other Twins have giant entourages, or entourages at all?

He allowed 4 more runs if you include the inherited runners, which is what h2o was referring to. His 33% inherited runners scored in an Astros uniform matches his rate with the Twins. This is a little above league average, so it's not the automatic lights-out guy his ERA suggests he is. The Astros can see this as they have mostly put him in games when there was no one on base. If you let three runs go in when you're on the mound but only one gets charged to you, that's nice I guess.

https://twitter.com/nowthisnews/status/1047875995049627650

DR is very corrupt so it could be none of those. But, knowing that (and I'm sure he knows this), he probably shouldn't have been out at 3am.

DFA Let him be Delmon Young somewhere else.

Why? There is more profit in baseball.

The Twins don't have to trade anybody to get better if they don't want to. They have $69,000,000 coming off the books this year, more than half of the 2018 payroll. They have a huge wad of cash to spend if they just simply want to spend the same as last year. The team doesn't have many needs so they can get three or four beefy players with that $69M and stop dinking around on the margins.