Doomtints

What you call unnecessary, I call inevitable. The Twins can control the situation or they can let the situation control them. What the Twins are setting themselves up for is moving him to DH after his next bizarre injury, which means they lose his bat as he recovers. His bat is his value, the Twins can dumpster dive for a defensive 3B if they decide they don't like Escobar's face anymore. This will play out like Mauer's permanent move to first. If the Twins use Sano as the primary DH starting now, they can get more years of him in the field. If they wait until he can no longer field, only then is the DH move "the only option." Only then are the Twins limiting themselves. This is called painting yourself into a corner. Do you remember when the Red Sox won a WS with the best DH in the game, which allowed them to put a light hitting Mientkiewicz in the field? That was Mientkiewicz's worst year, to boot.

Not a bad plan at all. This would get him in the field 45-50 games a year (all of the road interleague games + an average of 1 game/wk at 3b and another 1 game/wk at 1b). This would keep him apt enough at fielding on the off chance the Twins went to the world series, but allows him to mash the ball against the AL primarily at DH. Beats putting him in the outfield, I should think.

It's not clogging anything if he becomes the best DH in baseball. They just would need to play him at 3B once a week or so to keep him sharp enough for interleague play. This would give him 25-30 games in the field in a year, more if Escobar (or whoever) is injured.. Nothing wrong with that, this is a good ratio for a player whose sole value is with his bat. This is the AL, there's no reason to fear the DH position or use it as a scrap heap.

I saw an article somewhere, mlb.com I think, which said the Twins haven't even met with Darvish yet. They plan to do so this week, though nothing was actually set up when the article was written. This is the same old same old. The Twins are not seriously pursuing him. Darvish won't come to Minnesota. The Twins will have the obligatory "talk" with him but that's it. Mind you, I think he is injury prone and I don't think the Twins will miss out by not having him. However, the Twins should be looking at others and there have been no rumors that I know of about the Twins pursuing the other available "aces".

Interesting product. I'm not sure how it would help. If you watch this video, the guy starts his swing before the ball appears. He starts swinging based on the sound. You could literally do this with your eyes closed once you figured out the timing. Maybe Mauer's shades are just a little too dark?

I love writing, especially about the Twins, but: - My blogs would be of one of two types: Esoteric metrics that no one has ever heard of, which would not be Twins-centric. Humorous blogs which would not produce the well-researched articles we are used to at TD.- I don't have a lot of time anyway. I'm better off just starting a forum thread if I have something to say. BUT I strongly encourage others to blog here. The forum visitors and mods at TD would NOT attack first time bloggers as I have seen elsewhere. This is a great place to get started with writing about the Twins, or writing in general! And there is no question that TD visitors love new content.

Wolfson said on his radio show that the Twins have been shopping Sano to other teams. Note that Wolfson added that he doesn't expect the Twins to get it done because it's no secret that Sano's time at 3B is coming to a close. Shopping a DH is harder than shopping a 3B. This is utterly insane to me. If I were the Twins I would be ecstatic about having the DH position locked up for the next 5-10 years with a bat of Sano's caliber. But to each his own......

Ernie Banks was the face of the Cubs for years. He was an incredibly popular player. Banks's stats check all the boxes for HOF consideration. His career was longer than Mauer's will be. I'm not sure how one could compare Mauer to Banks in any shape or form. One may as well compare Mauer to Babe Ruth.

So... The new rumor is the Twins are interested in Napoli because of the possibility of trading Sano. They don't think he can play often enough at 3B and they (still) don't want him to regularly DH. Let's see if any of this actually happens but it seems unlikely this could be a good idea. What works on Sano's favor is the Twins continued inability trade off higher-level assets (see Dozier).

Right. I think the best advice is: 1) Try to keep a sense of humor. 2) When you start going back and forth with someone and both parties are just repeating themselves, move on. Your point was made even if it doesn't always feel like it. There is no value in getting in the last word, at least if you're not making a new point. 3) Realize that not all of us have read the same material, so we aren't all basing our opinions on the same information. 4) Even if a story was widely reported, most people won't remember an article from over a year ago unless it really struck a chord with them ... and good luck digging up the story if someone gets "haughty" and demands proof. For stuff from the past, it's best to keep it light. 5) If everything miraculously lines up and we all read the same articles and had the same memories, there are almost always different interpretations based on our internal biases/opinions. Overall, we do a great job on TD with these things. Yes, each and every one of us gets off track. We all have bad days.

Signing Duke seems like another case of the Twins signing someone who dominated them in the past -- even if against other opponents they were not so dominant. It's hard to say how much this new FO is actually making these decisions, in fact it seems impossible that they are. This practice goes all the way back to Jim Thome, and we saw it already this offseason with signing Pineda. Having said that, I don't have a problem with this signing... as accidental as it seems... Duke can contribute to this team. Hopefully the Twins can take things to the next level by, you know, signing someone who hasn't dominated their recent AAAA teams and actually do some scouting.

As Twins fans we have been fed "too early to tell" and "wait and see" for years, but with a new front office it's the best advice. But yeah, so far there's been no difference.

Per Molitor on mlb.com, the plan next year is to keep Sano fresh by limiting his games at 3B. What this also means is Mauer will be expected to hold his own at 1B. This means there will be no power bat added who will primarily DH or 1B. DH will be a "platoon" which will regularly be Sano. This bodes well for Escobar and maybe Vargas.

This is probably the first time most of us have heard of the goal to grow the writer's community here. I think you just gotta get the word out. As for "negativity" -- and this is a side point -- from my observations a small majority of the negativity in Twins Territory is a small group of people complaining about negativity. Our community is very meta. TD does a good job of keeping the personal attacks down and unlike another Twins site the power here isn't abused by the mods to attack/bait people without consequences. I don't always agree with the mod decisions but I know they have a tough job and I can see the overall results are good.

I'm actually not sure what point you are trying to make. If you watched Lincecum during his "peak years" -- he succeeded by keeping hitters off-balance. This was because about a third of his pitches went in the dirt. Hitters learned to be patient with him. Lincecum doesn't comp to any hall of fame pitcher that I know of.

WAA Lincecum: 7.9 Santana: 32.3 7-Year Peak WAR Lincecum: 25.1 Santana: 44.8 JAWS Lincecum: 23.1 Santana: 48.1 The peak years between these two players are not comparable. Santana was far more valuable during his peak years.

If the Twins are waiting for the Darvish trade to finish before making a move, they are making a mistake. This is what every other team is doing too. If the Twins want to acquire anybody of any worth, they've got to get off the sideline.

The Rays would be utterly insane to trade Archer, a player they are getting for essentially half price for even the most skeptical opinions of his ability. Using the Fangraphs value projections, they are paying him 84% below market value (which, yeah, is obtuse. Fangraphs needs to fix their algorithm). The Rays might have the best contract in history over this guy. If he starts to drop off, they can cut him loose before he ever makes anything close to what he's worth. The earliest it would make sense for the Rays to trade Archer would be midseason 2019. Any trade happening before then should result in their entire front office being committed to the nearest mental health facility ... and even if they did it then, they'd be acting questionable. This would be like the Twins trading off Brad Radke in 2000. People probably talked about it at the time, but it never happened.

Especially when the Rays had exactly one player who fit this profile.

Odorizzi isn't the type of player you trade for, esp. not that he is now making arbitration money. Also, Archer is cheap so why would they trade him? Colome is cheap.... Neither Archer nor Colome have peaked. I don't see any trading going on with these guys. Cobb, now a free agent, is the only possibility for the Twins to pick up. The media is running with stories of many teams trading for Archer and Colome, but if either are traded Rays fans would have every right to pull out the pitchforks. The Rays will not get better players at these prices. Longoria was the only "high paid" player on their entire roster, and yes even for him "high paid" has to be in quotes.... The Rays were a .500 team last year and weren't that far from making the playoffs. Plus, they need pitching, so why would they trade off pitchers? The Rays and Twins are teams with similar problems to address, so I don't see a trade happening. They want pitching, the Twins want pitching.

Letting Kalil go was the best thing the Vikings did to improve the OL. He was always the first player to collapse the pocket, often the only player, as he jumped backwards on every play.

This particular crew likes to "even out" the calls. So if one team gets some calls early, the other team will get some questionable calls later.

Don't forget that agents push stories like this to create a buzz.

This describes the problem the Twins have been stuck with for years. With all young, unproven guys in the bullpen, the Twins didn't know how to use the talent they had. Having an inexperienced manager didn't help.

Word is the Twins are looking for a right-handed power bat, but why not a left-hander who can hit both LHP and RHP?