Doomtints

His swing reminds me of how David Wells used to swing, and the results are similar. But Buxton is quite young. He has time to figure it out. He should be in the minors in the meantime, however.

You're not wrong and this thread proves it. Someone even played the HOF card in this discussion. If a player is pegged for the HOF before he ever steps foot on the field, people are bound to be disappointed. And you can bet Buxton feels this pressure! Buxton can turn things around if he forgets everything that has ever been said about him and completely tunes out the media and fans going forward.

I disagree. I imagine mlb.com has footage of one of his recent at bats. Take a look at one and compare it to before. He is not the same player up there at all. As I said earlier, this doesn't mean he won't fall back into bad habits. But his good numbers are not quite as much of a mirage as you are leading on. He won't continue to hit at an MVP pace obviously but he has legitimately improved from where he was when the season started.

Rosario's free swinging tendencies are well known. As for his OBP, don't forget that his OBP at the start of the year was abysmal - far below his (short) career norms. The rest of the team had the same problem. But the point is, if you are comparing this year to last year's OBP and not seeing an improvement, that's why. He has had a very bad start to the year. Beyond the stats that show he has been playing better since his return from the minors -- he also LOOKS like a different player in his at bats. It's true that he may be just one slump away from falling back into his bad habits, but he is young enough to where everyone should be giving him a chance. The Twins would be daft to give up on him now.

Your premise is a little wrong. Slowey was legendary in the minors before his first call-up. He had 4 years in a starter's role with the Twins. He had numerous spats with the front office. If the Twins did not like him, they had a great opportunity to trade him when his stock was high. Instead they killed his career and this event helped set it up that no pitcher wanted to come to Minnesota. Sure, it was a mistake. Trevor May's minor league career does not hold a candle to Slowey's. His numbers as a starter with the Twins are nowhere close to Slowey's. I read several scouting reports on May when the Twins acquired him and many had him pegged as a reliever or a marginal end of the rotation starter. Twins fans were drinking the Terry Ryan kool-aid back then and I think many of us still think May is someone he isn't. I think a better example for the Twins continued mishandling of pitching was the fact that they once had Glen Perkins as a starter, in spite of him having only two pitches. To their credit they did not give up on him and found him the right role. Fast forward to 2015/2016 and you have Tyler Duffey, another 2-pitch pitcher struggling in a starting role. Duffey could be an elite set-up man or a good closer and the Twins are wasting his talents as a starter, just like what they did with Perkins.

Strong opinions about a guy who is halfway through his sophomore season and is only 24 years old. Baseball is full of star players who had slow starts. The Twins had their fair share of them too. WIth you the Twins would have given up on Frank Viola, Harmon Killebrew, and Johan Santana. One thing baseball stat websites are missing is an easy way to compare baseball players by trajectory. How does Rosario fare when compared against contemporary players after 180 games? How does he compare against contemporary 24 year olds? I'm betting he ranks very well in these categories. Rosario looks like a different player since he returned from the minors. His "career OBP" (silly to bring up as he has such a short career) has jumped tremendously in the past two months. Rosario is a big reason for the Twins playing so well as of late. I'm wondering who you think would be a better option?

Rodriguez would rather die than play for the Twins. He seemed to truly buy into the David v. Goliath story recycled over and over on ESPN back when the Twins were good. It was his sole goal in life to beat the snot out of the Twins and prove all of that wrong. Even this year he slugged .818 against Minnesota. It's also difficult to imagine him being a good mentor for the young players, unless the message is "Hey, don't be like me." The Twins probably don't need him in the room for that message to be clear.

I would keep him as the #4 and the occasional pinch hitter, esp. against lefties.

I always liked Albers and I don't understand how the Twins handled him. If he was not good enough for the Twins a couple of years ago, why is he good enough for the Twins now? Either getting rid of him was a mistake or bringing him back is a mistake. Which is it? It's not like he was proven to be a flop then and it's not like he is proven to be great now. I think he deserved more of a chance than he got. This is one of those decisions by the Twins that can make your head spin.

The question was about calling him up in September.

This is why they needed to get him out of AA. They need the a bigger sample size with better competition to make an informed decision.

Ah, I see they did promote him to AAA yesterday. NICE. If he keeps hitting at AAA as he did at AA, I would consider adding him to the roster. It would be a tough decision, but if he seems like he could be ready at all next year I would do it.

Suzuki leaving after the season ends would get them back down to 3 catchers if Garver were added before the end of the season. But they won't want to go back up to 4 catchers to bring in someone new. The only option would be Garver, Murphy, and Centeno on the roster. That's a huge commitment just to "get a look" at a guy in the fall. And when would Garver even play in September with two or three other catchers with the team? Garver is untested above AA and Murphy looks like he should be in AA. This is the perfect setup for a classic Twins roster blunder. If the Twins are at all thinking about their next catcher, Garver should be in AAA so they can see if he can hit against better competition. Centeno, of course, could be cut if required but with how Murphy has looked that seems like a terrible idea. it doesn't seem likely that they will give up on Murphy within the next year. So what do they do?

This doesn't change the fact that there would then be 4 catchers on the 40-man. This would block the possibility of signing a catcher over the offseason. The Twins could still very well do that -- they have been rather masterful at painting themselves into corners. This doesn't mean they should.

The problem with bringing up Garver after the rosters expand in September is that he is not on the 40 man. To put him on the 40-man would mean they would have 4 catchers on the roster and it would mean releasing someone else just to get a look at a catcher from AA. The Twins won't do that. No team would. Although Garver is the best internal choice, we won't see him this year unless one of the other catchers ends up on the 60-day DL or gets released. Unfortunately this means that next year the problem is still not particularly easy to solve. If the Twins sign a free agent or re-sign Suzuki, Garver is still blocked by seemingly worse options. Centeno could be sent packing too, but then the team is still stuck with the apparently very raw Murphy on the roster. One move the Twins can do is swap Murphy and Garver at the AA/AAA levels so that the Twins can get a better look at Garver and make a smart decision about the catching position next year. I'm guessing the Twins will re-sign Suzuki at a cheaper rate and the logjam of mediocre to bad options blocking a promising option stays in place.

Not if it's this staff, that's for sure.

Some of you nailed it. This problem wasn't caused by not moving Plouffe. The problem was caused by signing Park. It's hard to see it now but Sano's 3B defense has an incredibly small chance of panning out. Moving him to the OF was the choice to make if the Twins did not want him to DH. Those moves are fine if in a bubble ... but then they signed Park and blocked Sano from moving back to DH if he could not play in the outfield. Now the Twins are truly stuck. Now the Twins will probably need to make multiple moves to accommodate Sano. I'm still a little surprised that some people don't see a superstar when they look at Polanco. I think that, sometimes, fans buy into it when a front office bounces a player around. But I'm not sure about putting him at 3rd as has been suggested. Good middle infielders don't grow on trees. Polanco will be an upgrade over Dozier and Dozier will probably make a nice return on the trade market.