Doomtints

No clue, but he must be since he won the award last year in spite of being an average defender.

Gibson is gone at the end of the year, and for this year they are not likely to find anyone better unless they make a trade. If the Twins make the WC game and the playoffs beyond, it's not like he would be on the roster I would think. Gibson is kind of a non-issue at this point. If the other starters can give the team a chance to win the usual 40-60% of the time, Gibson's 30-35% won't kill the team too much.

The Gold Glove is a popularity contest.

Mauer and Morneau won MVP awards without those numbers. There isn't any metric that equates to winning an MVP award, but if I had to pick one that seems to fit it would have to be OPS. If Buxton finishes a year with 1.000+ OPS, is he an MVP candidate? Yes. Can he do it? I think so. Last year, fans got excited over Buxton hitting well over the last month. This was premature. But he has now been hitting well for 45 days with no sign of slowing down and in fact he is getting BETTER even when playing near the top of the order. He has turned the corner. Does this mean he will never have a slump? No, all players have them.

And also, to be fair, he wasn't "clutch" in the playoffs that year ... his production didn't amount to much as far as scoring runs or driving in runs....

The Twins have him locked up until 2022, assuming they want him that long.

Yeah, not sure what the Melville thing was about. Gee insurance, I guess. This brings us back to the beginning: There was no insurance for Colon, but there was a backup plan for Gee?

Gee didn't stick? What was Gee's ERA at AAA when Colon was called up? 0.00 in 3+ starts?

*Might* have been, yeah. We'll see what happens during the offseason, of course.

I dunno, the fact that he is here at all says to me not much has changed. Sure, it's working out so far, but it's not a move most teams would have made.

Hughes. Ugh.

Mauer was good in the playoffs in 2009, his MVP season.

This is the Twins. We know if he plays well for them this year and wants to play next year, he will play here.

Buxton was never "Broken." He was (and is) young and dealing with extreme expectations. His talent was always going to shine through eventually.

The Twins have lost more than one game this year with the better player at some position sitting on the bench, yes even in rubber games in a series. I wouldn't read anything into it other than Molitor is managing the team and he gets his "scheduled days off" thing stuck in his mind over winning a series, just like he used to get "pitchers must finish an inning" stuck in his mind in previous years. Gardenhire had this right. Win the first 2 games in a series and the 3rd game means days off for some people. The Twins won a lot of series. Sure, they didn't go on long winning streaks, but players were adequately rested (not that this mattered come playoff time).

Right. This is a "shooting fish in the barrel" article. This stuff will be written as long as Sano is in MN.

I once saw Mauer break up a no-hitter late in the game with a casual, unexciting line drive up the middle. That's Mauer in a nutshell. Clutch? Sure, why not. Exciting baseball star? Perhaps "dependable" is a better term.

If he were to lie he would lose access to the team, no doubt.

Because I read the article....

Hey, I get it. I was one of the people berating people for comparing Buxton to Trout in the beginning, saying that setting such a high bar for him was only going to slow down his development. Note the term "slow down" and not "derail." He's still going to get there. And yeah, if this is your first time you have ever heard a Trout/Buxton comparison, you've been in a coma or something.....

The article states they are "getting to him" and are working on it. This is one reason I 1) don't see what the fuss is about here, and 2) question why this was so casually put out there by the team.

Exactly. Sano would have commented freely on this if given the chance. Like some others I don't see that this is a scathing article, but I still think the article could have been better, and the Twins could have been smarter....

Knock Trout out cold with a concussion right before his debut and I bet you get the same result. If you don't see similarities between these two players you are in the minority. Buxton won't hit for the same power, but he will be equally exciting.

Kind of like how Trout looked at the beginning....

He is putting up MVP-caliber numbers right now. All he needs is a season without a slump and he wins the award. That's not an easy thing for any player to do, but I wouldn't bet against Buxton doing this in the long haul.