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gunnarthor

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Everything posted by gunnarthor

  1. Well, it is still very hard. I doubt Morrison and most LH sluggers have practiced bunting in a game in years, if ever. Rosario bunted against the shift but he's a fast dude so I'm sure he's laid down a bunt or two in the minors to see if he could do it. Mauer would occasionally drop a bunt to keep the opponents honest. But holding the bat and trying to get the ball to roll toward third base (esp when the pitcher is probably throwing hard inside) isn't just something you do overnight. I wish some of these guys would work on it in the off-season but most probably don't. IIRC, I think Thome or Dunn once tried to bunt against the shift and ended up having the pitch hit their thumb and knocking him out of the game.
  2. It is too early to worry - he has a track record, after all. But I do wish some of our lefties would bunt against a shift. I know Rosario has done that at least once. But when they're giving you the entire left side of the infield ...
  3. Well, I agree that he probably can't help anymore the team should probably make sure. Letting him get some minor league starts to rehab his arm, maybe putting him in the pen are both reasonable options. 12m is a lot of money and I'm sure most owners don't want their GMs telling them to dump salary. It's pretty rare, even the Yankees have seldom done it.
  4. I do hope that Bechtold gets moved fairly quickly. He's 22 and has some college experience. I'd be thrilled if he could make it to AA this year, even for a cup of coffee.
  5. We'll see. The stupidity of a trade war is mind boggling to me. That and I hold a lot of Wells Fargo (already in trouble) has meant my portfolio has been in free fall. Ugh. Fortunately, I don't need the money right now but ...
  6. Great to see minor league baseball back! Only one game so not a lot to note but it's good to see Baddoo and Bechtold taking a lot of pitches/walks again. I really hope they both become on-base machines for us.
  7. Really excited to see how Rooker's bat plays in AA. They are really being aggressive with him, hope he dominates. Hopefully this is the last year that Jay is a prospect and he can get to the big league club fairly quickly.
  8. I do hope Dozier gets paid very well this offseason. I don't think it'll be us though. For all the payroll changes the Pohlad's have made, we're still a pretty low payroll team (I think we're #19 this year) so a longterm commitment to Dozier doesn't really work.
  9. This is probably our weakest team in regards to future MLers. I like Diaz more than most here at TD. Whitefield and Davis have some tools, Charlie Barnes could be a legit backend starter for a ML team and Blankenhorn might be able to hit enough to make it but that's about it, I would think. Not sure if anyone else on this team is even in a Twins prospect top 30 list.
  10. So Trump has vocally hammered Amazon, which I'm sure his kids shorted beforehand. Trade war with China is increasing and the Dow has dropped 5% in less than a month. Probably not the economy the GOP wants going into election season.
  11. Twins Record: 92-70 (1st AL Central) Offensive Player of the Year: Sano Most Home Runs: Sano Starting Pitcher of the Year: Jose Berrios Relief Pitcher of the Year: Addison Reed Twins Rookie of the Year: Curtiss
  12. In fairness, Cleveland was third in runs, we were fourth. They outscored us by 3 runs. They were third in wRC+, we were fourth. They were second in wOBA, we were fourth. It's not exactly the impossible hill to climb to be better than them without much going right, frankly. (Not sure how park factors play into this but it's probably not much since both teams have been, more or less, constructed for their home parks).
  13. Originally I was going to mention Lindor (easily my favorite non-Twin since Ichiro) but I didn't want to jinx it. He's pretty good.
  14. This season sort of has a 2002-2004 feel. Every year we read about how the Twins weren't as good as either Cleveland or Chicago (and sometimes both). The Twins are young but they have some solid vets and no major weakness (save maybe manager). I think the Twins have a very real argument for the best player in the division if Buxton plays like I expect him to and I think their offense will be top 3 overall. Cleveland has been great two years in a row but I really do think they'll have a bad year. They've played an awfully lot of games the last two years and finished with absolute Viking-level gut punches in both post-seasons. I just think that puts a toll on a team. If Buxton and Kepler and Berrios make the strides that we expect them to, we're pretty good. (Of course, the Twins do have a chance of another 2016 disaster season. You can easily see a scenario where Buxton presses in April/May, Kepler doesn't improve, Sano/Rosario go to the DL, the fip of Ordozzi/Lynn/Santana catches up to them, Mauer falls off the cliff, Molitor does Molitor things, the FO folds early and trades away Dozier, Lynn, Morrison etc. But **** that. It's nearly opening day so be hopeful).
  15. I dunno dude. I'm not sure why we would think Rosario went from a major plus defender in 2015 to a disaster in 2017. The main difference is that Rosario isn't covering as much range now as he did in 2015 but that's because Buxton is the full time CFer now as opposed to Hicks and Robinson then. In any event, Rosario is a pretty fast guy with a strong arm so I don't think we need to overly worry about one year's sample of defensive metrics. I'm fairly confident we'll have a strong OF in part because Rosario is out there.
  16. Take those numbers with a huge grain of salt. If you believe them, those suggest that Rosario was a worse LFer than guys like Willingham and Young. Clearly not true. The reality is that defensive stats aren't that accurate yet - in both measurement and value. A few years ago, hardball times wrote about the problem of defensive metrics in OF that have three strong fielders. They noted that in OF with a very strong CFer, (they looked at Jim Edmonds impact on Pujols and Drew as one example) one or both corner OFers would get dinged more than they should. I'd bet that's what's happening here. Rosario generally looks good in the OF. He's certainly not at the level of Hammer or Delmon.
  17. I'm probably ready for Kepler to be a platoon but if the Twins want to give him a bit more time (or trade him away), that's ok. I just don't think he's going to get it against lefties and maybe Granite or Wade could eventually be a better fit + whatever the trade piece is. I love Rosario and Buxton. I've said many times that I think Buxton will be an all-star this year but Rosario is really underrated. His bat really makes our lineup deeper.
  18. The Twins have nice depth so they should be ok. The offense will lead them so the pitchers just have to be adequate and they look like they can pull that off. If Lynn or Ordozzi fail, we have Romero (who I like a lot) in the wings as well. It'll also be fun to watch how Thorpe handles AA hitters. He's close and has some big upside.
  19. If Morrison's break out last year is legit, than our offense is going to be very, very good. I like Diaz in the minors more than most but he's a long way away. Rooker will get DH at-bats at some point as well.
  20. I honestly didn't think he'd get suspended for a number of reasons. But I'm glad it's over and hopefully everyone can move forward and hope he leads the league in home runs.
  21. So who had a good stock day today? No one? Thought so.
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