gunnarthor

That was a rough loss. Still, four more games can turn things around. Hope Springs Eternal!

Yeah, not a surprise. I'm really glad Dobnak got that money from the Twins. He's a good story. But I don't think he can be a ML pitcher.

The reality is that the new FO came in at great time, a great young nucleus, money, and the number one pick. Their job was to mimic the Twins 2000 success: supplement that nucleus and keep the window of opportunity open longer. They failed on both fronts. Their pitching pipeline doesn't exist, they've drafted poorly, and they've misjudged talent they had. If we miss the playoffs again, they should be gone.

This is such a dishonest piece that it just hurts to read. I assume the next article from Ted will be about how Falvey swam 15 KM down the Mississippi river 1 hour and 5 minutes.

IIRC, the Packers were playing six in the box against our three receiver sets pretty often. The announcers even pointed that out. So I think we ran it down their throat a bit in the 4Q. On the Mattison stuff, I think they went back to a normal alignment but Cousins didn't audible out. I could be misremembering all of this but that's what I think happened. I also remember from last year, Cousins saying something like he doesn't audible so that could be an issue as the season progresses but someone feel free to correct me.

I'm not sure the Vikes took the foot off so much. Our first drive we went backwards but got a FG (blown pass interference call was biggest play of that drive). Our next drive was a 5 play drive but, again, we had a penalty. We got to 4th and 2 at midfield. I was thinking we should go for it there but it's normal to punt there (the punt wasn't great). Our next drive was a 12 play drive that lead to a FG. And our last drive was a 7 play drive that ate up a lot of the remaining time. To the extent we didn't have the same success, well, the Packers are a good football team, we weren't going to score every drive. We kept going deep all day. I think the play calling was really strong yesterday, knowing that, even when we make a good call, the other team will occasionally defend it well.

I loved this pick and think he's easily our best prospect since Buxton. He'll end up #1 overall next year.

Cripes, the AFC is loaded. Pitt/Cincy is a heck of a game.

I think this is a good point. The NFC and the NFC North are both pretty weak. Green Bay, Tampa, SF, LA are, I believe, the universal top four in the NFC. After that, it's open and one team (hopefully the Vikings) can easily surprise.

This, exactly. He's a solid ML back of the rotation pitcher. I think he could pitch a little longer but what we have now (at age 26) is probably enough to know. Over a full healthy season, we can expect 30 or so starts, 160-170ip, with an ERA+ around close to 100. That's close enough to be a 2 WAR player. The Twins have had a ton of solid, back of the rotation pitchers over the years. I also wouldn't be surprised if he goes the Swarzak/Duensing route and becomes a long reliever in the next few years. But this is what he is and is pretty much in line with the realistic scouting reports. He's not going to be Jose Berrios but he can be useful.

Well, apparently, they had issues they thought should have been heard but weren't. Not sure what they were but they probably had to do with tanking and payroll so ...

I'm in the minority but I don't think the shift change will actually have that big of an impact. Most of the time when a player hit's into the shift, they mostly just hit it to where the second baseman was, anyway. I don't get why we needed a bigger bag but I don't really care. The pitch clock could be useful. Really interested to see how that works.

Yeah, I wonder if he'll get the sixth

I think this is the better question. We've certainly lost talent over the years. I do think the Twins are generally a bit too cautious with minor leaguers. It's nice to see Brooks Lee already at A+, suggesting he'll be at AA next year and nearly ready. I think Brad Steil was better at pushing minor leaguers when he was farm director. I don't think Zoll or Hassan are as good and the system suffers a bit for it. But I could be wrong.

Any predictions before the season starts? Me: Vikings 14-3, win the North, lose in playoffs. Bills finally beat KC in playoffs and win superbowl over SF.

The Astros have managed 80 quality starts in 137 games - meaning the pitcher went at least 6 innings, less than 3 runs. The Twins have 28. The Twins have 25 blown saves, third worst in baseball. Astros starting pitchers have thrown 150+ more innings than us - that's more than 17 full games worth of innings by their starters. Twins starters have thrown 80 or more pitches in a game only 53 times, by far the lowest number in baseball. Can you imagine how much better the Astros would be if they didn't let their starters pitch so much?

Yeah, I enjoyed the first game. I figure this team could finish the season in the top 20 but they aren't good enough to be a top 10 team.

Meh, games should be fun to watch. Watching a ****** pitching staff sucks. Watching a boring, ****** pitching staff is worse. If the Twins philosophy is only twice through the lineup, does that mean we've given up trying to teach our minor league pitchers to develop their third and fourth pitch? Do all of our cruddy pitchers through the same meat? Is that the goal? Find a bunch of 4 inning pitchers and claim a pipeline? I have no idea why you think we should welcome shorter starts. Sure, it's happening but it was a lot more fun watching pitchers figure out teams through the game.

The few examples I know about where players learned something and improved were, more or less, of the KISS rule. Torii Hunter got better (and his walk rate increased) when he started taking more sliders - and he could recognize them because they were the pitches with the red dot. But he said he didn't have a lot of experience/teaching on how to identify a pitch and learned it gradually. Harmon Killebrew had a silly mantra that helped him - if it's not a strike, don't swing. Justin Morneau said that he would see how pitchers pitched Mauer and would expect similar approach to him. Mark Buehrle said a big part of his success was just not thinking - he famously never shook off his catcher - and just threw the ball. (Obviously, Buehrle was being too kind, he was a very good pitcher with insane control. I'm sure he worked very hard). I suspect things like that are how most players learn and approach the game. I doubt (but don't know) that many players think more analytically than that. So how information the FO is giving the players might be important - it has to be digestible. But we see the players with their little cards in the OF that shows them where to line up, which has certainly helped defenses across the game.

Yeah, it's Rocco's team, in the sense that he has some freedom from the FO but the FO is certainly instituting plans and working philosophy that he has to follow. I have no idea if the concerns that Madden mentions have happened to our players. I know some pitchers have complained about things here but, at least, JA Happ was a bad pitcher so his complaints didn't matter.

I want the Twins to make the playoffs, even the watered down, every other team gets in, playoffs. I have no expectations that they can make any noise in the playoffs - a huge difference from 87 where you just play two teams, max.

I don't remember where I came down on the Mahle trade but I was probably ok with it. We gave up a lot but he was a good pitcher and that's the price. it was reasonable. But just because it's defensible doesn't mean it's ok. The Twins have made a lot of bad moves that were, on the surface, pretty defensible. But at some point, they need to pan out. We expected Mahle to give the Twins around 40 starts over two seasons, plus some playoff starts, and we aren't getting that.

Missed most of this turkey. Not a lot of reason for optimism.

I wasn't a big fan of the FO coming into the season so I'm ready to move on. I don't think they've done much to improve the Twins and, worse, have made baseball boring. Watching Gordon pitch tonight (to save the pitching staff?) was pathetic. I'll wait for the season to end but, right now, I don't see how we can keep supporting this crud.

I like the Reagor pick up. I know he's a been labeled a bust but he's young and had a cruddy QB. He had talent to be drafted in the first round. And Viking 3rd receivers have been just as bad or worse the last few years.