gunnarthor

I'd like to see Park back up again soon.

Yeah, that sounds about right. He's a good get but he's likely a back of the rotation starter, which is nice but not a top 100 type. But let's hope he excels for us.

Keep in mind that prospect ranking is an inexact science at best. MLB's scouts had him #7 while BA had him #3 and in the top 100. I tend to think mlb is better than BA but still, it's a solid get.

Solid return. I actually thought the Twins were aiming for Mejia or Clevinger (Cle) with the Nunez rumors so I was pretty happy to be right for once. Good luck to Nunez in SF.

That seems pessimistic.

My thoughts are that this should be divided a second time. The 08-11 period under Johnson and Smith and then the 12-16 period where Ryan and Radcliff had more input. And the draft pool thing came into effect in 2012, as well. I'm not sure how much budget affected the 08-11 drafts but we know there were pretty strong rumors it affected previous drafts. That said, Johnson certainly has some differences than Radcliff - we mainly see that with the type of pitchers he takes. He prefers fireballers whereas Radcliff focused more on control (this is an imperfect comparison as Johnson did draft Wimmers and Radcliff did take Garza and Durbin). But right now, the 08 draft (3 first rounders) was a big miss. And 11 was pretty rough, too. But 2012 could be an all-timer. I'm not sold on Johnson but the last few drafts have been a lot more exciting than his first few. Maybe he's learning, maybe there's more than we know. In a recent chat, Klaw had good things to say about the Twins scouting department so maybe there's more to know. I won't complain if the new GM replaces Johnson but I won't complain if he keeps him. I think there's just too much to this that I don't know.

The few times we've known we'd need money in less than a year, we've just dumped into a CD. It doesn't make much money, really, but it's safe. The one exception was about a year ago. We dumped 10k into HSI thinking that the Court would uphold Obamacare and the stock would spike. It did but we held it hoping to hold for a year (so lower taxes) and it bottomed out. I think we technically lost about 200 dollars on that. So we just should have done the CD.

Would that burn one of his option years?

We were kicking the tires on it but decided to hold our money. I do expect the economy to go down so we haven't invested (and the darn thing keeps going up) but we also might invest in some real estate so ....

Anyone jump on Netflix?

They all sound good. My guess is they hire someone else that we haven't heard of yet. Jim Pohlad seems to hear the fan complaints more than his father did so he'll hire outside the organization. But I also expect he'll try and save a few bucks so he won't hire a GM that will require a big salary - and most of these probably would. He'll hire someone who is willing to be the 30th highest paid GM in baseball and is comfortable with having the owner pick the manager.

Nice write up Seth. My guess is that ownership will hire someone we haven't heard of. Jim Pohlad seems to hear the complaints of fans a lot more than his dad did. So he'll find a GM who is willing to live with Molitor.

Worst case scenario. Balt GM: (to Antony) Look, we both know the Pohlads are going a different direction. Here's what I'll do. Send me Sano for Chris Lee and you can be my asst GM next year. Antony: Deal!

Wouldn't the playing time/quick hooks on our younger players be on Molitor, not Ryan?

I think it's actually pretty common. Off the top of my head you have Ned Colletti former Dodgers GM now the Senior Advisor and Doug Melvin, former Brewers manager who is now a senior advisor. Both were fired from their GM and managing duties.

Some of the insular stuff should be taking down a notch. The Twins almost entirely cleared their organizational coaching staff since Ryan got back and hired the majority of new coaches from other organizations. True, they do have some long termed people but most orgs do. Seth can speak on it better but the minor league coaches under Smith are almost all gone. And Ryan created a new analyst department that didn't exist before and hired one of the younger farm director's in baseball in Brad Steil (who hopefully sticks around after the new GM comes in). He also hired away dozens of new scouts from other teams as well and added resources in Canada. Sure, Dave St Peter is still there but his impact on the baseball operations in nil.

If that's true, the timing is strange. Unless the team doesn't expect to make any deadline moves?

Yeah. The scary thing might be that ownership wants to lower payroll again (my guess is that was why Smith was fired). If we trade Santana for nothing but payroll relief, our rotation next year will be bad. And searching for a GM during the season strikes me as not the best way to do it. Wouldn't we want to wait until after the season to interview people connected with other teams?

Wow. Well, best to Terry. He worked hard for this team for decades. I suspect the timing meant that he and the Pohlad family had a different view of what should happen at the trade deadline. I'm not sure what this means to Molitor, I always felt he was a Pohlad hire so I doubt he's gone. (Although I'm not a fan of this coaching staff). And Anthony is the logical interim GM. Nice to see that they will do a big GM search. And I would also assume that most people would look at the Twins GM job as a really nice prize.

Romero has been really good sign by the international department. He signed for 260k in Oct 2011. mlbpipeline wrote this about him: "It's possible Romero would be talked about now as one of the better pitching prospects of the game if he hadn't gotten hurt. But the talented right-hander needed Tommy John surgery after just three starts in 2014, missing the rest of that and the 2015 season. Romero has a big arm when he's healthy, sitting in the 93-95 mph and touching the upper-90s. Romero's breaking ball has morphed a bit over time. It was more of a power curve two years ago before the injury, but it's turned into more of a slider and looked like it could be a plus one eventually based on how he was throwing it at instructs last fall. He has good feel for his changeup, giving him the chance to have three above-average pitches once he gets back to full strength. Romero is still learning how to pitch and there is certain to be some rust to shake off after nearly two years away from competitive pitching. If he can get back to where he was before the surgery, he has the chance to have among the best stuff in the Twins system."

He was a 24th round pick out of Appalachian State which, I believe, isn't a great baseball program school but it's ok. His numbers so far are far better than what he put up in college. He's doing very well against younger competition and the Twins seem willing to move him up, which is good. He's probably a lottery ticket but he's a nice one to have.

Probably time to bring up Berrios

Nice start by Gonsalves. It doesn't mean much but with all the promotions, mlbpipeline updates its top 100 prospects and Gonsalves is now #98. Of course, that doesn't include recent draftees and it doesn't change the order for those above/below on how they've played but it is still nice to see.

Sure, but the offense also pummeled Hamels, Manaea, Nola and Quintana. I do think the offense will certainly have some lows but they won't be the lows we saw in April.

The Twins certainly have the pieces for a very good offensive team. Hopefully, we are starting to see that grow at last.