Squirrel

I think last year I put the team at about 80 wins. This year I say 85. I’m still concerned with the BP. I don’t see enough there. And I am still concerned with the offense. I think we have guys who can hit, same as last year, but they need to hit. I think we finally have some depth, good depth, with our SP. Never thought I’d say that. Hopefully that takes the load off the BP some. The optimist in me thinks this team has the potential to win 90+ if the offense starts connecting and a couple of our pitchers really have great years, but the realist says 85. I think I’m going to enjoy watching them this year and am really looking forward to the season starting, and that’s not something I could’ve said last year or the year before.

Yeah, you aren’t alone. There are several here who want to believe the worst of Balazovic. Likely we will never know the details. I just hope he comes out of this wiser and gets his pitching back on track.

Okay, well, whatever

Possibly. But it is an ongoing investigation and they are looking for the guy who threw the punch who ran out and they have yet to find. Why run? Why hide? According to Balazovic he was sucker punched. Maybe the guy thought he was someone else? And maybe there was a verbal relay there? And of course people can choose a violent route, but I don’t think that is the answer. I never said you can’t escalate a situation verbally. What I said is that I’m glad he didn’t respond in kind and escalate the situation that way. still context missing, but maybe we need to see the end of the investigation before coming to conclusions.

And LaTroy, too! Go get ‘em, team USA!

I’m glad to hear that it was unprovoked. Really feel badly for him.

An update.

Again. We are not EVER going to merge articles written by our contributors. Those are the articles that are in the Front Page forum and on the Front Page. Never happening. Maybe separate forum for certain subjects could be a thing? In the Twins Talk forum, though, those aren’t articles and we generally do merge those with the exception I noted, when they got posted as rumors.

I think a lot of that depends on who we are facing. As most managers do, they look at the matchups and construct their lineups accordingly and Baldelli is no different. Perhaps a righty and lefty will emerge who will get that spot regularly, but I will have to see how things progress first.

That doesn’t seem to be huge differences, imo. Either way, I still pick around 85 wins for the Twins

Lots of things to unpack here. The Front Page News forum is generated from the creation of front page articles. It’s basically a secondary front page. Most everything from the front page is automatically duplicated and deposited into that forum for those posters who by-pass the front page to get those articles in that forum instead. The articles there are written by the site’s contributing writers and owners. Moderators have no control over what is written, when it’s written or when it’s published. An owner would have to explain that process, but I think other than some specific stories that must be covered, I think the writers pretty much can write what they want. Again, I don’t know if there is a schedule or organization to how those articles get written and published. Those articles cannot and should never be merged, ever, either with other articles in that forum or with threads in other forums. If you don’t like the number of articles on Correa, don’t read them. It’s as simple as that. But each writer has a different perspective on these events and are given latitude. What content there is in the Front Page Articles forum is completely generated by contributing writers and very separate than what gets posted in the other forums. The Twins Talk forum and the Other forum and with some exceptions, the Minor League forum, are poster generated. In other words, those forums don’t have front page articles in them, with a few exceptions in the Minor League forum and even less so in the Other forum. But everything in the Twins Talk forum is its own entity and completely poster driven. When news breaks and multiple posters post the same news stories, yes, those do get merged. However, this year we were trying a new function with Twins rumors. Unfortunately, some posters were using this function not as intended, and were using that to report actual news of signings rather than strictly rumors, so signings came out as rumors. And, unfortunately, we couldn’t merge those, but we did try and lock and redirect threads in that case. We will definitely look into how to do this better as the season goes on. But, posters want to talk about things, and sometimes topics do get repeated that were discussed weeks before. We don’t merge those. We try to post links to the previous discussion, or other posters do, but mostly we view these as separate discussions even if it was had weeks previously. Again, you have control over what you want to read. But the duplication of discussions between the Front Page News and Twins Talk forums … basically nothing we can do about this. I try to cross link the two entities when I can, but mostly it is what it is. In today’s discussion of ‘Who will start?’ it’s doubtful that writer even saw the poll and discussion in the Twins Talk forum from a couple of weeks ago. But there is a difference between the two. One was a fully fleshed out article, while the other was just a poll question. While the discussion ends up being similar, or even the same, again, no one is forcing you to read anything. I did put a link up in the new article, but it’s still a separate entity. There is never a way to perfectly organize things, however, we can’t limit content. That just wouldn’t be a good thing to do when we need writers and posters on a content-driven website.

While I know you were being funny, I still had to dislike this on two points … the use of an opener and the use of Pagan in that position. It’s just too horrifying to laugh!

If you don’t want to participate in a discussion, don’t. If you have suggestions for the site or want to make complaints, please use the ‘Questions about’ forum. These kind of comments are off topic and derail the discussion. The original discussion was in the forums, linked above, but it was a poll and not a full article. Thanks.

I don’t know if there was more than one and from my vantage couldn’t tell if there was one directly behind home. The one I noticed was just to the left of the Twins dugout looking in. It didn’t seem distracting or obtrusive at all

I think Gray is opening day starter with Ryan being given the home opener. Although, it depends on how the rotation is set up and how pitchers are doing. If Maeda continues to progress, I could see the Twins giving him one of those games

A poll on this subject is in the forums, started a couple weeks ago, if anyone wants to vote, check out the totals so far

I think they need to make Sands a RP and hope they are working with him with that in mind. I’d still like to see Winder and Ober start, but I think Winder’s role is eventually as a RP.

I, quite frankly, want neither. And I don’t want Megill, either. Again, the BP is an after thought. The starters need to go deeper and lots of current RPs need to step up and stay strong. It’s a lot to bet on.

Welcome to travel days. My guess is they will either be in Monday’s or Tuesday’s lineup or both. Since Monday is just across town, more of the regulars might be willing to ‘travel.’ In the past I’ve gone to games at Hammond with friends who were fans of other teams, and they were always disappointed when regulars from their teams weren’t there. But, considering how early it is in the ST, yeah, this is it. As more players get sent to minor league camp, we’ll see more regular and longer playtime in a couple weeks.

Feel free to post a link to these good reads or listens! Thanks for the tip!

I don’t disagree that if you have that one person who can fill that role, they can be a primary DH. (I clarified that in a later post than the one you quoted.) We don’t have a Cruz, Thome or Davis on the roster, and Miranda is too young yet to put him there. So, because we don’t have that role player, I like the idea of a rotating DH for the flexibility it brings … for how this team is currently constructed, I think it makes the most sense. But I don’t like the idea of having one person DH who NEVER plays the field. I do think it’s a wasted roster space.

He spent a lot of time this offseason doing his homework, getting to know our pitching staff. I think he will be a big upgrade and will help our pitchers succeed. There’s a reason the Twins gave him one of the corner lockers in the clubhouse. “I think he’s, hands down, one of the best catchers in the game,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “He’s a leader. He’s a player that understands what goes into winning games and playing at a high level and he knows the types of things he can do to help our pitching staff.” https://www.twincities.com/2023/02/24/new-twins-catcher-christian-vazquez-here-to-help-everybody-especially-pitchers/

I was there, and yes it was.

The Rocco comment gets an eyeroll from me, but I get that he’s the scapegoat for everything like not stealing is his philosophy or something. I think you’ll see more base stealing this year in MLB as a whole because of the larger bases. It’s one of the reasons (I think) the Twins signed Vázquez and I think why Molitor is in camp to work on that and why there is more speed on the team.