ewen21

In the plainest terms,. according to his own words, Bumgarner wanted to go to Arizona. That means HE DIDN'T WANT TO COME HERE. He wanted to go to Arizona. Get over it guys

Wrong sir! Wrong. You are dreaming if you think this kind of setup exists anywhere else but in baseball. We don't actually NEED baseball. I love it and I am somewhat addicted to it, but when the players went on strike in 1994 that was it for me for about 5 years. If they think they can throw their weight around they are sorely mistaken. The bubble will burst soon if they aren't careful.

I don't give the owners a moment's thought. YOu seem to have a deep resentment for them. And no.....players should not have guaranteed money. Owners should be able to exercise an option like players do. An owner should be able to hit the eject button a contract within 600 days of signing a player.

Mike, please. This is a classic deflection and it is pretty weak. Tell me where someone can work someplace and get guaranteed money for years without any concern for performance.

Mike, you seem to be on a mission to aggressively defend the lofty status of major league baseball players. They have agents. They have the most powerful union in the world. They get guaranteed money and yet you've assigned yourself as an advocate for them in your spare time. You have been rather intense in this area this offseason. No offense, man. I am entertained by it.

No one has a guaranteed salary in the real world. Why should baseball be any different?

With his injury history, documented odd training habits and build.....I am not sure how people are confident he can maintain the high level of effectiveness WHEN HE PITCHES. At age 33 no less.

I don’t even know who this player is and I’m sure most here haven’t the first idea other than he’s a a 32 year old lefty. Having never seen him pitch it really doesn’t give me the right to grouse about not going for him. I imagine there is a decent pool of players of this ability level. He is kind of FA pitcher we often sign with the only difference being he pitched in the Japanese league. Long story short is I can’t complain about not going for a guy I never heard of, nor should anyone

I, for one, respect the divergent opinions of posters here. While I do not understand all the criticism about the Twins not signing anyone of note thus far this off season--I certainly get it. I have been that way in the past, but for now, I guess after the last postseason embarassment I don't see where this is a "win now" club. So I get the analytics-driven approach that dictates guy try to get the maximum value from trades and deals. Falvey and Levine did their job, in my opinion. It was the players who failed. Had they won a game in the playoffs I might feel differently. They could not win a game. AGAIN. Once again, we could not hit a lick in the postseason. How is a guy like Ryu or Bumgarner going to fix that? So I am not going to rip our GMs this offseason. I am reserving that for guys like Kepler and Buxton. These two darlings contributed NOTHING in the postseason. One ran into a wall (for the umpteenth time) in a meaningless game in Florida to ensure his season was over early and the other was invisible the last month of the season.

No one said EVERY free agent pitcher doesn't want to pitch in Minnesota so he's writing a letter to nothing basically. I think it has been stated and restated many times that Bumgarner didn't have an interest in Minnesota. He clearly had his heart set on Arizona (among other places). What are we supposed to do? Offer him WHATEVER IT TAKES like people insisted we do with Darvish? No man. No. The job these GMs were hired to do was use analytics to build a winning, cost-effective team. They have done that. Big name FA pitchers are historically not cost-effective in almost every single case. Had we made some hay in the playoffs I think we are having a different conversation here. This team soiled their pants in the playoffs yet again and seems content to call it a success. That right there doesn't help a damn thing with regard to guys considering Minnesota as a destination. We have a sad legacy of playing like chumps in the playoffs and that works against us. It is embarrassing for me as a Twins fan and it should be. (Now... do not go making that THE REASON why FAs don't favor Minnesota. I am saying it is part of it, I am not saying THERE IS THE REASON so please pump the breaks on anything that suggests this.) Not sure what the big deal is here. This place has been analytics-friendly if ever a place was. I thought it went a bit overboard for a while, as a matter of fact. The irony here is I am upholding the core tenets of analytics. Seems to me that doesn't mean a thing to you or a bunch others. Maybe it never did with you and that is fine with me. The fact that this place has scores of people basically saying PAY THE STUPID TAX is interesting and refreshing, but at the same time it is based in emotion and futile.

I gave my opinion, not what I thought they would do. You’re conflating the two. I am not answering for our GMs nor am I defending them. Please don’t ask me to do that. To be honest with you, however, I would have told them not to bother Bumgarner. I’ve already run through the reasons why I would pass on this guy so I won’t repeat it. If he turns around and does the improbable then I’ll have egg on my face for all the preaching I’ve done. And I’m not saying he CAN’T rekindle his career and be that guy again for a few years. I’m just saying I’m willing to put a significant amount of money against it because his decline already started. BYTO, I respect you and enjoy your posts. This last paragraph is not for you. I’d also like to respond to those who mention Verlander, Clemens and Randy Johnson. You have to go back thirty years to find three guys who got better after a big deal in their 30s. And in the interest of accuracy Verlander was acquired in a trade. For every one of these guys there are literally hundreds of pitchers who hit 32 and experience a precipitous fall.

I need to douche my brain after reading all the whining about this one. Hardly worth the time, but it is hard to just leave some stuff up non contended. I said my piece on Bumgarner and I am glad we didn't do this. It would have been moronic

Not making an excuse. I’m saying the contract he signed isn’t something I would support. His durability and deterioration are great concerns for me. I want value and this FA pitching market doesn’t offer a lot of value.

Why the HELL should the Twins go five years for this guy? He's declined sharply. He hardly throws that four seamer anymore and he isn't nearly the guy he was. WHY WHY WHY do we give him five years? Because he is "MadBum"?? Honestly, getting him is just paying for a name. He isn't Madison Bumgarner anymore.

And why do you think was? Read the post I just quoted.

If someone was going to offer me twice as much as what I made now, but had to live in Alabama I would say NO. So much is made of the free will of players and yet some of the same folks who think players are worth every dollar they get can't wrap their arms around this one.

The most overrated person of the off season here. Enough.

Who cares? There are no elite pitchers on the market now.

Not only that, it ignores flexibility next year and several years beyond. People also seem to want ignore to basic economics and the concept of a budget. Then again, I’m reading posts from people who feel Pohlad should just spend his own money. It’s really a bunch of pie in the sky chatter about nothing to the point where we are speaking hypothetically now. It does make me wonder. What if Jeff Bezos brought the Twins and made it his life’s mission to bring the Twins a championship? Would anyone be happy if he set aside five billion dollars of his fortune for the Twins and bought the biggest names in free agency the next five years? Would that get these people excited? Being a long time Twins fan you develop an understanding that we can’t operate like the Yankees or the Dodgers. Like you say, it is naive to think of we had even a little shot at Cole. To waste a moment on that is a fool’s errand. People know this and yet seems to be an increasingly louder group of folks who insist we spend without any concern of future implications. Have they learned nothing? For whatever reason they see this team as a win now team and that signing Bumgarner or Ryu (or both) is the recipe for success. All Pohlad needs to do is write checks. Meanwhile, when it comes time to sign Sano, Buxton, Berrios and the like we won’t be able to and there’s a good chance there will be complaints about that. It’s just becoming a silly conversation. This isn’t the market and it isn’t the year. These guys that are left isn’t going to get it done. We’d be better off pulling the trigger on a trade if anything.

I know what ephemeral means and I was trying to be ironic. I don’t know about you, But I remember 1991 only because of the games in October. Had we gone all the way in 2006 it would’ve been a season for the ages. It’s barely talked about now I’m trying my best to explain this to you but I don’t feel the need to talk about a word and lard up these pages with that. People want to discuss Ryu. Can we please honor that here? I PMed you in hopes that this discussion wouldn’t carry out on the board

If “anything can happen” why do we lose all the time? The “anything can happen” stuff seems not to apply. Again, can we stick to Ryu here?

I agree with you and added to what you said. By quoting you I was not challenging you in any way, but rather reinforcing by adding to your point

Why is it that we can't trade for a young guy on the rise to get this pitcher? This is what Houston did to get Cole. I think they played Cole perfectly. They got him at the exact right time and now the Yankees owe him a third of a billion dollars. We need to do what Houston did and NOT what the Yankees do. If we trade a Buxton or Rosario then get a FA outfielder to replace them. They are not as costly as pitching and far more common and therefore easier to replace.

This thread is about Ryu. I gave my concerns about age, health, and durability. Does none of that matter and do you operate under the assumption that we give him five years and pay a "stupidity tax" Let's leave the word "ephemeral" out of the discussion. Last year means as much to me as the 2005 season as weird as that might sound. To win 101 games and not even make so much as a peep in the postseason diminishes the regular season greatly for me. That isn't the discussion, though, It is supposed to be about Ryu and if getting him means we have to go 5/100 then I think that is off the charts nuts given what I wrote in paragraph one here.

Over the course of Twins history each season is a moment in time to me. There is little significance in winning 101 games historically as compared to winning games in October. Maybe I am strange, but those 101 wins mean nothing to me right now after a 3 and out in the first round. Maybe you place more significance in the regular season than you do the postseason. Sorry, but last year just isn't a big deal right now to me. MOre important than my use of the word ephemeral what about your comment on how this team is ready to win? How is a team that has lost the last 13 playoff games in a row "ready to win"? I was hoping maybe you would explain that to me because I was applauding everything but the last two paragraphs you wrote