The Sir

It’s not the bias. If we weren’t all biased, we wouldn’t be diehard sports fans. I get and respect that. It’s the gross ignorance. The not understanding Encarnacion’s role so you end up thinking his D matters, the writing off Dylan Cease, the total unawareness of Robert and Madrigal’s very existence. And thinking Yoán Moncada will regress while Mitch Garver won’t isn’t just bias; it’s stupidity. I hate the Twins more than any other team in sports, but I am actually aware of Brusdar Graterol and Alex Kiriloff, and I’m not idiotic enough to write them off. We’re all Sox homers here. No argument about that. But very few of us are that...dumb. That’s what I find funny.

1998 Rick Helling (20-7 with a 4.41 ERA) or 2013 Chris Sale (11-14 with a 3.07 ERA)...

Yeah, I definitely got a @greg775 vibe reading that guy’s posts. The similarities are uncanny.

I tend to disagree. The Twins have some glaring weaknesses and they have several guys who are due for serious regression. They are our main competition this year, but despite winning 100 games, they’re not in the same class as the Yanks or Astros. And cockiness aside, the guy I quoted seems like an ignoramus in his own right.

Perusing a Twins board this morning, and here they are talking about us. What a bunch of morons. “In my honest opinion i do not think the Twins need be concerned with Chicago Or Cleveland threatening their division title aspirations. Cleveland is obviously not concerned with winning and Chicago is just Chicago. True that they have added quality players. Give them an A for effort. To me they fall short on outfield defense, infield defense and starting pitching. Even though they have Keuchel and Gonzalez, they are relying too much on Giolito to not regress(unlikely), Rodon to bounce back from Tj surgery(unlikely), Lopez to improve(highly unlikely), and Cease to break out(extremely doubtful). Also, what have they done with the bullpen? not much if anything. Their players don't hustle, take extra bases,fight hard when down, and generally i feel are just not winners. Thats their top dawgs fault. Unfortunately for them neither Encarnacion nor Mazzara are defensive wizards either. Who is gonna play 2nd base? Center? Do they even have a gold glover on the roster? Philosophically we beat them like a drum since 2008...and those White Sox were more talented and better managed. Lets worry about the next step...hear me Derek? To just win the Central is not gonna do it this time.” Extremely doubtful that Dylan Cease progresses? Highly unlikely that Lopez improves? Who’s pinning their hopes on Rodon coming back strong? Ever hear of the DH- who cares about Encarnacion’s D? Have you heard of the #3 and #40 prospects in MLB? We actually let our GG go because we have someone in the wings who is better. A fan of a team that got 31 homeruns from Mitch Garver is talking gleefully about regression on other teams. The 2019 Twins got more career years from otherwise mediocre players than any team I can remember. I can’t wait to knock these smug dicks off their pedestal. Who knows- maybe they’ll win the wild card so they can continue their hilarious postseason futility, one game at a time.

That is why you think it's unreadable? Not the references to Tuijuan Walker and Will Koncanon, the Dane Dunning-Mark Buehrle comp, or the Ulyssean length of it all? Okaaay.

To be fair, Greg actually believes, with his genuine but insane baseball philosophy, that Timmy should be a catcher.

I don't really want to make a numbers prediction, but I want to highlight points 4 and 5. This is HUGE. Some people have expressed disappointment that we got mid-tier free agents this offseason and not stars. First off, I'll ignore the fact that Grandal is one of the best catchers in baseball and Zack Wheeler has POTENTIAL to be a star but isn't actually one, yet. I never thought this team needed to add stars. Moncada, Gio and Timmy are already there, Jimenez is borderline and probably secures the label this year, and Robert, Madrigal, Kopech, Cease, and Vaughn are waiting in the wings. That's far more actual star power than, say, the 2005 team had. Our problem last year was weaknesses (which the 2005 team had almost none of). CF, RF, 2B, DH, most of our rotation, those were all enormous holes. We needed to fill them. Now we have. So yeah, I think this team will be very good and only bound to get better.

On a seasonal level and on an individual level. I can get somewhat excited to watch our young talent even if the team is 52-70. I feel like I spent numerous days last summer whittling the hours away to a 1:10 game, anxiously counting down, planning my game snacks and buying some beer to enjoy with it, only for Dylan Covey to pitch and us be down 5-0 at the end of the first. And then, 25 minutes in, I’m wondering what the hell I ought to do for the rest of my day.

Yeah, your initial response was correct. Have fun using your pen for five innings against Jimenez, Moncada, Robert, Encarnación, Grandal, Abreu, and Anderson. I’ve always been a big supporter of the Mazara acquisition. But I’ve also pointed out that Texas mostly had him batting cleanup. That’s a weak lineup and I’m not a fan. For us, next year, Mazara will probably be batting eighth and that will work just fine.

That’d be idiotic anyhow. What would stop us from then PHing for Mazara? Besides, only in Fantasy Analogy Land can GIDPs in the 4th inning be game changing.

And the fact that they’re just adding and subtracting wins based on WAR added and lost. So Keuchel with 2 or so WAR pushes us up to 74 wins but losing Yolmer and his 2 WAR pushes us right back to the start. It. Does. Not. Work. Like. That. Yolmer was an offensive black hole with great D. His loss does not offset the addition of Keuchel, who will replace a catastrophe like Dylan Covey and go out every fifth day and give us a solid chance to win (with a QS about 70% of the time). WAR is a fair way of comparing the overall production of individual players in all aspects of the game. But if you think you just add and subtract it to what you already have and that accurately predicts a team record, you need to step back and go watch a baseball game. Last year, we gave 513 starts and 2,181 PAs to 11 players who had an average OPS+ of 57. Next year, the vast majority of those PAs will be consumed by three MLBers who put up an average OPS+ of 113, a highly touted prospect who went 30-30 with a 1.000 OPS, and a first round draft pick with a .782 OPS who struck out 3% of the time. Fuck your WAR calculations. Unless one of our acquisitions falls off a cliff or the prospects disappoint, we are a MUCH better team and can absolutely knock off a team that got 30+ roid bombs from Mitch fucking Garver and has Devin Smeltzer, Randy Dobnak, and Lewis Thorpe slotted for the back end of the rotation.

Honestly, it's the only thing that unnerves me going into this season.

And he had an OPS+ of 123 against RHP. Against LHP, Leury should play and his OPS+ there was 105. Our idiot manager is going to fuck this up, isn’t he?

I don’t know why anyone wants to trade McCann. He doesn’t cost that much, we’re not cash strapped anyhow, he won’t return that much in a trade, and even if his high points last year were flukes, he’ll probably put up a mid .700s OPS as a backup catcher, giving us one of the best C tandems in MLB and allowing us to rest him or E without resorting to anything super ugly looking.

I’d pack it in. I think Edwin will sign with us soon, but he buried his dad yesterday and it’s Christmas Eve. Nobody’s dealing with this tonight.

This. He’s worth more to us as a backup C than anything he’d bring in a trade, and that’s not knocking him at all. Keep him.

Robert CF Moncada 3B Jimenez LF Encarnacion DH Grandal C Abreu 1B Anderson SS Mazara RF Madrigal 2B Also, pretty informal, but the Rangers’ team OPS last year was 22 points higher than ours. Mazara still got the vast majority of his ABs in the cleanup position. I don’t see how he ever hits higher than 7th for us. Pretty cool.

Don't anyone get me wrong. If we really get E, I'll get fucking wet, but as much as I like Mazara, he needs to be hidden from LHP. At the same time, whatever. Get E and let's murder the shit out of RHP.

OK, Encarnacion is a better hitter than Castellanos, but am I wrong to want Castellanos more because he helps us hide Mazara against LHP? If we get E, then Garcia or Engel has to play RF against RHP. McCann has no real place other than backup C. If we get Nick, then against LHP, he shifts to right and McCann serves as DH. What am I missing?

Honestly, I’d just go with Robert and Madrigal on OD. The window is starting. Why go into the season with Engel and Mendick as starters when you could start grooming two future All Stars at the highest level? That’s spiting the now for the distant future, and 2026 success depends on other factors beyond the retention of those two anyhow. Yeah, I know they’re not actually going to do this, FWIW.

If we get Edwin, in all honesty, I like this course of events for this franchise far more than if we blew our entire wad on that douchebag Machado last off-season.

As a fan, this is worth so much. I'm not in Chicago much anymore, but I did visit in 2015 and got Sox tickets. John Danks was pitching. Missed out on Sale, Quintana, and Rodon, and got 2015 Danks. It was amazing having my wife and kid at that special place, and we won, but damn if that wasn't a bit of a letdown. Having stretches of Yolmer, Engel, Cordell, and Castillo, or some of those other disasters you mentioned...well, it was nice having innings where I could safely march off and take a nice, long shit. Guess what? We don't have that anymore! From a tactical baseball perspective, some of the pessimists on here are freaking out about WAR. I really don't care about that at all. Someone find me the weakness on this team. A month or two into the season, and the "easiest" stretch for an opposing pitcher will be something like McCann-Mazara-Madrigal. The "easiest" possible slate for a team coming to play three games in Chitown will probably be Gonzalez, Lopez, and Cease. No more do opposing fans and players get to dream about beating up on any combination of Sanchez, Tilson, Detwiler, Santiago, Covey and whoever. We are much more solid from top to bottom.

I’d put money on Wheeler being a total mediocrity over the course of his deal, regardless of years and money. Much rather have Keuchel.

Who cares about WAR? 19 starts last year. 12 of them quality. Only gave up more than 4 ERs twice, and only in his sole disaster outing of the year did he fail to pitch five innings. Dude will give us a decent chance to win every time he goes out. Dylan Covey gave us one QS in 12. We were pretty much finished in several of his starts before we even came to bat. He’s DONE. Ross Detwiler gave us two QS in 12. He’s DONE. Despaigne, Santana, and Banuelos gave us one QS in 14. There’s four QS in 38 games. And it’s not like they were just failing to reach the six inning mark to have QS; those five gave up four or more ER in 21 of their starts. They’re DONE. Keuchel eliminates all of them. And he’s reliable, unlike Ryu. Too many people on here think we need an ace. No- arguably, we already have one in Lucas. We now just need people to add to the potent but untested youth who will give us a chance to win and keep the uninteresting (for us fans) and disastrous (for our W-L) pitchers off the mound. Dallas and Gio do that just fine.