"The Twins are trying to hold on to righthander Kyle Lohse"

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?

Just say "no" to Hillenbrand.

I don't know if this was mentioned yet or not but the Twins did offer arbitration to Jacque Jones.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/sports/13354466.htm

Keep

Baker

Here

.

silly batgirl. fish are vegetables! so even you can appreciate the fishyness of holding on to kyle/lyle and moving baker.

Of all the pitchers I've heard of in all these trade rumors...I would least like to lose Scott Baker. He's shown an ability to start and start effectively. I'd rather trade away a number of different of our relievers before him.

If we give up Baker.....just the idea is making my brain punch me from the inside.

BAKER NEEDS TO STAY SECOND COMING OF RADKE WITH A BETTER FASTBALL i guess i don't need caps on but it needs to be said

I certainly hadn't heard this trade-Baker-before-Lohse thing before. Those who, as I recall, have made good points about why the Twins ought to keep Lohse (a couple of days ago here?) did not seem to think that would include losing Baker.

I would be stunned if Lohse stayed and Baker was dealt. Lohse needs a change of scenary to perhaps realize his potential, but Baker I think has what it takes to be a consistent pitcher for years to come.

It's just a tricky Ryan ploy. Think Frenchmen from Monty Python & the Holy Grail: "Oh no! We WANT Lohse - he's a vital part of our plans! He's worth a LOT more to us than you think. (I told them we want to keep Lohse! *snicker snicker*)"

Well, the three-way deal with Toronto and Milwaukee isn't happening since the Blue Jays just acquired Overbay on their own.

I would rather give up Lohse then Baker but either way if we can get a power guy like Hank Blalock at third, that would be cool.

Getting Mench would be cool too, because of his oversized head.

I agree with the statement "If we give up Baker.....just the idea is making my brain punch me from the inside." Because giving up Baker seems completely wrong. This is a guy that's proved himself to be good over his starts at both levels (majors and minors). I, for one, am not willing to give up good starting pitching to get good hitting. I agree with keeping Lohse, but not when it means we give up Baker. That's insane. I hope that's just the Dallas paper doing some wishful thinking when TR said he didn't want to give up Lohse.

Eh - I wouldn't miss Kyle that much

I see Soriano went to the Nationals

Much Love
WW

IMO, wanting to keep Baker over Lohse is something of a no-brainer. Good luck having that translate to reality though. Baker has more trade value, so it's not like you can sub them in and out of trade offers like they were the Olsen twins.

And as for Baker being the next Radke, it wasn't that long ago when Lohse was suppose to be the next Radke.

"IMO, wanting to keep Baker over Lohse is something of a no-brainer. Good luck having that translate to reality though. Baker has more trade value, so it's not like you can sub them in and out of trade offers like they were the Olsen twins."

True, but there's some question about Blalock's value as well. He has an OPS of .895 at home but it drops all the way to .611 on the road. Only 5 of his HRs came on the road.

That's a pretty wicked home/away split.

According to Twins web site--Jones offered arbitration but Mays and Old Man Terry were not--so we need to hold on to pitchers to give Liriano more seasoning...besides Toronto got Overbay already...maybe they could send us back Corey and move Hillebrand to 3B.

Toronto will definately be looking to clear out therir infield logjam, but the last time the Twins called about Koskie the words "Justin Morneau" came out of JP Ricciardi's mouth and was followed soon after by a dial tone.

Damn. Marte's been snagged by the ECBS.

hey when are you goingto get a Terry Ryan is my boy friend t-Shirt

sorry a little off topic - but I thought it was cool =)

http://minnesota.twins.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/news/press_releases/press_release.jsp?ymd=20051207&content_id=1277871&vkey=pr_min&fext=.jsp&c_id=min

Much love
WW

Gendo-

Amen. I threw up in my mouth when I read that the Twins are TRYING to hang on to Lyle. I swallowed it, though, so I'm ok.

And Jewscott, Ashley is much hotter than Mary Kate. With way less of a coke/eating problem. Which is cool.

Regards,

Chris

Looks like the Twins just went fishing in the Rule 5 Draft, picking up OF Jason Pridie off of the Devil Rays AA Team. Click my name for the link.

Now, I am hoping TR has something wicked up his sleeve on this one. At first glance, picking up a 22-year-old whose best accomplishment so far professionally was an OPS of 685 and 1 HR at Fall Leagues this year, seems a bit crazy. It seems especially crazy when it is considered that this guy has to take up a major league bench spot this year.

Is there something wrong with Kubel that I haven't heard of?? Why the heck did this guy get picked?

Hillenbrand < good will over Castillo trade.

Please, please, please do NOT bring in another guy who will flail at every ... stinking ... pitch.

"Those who, as I recall, have made good points about why the Twins ought to keep Lohse (a couple of days ago here?) did not seem to think that would include losing Baker.

Posted by: AT at December 8, 2005 12:36 AM"

As one of those people, you are right on. I think Kyle is a "B" pitcher if he's in the #5 spot in the rotation. He drops one letter grade for each spot he moves up.

I understand TR's rationale for wanting to hold onto Loshe. It makes sense if we are aiming for October this year and is consistent with keeping Tori in the last year of his K. But I'm curious, does anyone know if Baker is under K for a few more seasons? If so and he's working for cheap than the deal seems a little more precarious.

Just saw that Kenny Rogers is with the Tigers now. A 2-year deal.

I agree that it would seem preferrable to keep Baker over Lohse, but I would give up either for Blalock. Also, haven't we learned to trust Ryan on who to keep and who to jettison yet? Other than Ortiz, he generally makes the right call...

Hmm, getting blalock would be MUCH better than Hillebrand. Blalock's easily a top-5 3B, along with A-Rod, Chavez, Ramirez, and Glaus (when healthy). Hillebrangs medium-tier, he's a solid contributer, better to trust than a random minor leaguer, but when you're looking for an edge on the rest of the AL Cent, Hlllebrand will get your parity, but Blalock will put you over the top at that position.

Updating the lineup...

Gaining Castillo puts you in the upper tier of the AL Cent at that position. Iguchi has better power numbers while being slower, Belliard's solid but not as fast, Polanco's a little more power for less defense, and who cares about KC.

So you went from 2nd to last at 2B in the AL Cent to really in a 4-way tie for first, each of the big 4 seem to have different advantages from their 2B's.

Getting Blalock would put you easily from 5th place (Hey, KC at least has Teahan) to 1st. Hillebrand would move you to 2nd, behind Crede (assuming Joe doesn't super-slump again anyway).

Losing Romero and Baker would sting though. You guys don't take your bullpen for granted, but losing too many of the 6/7/8 guys will definitely decrease the effectiveness of your 2-5 starters (Senor Santana needs no bullpen). Keeping a death lock on Rincon seems like a smart move.

Personally I think Baker's more valuable than Lohse, and if you can witter Lohse away for Blalock, f'n A. Lohse hasn't shown that he can dominate anyone consistently, and he SHOULD have developed more poise and maturity by now. And the thing is, even if he does realize his potential and pitch smarter and with greater confidence, he still is about #4 pitcher range. The Twins have the minor leaguers, take some chances from within if you don't seek help from without, but I think giving up Baker just to work with Lohse won't benefit the Twins.

Few notes from my perspective.
-Pander, the wow-busy-off-season White Sox fan.

Part of the reason Terry "Risk Averse" Ryan doesn't mind hanging on to Lohse is the condition of Radke's shoulder. If you recall, he didn't get it fixed last summer when conventional wisdom said surgery would get him several more good years. Instead he rested it and said a lot of vague stuff about fishing once this contract was over. Ryan knows that when Radke has to sit down this June he'd have a rotation that went Liriano - Baker - (b)oof, since Old Man Mulholland and Kid Joe aren't around to fill in. Might others be up to the task? Sure, but there's no way Ryan has 60% of his rotation filled by guys that still take their laundry home to their moms. It's way more than he can contemplate, especially if he's got Lohse on hand already.

It puts an added burden on the payroll, it costs kids that the farm worked hard to build up, and it makes it harder to add impact players, but it is in keeping with the organizations' MO to play it safe. I entirely expect to see Lohse in a Twins uniform this summer.

I thought it was long established that we wanna say bye-bye to Kyle/Lyle, and we are deeply impressed with Baker. I thought this was based on the fact that Baker, you know, pitched better in his rookie year than Lohse ever pitched in his, you know, life.

Seeing folks discuss the Baker/Lohse thing reminds me of a psychological experiment I read about once.

A multiple-choice test was assigned that described traits of people and asked the test-taker to pick which additional trait among a number of traits on a list was most likely to also be true of those people.

One woman (let's call her Linda) was described as having a college-degree, having participated in student protests, and being a volunteer at a local shelter for battered women. Two of the options on the list of additional traits read as follows:

1) Linda is a librarian.
2) Linda is a librarian and is active in the feminist movement.

The vast majority of participants chose 2, even though by the terms of the test, there's no way that 2 is a more likely result than 1. (Because in theory there's no way the likelihood of Linda's being a librarian increases by knowing she's active in the feminist movement, and thus the odds of someone possessing two independent traits is always smaller than the odds of that person possessing only one of those traits.) The reason people chose 2, however, is because based on the description, Linda being a feminist simply fit their mental image of her, even if by the rules of probability, the odds of her being both a feminist and a librarian are smaller than the odds of her being a librarian regardless of her gender politics.

Similarly, you have two major-league pitchers: one is going to be 24, has been a solid minor league starter (18-17, 3.04 in 59 minor league starts) and could be an effective #3-5 starter in the major leagues. The other is going to be 27 and has been an effective major league #3-5 starter (49-52, 4.72 in 144 big-league starts).

There's really no objective sense that the younger pitcher (we'll call him Timothy Scott) is more valuable than the older pitcher (we'll call him Kyle). TS simply has the potential to do something that Kyle has already done. But because people have a mental image of TS as having more 'potential' (meaning that, at least in theory, he could exceed the expectation of being merely a #3-5 starter), he's considered more valuable than Kyle, who is perceived as having failed to reach that 'potential', just as because Linda is perceived as fitting the mental image of a feminist, people will select an answer on a test that cannot logically be true.

TR, at least, seems to be able to see through the distinction, which is good news for Twins fans, IMO.

Dear Mr. Wintheiser,

But you fail to mention that Linda the librarian makes 8 times as much money as Linda the librarian-feminist, and that the head of the library is a major tightass, not to mention the head librarian needs to free up money to buy a new children's librarian, because the last one didn't know her Astrid Lindgren from her ass-bat.

Sincerely,
Batgirl

Haha...That just about made my night.

I say trade Baker if it means getting Blalock. He's a career .260 hitter, hits line-drives better than anyone on the league, and has averaged about 30 HR per year. Oh, and he's 25. Sure, Baker could turn into a great pitcher. We already have pitching, though (don't forget Glen Perkins and the rest of the prospects shooting through the system) and the offense absolutely has to show up to have a chance in this division. Baker would be solid every 5 games, but a new 3B would have a daily effect. Besides, having that lineup makes me giddy.

Stewart - LF
Castillo - 2B
Mauer - C
Blalock - 3B
Morneau - 1B
Piazza/Big Hurt/Jones?- DH
Hunter - CF
Kubel/Ford - RF
Castro (or whoever wants to play) - SS

That's a lot of runs in the top half of the lineup. Santana would be very pleased.

My baby's here.
Check my link.

Dear Drew,
Here is my alternative lineup:

Castillo- 2B
Stewie- LF
Mauer- C
Blalock- 3B
Hunter- CF
DH
Morneau- 1B
Ford/Kubel- RF
Bartlett- SS

Can't talk now, I'll explain later.

Yeah, I'd much rather give up Lohse than Baker, mainly because Kyle has already failed to live up to inflated expectations and Baker has not. If we were going to trade one of them and have them turn into a great pitcher, I'd rather that be Lohse, so I can at least accept the 'scenery change' helped him. (See Ortiz, David)

Getting Blalock would be great, but those home/away stats scare me too. Everyone can hit in Texas; why else would they be willing to deal both Soriano and Blalock? But I'm willing to take that risk because frankly, I think we need to in order to contend next season. But for Baker? hmm... Depends on how good those 5 pitchers on our 40 man roster that I've never heard of are. With the hype surrounding 2006 central (I never thought I'd wish we were in a different division), I Guess I'm stuck trusting TR again.

Also, I see Miguel Tejada has demanded a trade... Do you think TR even bats an eye?

"Also, I see Miguel Tejada has demanded a trade... Do you think TR even bats an eye?"

*wets self*

Dwintheiser: thank you for articulating so well (if a little egg-headed ... But hey, we like that here) this weird assumption that Baker, Liriano, or both would be better than Kyle right now.

Yes, Lohse can be frustrating. But isn't it more to do with not matching his early promise than with his actual pitching? His numbers are solid for a 4/5 guy in the rotation. It's just that we wanted so badly for him to be a legit 2/3 guy. OK, so he's not. But I stick by my assertion that we KNOW he is a better than average #5 guy, and no worse than average #4 guy.

What has Baker proved? That he can pitch at the MLB level at the end of the season when the Twins were out of the race. That's nothing to sneeze at. Most AAA pitchers can't do that. But all he's really proved is that he is better than most AAA pitchers right now. He could just as well plateau where he is, and be a solid #4 or #5 guy. Sound familiar?

That doesn't mean I want to trade Baker. It's just that his value is a lot higher when there are 4 established MLB starters around him.

Keep Baker, lose Lohse - for value, though.

IMO, Baker's shown more signs of becoming a good pitcher in his brief time in the bigs than Lohse has since he first started with the Twins.

Have we seen temper tantrums or childishness from Baker?

Have we seen him suddenly load up on gopher balls?

Have we ever read an article suggesting coaches have been frustrated with Baker?

Lohse violated what I've always thought was rule #1 for a baseball team - "It's about us, it's not about you" - with that tirade toward the end of the year.

I don't recall the bats ever complaining when Lohse, handed a 3 or 4 run lead early in a game, spit the bit & gave it all back in an inning or two. At the end of the year, though, when that sort of back-biting was appearing, Lohse was right in the middle of it.

A pitcher with a great arm won't make us demonstrably better if he has a 10 cent head - and Loshe doesn't have that great an arm.

IMO, Lohse has shown himself to be an inconsistent pitcher who has had enough time to grow up - we have reason to believe it's not likely to happen.

Baker gives every impression of having at least as good stuff and a better head on his shoulders.

I'd rather go wtih the kid who's probably as good as Lohse right now, especially when he's given every indiation of having more upside long term.

Ok, now I can explain my last comment.

Luis Castillo -- 2B
Shannon Stewart -- LF
Joe Mauer -- C
Hank Blalock -- 3B
Torii Hunter -- CF
Mike Piazza -- DH
Justin Morneau -- 1B
Lew Ford/Jason Kubel -- RF
Jason Bartlett -- SS

Castillo is a guy who can get on base a lot, and he still has some speed, which makes him a moderate stealing threat. This means that Shannon will see more fastballs, Shannon is a fastball hitter, which will make him more comfortable in the box. Say Shannon gets a hit. This gives us a chance that we will have a runner on 3rd and 1st. Up comes Joe Mauer. Joe Mauer ,in all his awesomeness, drives in at least Castillo. Now bring up Blalock. Blalock hits a dinger, wich will actually give us, get this, 4 runs in around the first inning. This is all hypathetical and wishful thinking, but is would be pretty cool to have this happen.

I've kind of been out of the loop on this, but what is the Twins' position on Joe Mays? I seem to recall someone (probably on TV) a while ago point out that pitchers one year removed from Tommy John surgery are average at best (see Joe Mays 2005), while the following year they return to form. Reaching way back in my memory it seems like Joe Mays' "form" was pretty good. Is there any indication that the Twins are going to hang on to and/or trade Joe Mays?

I kind of like Joe, even though he refused to throw my little brother a bp ball, that's ok because Boo took care of it. I think he has the potential to help the Twins...

i think joe will get more than 2-3 mil maybe form kc(Twins south? with jones and Mays)and that is all we would afford to offer him.

I'd give up Lohse before Baker.

We didn't offer Joe arbitration- I don't think Terry Ryan wanted to keep him anyway - I unlike most people like Joe Mays - he's not that horrible - I think people forgot he was coming off Tommy John surgery

Joe's always been a nice guy - maybe he didn't hear you?? When we were in Toronto he tossed a ball to my little cousin - she was thrilled!

Plus I think Joe's got a great attitude - and I like that in a person -

Yeah I know that was very much a 'girlie - girl' - post- what can I say I like the colour pink too=)

Much love
Wonder Woman

This is true, although Castillo's speed has dropped off recently. I think that you keep Stewart in 1st b/c his average is much better in the 1st spot and Castillo can run some hit-and-runs and sac bunts in the 2 spot that Stewie couldn't.

Also, I'd have Morneau up higher in the order to emphasize Blalock's switch-hitting skills. Let Mauer (L) sit next to Blalock (L/R) sit next to Morneau (L). It deters pitching changes later in the game.

If we get Blalock I might be excited by a Twins trade for the first time since...well Castillo I guess...but it's still rare.

Well, Mays was one of our biggest contracts, and with so much young talent coming up, it would just be too expensive to bring him back with the hopes that he, like other Tommy John patients, returns to form.

So, we have a rotation spot for which Liriano and Baker will duke it out. Now, we could trade Lohse and let them both have spots in the rotation, but two rookies in the rotation is not the kind of thing that's good for Gardy's health.

As is, whoever doesn't get a spot now will almost certainly get a spot next year with Radke's presumed retirement. So, if we retain Lohse, we're looking at an 07 lineup that lost it's ace but isn't put in a position of adding a starter from the outside or promoting an overglorified long reliever.

Now, that doesn't mean we should retain Lohse regardless of what we get for him, (although the more I think about Blalock, the less I think he would be as big a pickup as we may lead ourselves to believe) that just means there are benefits to keeping him around.

Blalock is not coming to Minnesota. I doubt he is going to be traded. With that said, I think Terry Ryan should try to go after Tejada. I am ready to dump Liriano and Morneau just to get Tejada.