>or buxton can make the run
>from short RC ... he does have an 80 speed rating after all.

this idea is better though.

>in all seriousness, i'm willing to discuss just about anything
>about this team. we haven't discussed gardy and his future
>yet, which seems all the rage in the local media. or how rick
>anderson seems to have lost the midas-y touch. bruno hasn't
>caught much flak yet, either.

Oi. The coaching staff thing is so weird. I'm willing to listen to any of the people on this board talk about it more than I am other local voices that I know because you guys are marked as non-crazy.

To Gardenhire... I guess I don't particularly object to the idea that new blood is needed, but outside of coming freighted with some oddities that most managers have, I actually think he's really good. He runs a good pen. He uses his bench to keep players engaged and healthy. The less control over roster construction he has, the better - but that's something which can be organizationally flexible. Terry Ryan is perfectly justified in saying "no third catcher" or "eleven pitchers is enough" because Gardenhire's job is to use the 25 guys he has.

So whatever. If we can do better then I suppose we should do it. But as I've found out recently in painting our new place (and helping a friend with hers) I'm one of those people who finds the un-named general less attractive than the specific.

To Anderson... yeah. Something's broken, but I'm not sure if he's a cause or an effect. My read is that he was the perfect pitching coach for when the team was just acquiring good, raw arms and he was assisted by like-minded coaches down the line (like Bobby Cuellar). People like Santana and Juan Rincon and Liriano and Latroy Hawkins and Eddie Guardado really flourished having coaching which identified one or two things they could do really well and then added the Twins of "do that... and stop walking people".

But it seemed like eventually the team started acquiring arms which already fit this mold rather than forming them into it. Rick Anderson coaching Nick Blackburn is the baseball equivalent of John Malkovich entering his own mind.

In spite of this, there've been some successes that he hasn't gotten full credit for. Dude kept Carl Pavano healthy and effective for two and a half seasons. That's an achievement. I don't actually carry much water for pitching coaches though, so I'm comfortable with the somewhat unjust practice that when the pitching sucks, pitching coach has got to go. Unlike Gardenhire, I'm more confident that we can do better and that we're actually prepared to since elevating Bobby Cuellar to an MLB roll.

Bruno is a mystery to me. My inclination is to base an evaluation on the success of the young players who really need help adjusting to MLB pitching. But my overall attitude towards that learning curve is that guys become who they are. Dozier and Plouffe are looking like they can carry MLB average bats for their position. Nice job. Chris Parmelee looks like a bench player. Bad job. Unless that's who Chris Parmelee was always going to be. Aaron Hicks first month was bad to the point of near-statistical impossibility. Like, I might have actually lucked into more singles in April 2013. Bad job. Hicks since has looked like the slightly flawed but still very valuable player we expected. Adjustment is part of coaching, so good job. But Arcia was great when he first arrived, slumped hard, and then was shipped outside of Bruno's supervision to Rochester. Sooooooo?

I think hitting coaches should be treated as wizards in the court of some crazed, fictional medieval monarch. Nobody really knows what he does, but when he's working the wizard is pretty terrific. When things go poorly, find a new wizard.

>in other words, distraction seems to be the course of action.

2014 Draft is going to be a good one. Finally, we're sucking at the right time. Ace pitchers (even lefties!), true shortstops with plus bats, and catchers all abound.