We are watching the unraveling of a once promising prospect. Trevor Plouffe's line through 5/16/2012: .124/.274/.210 with numerous errors and misplays in the field. He is now incapable of doing much at all to help the team. At what point do the Twins decide to cut their losses? It can't get any worse than this.

This is just a short rant about the Strib's recent policies. First, they require you to subscribe to the digital version of the paper. You are allowed to use the home page, and to open up to 20 articles per month. After that, you are blocked from opening without first subscribing. This is true even if you have a subscription to the paper. I am a Sunday subscriber, but I would still need to pay for the online version. I have to pay even for the blog content for which they pay nothing, such as TwinsCentric. And subscriptions are per computer. My wife and son would need to subscribe as well.

OK. Fine. It's not that good anyway. I can content myself with the Pioneer Press. And at least I can scan the Strib's home page for breaking news and such. That's what I thought for the first couple of months. Nope. Now they have an ad function that runs in the background on the home page without any way of turning it off. If you come to the home page, be prepared for a barage of audio ads that launch automatically and cannot be turned off without exiting the site.

We shall see how this works. But I predict disaster. The PiPress offers much the same content for free. It is easy enough to access that content. Even long-time Strib readers will convert rather than paying for the likes of Jim Souhan or listening to ads just to scan breaking news. I used to run an online magazine that got 2.5 million unique visits per month. The fewer the UVs, the less able we were to sell ads. I'm wondering how the Stribs ad sales people are liking the fact that their traffic just cratered. Well, it won't last long. The Strib will be the gazillionth online property to try pay per click and fail.

I posted this in another thread, but I thought it merited its own fan post. So here goes:

In all of the talk about the Delmon Young trade, everybody blames Bill Smith. I am as guilty as anyone. My criticisms is not about this trade (good riddance) but about the trade that brought Young here in the first place. Bringing in Young was a bad trade then and it has only gotten worse. You just don’t trade two precious commodities for one player in a position of relative abundance. (And don’t talk to me about Harris and Pridie: They were fillers to grease the skids, nothing more.)

But what is missing is the sense that Delmon Young has underperformed his scouting projections in Minnesota by a huge margin. Those who say we gave away a former number 1 draft pick and BA top prospect are right. But is that our fault? If you had asked 30 scouts at the time of the trade, 28 would say his future was very bright. All 28 of those were wrong. Even among SABR-centric minor league aficionados on Sickels’ site, the initial consensus was that the Twins got the better end of the deal. It was no mere enthusiasm to expect something between Albert Belle and Vladamir Guerrero from Young.

Is it Bill Smith’s fault that he had one good year and three horseshit years? No. Is it the coaching staff’s fault? No. It’s on Delmon Young. By all accounts, he was one of the most talented players to ever wear a Twins uniform. The fact that he was the worst regular outfielder in Twins history (by the numbers) tells you how poorly he played here. I’m surprised nobody is outraged at what a dog he was.

Go ahead. Get it out. He’s a Tiger now. Now is not the time to play Minnesota nice. Let’s hear a collective Bronx cheer for the biggest disappointment to don a Twins uniform since David McCarty. Let’s give him the regular Chuck Knoblauch treatment when he comes to Target Field. He deserves it!

This started as a muse with my brother Stu about why the Twins are in the tank. After last night's fiasco, I have to write it down or I'll blow a gasket. The short answer is the bullpen, as anyone who has watched the action can attest. Other parts of their game have not lived up the the Twins Way(TM) at times. But even when they do, the bullpen lets them down. The bullpen has been the one consistently bad aspect of the team's game.

As I project teams going into the year, I typically look at two factors:

1. Do they have the horses (strong starting staff, good hitters throughout the line-up, etc.)

2. Do they have the bullpen to hold down leads and otherwise keep the team in games late?

Lots of teams have item 1. Few teams have item 2. Take the Cleveland Indians in 2005 and 2006. Both teams had the horses. They were essentially the same teams with a few minor changes. But the 2005 team had a solid bullpen. The 2006 team did not. In 2005, they won 93 games. In 2006, they won 78 games. Between those years, they lost their three best bullpen arms (Bob Howry, Arthur Rhodes, and David Riske) and ended up blowing something like 30 saves in 2006. They also used 23 arms in 2006 and only 17 in 2005.

So why didn't we see the same thing coming this year with the Twins, who lost three solid bullpen arms from 2010 (Jesse Crain, Matt Guerrier, Jon Rauch) and a fourth who helped out down the stretch (Brian Fuentes)? I blame myself for homer myopia. But the Twins were consensus division champs by most projection systems. We all said, "We have like 10 arms to replace those four guys, we should be fine." The analysts generally agreed. We might struggle early to find the right mix, but find it we would. Well, there's little hope of finding it when your manager is forced to use three guys with ERAs over 9 in the eight inning with a lead. The minors are not without hope, but the season is practically lost by now. Winning 78 games is a dream only homers like me contemplate.

Obviously, projection systems need to pay closer attention to bullpen strength. One of the consistent messages from SABR people (not naming any names) is that any competent pitcher can close games. Perhaps in aggregate this is right. But good teams have four or five guys who can get tough outs in late-and-close situations. And I would put the emphasis on the word competent. You need four or five competent arms in the bullpen in this day and age. I'm talking about guys who have demonstrated their competence at the major league level, not minor leaguers who show promise. It stands to reason, you can't lose your top four bullpen arms without proven competent arms to replace them and expect to win.

Still, why do projection systems keep making this mistake? It's not just the SABR people, who systematically underestimate the importance of closers and, by extension, other relievers. It's the old guard. Guys like Bert Blyleven, Jack Morris and Nolan Ryan, who bemoan the fact that starters don't take the ball deeper into games. I think they wish starters were tougher and, in the process, besmirch relievers. When both baseball religions underestimate the importance of relievers, we have a problem. I hope to shed some light on this problem.

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This is just a quick rant. I am sick and tired of Bert saying the pitcher "left the ball up" after a guy gets a hit. Yesterday, several pitches at the knees or lower made their way through the hole and all Bert could say was that the pitcher "left the ball up." I have lost count of the number of times a guy gets a hit on a low pitch and Bert automatically blames the pitcher for "leaving the ball up."

The only way this makes sense is if "leaving the ball up" is code for not having enough stuff on the pitch. But it is unfair to the pitcher to imply that he's not doing his job when a good low-ball hitter hits a sinker at the knees through the hole and all Bert can say is that the pitcher "left the ball up."

Please Bert: Watch the play and then determine if the pitcher indeed threw a hanger or the hitter hit a good pitch that found a hole.

This is a short post. Yesterday, this site stopped displaying well in FireFox on Windows XP (at least on my machine). The CSS appears to be screwed up. I viewed it in Safari and it's fine. Have not tried IE, yet. Just wondering if other folks are having difficulty viewing this site in FireFox.

If you are having issues, you probably can't see this fan post. But if you are not, please leave a comment and indicate: Browser version and platform (e.g., Mac,  Windows XP, 7, etc.) Just trying to gather as much info as I can for the webmasters.