show me your yankee list that matches this.
I said ‘starters’ at the top of my post.

I’ll give you that Yankees list in 2 years. I can guarantee you that Yankees list will top this Twins list at that point.

any reason why you leave out neshek and guerrier? they were really good in 2007.

show me your yankee list that matches this.

i invite you again to look at the 2008 pitching stats. look at the young pitching they have. do you see that matched by the yankees? want a whole year? look back at 2007.

you are just not looking because you don’t want to see that the twins plan is superior to the yankee plan.”

ROFL!

Yes, Kennedy and Hughes have sucked so far in 2008. I think I’ll wait a bit for this season to unfold to proclaim whose young starters are better (I mean, Cliff Lee ain’t maintaining that awesome ERA, neither is Hughes going to maintain his).

In 2007, the Twins starters were thus:

Santana, 28, 3.33 ERA (33 starts), signed by Astros in 1995
Silva, 28, 4.19 ERA (33 starts), signed by Phillies in 1996
Bonser, 25, 5.10 ERA (30 starts), drafted by Giants in 2000
Baker, 25, 4.26 ERA (23 starts), drafted by Twins in 2003
Ortiz, 34, 5.14 ERA (10 starts), signed by Angels in 1995
Garza, 23, 3.69 ERA (15 starts), drafted by Twins in 2005
Slowey, 23, 4.72 ERA (11 starts) drafted by Twins in 2005
Ponson, 30, 6.93 ERA (7 starts), signed by Orioles in 1993

So, they developed Bonser, Slowey, and Garza. Garza was excellent over the course of half a season’s starts. Bonser was horrid over a whole season, and Slowey was mediocre over a third of a season.

Awesome job with that minor league development!

i invite you again to look at the 2008 pitching stats. look at the young pitching they have. do you see that matched by the yankees? want a whole year? look back at 2007.

you are just not looking because you don’t want to see that the twins plan is superior to the yankee plan.

v.
now you’re catching on.”

Huh?

The Twins have not developed their own starters!!!

Bonser can definitely work it out, but come on, 4.00 ERA with low Ks is a ‘success’? That’s a #3-#4 starter at best.

And I showed (at least with 2004) that your definition of ‘young’ is ridiculous if you’re including guys like Radke, Silva, and Lohse as ‘young’.

The Twins have not gotten a ton of mileage out of ‘young’ guys unless ‘young’ means 10+ years of professional baseball.

v.
now you’re catching on.

i took out santana’s stats for 2006 and the twins era went from 3.95 to 4.17.
they would have still been fourth in the league.

i think where it seems like we are disagreeing is that i’m looking at results at the major league level and you are looking at prospect ratings.

even counting wang, chamberlain, and hughes the twins clearly put out more innings from young pitchers with a lower overall era over the past three years than the yankees a the mlb level.

wang is an interesting case because he is older and more in line with the twins pitchers’ ages that are brought up. wang did develop slowly and was not rushed.

i’m not at all opposed to stockpiling young pitchers and developing them so that every year one or two can be added to the major league roster. what i am against is bringing up too many, too soon, with no back up plan when things go differently than hoped for.

joba is by no means a slam dunk either. he still has to do it as a starter before it counts.
the only pitcher the yankees really have in the books is wang. that just doesn’t match up to what the twins have in the books as far as actual major league numbers.

i’m just saying cashman needs to amend his plan with young pitchers, not throw it away. he needs to take some of the pressure off the young pitchers by adding veteran pitching that can eat up innings and who can handle adversity without having to see a therapist.

i once caught a young pitcher named terry gilmore who told me that if andy benes was brought up before him to the padres he’d quit. terry was like kennedy but more so- threw 6 pitches for strikes. but he threw 88 -89 tops. gilmore was a triple a all star that year and won more than 15 games. i caught another kid at the same time, jack armstrong, who started the national league all star game that summer. gilmore was better than armstrong. benes was called up first by san diego. gilmore quit.

young pitchers are about more than just their arms. the mental side of pitching often lags behind as we are seeing with hughes and kennedy.

how do you like these facts?

twins era ranking:
2007- 5th
2006-2nd
2005-5th
2004- 1st”

The Twins had good pitching in 2004-2007.

Your claim is that this is proof that the Twins have excellent minor league pitching development.

DESPITE the lag time that developing pitchers requires (the best pitchers drafted in 2005 are recent debuts), here are the top 4 starting pitchers the Twins trotted out in 2004 –

Johan Santana, signed by the Astros in 1995, pitched 228 innings with 34 starts to a 2.61 ERA.

Kyle Lohse, drafted by the Cubs in 1995, pitched 194 innings with 34 starts to a 5.34 ERA.

Brad Radke, drafted by the Twins in 1991, pitched 219.2 innings with 34 starts to a 3.48 ERA.

Carlos Silva, signed by the Phillies in 1996, pitched 203 innings with 33 starts to a 4.21 ERA.

Damn, you’re totally right. I’m really baseball dumb.

I mean, Radke was awesome. Developed by the Twins, he had a career year and paid off good 13 years later.

(man, check the transactions list of their #5 starter at the bottom of this page: http://retrosheet.org/boxesetc/M/Pmulht001.htm )

The Twins had developed the following pitchers that helped in their bullpen (which was excellent, btw):

Rincon (signed international agent)
J.C. Romero
Grant Balfour (4.35 ERA)

The rest of the relievers they developed pitched under 30 IP each.

Wang in 2005 and both Chamberlain and Hughes in 2007 were big reasons why the Yankees made the playoffs in those years. That’s 3 homegrown guys. That’s a fairly large amount for a major market team.

Its hard to say Hughes was rushed. He was excellent last September and October. Had an outstanding spring and first start against the Blue Jays this season. He then struggled.

Is that because he was rushed or because he was hurt?

Hughes pitched well enough to earn his spot in the rotation. One could argue he was the best looking Yankee starter this spring.

The Twins will always have more homegrown guys on their roster, especially their pitching staff, than the Yankees. Its how they do business.

However, do their pitchers on their roster right now have higher ceilings than Wang, Hughes and Chamberlain? Aside from Liriano (who is in the minors right now), nobody in baseball believes they do.

Nor do their best pitching prospects approach the ceilings of several of the Yankees current minor league prospects.

Its why they were so desperate to take back mulitple pitching prospects in the Santana trade. They needed the bodies.

Their overall pitching rankings the last 4 years were as much a result of having one dominant starter in Santana and 2 (Santana and Liriano) in 2006. Its not an overall indication as to who is doing the best job today in developing young pitchers.

Let’s see where the Twins fall in pitching this year without Santana and without a fully healthy Liriano.

In every evaluation of farm systems in baseball, the Twins are far behind the Yankees with regard to pitching prospects.

Its like I said, from 2005 to now, the Yankees have out-Twined the Twins in developing their prospects.