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About this blog

The assorted and extended thoughts and ideas from Matt Braun

Entries in this blog

Minors

Matt's Top Prospect List (Mid-Season) + Writeups

System overview: A lot changes in half a season. Royce Lewis finally departed the prospect list nearly 6 (six!) years after the team drafted him first overall in 2017. Edouard Julien and Louie Varland also lost their prospect status, weakening the high-end of the list despite a recent influx of incredible talent. Speaking of which… Walker Jenkins! The Twins actually did it; they eschewed their conservative desires and simply took the best player available at number 5: a sweet-swinging
Matt Braun

Matt Braun in Minors

18
Minors

Matt's Top Prospect List (January) + Writeups

It's prospect season again. Pitchers and catchers will soon report, so our effort at Twinsdaily to cover the minor leagues will fire up once again, and that includes our prospect rankings. The system looks surprisingly strong. Despite a flurry of trades over the last 18 months or so, the Twins still have a top nucleus of elite talent, and the franchise enjoys solid upper-level pitching depth. They're a little low on gamechangers at the elite positions—centerfield and shortstop—but so is bas
Matt Braun

Matt Braun in Minors

7
Minors

Matt's Top Prospect List (August) + Writeups

Before hopping into the list, I wanted to say a few things about this process: I started these writeups to kill time, but I’ve found them fun to write, and the community has responded with great support. My system lacks the professionalism of scouts, but I want to strive toward respectability; this edition is the one I’m most proud of. Previous write-ups lacked consistency, and I failed to consider crucial aspects of a player’s performance. Reminder: tier matters more than specific ranking.
Matt Braun

Matt Braun in Minors

5
Minors

Matt's Top Prospect List (July) + Writeups

Studs: Royce Lewis Nothing has changed here; Royce Lewis is a phenomenally talented shortstop on the mend with his second ACL tear. All we can do is hope he’ll return quickly enough next season to impact the team meaningfully.              Brooks Lee It’s a miracle that Brooks Lee fell to the Twins at 8. We should thank the Cubs and Mets every day—the former for reaching on a pop-up college arm; the latter for turning their noses at Kumar Rocker in 2021, allowing th
Matt Braun

Matt Braun in Minors

11
Minors

Matt's Top Prospect List (June) + Explanations

Royce Lewis Royce Lewis is still the best prospect in the Twins’ system, but the soul refuses to accept that truth. Lewis will now miss extended time with another ACL surgery, and it’s impossible to feel anything but grief and sympathy for the man; he’s an elite talent that life continues to deal poor hands to maniacally. His major league performance proved that he’s capable of great things, and all we can do is hope that he’ll come back without missing a beat as he did before.           
Matt Braun

Matt Braun in Minors

12
Minors

Matt's Top Prospect List + Explanations

Royce Lewis I have been conservative about Lewis for a while, and it is time to admit that he is the best prospect in the Twins system. His hit tool looks real, at least much better than before, and the eye test shows that he can currently play a passable shortstop, a significant point in his development. The Twins are lowering him into a super-utility role, which is fine given his athleticism, but I would prefer to have him challenged at shortstop every day. There is no real easy answer
Matt Braun

Matt Braun in Minors

6

Strong And Sturdy, The Twins Have A Rock Solid... Bullpen?

On the day of this article being written, the Twins were rained out in Anaheim of all places and so my thirst for Twins content remained strong (evidently the field’s thirst for water was not, but that’s a joke for a different time). And so what else can I do except scroll through the usual suspects of baseball stat sites in order to find some weird and wacky stuff to write about. What did I find? Well, a lot of crazy stuff for sure, Joey Gallo’s BABIP for one, Ryan Pressly’s walk rate (or lack
Matt Braun

Matt Braun

3

Max Kepler (And the Belated Breakout)

Max Kepler is my favorite Twins player, something that has been true ever since he stole my heart with his performance in July of 2016. If you remember (I truly hope you do not), the Twins were mostly unwatchable that year as they rolled over and died from the very beginning and slogged their way towards the worst record in baseball. Their reward was Royce Lewis and a fresh FO, but at what cost? There wasn’t much else to gain from the season but the play of the young prospect caught my eye and h
Matt Braun

Matt Braun

3

What To Expect From The Twins Newcomers To Start The Season

As the snow begins to melt and the shorts slowly come out of retirement, the sounds and smells of baseball lurch closer, beckoning fans across the world to watch and support their team as they grind through yet another season. But while the beginning of the season sparks hope for most teams (Orioles not included), the first month or so of the season can be somewhat unusual in how the players and teams perform thanks in part to scheduling and weather among other things.   For example, take the 20
Matt Braun

Matt Braun

0

Intro To Building A Bullpen-MLB 101

Ever since the Twins decided to stop playing in a stadium that had the aesthetic of a bowling alley, it has felt like the Twins have needed to improve their bullpen. Now, I’m not saying there is a correlation here, but maybe the threat of a screaming foul ball taking care of someone’s shin made the relievers pitch just a little better in the Metrodome. Personally, I don’t think I have trusted a Twins bullpen since 2010 when they had Jon Rauch, Matt Guerrier, Jesse Crain, and, *gulp*, Matt Capps
Matt Braun

Matt Braun

4

What History Can Tell Us About Michael Pineda's Innings Total in 2019

The 6’ 7” beast Michael Pineda took the mound the other day in Fort Myers and fired off 2 scoreless innings to go with his 2 previous scoreless innings, giving him an easy to calculate ERA of 0.00 so far in spring training. Pineda last pitched in the majors for the Yankees but you might have also recognized him by his nicknames “Big Mike” or “Large Mikeal” or “Why is That Mountain Moving?” When he was signed in the offseason following the 2017 season, it was with the understanding that his value
Matt Braun

Matt Braun

2

A Look Back At The Top Twins Prospects From 2011 (AKA... Yikes)

Recently I was messing around on MLB.com for no particularly good or suspicious reason when I stumbled upon their top prospects list. Now, we all are familiar with prospects because as Twins fans, they sometimes bring us more hope than the major league team. But even cooler than the updated top prospects list was an archived top prospects list from 2011 that included their top 50 prospects of the year along with top 10 lists for each team. An oh boy does nothing brew my fair-trade espresso like
Matt Braun

Matt Braun

2

A Final Plea For The Signing Of Craig Kimbrel

This time of the year is always exciting as a baseball fan, the start of spring training brings an undeniable energy that rejuvenates every single fanbase across the country, yes, even Mariners fans. But the last two offseasons now have brought the droning, political, and monotonous free agency cycle bleeding into the beginning of spring training. Whether it be the owners becoming greedy and selfish in their wealth, the front offices becoming wiser in how money is allocated in free agent deals,
Matt Braun

Matt Braun

5

The Twins and Their Brothers In Arms (or xwOBA)

I sit here on the Wednesday of February the 13th, the same day that pitchers and catchers have reported for the Twins, pretty much stuck in my dorm as the classes on my campus were canceled for the 3rd straight day due to snow. At this point, I actually want to go to class because there is something inside me that craves work of some sort and the amount of MLB The Show and Grand Theft Auto that I have played over the last few days would make any sane human nauseous. The solution, of course, is t
Matt Braun

Matt Braun

2

Derek Falvey's Copy + Paste Button And The Twins Rotation

Picture this, I’m sitting in my 1:00 Anthropology class again absolutely bored out of my mind as my professor drones on about, well actually I don’t remember, but I hope it wasn’t important. Anyways, an interesting thought came to me; how did Derek Falvey build the Indians starting pitching staff? This thought came the day after looking at the Fangraphs projections for both Minnesota and Cleveland and realizing that dear God, Cleveland’s starting staff projections are hilariously better than Min
Matt Braun

Matt Braun

6

Show Me The Money (And The Wins)

Given that we’re Twins fans here, payroll has never been a topic of discussion. No one has ever been annoyed at the lack of big spending in free agency and is always perfectly ok with how the front office allocates their resources, especially this year. Free agency is supposed to be an opportunity to right the sinking ship through veteran additions to a low-talent roster (Texas), to fortify a good roster to take their team over the top (Boston), or to sit around and talk about how good the farm
Matt Braun

Matt Braun

0

What's The Deal With Relievers?

Relievers are weird. Not only because they do strange stuff like play video games on the side, but they are probably also the most volatile position in baseball. Go look up the best relievers of 2015 and have a good laugh at some of the names that appear. Liam Hendriks? Kevin Siegrist? Luke Gregerson? Josh Fields? The top 10 or so names have been relatively consistent and are still playing at a high level now, but after that, there is little to no guarantee that production will be sustained at a
Matt Braun

Matt Braun

2

The Strange Relationship Between Fans and How Much Money Is Spent On Players

We, as fans, have an interesting relationship between the franchises we support and ourselves. The bottom line of why we support these teams is usually because we enjoy doing so (although it seems like some Twins “fans” on Twitter don’t enjoy anything that has to do with them, but that’s another story). And this vested interest in the team leads us to want our franchise to acquire the best talent available in order to possibly win the championship at the end of the season. But, there are paramet
Matt Braun

Matt Braun

3

The 2019 Twins and Why Being In The Middle Isn't A Bad Thing

A profound philosopher once proclaimed that “it just takes some time” and that while you might be “in the middle of the ride”, “everything, everything will be just fine.” “Jimmy Eat World lyrics? That isn’t philosophical.” Well, when I’ve been drinking a little on Friday nights, it starts to sound like Socrates to me so lay off of it. The name of that song is “The Middle”, a little diddy you may have heard of, and it was the inspiration for this article about where the Twins happen to find thems
Matt Braun

Matt Braun

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