Kepler part time at 1st and other playing time options
Entry posted by Supfin99 ·
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Going into the offseason I thought that signing Matt Adams would be a perfect pairing with Tyler Austin. Then we claimed C.J. Cron, which I didn’t think made a ton of sense when I read he was also right handed. The more I looked at it I am fine with the pick up. Cron is a pretty low risk addition and if he comes even close to matching last years production he will be well worth the 4.8 mil. But it got me to thinking about how you parcel up playing time. You now have 2 RH bats for 1B and DH and no lefty to platoon with them. Twins also have a solid 4th OF in Jake Cave who showed signs last year that he can be an above average major leaguer. I started looking at different playing time options and I really liked what it looked like if you played Max Kepler some at 1B. If you give Max 60 starts at 1B it opens up those starts in right for Cave. Penciling in 20 starts in left and center to give Eddie and Byron some off days puts Cave at 100 starts for the season and probably 450 at bats. That is a solid amount of playing time to see if he can improve on his rookie year. I still believe that Kepler has a gear we haven’t seen yet in the majors. I keep wait9ng for a season like he had at Chattanooga. He is very athletic and has the ability to be an outstanding first basemen. This leaves 264 starts at 1B and DH to divvy up. If Cron is a better fielder than Austin then you can give all 102 remaining starts at 1B to Cron. The DH at bats will de divided up based on a couple of things. 1st is how many starts at 3B you can count on Sano for. If he is truly getting in as good as shape as early reports indicate maybe we can get 120 starts at 3B from Miguel. That would be ideal. Give Sano another 20 starts at DH. That leaves 142 starts at DH. I would still like to give Tyler Austin a chance to show his power can play. I know he has contact issues but he looks like a guy that could hit 30 HR a year with playing time. If you have home 100 starts at DH you would still have 40 starts to give Cron. At the end of the season you would still have what should be your starters all getting 140 plus starts. Plus you would be able to get 2 intruiging young players (Cave and Austin) plenty of opportunity with 100 starts each. With this additional time we may find out that Cave is really meant to be a bench guy that makes spot starts, Austin can only start 30 to 40 times a year against lefty’s and Cron is the next LoMo. If that is the case, later this year or next you can plug Rooker, Raley and potentially Kirillof into these spots. Kirillof is the other reason I think the Twins should find out now if Max can play a solid 1B.
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