On 6/20/2023 at 11:18 AM, KBJ1 said:

Trading for quality starting pitching is always the way to go, but do to the nature of the game and injuries, also a crapshoot.

The Mahle trade is a disaster. Over paying for an unproven Jorge Lopez, also a disaster.

I've  said it a 100 times, Arreaz is a ONE tool player. Granted if he were here maybe his teammates could have watched and learned and be able to hit 250.

But no speed, bad knees, no power and below average fielding made trading him for a potential Ace well worth it.

The Twins are actually in the top three for starters going deep into games, so the early hook critique is no longer a valid one. The problem seems to lie with coaching - hitting, pitching,  athletic trainers. They miss Wes Johnson. 

Examples - Miranda - what happened here?? Gallo we k ew would hit about 200, but power and good defense make his prescence tolerable.

But Buxton, Kepler, Polanco, Vasquez and yes even Correa flailing at the plate and getting Injured goes to coaching.

Alcala, Moran, McGill, Lopez ,even Cano - none have developed their potential and all have regressed as a Twin. Also goes to failed coaching. 

This team has no synergy. The sum of its parts does not exceed its whole, it doesn't even get close.

The no name Phillies got to the series last year! Based on talent, they shouldn't have even made the playoffs. Team chemistry did it.

Same with the 1987 Twins (85 -77).

Maybe so.e magic happens and thus current batch gets in at 85-77 and catches fire. They have the talent, just not the synergy.

You couldn't ask for a better group of utility backups in Farmer, Solano, Taylor & Castro - but they are not supposed to be carrying a team. 

Yet they are arguably our 4 best players so far this year. 

And yes Buxton needs to play in the field. Will pick up the whole team. DH only is not working. He can't lead the team from the bench. Start there and see what develops.

 

 

I agree with you 100%. We have a great team where Correa & Buxton have greatly under preformed. Once they catch on fire, it'll be a totally different team, if the rotation can maintain their dominance. We could use some help in the BP.

Gallo is leading the team in HRs but normally they come when we don't them & SO when we do. He's a waste of money especially since he's taking a spot away from a ton of prospects that can play where he does. Kepler should have been traded for at least for a decent RP, in the off season.

Matt Wallner has all the raw tools to be a super star. But instead of developing the feel in how to play the OF, run the bases & at the plate, they focus on trying to squeeze extra HRs out of him at the cost of SOs; in these 4+ yrs. IMO they need to do a better job of player development & evaluation.

People have been comparing Arraez to Lopez in arguing that that was a bad trade. As I see it, the trade is really about, "Have the Twins gained more by having 15 starts of Lopez compared to 15 starts of someone else (which would have been someone like three starts of Ober before he was called up, but then 12 starts of Dobnak/Rodriguez/Sanchez, etc.) or would they have gained more by having 300 plate appearances from Arraez at the expense of 300 at bats from others (some combination of Kirilloff, Solano, Gallo, Larnach, Buxton)? 

With how Arraez has been hitting, it's probably accurate that the offense would have been better with 300 plate appearances of him compared to those guys. But I think the gain from Dobnak, et al., to Lopez is much more significant than the loss from Arraez to others. 

All of which to say is that it's never as simple as comparing the players who were traded. Every player has a context. I'd love to have Arraez, but in the context of what the Twins also had, I think he was among the most tradeable chips to fill in a need.

(And also, of course, that we're talking about a bit less than a half season. I'm not a betting person, but I will bet anyone on TD a buck that Arraez doesn't finish the year with a .400 batting average or a .940 OPS.)

On 6/20/2023 at 7:42 AM, Irishman said:

Recent trades were terrible.   Trade Aareaz was a biggest mistake ever.  FO should be overhauled.   

I’m sure YOU were against trade in real time but all I heard from most others at TD was that Luis was:

Slow, Injury prone, Horrible & Position-less defender, Not a run producer, NOT good enough to take-up the DH spot……..not able to keep up the same level of performance going forward.

I was stating there were only 20 guys in the game that hit .290 or better in 2022 & Luis hit .316. His BA low over 4 years as a Pro was .294 & his career average was .314 after 4 years. “You can’t trade good hitting, regardless of power……” He’s a 10 HR - 80 RBI guy if you bat him 2,3, or 5 in your line-up. He doesn’t try to hit the ball to the fence because he traditionally bats lead-off and is supposed to get on base.

Lopez will work out if he stays healthy……no bitterness, but Arraez was/is a guy that doesn’t come along very often!

13 hours ago, JD-TWINS said:

I’m sure YOU were against trade in real time but all I heard from most others at TD was that Luis was:

Slow, Injury prone, Horrible & Position-less defender, Not a run producer, NOT good enough to take-up the DH spot……..not able to keep up the same level of performance going forward.

I was stating there were only 20 guys in the game that hit .290 or better in 2022 & Luis hit .316. His BA low over 4 years as a Pro was .294 & his career average was .314 after 4 years. “You can’t trade good hitting, regardless of power……” He’s a 10 HR - 80 RBI guy if you bat him 2,3, or 5 in your line-up. He doesn’t try to hit the ball to the fence because he traditionally bats lead-off and is supposed to get on base.

Lopez will work out if he stays healthy……no bitterness, but Arraez was/is a guy that doesn’t come along very often!

He IS slow, injury prone, position-less and not a run producer. 

1 hour ago, dxpavelka said:

He IS slow, injury prone, position-less and not a run producer. 

That’s why 30 teams in the league would love to have him play 145 games for them every year…….give him CC’s at bats hitting 2,3 or 4 and see how many runs he drives in……

70 of 75 games in ‘23……144 games in ‘22. His job is to get on base….leads Baseball in OBP. 

His job is to get on base - leads baseball in OBP!

Tony Oliva was slow…..he didn’t have a position when he came up & ended up with a gold glove - 3 batting titles - HOF.

Carew - bad knees - had to move from 2B to 1B - no power - 7 batting titles - 100 RBI batting 3rd & an MVP - HOF

There’s an entire thread in TD about how the trade is an embarrassment at this point - I’m not a hindsight type, Lopez will help us over next few years…….no reason to bad mouth Arraez.

1 hour ago, JD-TWINS said:

That’s why 30 teams in the league would love to have him play 145 games for them every year…….give him CC’s at bats hitting 2,3 or 4 and see how many runs he drives in……

70 of 75 games in ‘23……144 games in ‘22. His job is to get on base….leads Baseball in OBP. 

His job is to get on base - leads baseball in OBP!

Tony Oliva was slow…..he didn’t have a position when he came up & ended up with a gold glove - 3 batting titles - HOF.

Carew - bad knees - had to move from 2B to 1B - no power - 7 batting titles - 100 RBI batting 3rd & an MVP - HOF

There’s an entire thread in TD about how the trade is an embarrassment at this point - I’m not a hindsight type, Lopez will help us over next few years…….no reason to bad mouth Arraez.

You get back to me when Arraez hits 100 RBI.  We're halfway thru the season and he's not at 100 if we count this year AND last year.  Not holding my breath.

It would have been nice to have kept Arraez and let the Twins get another batting title , but him not being would have had zero affect on where the Twins would be now.

He is not a miracle worker, just an old school style batter.

If you want to reach back into 2022 trades that affected 2023 then you can't take away the Donaldson contract drop. That was some excellent work that completely restructured our payroll and made Correa possible.

Steer and CES were never great prospects in MN. Neither was ever listed anywhere on MLB's Pipeline Top 30 for the Twins for any year back to their drafts, yet they showed up on the Reds' list in 2022 at #7 and #14. (Pipeline might only allow a guy one team per season, so this might not be fair.) But CES was ranked #16 by this web site in 2022, so as "beastly" as he might be there were a lot of guys ahead of him in this system and converting him to a SP was probably not a bad move, especially given his cement glove.

As far as the future moves go, you are all-in on trading away the present for an uncertain future with no regard for medical histories just to give a short term thrill to impatient fans? You realize that was the plan with Buxton last year and he played both worse and less often. Same with grinding down Arraez to a worn .316 nub by the end of the season.

And how do you square winning now with trading away your front starter "to get value"? Wouldn;t the high draft pick from a rejected QO count as value? And have you seen the standings lately? Have you seen the innings per game by starters lately? When Grey is good he gets to go deeper, same as any other team, so he can;t really complain about that any more.

And when you trade or cut Gallo and Kepler who will play OF, and where does your power come from? That's 23 of the 104 HR this team has hit in 2023. Walner may or may not be ready, but Larnach's .699 OPS isn't much different from Kepler's .691 or Castro's .696 or Garlick's .662 (but Gordon's .503 OPS in 93 PA does stand apart.) Gallo is at least at or near the team lead in BB and HR so he's clearly above average at .768.

There are a lot of potentially talented guys having bad years right now, so some move needs to happen, but you have to take care not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.