Mahle shut down with elbow...

[tarheeltwinsfan]

Too bad for Mahle and too bad for the Twins. Hopefully Varland will perform well the rest of the season. The Twins next injury to a starting pitcher this season, cannot be mitigated as easily.

 

[Hosken Bombo Disco]

1 hour ago, Trov said:

Speculating on what we could have got in other trades is hard to evaluate.  Would Miami have made same trade for Lopez, we will never know.  Would we have found some other pitcher out there available, maybe, would they have done any better, who knows.  Look what happened with other trade target every one seemed to have targeted on here.  Montas.  He failed bad in New York and now out the year for them.  Maybe we could have traded for him, and be in same situation. 

Montas was hurt, correct? 

[TopGunn#22]

While this is disappointing to hear this allows the Twins to give Ober and Varland a fairly extended look in the rotation.  I for one would like to see Maeda in the BP in long relief when he's healthy enough to come back just to give him more time to build up.  That would ensure an even longer look at Ober and Varland.  Varland hasn't disappointed me yet.  I'm excited to see him get 10 starts.

[Jocko87]

1 hour ago, Nashvilletwin said:

The point is that “assets” are assets.  The “assets” given up in the Mahle trade could have been deployed elsewhere. And no mistake, they were valuable assets. For example, could they have been used to package with another player, say a Kepler, for a different pitching asset, say even a Pablo Lopez? 

It has been a bad trade - right from the start - in every respect thus far. It is unlikely ever to be a good trade.  Sorry, I do not give a pass to our FO on this one for the “who could’ve known” argument.  It’s their job to know - especially when it’s so evident right out of the gate.

The FO has other wins though, so we need to be a good ump and call balls and strikes as we see them.  This was a ball.  Give the FO credit though in seeing the risk in their mistake (and with Maeda’s return) and going out to get Lopez - it’s just too bad it cost us so much to mitigate it.

 

I'm not making the case that they shouldn't have known the health risks, in fact I believe they thought they did and were comfortable with them. It is their job to know as you say. Unfortunately I have a tough time believing they knew enough about the injury considering they don't seem to know what wrong even now.  Probably part of the new trainer being hired is that they acquired two broken pitchers last year. It's his job to know.

Very similar to Paddack this is the market they operate in, it's a level up from Archer and Bundy but similar methods.  

This is far from a closed book on the trade. A scenario where they find the problem, get a good fix then sign an under market two year deal is not outrageous.  Would the trade be a win then? We will find out with Paddack.

[USAFChief]

11 hours ago, Mike Sixel said:

So they should have just sat pat while leading the division and needing pitching? Ugh. At some point, you have to try to win. 

Pretty bad take.

There's a wide gap between "sat pat" and "make a trade that doesn't help with trying to win AND costs quite a bit."

The options weren't limited to "do nothing" and "trade for Mahle."

[Nashvilletwin]

1 hour ago, Trov said:

Speculating on what we could have got in other trades is hard to evaluate.  Would Miami have made same trade for Lopez, we will never know.  Would we have found some other pitcher out there available, maybe, would they have done any better, who knows.  Look what happened with other trade target every one seemed to have targeted on here.  Montas.  He failed bad in New York and now out the year for them.  Maybe we could have traded for him, and be in same situation. 

Yes, you are correct - we don’t know if these assets could have been used to in some sort of package to get Lopez. Don’t get me wrong (and I have had the under on 125 IPs for both Mahle and Maeda for a long time now), getting Pablo was an insightful deal.  But it was made necessary (it still was probably a good idea though) by a prior error.

It’s nothing more than a trade that didn’t work. I’m just not giving a pass to the FO given that the trade was a disaster a less than a couple of weeks or so after it happened. So we gave up two good assets for essentially nothing. Hey, as they say, “you pays your money and you takes your chances”.

Get ‘em next time.

[Mortimerkenny21]

This is a bummer man! But I really do think Ober and Varland will step up and do the job admirably. Still think it's a better rotation than we had last year by a long shot.

[TwinsDr2021]

58 minutes ago, TopGunn#22 said:

While this is disappointing to hear this allows the Twins to give Ober and Varland a fairly extended look in the rotation.  I for one would like to see Maeda in the BP in long relief when he's healthy enough to come back just to give him more time to build up.  That would ensure an even longer look at Ober and Varland.  Varland hasn't disappointed me yet.  I'm excited to see him get 10 starts.

IMO, this could be considered a good thing, this gives the Twins an extended look at Ober and Varland for next year, if they both perform well enough to be considered for next years rotation, The Twins go into 24 with Lopez, Ryan, Ober, Varland, and a choice of Paddock, SWR or another prospects. This would be the pipeline we have been waiting for.

As for the trade I was all for it and still happy it happened, so far Steer (age 25) hasn't been a loss; 200 at bats into his career his OPS+ is 83 and CES is still in the minors (but hasn't taken a 40 man spot yet so that is good for Cin)

Some people make it sound like the Twins have up Vaughn Grossom, Micheal Harris or Jordan Walker.

[TwinsDr2021]

43 minutes ago, Nashvilletwin said:

I’m just not giving a pass to the FO given that the trade was a disaster a less than a couple of weeks or so after it happened.

This is true, but not all trades will work out, but the Ryan trade did, the Odo trade did, the Maeda trade wasn't terrible, and the Lopez trade looks like it will be good. I am not a huge fan of this FO but I also think people need to be fair for as much as people hate this trade they should be loving the Ryan trade, correct? I am not judging them based on only the bad things, I am judging them as a whole.

[Mike Sixel]

48 minutes ago, USAFChief said:

Pretty bad take.

There's a wide gap between "sat pat" and "make a trade that doesn't help with trying to win AND costs quite a bit."

The options weren't limited to "do nothing" and "trade for Mahle."

Castillo was too expensive and the montas is out for a year. Three pitchers were traded.

[Mortimerkenny21]

1 minute ago, TwinsDr2021 said:

This is true, but not all trades will work out, but the Ryan trade did, the Odo trade did, the Maeda trade wasn't terrible, and the Lopez trade looks like it will be good. I am not a huge fan of this FO but I also think people need to be fair for as much as people hate this trade they should be loving the Ryan trade, correct? I am not judging them based on only the bad things, I am judging them as a whole.

Exactly! Well said.

[Hosken Bombo Disco]

8 minutes ago, TwinsDr2021 said:

This is true, but not all trades will work out, but the Ryan trade did, the Odo trade did, the Maeda trade wasn't terrible, and the Lopez trade looks like it will be good. I am not a huge fan of this FO but I also think people need to be fair for as much as people hate this trade they should be loving the Ryan trade, correct? I am not judging them based on only the bad things, I am judging them as a whole.

The Ryan-Cruz trade was a win-win. The Twins received a good starting pitcher and the Rays, the thinking goes, did not stand pat when they needed hitting and dealt from a position of strength. Noted that the throw in piece the Twins received is out of the organization and the throw in piece the Rays received is currently in their big league bullpen. 

Ultimately the Twins are going to have to develop pitching from within their system for this to be sustainable. The jury is still out on Ober and Varland but so far it looks promising. We shall see about SWR. Hopefully a few more arms besides those 3 start emerging as well. 

[USAFChief]

42 minutes ago, Mike Sixel said:

Three pitchers were traded.

Jose Quintano, Jordan Montgomery, Jake Odorizzi and Noah Syndergaard say hi.

 

I even liked the Mahle deal. But it looks pretty bad in retrospect. Mahle is gone after this year and at this point what have they gotten? 

 

 

 

[Jocko87]

38 minutes ago, USAFChief said:

Jose Quintano, Jordan Montgomery, Jake Odorizzi and Noah Syndergaard say hi.

 

I even liked the Mahle deal. But it looks pretty bad in retrospect. Mahle is gone after this year and at this point what have they gotten? 

 

 

 

I liked it at the time as well so for me it comes down to the medicals.  We have been talking about the new trainer on and on about random injuries but the more I think about it it’s just as likely the old guy was fired more for signing off on two injured pitcher trades than the other injuries throughout the season. Those are big mistakes that lead the FO down a blind road. 

I’m sure it was not only the trainers call but he had to be intimately involved. The FO have to trust their experts at some point. I have no doubt they had whoever they ask about medicals to dig in deep. 
 

 

[Mike Sixel]

55 minutes ago, USAFChief said:

Jose Quintano, Jordan Montgomery, Jake Odorizzi and Noah Syndergaard say hi.

 

I even liked the Mahle deal. But it looks pretty bad in retrospect. Mahle is gone after this year and at this point what have they gotten? 

 

 

 

Sure in retrospect it looks bad......

[KirbyDome89]

1 hour ago, Mike Sixel said:

Castillo was too expensive and the montas is out for a year. Three pitchers were traded.

Why were the Twins in a position where they had to trade for an injured SP? I don't understand defending the move based on the corner that this team backed itself into. 

[SwainZag]

54 minutes ago, KirbyDome89 said:

Why were the Twins in a position where they had to trade for an injured SP? I don't understand defending the move based on the corner that this team backed itself into. 

Did they back themselves into a corner though?  I fully believe they went into last season believing that best case scenerio would be them being competitive at the trade deadline.  Their pitching staff was relying on a ton of young talent to take big steps forward. 

 

It ended up happening, they went and traded for a pitcher with prospect resources at positions of depth and so far it hasn't panned out.  Injuries ravaged the ball club down the stretch.   How many years have we seen the Twins hang on to prospects to watch them flame out? 

 

Maybe Mahle wasn't the correct trade target, but I don't blame them one bit for making the move. 

[KirbyDome89]

11 minutes ago, SwainZag said:

Did they back themselves into a corner though?  I fully believe they went into last season believing that best case scenerio would be them being competitive at the trade deadline.  Their pitching staff was relying on a ton of young talent to take big steps forward. 

 

It ended up happening, they went and traded for a pitcher with prospect resources at positions of depth and so far it hasn't panned out.  Injuries ravaged three ball club down the stretch.   How many years have we seen the Twins hang on to prospects to watch them flame out? 

 

Maybe Mahle wasn't the correct trade target, but I don't blame them one bit for making the move. 

If you want to argue that Archer and Bundy were signed as placeholders, ok, but then the Twins needed to actually replace them with superior talent. Instead, the "pipeline," failed to deliver, the placeholders were for the most part awful, and the team's other offseason SP acquisition (who had a known elbow issue) blew up in their face within a month. They swung big and missed on young arms, the buy low guys pitched like buy low guys, and players with injury concerns ended up injured. To me that's the definition of backing yourself into a corner. 

Injuries dealt the final blow, but they were playing sub .500 ball for months before IL stints started to pile up. Idk whether they gave up too much in the deal; my comments don't really have anything to do with the prospect angle. This team shouldn't get a pass for being the victim of tough circumstances when said circumstances are almost entirely of their own making. 

[DJL44]

2 hours ago, USAFChief said:

Jose Quintano, Jordan Montgomery, Jake Odorizzi and Noah Syndergaard say hi.

Quintana pitched the best few months of his entire career because the Cardinals can make lemonade out of any lemon. Odorizzi was bad. Syndergaard was mediocre. They all cost less than Mahle but they were also impending free agents. The lesson is to buy cheap vets at the deadline because needing to improve the top end of your rotation means you probably aren't a contender.

[wsnydes]

20 minutes ago, KirbyDome89 said:

If you want to argue that Archer and Bundy were signed as placeholders, ok, but then the Twins needed to actually replace them with superior talent. Instead, the "pipeline," failed to deliver, the placeholders were for the most part awful, and the team's other offseason SP acquisition (who had a known elbow issue) blew up in their face within a month. They swung big and missed on young arms, the buy low guys pitched like buy low guys, and players with injury concerns ended up injured. To me that's the definition of backing yourself into a corner. 

Injuries dealt the final blow, but they were playing sub .500 ball for months before IL stints started to pile up. Idk whether they gave up too much in the deal; my comments don't really have anything to do with the prospect angle. This team shouldn't get a pass for being the victim of tough circumstances when said circumstances are almost entirely of their own making. 

The injuries to the pitching staff started in April though and only got worse as the season wore on.  I wouldn't say that's "almost entirely of their own making".  

Alcala, Gray, Romero, and Ober all went on the IL in April alone.  Bundy, Paddack, Coulombe (twice), Winder and Ryan went on the IL in May.  

[Major League Ready]

3 hours ago, USAFChief said:

Jose Quintano, Jordan Montgomery, Jake Odorizzi and Noah Syndergaard say hi.

 

I even liked the Mahle deal. But it looks pretty bad in retrospect. Mahle is gone after this year and at this point what have they gotten? 

 

 

 

Quintana is out.  Sydergaard was mediocre last year and bad this year.  Nobody wanted Odorizzi.  Montgomery has been a good trade but he was traded for an established CF.  I am not sure how we could have gotten that trade done.  It's easy to speak in the form of generalities.  It's pointless to insist there were other solutions unless you actually make a case for the feasibility of something specific.   

[Nashvilletwin]

4 hours ago, TwinsDr2021 said:

This is true, but not all trades will work out, but the Ryan trade did, the Odo trade did, the Maeda trade wasn't terrible, and the Lopez trade looks like it will be good. I am not a huge fan of this FO but I also think people need to be fair for as much as people hate this trade they should be loving the Ryan trade, correct? I am not judging them based on only the bad things, I am judging them as a whole.

Did you read my post?  We are like the umps - calling balls and strikes. This trade was a ball - from the start.  Obviously, others have been strikes (I referenced the Lopez trade).  Is that not a fair assessment? The FO makes good and bad decisions. The Mahle trade was a bad one. It’s ok to call that out. And by no means did I imply they haven’t made good decisions.

And btw judging them as whole includes more than trades. Right now, the FO is in the plus column - or, out another way, is ahead of the hitter in the count.

[KirbyDome89]

31 minutes ago, wsnydes said:

The injuries to the pitching staff started in April though and only got worse as the season wore on.  I wouldn't say that's "almost entirely of their own making".  

Alcala, Gray, Romero, and Ober all went on the IL in April alone.  Bundy, Paddack, Coulombe (twice), Winder and Ryan went on the IL in May.  

None of the starters you named (Gray, Ryan, and Bundy) missed significant time, and all three were consistently starting games during those months of sub .500 play. I think Gray might've had one more IL stint in there somewhere though. 

The rest of that crew? 

Ober had eclipsed 90 innings once in 4 professional seasons coming into last year. At some point you don't get to be shocked when he isn't available. 

At least one other team passed on acquiring Paddack due to elbow concerns. That TJ didn't come out of nowhere. 

Alcala is in AAA right now. He had a long stretch of bad baseball in 2021. They definitely planned for him to be in the pen last year, but losing him didn't create some massive hole the team couldn't recover from. Ditto for Coulombe; if he's your lefty at the back of the pen giving you a decent 30ish innings that's great, but he's a journeyman RP, i.e. the definition of replaceable. 

I have no clue why Romero is even being mentioned here. 

I'll give you Winder. The shoulder stuff was tough, but even then that's a fringe SP/possible RP. 

 

[h2oface]

53 minutes ago, Nashvilletwin said:

Did you read my post?  We are like the umps - calling balls and strikes. This trade was a ball - from the start.  Obviously, others have been strikes (I referenced the Lopez trade).  Is that not a fair assessment? The FO makes good and bad decisions. The Mahle trade was a bad one. It’s ok to call that out. And by no means did I imply they haven’t made good decisions.

And btw judging them as whole includes more than trades. Right now, the FO is in the plus column - or, out another way, is ahead of the hitter in the count.

I know most are Lopez drunk after the first 4 good games, but they have been followed by 2 bad. Season ERA at 4, right about his career average. 9.90 in his last two starts (11 earned in 10 innings). I, personally, wouldn't call that a strike just yet because he had 4 good games to start the season. Especially since we lost Arraez to acquire him (who is just getting better is seems and still at .438 average, .500. OBP, 551 SLG, and 1.051 OPS, although probably not sustainable, but then, neither was Lopez' 4 game start). I know the popular feeing is this is win/win, but I am not sold yet. We now have 5 years and $73.5MM to hope, though.

Ryan and Gray have been strikes. Maeda? 1 short 2 month season in 3 and now this? Count is 2-1 on Maeda. It could end up 3-1. At least it won't be a 4 pitch walk. 😇

Never liked the Mahle trade. Never liked Mahle since his wildness broke Buxton's hand.

[stringer bell]

Both Maeda and Mahle point up how hard it is to find good, durable arms in this era of maximum effort and high velocity. Both guys were injured last year and now have new arm injuries not directly related to the injuries they recovered from. To me, it is something's gonna give. The good news for the team is that the Twins' replacements look to be ready to step in with minimal drop in performance. The bad news is that the wealth of depth the Twins had a month ago is pretty much gone.

[bird]

3 hours ago, Mike Sixel said:

Sure in retrospect it looks bad......

Yes, in retrospect it does. For example, at the time of the trade, our pals at Fangraphs  had a 40 FV on Steer and Hajjar, and CES did not even warrant a 35FV in their book, probably because they saw the huge K numbers and saw him at best as a mediocre 1B a la Sabato. So, in their minds at least, all three were projected to be "Up and down" guys or bench players. Certainly, one or more of those three could defy the considerable odds and become better than a replacement player. But likewise, Mahle could recover nicely, sign an extension, and be a solid mid-rotation guy and/or valuable trade asset..

In other words, the jury is out on this trade, but the early testimony is damning for sure.

[wsnydes]

9 minutes ago, KirbyDome89 said:

None of the starters you named (Gray, Ryan, and Bundy) missed significant time, and all three were consistently starting games during those months of sub .500 play. I think Gray might've had one more IL stint in there somewhere though. 

The rest of that crew? 

Ober had eclipsed 90 innings once in 4 professional seasons coming into last year. At some point you don't get to be shocked when he isn't available. 

At least one other team passed on acquiring Paddack due to elbow concerns. That TJ didn't come out of nowhere. 

Alcala is in AAA right now. He had a long stretch of bad baseball in 2021. They definitely planned for him to be in the pen last year, but losing him didn't create some massive hole the team couldn't recover from. Ditto for Coulombe; if he's your lefty at the back of the pen giving you a decent 30ish innings that's great, but he's a journeyman RP, i.e. the definition of replaceable. 

I have no clue why Romero is even being mentioned here. 

I'll give you Winder. The shoulder stuff was tough, but even then that's a fringe SP/possible RP. 

 

Ryan missed three weeks with Covid and took a long time to get back to his productive self.  Gray was on the IL three times, including three weeks in May and then another two week stint at the end of the season.  Bundy had only the one stint.  And I agree on Romero, I threw him in there because he was on the active roster when he was hurt and he did get hurt.  The depth they did have was pretty well decimated as well.

They relied on youth, you'll get no argument otherwise from me.  My theory on last year was that they didn't expect to contend the way they did.  They found themselves to be both one of the most beat up teams in baseball and still in division contention despite it.  My guess is that the Mahle trade doesn't happen if they weren't in contention at the time.  

But my point is that you can't have that many injuries throughout the roster and expect to compete.  Not only on the pitching, but they offense as well.  The slide can't be solely blamed on the pitching.  That's a significant portion of this conversation and I don't see how that can be blamed on anyone.

[KirbyDome89]

10 minutes ago, wsnydes said:

Ryan missed three weeks with Covid and took a long time to get back to his productive self.  Gray was on the IL three times, including three weeks in May and then another two week stint at the end of the season.  Bundy had only the one stint.  And I agree on Romero, I threw him in there because he was on the active roster when he was hurt and he did get hurt.  The depth they did have was pretty well decimated as well.

They relied on youth, you'll get no argument otherwise from me.  My theory on last year was that they didn't expect to contend the way they did.  They found themselves to be both one of the most beat up teams in baseball and still in division contention despite it.  My guess is that the Mahle trade doesn't happen if they weren't in contention at the time.  

But my point is that you can't have that many injuries throughout the roster and expect to compete.  Not only on the pitching, but they offense as well.  The slide can't be solely blamed on the pitching.  That's a significant portion of this conversation and I don't see how that can be blamed on anyone.

Ryan led the team in innings last year. I wouldn't characterize that as missing significant time. We're just going to disagree that some less than stellar outings were due to a positive test result 3+ weeks prior. The Twins were 10ish games over .500 coming into June, which means all three of those starters were throwing during the actual slide.

I'm not saying last year was 100% on the pitching, we're talking about Mahle, so pitching is the focus. This team put a lot of faith in a pipeline that didn't, and hasn't, delivered. They signed multiple low tier FA starters to be placeholders, they overtaxed an undermanned bullpen, and they leaned on guys with serious injury concerns. We can waive it away as bad luck, but when a plan fails that spectacularly it's hard not to attribute a majority of it to human error. To bring it back to the Mahle discussion, I don't see those failures as justification for acquiring another SP dealing with injury. 

[wsnydes]

25 minutes ago, KirbyDome89 said:

Ryan led the team in innings last year. I wouldn't characterize that as missing significant time. We're just going to disagree that some less than stellar outings were due to a positive test result 3+ weeks prior. The Twins were 10ish games over .500 coming into June, which means all three of those starters were throwing during the actual slide.

I'm not saying last year was 100% on the pitching, we're talking about Mahle, so pitching is the focus. This team put a lot of faith in a pipeline that didn't, and hasn't, delivered. They signed multiple low tier FA starters to be placeholders, they overtaxed an undermanned bullpen, and they leaned on guys with serious injury concerns. We can waive it away as bad luck, but when a plan fails that spectacularly it's hard not to attribute a majority of it to human error. To bring it back to the Mahle discussion, I don't see those failures as justification for acquiring another SP dealing with injury. 

I didn't say that Ryan missed significant time, I said that it took him quite a while to get back to his productive self after Covid.  We don't have to agree on the cause, but the results certainly took some time to come back.  

I won't argue that the pipeline has panned out, because it hasn't so far.  But I still can't agree that a team as injury riddled as it was is something that a team can prepare for.  Just because three pitchers that we're cherry picking happened to pitch during that slide, that doesn't mean they pitched well or the team around them performed for them.  Look at some of the lineups they were rolling out in August and September.  

Beyond this, we'll just have to agree to disagree.  You're not going to convince me that injuries weren't a significant role in that slide.  That's not their own doing.

[KirbyDome89]

25 minutes ago, wsnydes said:

I didn't say that Ryan missed significant time, I said that it took him quite a while to get back to his productive self after Covid.  We don't have to agree on the cause, but the results certainly took some time to come back.  

I won't argue that the pipeline has panned out, because it hasn't so far.  But I still can't agree that a team as injury riddled as it was is something that a team can prepare for.  Just because three pitchers that we're cherry picking happened to pitch during that slide, that doesn't mean they pitched well or the team around them performed for them.  Look at some of the lineups they were rolling out in August and September.  

Beyond this, we'll just have to agree to disagree.  You're not going to convince me that injuries weren't a significant role in that slide.  That's not their own doing.

What you're labeling as time to come back I see as a normal ebb and flow in performance. 

If you're going to invest in players with injury risk, you don't get to play the victim when/if they're injured. They traded for two injured SPs and they handed a rotation spot to a third who has never handled even a modest major league workload. Outside of the SPs, Winder was the only name you could argue was expected to provide relief.