Twins Front Office Finding a Sweet Spot with Low-Wattage Free-Agent Bats

[Cris E]

23 hours ago, Doctor Gast said:

Exactly, they are making a area of need into a crap shoot. None of them ever live up to their hype. All of them take up valuable playing time from capable inhouse players. They are showcased & when they flop, they still play too much & block the needed young inhouse players. This showcasing is often not only a detriment to the team but also the players. Case in point. Coulume, Pagan & J Lopez all were elevated to closer & all flopped. If they were eased into the team & BP in lower leverage, they could have done well. But that's not Flavey's way. 

But getting back to the main point. Constantly bringing in 1 year rentals never improves the position from year to year & we aren't developing our young players to take over those positions. Which is cheaper & more beneficial.

You've got it backwards. These guys are not leading away from good young players and towards more filler, They're only there until our own good young kids show up, which is what's been pointed out is already happening in the rotation.

The goal is always to be developing your own guys to fill holes long-term, but while you're waiting for them, signing a series of mediocre veterans is not a bad plan.  What an actual bad plan looks like is signing someone mediocre or old to a long-term deal. Settling for three or four years of a Rhys Hoskins, Gio Urshela or even Ty France slams the door shut in the face of the eventual emergence of Miranda or Julien or Larnach or Keaschall or Gasper or Eeles or whoever. Gallo was around until there were better options. Margot is gone. Farmer was pushed out by the youngster Lee.   This is what it should look like. (And since no one is perfect, there's always room for some improvement. In our case it is mostly around when to cut bait on a failed spin of the wheel.)

 

[Doctor Gast]

8 minutes ago, Cris E said:

You've got it backwards. These guys are not leading away from good young players and towards more filler, They're only there until our own good young kids show up, which is what's been pointed out is already happening in the rotation.

The goal is always to be developing your own guys to fill holes long-term, but while you're waiting for them, signing a series of mediocre veterans is not a bad plan.  What an actual bad plan looks like is signing someone mediocre or old to a long-term deal. Settling for three or four years of a Rhys Hoskins, Gio Urshela or even Ty France slams the door shut in the face of the eventual emergence of Miranda or Julien or Larnach or Keaschall or Gasper or Eeles or whoever. Gallo was around until there were better options. Margot is gone. Farmer was pushed out by the youngster Lee.   This is what it should look like. (And since no one is perfect, there's always room for some improvement. In our case it is mostly around when to cut bait on a failed spin of the wheel.)

 

To develop players you have to play them. If you are waiting for our players to arrive at a certain level & don't play them, they never arrive & this vicious recycling of veteran FA rejects never end.

[Cris E]

23 hours ago, Karbo said:

How are they going to develop a 1st baseman if they keep getting these types on 1 year deal? It sure would be nice to have a youngster to put there and let him grow. I've been advocating to move Lewis to 1st for a couple of years now. With Keaschall on the verge of his major league debut, they move Lee to 3rd and Keaschall to 2nd. Now that has the potential to be a really good defense, with guys that can hit!

Show me the guy hitting so well he needs to shoulder his way past everyone else to claim ABs. Kirilloff might have been one, but his body failed and he's out of the picture.   Did you not see who was playing 1B in St Paul last year? Severino? Williams? Isola? Does anyone else have a better 3B glove that makes you need to move Lewis? If Miranda's hitting starts demanding a spot in the lineup his glove is making the case for 1b, not 3b.  Keaschall hasn't fielded in a year and needs to go down to the minors to solidify his hitting. Remember he's only got 267 AB in AA (where he only slugged .439) and nothing higher so far. Julien and Martin are both slow to come into focus, but either could at any time and neither is a great fielder that would belong anywhere but 1B. 

I get your point, but you need to have these good young guys before you move away from one year veteran filler guys, and we simply haven't had those kids step up yet. Maybe by the end of this year, certainly some for next year, but not yet. Not even close.

[Cris E]

6 minutes ago, Doctor Gast said:

To develop players you have to play them. If you are waiting for our players to arrive at a certain level & don't play them, they never arrive & this vicious recycling of veteran FA rejects never end.

Seriously who? Actual names.  See my note above, but they didn't have anyone ready last year. They don't have anyone ready now, If you'd thrown the keys to Julien last year it would have failed. Kirilloff would still have been injured. If you move Jeffers you need to play Camargo and that's a terrible trade.  Who?  

This isn't hypothetical team building, they only have this list of names to work with. Who?

[Doctor Gast]

18 minutes ago, Cris E said:

Seriously who? Actual names.  See my note above, but they didn't have anyone ready last year. They don't have anyone ready now, If you'd thrown the keys to Julien last year it would have failed. Kirilloff would still have been injured. If you move Jeffers you need to play Camargo and that's a terrible trade.  Who?  

This isn't hypothetical team building, they only have this list of names to work with. Who?

I'm just responding to your hypothetical statement. Last year we had Miranda, Kiriloff & should have sent Julien down to AAA to learn 1B & how to adjust his hitting. Miranda & Kiriloff were mashing coming off shoulder injuries. If they kept them both at 1B/DH they would have both stayed healthy for most if not the whole season & mashed. & we had 1Bman Severino in AAA as a break glass. 

Because Kiriloff retired & Julien was kept down in AAA to learn 1B, I'm not against signing France as a fulltime DH & partime backup to Miranda but not handed primary 1B on a platter.

[Cris E]

My whole point is that I agree with your hypothetical but they don't have the players for that and have to make do in the 1.0 WAR bin until the kids step up.  The complaints I was addressing were very concrete lists of names and the answer to them is equally concrete.

[Eris]

21 minutes ago, Cris E said:

Seriously who? Actual names.  

I think DaShawn Keirsey over Marlot (-0.2 fWAR, 79 WRC+) would have been preferred. At least we would know if Keirsey is an MLB 4th outfielder who can play an acceptable backup CF. Not knowing this has led to Bader with Keirsey still on the 40 man roster. 
 

Agree that they had no internal options at 1B. 

[Karbo]

40 minutes ago, Cris E said:

Show me the guy hitting so well he needs to shoulder his way past everyone else to claim ABs. Kirilloff might have been one, but his body failed and he's out of the picture.   Did you not see who was playing 1B in St Paul last year? Severino? Williams? Isola? Does anyone else have a better 3B glove that makes you need to move Lewis? If Miranda's hitting starts demanding a spot in the lineup his glove is making the case for 1b, not 3b.  Keaschall hasn't fielded in a year and needs to go down to the minors to solidify his hitting. Remember he's only got 267 AB in AA (where he only slugged .439) and nothing higher so far. Julien and Martin are both slow to come into focus, but either could at any time and neither is a great fielder that would belong anywhere but 1B. 

I get your point, but you need to have these good young guys before you move away from one year veteran filler guys, and we simply haven't had those kids step up yet. Maybe by the end of this year, certainly some for next year, but not yet. Not even close.

Move Lewis to 1st, Lee to 3rd. Keaschall did play on defense last year and will again this year. I anticipate him up by mid season, and 2nd is the most likely position for him.

[Cris E]

1 minute ago, Karbo said:

Move Lewis to 1st, Lee to 3rd. Keaschall did play on defense last year and will again this year. I anticipate him up by mid season, and 2nd is the most likely position for him.

You are correct, he did play elsewhere. (Fangraphs doesn't sort their fielding numbers by year, which was pretty unexpected.) He may well be up in three months, but not until then. And he's still only got 267 PA above A+ ball and they were not outstanding.  He's essentially Brooks Lee from a couple years ago and we've already got one looking for a spot.

[Cris E]

20 minutes ago, Eris said:

I think DaShawn Keirsey over Marlot (-0.2 fWAR, 79 WRC+) would have been preferred. At least we would know if Keirsey is an MLB 4th outfielder who can play an acceptable backup CF. Not knowing this has led to Bader with Keirsey still on the 40 man roster. 
 

Agree that they had no internal options at 1B. 

I think the Twins are still living in the shadow of 2022 where they had a huge number of injuries, didn't provide a sufficient number of backups and didn't have any real players left by August. Some of those late-season outfields would have embaressed St Paul.   So finding a guy that was a proven CF to cover for Buxton's  inevitable 100 game outage was important. Remember that Rocco described Kiersey's D as greatly improved after a lot of work, meaning that it wasn't always this good. And a year ago he had not had any MLB experience yet so they didn't want to find out his hitting game did not translate while knowing that they needed a half season of CF work from that roster spot.

I can see the decision going either way for most teams, but after 2022 the Twins are always going to have a proven MLB baseline on the roster at every position. Doubly so for spots with proven injury risk like Buxton, Correa and pitching in general.

 

[IndianaTwin]

On 3/14/2025 at 5:27 PM, Rod Carews Birthday said:

This makes perfect sense, but honestly my first takeaway is “Holy Crap!  The White Sox were BELOW replacement level last year WITH Garret Crochet!”

And wasn’t it fun? 

[IndianaTwin]

On 3/14/2025 at 5:36 PM, Major League Ready said:

This is a very good point.  We don't see Cleveland signing nearly as many of this type of player.  I do think we are improving in this regard because THANKFULLY we no longer need to sign warm bodies for the back of the rotation.  With reasonable health we should be able to avoid these types of pitchers for the next several years.

I also do see the need for low-rent OFers for quite some time either with Rodriguez / Jenkins on the horizon and Keaschall probably will play some OF as well.  Martin might be kept around as well.

3B and SS are covered for the foreseeable future as well.  That leaves us with 2B and 1B which are the easiest two positions to fill.  IDK who ends up there but it seems likely they fill 2B with either Lee, Julien or maybe even Gasper until Keaschall is here.  That leaves Miranda or maybe Julien for 1B.  I also think we will trade one of Wallner or Larnach next off-season or when Jenkins is ready.  This assumes Rodriquez works out at least reasonably well.  That trade could be used to fill a need.  Tampa and Cleveland have been great at getting major league ready guys in this type of trade.

I went through this exercise to ask this question ... Are we at the point where the type of player you pointed out won't be needed starting next year?  I think the vast majority of us would like to see the system produce enough that we can move on from these low-rent players.  Some of them have been good as you point out but it sure would be nice to simply not need them.

I don’t about not needing any, because stuff happens, but the fact that we are down to signing only France and Bader suggests they are needing low-rent guys less and less. I think you could do a similar exercise on the pitching side and see that the lonely low-rent guys this year are Coulombe and Tonkin.