What Derek Shelton Saw While Watching Twins Hitters This Summer

[jmlease1]

On 11/10/2025 at 2:16 PM, sweetmusicviola16 said:

Lol. My first action as GM though would be to call up the Dodgers and say "hey, we have to rectify the fleecing that you did on the last guy. I want Miller back." Where is the guy we got? Doncon or whoever it was. I'm not mentioning by name the player we got as the centerpiece of the deal. But Miller has continued to improve which I knew he would. He still has GG potential if the Dodgers stick with him.

There's a real chance that Noah Miller is going to be available in Rule 5 draft this year, I believe. Would love to know exactly what he's improved on, since he still looks exactly like the same slap hitter as always. Are you banking on his performance at AA this year, where he finally topped .700 for his OPS? That's betting a lot on 27 games, because after promotion to AAA, he was quite poor in double the amount of opportunity. Unless you want to count his rehab assignment back in rookie ball at age 22 for 8 games, Miller has never: hit over .300, had an OBP over .350, had a SLG anywhere near .400 at any level of professional baseball. His career OPS is .645. While spending the bulk of the season in AAA, he had a .612 OPS in a hitters league; the league average OPS was .803. He's a fine defensive SS, but he's a truly terrible hitter. 

Even if he's available in the Rule 5, $100K plus a 26-man roster spot is too high a price. It certainly won't help Shelton improve the performance of the lineup. Brooks Lee is struggling mightily at the plate in MLB, but his career OPS in the minors is nearly 200 points higher than Noah Miller's. Imagine how ugly things would get for Miller, who has absolutely positively never ever shown Brooks Lee's ability at the plate?

Hmm...maybe try another argument: Noah Miller strikes out more per game in the minors than Brooks Lee did. :P

[Cris E]

On 11/10/2025 at 11:02 AM, rv78 said:

"I talked to Drew MacPhail a little bit about it, and we’ll continue to talk about it, but players get to the big leagues so fast these days," 

 

This is no excuse compared to players from the past.

Ages of 1st season in the majors:

Lee 23, Martin 25, Larnach 24, Julien 24, Jeffers 23, Lewis 23, Wallner 24, Miranda 24.

Mauer 21, Polanco 20, Sano 22, Morneau 22, Hrbek 21, Knoblauch 22, Puckett 24, Gaetti 22.

All I got from this article is that no one knows why the Twins hitters struggle to carry over their success from the minors to the majors and Shelton doesn't know either. My guess to why is, lack of consistant playing time, never a consistant batting order, and no confidence shown from the Manager. If the regulars don't get to play everyday and the lineup order changes daily, and the Manager platoons them against every left or right handed pitcher, like Rocco did, nothing will change.

The recent American players you listed grew up in a wildly different baseball world than those of 20, 30 or 40 years ago. They play year round, drilling in cages far away from fields way more than anyone did a generation ago. There are fewer games for the guys who go to college so they play less than guys drafted out of high school. Buxton, Lewis and Miranda played over 120 games at 19 and 20, whereas college guys like Larnach, Lee, Wallner and Julien don't see 100 games until maybe age 22. Martin still hasn't been in 100 games in a season yet and he's 26.  And pretty much every one of those old timers listed above hit 100 games by 20 except Puckett, and his baseball schedule was skewed by poverty and his father's death.  (Knobber and Gaetti were 21.) 

The game experience that comes from playing daily in the Dominican academies or 110 dates at Quad Cities at age 19 (Mauer) or 125 games across three levels at 19 (Buxton) are different from the weeks of drilling and 50-60 games that you get in the NCAA. Larnach got 59 PA in 28 games at 19 and batted .157 as a pinch hitter and DH (only 6 games in RF.) Few freshmen are going to get the chances that a raw fieldhand in A ball sees.

And to make the lack of game-time worse, there is more "analytic" baseball being played at lower and lower levels every year, where platooning, numerous relief pitchers and Three True Outcomes strategies are more common. That removes a lot of the decision making and adjusting from players and puts it in the hands of managers. 

One big difference between the guys that started young and the other names are that poor performance usually gets you out of the game before you turn 21, whereas college guys don't hit the grind until far later and seem like bigger disappointments when they fail at 23 or 24.  I'm not one of those "Back In My Day" geezers shaking my fist at clouds, but when you skip college and head to the minors you are making the game your job and you do more of it earlier. That playing time brings the opportunities to see in-game pitcher adjustments and counter them, or to feel the effects of a fifth or sixth game in a row, or playing the same team a fifth or tenth time in a season. It's harder, and the earlier you encounter that and struggle with it the better your chances of overcoming it. 

[Paul Walerius]

On 11/10/2025 at 9:08 AM, Schmoeman5 said:

Nothing again Lee. But Lindor is a real SS. Thats a ridiculous comparison. Lee can hit. He falls behind a lot and winds up with weak contact.  Just putting the ball in play is better than striking out. So in that sense you might say Lee was unlucky. I dont. Its obviously something he needs to work on. The one thing I keep hearing about Lee is how baseball smart he is because his dad's a manager. Lee makes more boneheaded mistakes than any Twin not named Martin. In addition to that. Hes slower than every Twin except Vasquez.

I didn't get to watch every game but the ones I did, it seemed like Lee had good range.   What does the analytics say? Did he get to less than most SS would?   Could he or Lewis fix out 1B issue?  I thought Lewis really improved at 3B so Lee at 1B would hide most range issues, when Culpepper is ready.