The Twins’ Biggest Organizational Weakness Might Be Scouting

[Riverbrian]

I have no idea what the issue is. There is a bottleneck and it appears to be at the AAA to Majors crossroads. We don't seem to transition highly ranked farm system to major league value fairly well. 

If I were to guess and guessing isn't fair to anyone.

It's the top prospects who make it to the majors or get the opportunity to make it to the majors. Everyone seems to know who the top prospects are so how are the scouts going to be the difference? None or very few are major league ready when drafted but everyone agrees on who they are.

So if they are not major league ready. You got to get them major league ready so it's the getting them major league ready part that I would look at first and that is where you will find the bottleneck. 

Just guessing of course. 

[Woof Bronzer]

15 hours ago, HarmonK03 said:

Falvey left on his own, and he was the one who started to downsize the scouting staff over the last few years.  

Lol, you think Derek Falvey willingly gave up one of the most exclusive jobs on the planet 2 weeks before the season with likely millions of dollars on his contract knowing he'd probably never get that job again?

15 hours ago, HarmonK03 said:

and he was the one who started to downsize the scouting staff over the last few years.  

So what?  Tommy could hire a dozen scouts today.  He could have hired scouts every single day since he took over as CEO.  But he hasn't, in fact, all he's done is fire more scouts.

[Trov]

Increasing the scouting staff with diverse thoughts of the scouts should help.  When you have a smaller number, you will most likely have a less diverse thought pattern on players, and less likely to have scouts push back on assumptions.  Everyone has personal thoughts and beliefs about what is best, where issues are, and things like that.  If everyone in the room has same thoughts or beliefs then it is just an echo chamber of everyone agreeing.  That can lead to blind spots for organizations. 

Just have more is not the answer, having different ideas will lead to discussions about players and that will lead to more informed decisions. 

[DJL44]

30 minutes ago, Riverbrian said:

I have no idea what the issue is. There is a bottleneck and it appears to be at the AAA to Majors crossroads. We don't seem to transition highly ranked farm system to major league value fairly well. 

If I were to guess and guessing isn't fair to anyone.

It's the top prospects who make it to the majors or get the opportunity to make it to the majors. Everyone seems to know who the top prospects are so how are the scouts going to be the difference? None or very few are major league ready when drafted but everyone agrees on who they are.

So if they are not major league ready. You got to get them major league ready so it's the getting them major league ready part that I would look at first and that is where you will find the bottleneck. 

Just guessing of course. 

The scouts had pretty good consensus that Brooks Lee was a future third baseman but the Twins decided to play him 300 games at SS and another 50 at 2B before moving him to 3B.

The scouts were unanimous that Austin Martin wasn’t a SS (and the Blue Jays had already moved him to the outfield) but the Twins played him there for 100 games in the minors. 

Finally, there is no such thing as a 3-inning piggyback pitcher who plays every 4 games in the majors but the Twins insist on developing all of their pitchers for this non-existent role.

[Riverbrian]

3 minutes ago, DJL44 said:

The scouts had pretty good consensus that Brooks Lee was a future third baseman but the Twins decided to play him 300 games at SS and another 50 at 2B before moving him to 3B.

The scouts were unanimous that Austin Martin wasn’t a SS (and the Blue Jays had already moved him to the outfield) but the Twins played him there for 100 games in the minors. 

Finally, there is no such thing as a 3-inning piggyback pitcher who plays every 4 games in the majors but the Twins insist on developing all of their pitchers for this non-existent role.

I agree with the first two paragraphs. 

The third paragraph. I can't help but wonder why MLB baseball doesn't have anything between 5-6 innings for a starter and 1 inning for a reliever. Anything that black and white with no middle ground is a little to systematic for my tastes.

Surely there is something in between those two that can be introduced to the game. Weather the experiment is working or not working can also depend on the quality of the test subjects.    

[Woof Bronzer]

22 minutes ago, Riverbrian said:

The third paragraph. I can't help but wonder why MLB baseball doesn't have anything between 5-6 innings for a starter and 1 inning for a reliever. Anything that black and white with no middle ground is a little to systematic for my tastes.

Many teams do openers.  Many teams use relievers more than 1 inning.  It's not black and white at all?

What benefit is there to train pitchers to go 3-4 innings?  Starters should be your best pitchers, you should want them to go longer.  Relievers often become relievers because they don't have enough variety in their pitches to be a starter, so they can be more effective in short outings.

Baseball has been around for 150 years.  Over than century and a half every single possible idea to "crack" the code of baseball has been considered and tried, probably multiple times.  The reason that over those 150 years a 3-4 inning pitching role hasn't emerged is probably because it's a bad idea.  Why would any team would want to limit the innings of their best pitchers, while giving longer outings to relievers who are relievers specifically because they can't do longer outings?

[HarmonK03]

40 minutes ago, Woof Bronzer said:

Lol, you think Derek Falvey willingly gave up one of the most exclusive jobs on the planet 2 weeks before the season with likely millions of dollars on his contract knowing he'd probably never get that job again?

So what?  Tommy could hire a dozen scouts today.  He could have hired scouts every single day since he took over as CEO.  But he hasn't, in fact, all he's done is fire more scouts.

Falvey had the business operations taken away from him and he did not agree with it.  Very few teams have someone over the business and baseball operations.  We don't know if Tom P. did that to force to him out, but by his own words that was a factor in his leaving.

It's not Tommy's job to hire scouts, that is Zoll, and if he is requesting more hopefully Tommy will authorize the spending.

Where Tommy has failed is not hiring a competent GM who can manage both upwards and down and set up the baseball operations with a structure that will provide sustainable success.  Zoll is not the one to do this and not much will change until he is gone.

 

[Riverbrian]

2 minutes ago, Woof Bronzer said:

Many teams do openers.  Many teams use relievers more than 1 inning.  It's not black and white at all?

What benefit is there to train pitchers to go 3-4 innings?  Starters should be your best pitchers, you should want them to go longer.  Relievers often become relievers because they don't have enough variety in their pitches to be a starter, so they can be more effective in short outings.

Baseball has been around for 150 years.  Over than century and a half every single possible idea to "crack" the code of baseball has been considered and tried, probably multiple times.  The reason that over those 150 years a 3-4 inning pitching role hasn't emerged is probably because it's a bad idea.  Why would any team would want to limit the innings of their best pitchers, while giving longer outings to relievers who are relievers specifically because they can't do longer outings?

It's the opposite of how you are presenting it. You want to get more innings to your best pitchers and a lot of times your best pitchers are your relievers.

If you have the Miz on your roster. You'll want him to throw 200 Innings if he can. I have no issue with that. 

If you have Dylan Bundy on your roster... why try to get him 180 innings. If you have Duran on your roster... why limit him to 60, 

It's about decreasing the amount of innings from your questionable starters by increasing the innings of your lights out relievers. Who are your best pitchers. Figure out how to get them more innings and less to your lesser pitchers. That's hard to do with a systematic assignment of starters go 5 and relievers go 1 regardless of the talent of the participants. Perhaps there is an answer somewhere between the two static worlds.   

[Woof Bronzer]

2 hours ago, Riverbrian said:

It's the opposite of how you are presenting it. You want to get more innings to your best pitchers and a lot of times your best pitchers are your relievers.

If you have the Miz on your roster. You'll want him to throw 200 Innings if he can. I have no issue with that. 

If you have Dylan Bundy on your roster... why try to get him 180 innings.

Your solution to the problem of Dylan Bundys is to take innings away from the Mizerowskis, and eliminate the things that allow Duran to be successful (max velo in short stints).  Basically, you are playing the best pitcher in baseball less, and you are turning Duran into a different, likely worse, pitcher.  

If you want to address the problem of bad #6,7,8 starters by having THOSE guys throw fewer innings, great. 

Addressing the problem of bad #6,7,8 starters by deleting the position of starting pitcher from your entire system is nuts to me. 

You are a sharp fellow who knows ball, I'm just surprised at the take on this.  But, as always, what do I know? I'd address the problem of Dylan Bundys by training starters NOT to exert max velo with every throw, but to take a few ticks off and emphasize location and duration.  Max effort leads to max injuries; if you can minimize injuries to starters #1-5 the impacts of starters #6-8 is minimized.  

[Mike Sixel]

7 minutes ago, Woof Bronzer said:

Your solution to the problem of Dylan Bundys is to take innings away from the Mizerowskis, and eliminate the things that allow Duran to be successful (max velo in short stints).  Basically, you are playing the best pitcher in baseball less, and you are turning Duran into a different, likely worse, pitcher.  

If you want to address the problem of bad #6,7,8 starters by having THOSE guys throw fewer innings, great. 

Addressing the problem of bad #6,7,8 starters by deleting the position of starting pitcher from your entire system is nuts to me. 

You are a sharp fellow who knows ball, I'm just surprised at the take on this.  But, as always, what do I know? I'd address the problem of Dylan Bundys by training starters NOT to exert max velo with every throw, but to take a few ticks off and emphasize location and duration.  Max effort leads to max injuries; if you can minimize injuries to starters #1-5 the impacts of starters #6-8 is minimized.  

Most teams don't have four starters. Trying to force 40 percent of your starts and bad starters doesn't work. Yet no team will try something different. I blame stubbornness, not that there isn't another path. 

[Riverbrian]

41 minutes ago, Woof Bronzer said:

Your solution to the problem of Dylan Bundys is to take innings away from the Mizerowskis, and eliminate the things that allow Duran to be successful (max velo in short stints).  Basically, you are playing the best pitcher in baseball less, and you are turning Duran into a different, likely worse, pitcher.  

If you want to address the problem of bad #6,7,8 starters by having THOSE guys throw fewer innings, great. 

Addressing the problem of bad #6,7,8 starters by deleting the position of starting pitcher from your entire system is nuts to me. 

You are a sharp fellow who knows ball, I'm just surprised at the take on this.  But, as always, what do I know? I'd address the problem of Dylan Bundys by training starters NOT to exert max velo with every throw, but to take a few ticks off and emphasize location and duration.  Max effort leads to max injuries; if you can minimize injuries to starters #1-5 the impacts of starters #6-8 is minimized.  

Not all all.

Miz can throw as many innings as he possibly can. He's one of the best in baseball... you want innings to go to your best pitchers. You don't take innings from the Miz. Don't touch him. Don't reduce him. 

Dylan Bundy... the way it traditionally works... You have a 5 man rotation and the back end of that rotation will throw 5 innings every 5th day because that is the structure that has been in place since forever.

Dylan Bundy for example threw 140 innings for the Twins and he produced a 4.89 ERA in 2022. Our bullpen guys in 2022 had Jax throw 72 innings, Duran 67 Innings. Thielbar with 59 innings. Because they are limited to one inning an appearance. 

These guys were better pitchers than Bundy was but the structure guarantees that he will throw twice as many innings. 

So... I openly question weather it should a 5 innings for Starters and 1 inning for relievers with nothing in between. I'd rather see a better allocation of innings based on ability. Get your better pitchers more innings. However... that would take invention and it would take a departure from the structure that we are locked into. There has to be something in between these two worlds because there is clearly space in between 1 and 5 innings. Can you get Duran up to 120 and Bundy down to 110? I don't know but it's a thought that would clearly improve overall results if you could.   

Weather the Twins experiment in this regard is working or not. I like the experiment. 

 

 

[spanman2]

You would think scouting would be one area within the organization that it should be agreed on that you cant go on the cheap...more eyes on players should be a fundamental level of the foundation.