4 Creative Tweaks the Twins Can Make to Get Better

1.   I think the Twins should try Taylor Rogers as a starting pitcher.  He added a 3rd pitch and was a starter through most of his career, and would give the Twins a left handed starter.

 

2.   I disagree with moving Kepler to first.  The Twins already have several players that have defensive limitations that they need to keep the position open for.  It is a natural spot for Miguel Sano.  They have Tyler Austin.   And now just added CJ Cron to that group.  Brent Rooker is sitting in the minors, and I could see them adding a guy like Ryan O'Hearn in the Rule 5 draft to get a left handed hitter to that mix.  

If you need a LHP starter for some reason, you have Mejia.....I wouldn't move Rogers in a million years. He's doing what he should be.

my thought on Astudillo.......give him a shot to prove us right or wrong. That is what other teams seem to do, trust results and see if they stick. 

Watching Twins batters strike out with a runner on 2nd base and nobody out last year was just brutal. I can't stress how many runs were wasted simply because guys couldn't make contact. Astudillo might not be Tony Gwynn but his contact rate is desperately needed on this team. He puts the ball in play, period. I hope the Twins are seriously considering ways to get him as many ABs as possible. Really hope he makes the team out of ST.

 

Astudillo's not a "nobody" anymore. A diamond in the rough is only valuable if you use the player. He won't do us any good stashed in the minors.

All in all... I agree with every word you saying about Astudilo. His bat plays... I'm a believer. 

The only place where I disagree is going to come down to the definition of "Stashed". If starting in Rochester means that he won't see the light of a major league day then I agree with you.

However, my definition of stashed is... he comes up when someone is playing poorly or is injured. With his flexibility... he could be the first call up for poor performance or injury at Catcher, 3B or 1B. In other words he wouldn't have to stay there long and if he performs like he did last year. He wouldn't have to be sent back and you have now created depth. 

The alternative to that isn't appealing to me. That would be to give Astudillo a 25 man roster spot because he earned it (he kinda did). Count on him doing it again... and if it doesn't work out due to poor performance or injury... now you got to go with Bobby Wilson #2 who was signed as Farm filler. 

The Twins are in much better position for all eventualities if they have Castro and Garver with Astudillo waiting for a phone call.

If you hand Astudillo a 25 man spot... (I get the temptation, I'm half way there myself) you are not as strong nor prepared for failure. It also needs to be considered that every time you hand a 25 man spot to someone with options like Astudillo... It closes the door on adding someone else to the 25 man roster because he got the available spot.  

Fun article.

 

If the Twins are trying to win in 2019, Fernando Romero to the bullpen makes a ton of sense. Long term? That's really difficult to say without knowing whether they're going to be willing to extend Gibson, sign free agents or trade for starters. The 2020 rotation is looking really thin (no Gibby, no Odorizzi, no Pineda).

 

I'd do it. If your season goes down the tank, you can always send Romero back down, stretch him out and get him ready to start again in 2020.

Why can't Romero throw 150 plus innings out of the pen? 

The only reason he can't is because of past baseball conventions that you have a 5 man rotation and a bullpen full of guys who throw one inning at a time. He could start in the 5th and pitch until the 8th out of the "Pen" and do it twice every 5 game stretch. 

The Rays, A's and Brewers (and Twins) kinda showed everybody that the 5 man rotation is about to go away for teams that keep trying and dying to find 5 competent "Innings Eaters" to absorb all those innings in the traditional way.  They are growing tired of throwing a 5 plus ERA starter every fifth day trying to get through a season with 5 designated starters. 

Cody Bellinger is not a very good comp for Kepler. Bellinger's a first baseman who hits like one; if you put him in CF as a tactical move, say to get Max Muncy's bat into the game, the hope is that Bellinger's bat really outshines other CFers and compensates for a marginal glove. (I still don't understand LA's roster well enough to see why you wouldn't put him in a corner OF spot and use someone else in CF, but it may just go to show that all of this is second-order effects.)

 

Kepler may yet achieve that level of hitting, but right now he's pretty much the opposite player. If he's not using his OF skills, a lot of his value is wasted.

 

I am all for positional flexibility. But from a given player's perspective, it's to give him somewhere to play when the team has 3 better outfielders, say, than himself. We aren't close to that in the case of Kepler, or at least I don't like Cave or Rosario better than him.

 

Flexibility is good in the abstract, and if (say) Cron goes down with an injury mid-game, and Austin is DHing already, telling Kep to go grab a first-baseman's glove for the remainder of the game sits just fine with me.

 

But while an overall flexible strategy is fine, it still comes down to specific games. And if I'm writing out a lineup that has Kep at 1B, an instant improvement is to swap him to an outfield spot and let the other outfielder be positionally-flexible and handle 1B duties that game. That will remain true, even if Kep improves at bat and starts to hit like a first-baseman too, until the day his OF skill eventually erodes.

I'm going to simplify my thoughts the best I can... and that is really hard for me. 

For example... If you put a roster together with 25 players who can play. If you do that... all organizations will be forced... and I mean forced... to adopt positional flexibility to accommodate all the talent. Necessity is the mother of invention. The Dodgers are over loaded with talent and they have to move pieces around to make it work. 

If you are fearful of the side-effects of moving Kepler around to playing 1B for a game or two. You immediately restrict and put parameters on flexibility and the eventual result of that is: You don't sign a 4th outfielder and are then forced to hope and pray that Kepler becomes the RF we need him to become and if he doesn't... Grossman is the guy waiting on the bench. 

Flexibility is a natural by-product of having a talented roster. Fear of flexibility prevents you filling out your roster to the brim with talent. 

Just adopt the idea of flexibility and fill your roster. 

If you need a LHP starter for some reason, you have Mejia.....I wouldn't move Rogers in a million years. He's doing what he should be.

You don’t have to move Rogers to the rotation. All you gotta do is increase his innings from 60 to lets say 100.

Can we agree that being overloaded with talent is different than being over loaded with players?

The Dodgers had 10 guys with a OWAR over 2, the Twins had 2 and traded one of them to Arizona.

 

Trying to make guys that can't hit (Well) into flexible position players seems like pissing into the wind. IMO

And here is how they did it.

They dont tolerate bad play. They didn’t buy it with money like most assume.

Back when Dozier was playing like crap for us, I stated that the Dodgers wouldn’t tolerate it while the Twins tolerated that sort of thing all the time and have for decades.

Well... Dozier gets traded to the Dodgers and they didn’t tolerate it and it was Kike Hernandez playing 2B the majority of the time.?

It can be argued that the Twins had no choice because of Ryan LaMarre and whatever.

But the Dodgers replaced Dozier with their versions of Ryan LaMarre.

The Dodgers created a full roster of talent because they gave playing time to players who played the best. It wasn’t money that gave them Taylor, Muncy and Kike.

This how they created depth and flexibility allows them to keep it all.

The Twins will be handicapped trying to create depth if the team continues to be satisfied with bad play getting everyday time or nervous about Kepler playing 1B to handle over flow in case you decide to try and create overflow.

And if they can’t create depth... we will be victimized every single time we have players like Dozier playing like crap.

The Dodgers didn’t buy it. The Dodgers simply said... you must perform and didn’t care about the pedigree of those who were or weren’t performing.

Simplifying my thoughts leads me to point out that I was responding to Nick's proposal to have Kepler split time between RF and 1B, not simply fill in for a game or two.

 

Do you envision Jake Cave in RF when Kepler's at first? Perhaps you like Cave's outfield defense better. That would lead to a different conclusion than I draw.

 

Otherwise, I suggest that positional flexibility should not be a one-way street and should not apply to Kepler alone.

Cave in LF, Rosario to 3B, Kepler to 1B, Sano to RF. What could go wrong?