The Twins Have Struck Gold With Brock Stewart

Every team has certain players on other teams they covet and keep an eye on to acquire when they can. I think Brock Stewart was one of those for the Twins, maybe De Leon too.

"A pleasant surprise" - Sure

"Struck gold" - Let's pump the breaks on that and see how the season shakes out

1 hour ago, Rod Carews Birthday said:

This was a nice hit for the Twins, and with a couple of years of team control as well.  It is definitely “found” value.  Good job!

The alternative way of writing this comment would be this. . . . Wow!  I can’t believe the Dodgers let this one get away, especially when they had a guy with an 80.96 ERA on their team.  No wonder they never have any decent pitching!  The team is always bad and this is why.  The entire management team surely must be fired.  

See how silly that looks?

 

 

Close the comments, we have a winner for post of the week!

Typical story of SP prospect flames out, discovers how to pitch effectively as a reliever.

He is off to to a good start, lets see if he can maintain it.

Glad he's doing well - Good job.  BUT, I'm afraid now this will only support the FO belief that they don't need to invest in the pen because they can just find guys like this.  They obviously do, but not as often as they think they do.

39 minutes ago, Fire Dan Gladden said:

Typical story of SP prospect flames out, discovers how to pitch effectively as a reliever.

He is off to to a good start, lets see if he can maintain it.

It's definitely another one for the case files on "Why You Should Never Give Up on a Starter Until You've Given Him a Real Go as a Reliever". he's definitely a bit wild, but it's a lot easier to dodge around a walk or two as a high-velocity reliever than as a medium-low velocity starter.

but he's also one of the reasons the Twins as an organization (and the Rays and a few others) tend to not want to spend on the bullpen: you can find guys like this. But props to the Twins for finding him and having some patience in the transition (he was not good last season) and for him in embracing the change in role to find success.

We'll see if it's sustainable: the increased velocity certainly helps a lot, but he's also doing a much better job of keeping the ball in the park and has been less hittable as well, with a major uptick in K/9. If this is closer to who he is as a pitcher, he's going to be a useful bullpen piece.

The next Liam Hendriks. That is, if the Twins are allowed to have nice things. 🙂

He been a nice find so far and his control has been better of late, but its a long season. we'll see if hes been real or fools gold after the season.

First of all, just want to state that I don't believe in spending a ton of $ on FA in regard to the pen. BUT, it's a tool to be used to help yourself. It seems like a 50/50 crapshoot most years as to whether you get a good pen arm or disappointing one. It's up to the FO, and the scouts, to try and guess right. And I DO believe they should have taken a shot this offseason to add depth, and to guard against Alcala being slow to get back. (I still have a lot of hope for Alcala, BTW). 

I also believe you should be looking for  Stewart type EVERY SINGLE OFFSEASON. If not a couple of them. Quality Twins BP arms going back decades have been fliers like these. Current Thielbar is a great example. 

I'm still a little worried about Stewart's BB rate and hope to see it come down. But he's been a real baseball godsend to the Twins. And let's take a moment to point out it looks like Jax has begun to right himself after some crazy stuff earlier in the season. Now, if they can get Lopez looking good again, with the improvement of Moran, thus pen can be legitimately 6 deep with room to add and roll through the St Paul candidates. 

But like Stewart, they've gotten some really good work from De Leon as of late. Could he ALSO provide a big lift? Has his own injury filled and disappointing career suddenly trandlsformed in the Twins pen? I trust him less than Stewart right now, but he's looked pretty solid so far.

I don't care where relievers come from, but you need to ensure you have plenty of good ones, and the Twins did the opposite.  Personally, I even felt Duran may not have been able to be counted on, necessarily, between his wonky arm and natural drop off.

I think I listed every reliever and the reason why you couldn't count on him, and though I didn't put percentages with them getting hurt or going south, my point was that the Twins completely neglected a unit they needed to address and in no way were they going to have enough, even if a Brock Stewart type emerged.  I mean, Jorge Lopez is a head case (baseball-wise), and that should have been obvious from last year.  How do you count on Alcala? etc. etc.