Twins Add Prospects Rodriguez, Martin to Roster Ahead of Rule 5 Deadline

10 hours ago, miracleb said:

Salas is already 20 years old and eligible for rule 5?  My hopes for him are starting to fade.    :-(

That's how it goes for some international kids. Yunior Severino, for example, would have been R5 eligible for the 3rd straight year if not added to the 40 man (or could have signed in MILB free agency I think).

Part of the reason for protecting players is the probability that they would be lost in the Rule V draft. Pitchers and (IMHO) catchers are more likely to be claimed. It is difficult to keep a position player on a roster for an entire season unless the club isn't really interested in winning. 

The four guys the Twins put on the 40-man would have been near-certain claims by other teams. I don't know if any of the players they didn't protect will be claimed. 

Looking at the 40-man as of now, there isn't much depth or upside in the pitching and they have no player who profiles as a healthy center fielder. 

7 hours ago, Fat Calvin said:

I see you take issue with the word, "uncertainty."  It wasn't my first choice.  I first went with: "With our center field situation,"  But I thought "situation" was too vague.  So, I went with "uncertainty."  How about "precarious," or "unstable?"  What ever word is used, the truth of the matter is, in this case, it would behoove the Twins to protect a promising center fielder like Keirsey in the high likelihood of another Buxton injury.   

(I hope you like the word: "behoove.")

I know it must have looked like nitpicking, but I latched onto your word as simply a rhetorical device in my reply.  Including Keirsey on the 40-man adds less in my view than it obviously does in yours, whether that metric be "certainty" or "value" or "wins".  His ability to contribute is not at all certain, for me.

Maybe DaShawn's got some more growth left in him, but he'll turn 27 years old pretty early next season, and the odds are that he is what he is, as a hitter.  He was drafted as a 21-year old from college, and while his first year in the minors was okay, he had a disastrous 2019 and then of course had no 2020.  From 2021 on, he's been kind of a poster child for my rule of thumb with hitting prospects - up to a certain age they gain about .100 of OPS due to experience plus physical maturing, while each league level gets about .100 harder.  Strictly an empirical observation I've tucked away for many years now, but in his case it matches up almost eerily, when he moved up from high-A to AA in 2022,  then repeated AA in 2023 and was later promoted from AA to AAA.  His AA OPS of .850 and AAA OPS of .739 suggest he might have been somewhere around .650 if he'd been brought up for a cup of coffee in the majors.  (Such numbers would have been Small Sample Size so I would not have discarded my rule of thumb had he OPS'ed .400 or 1.000 of course.)  I don't know his defensive skills except that he's supposed to be a pretty good center fielder, but the bar is set pretty high at the major league level to be better than average on defense in CF.  And would an average/good CFer who OPS'ed .650 be any kind of difference maker, or would he be on a par with someone like Andrew Stevenson, who was easily obtainable for AAA when the need presented itself, and who had actually better batting numbers than Keirsey did at St. Paul?  Keep in mind that MAT OPSed .720 this season with splendid defense, and we're still looking for an upgrade over him.  Keirsey looks like a notch below MAT, if my rinky-dink projection is anywhere close.

The 40-man roster is a difficult constraint for a good team.  In a world where the limit was instead 50, Keirsey might be one I'd protect.  I've followed him since draft day, and I like him.  He's got skills, which is to say he may wind up slotting in as a AAAA player or better, for a few years.

But there are 38 names on the Twins' roster, last I heard or checked.  Suppose the budget allows signing Kevin Keirmaier (never noticed the name similarity before).  I'd rather have him for 2024 than Keirsey.  Would you?

If they don't sign any kind of experienced and good defender for CF, and if they lose Keirsey, I'll be real disappointed in the FO's judgment.  I don't expect either outcome though.  Most teams have someone like DaShawn in their systems, and could just promote them, without the constraints that drafting a rule-5 player puts on them.

One other angle.  Suppose the Twins did add Keirsey to the roster, and then needed to replace him after signing a veteran like Keirmaier.  I believe roster rules hold a special case for that, and they must actually keep Keirsey on the 40-man, or else DFAing him is not simply putting him on the waiver wire but actually offering him free agency.  I think that little wrinkle is true until Opening Day, or maybe the start of Spring Training.  I'm shaky on the exact rule but there is something like that involved.  It adds a bit of complexity to the decision, and is why you don't see a bunch of shuffling of marginal prospects on the 40-man like you do with waiver-wire pickups.  A team drafting him in Rule-5 must keep him all season, or return him, or work out some other mutual agreement; but a team signing him to a free-agent minor-league contract could just keep him in reserve at AAA free and clear, off their own 40-man, much as the Twins can do now if he doesn't get drafted away from them in a few weeks. 

All in all, adding Keirsey to the 40-man is a riskier move than it first appears.

There, that's the long version of my reply to you.  Since you asked.