Twins Roster Among Baseball’s Top 10 Entering the Offseason

17 hours ago, Hubie29 said:

Farmer is a blue collar, hard nosed team guy we need to resign.  I would think he would be receptive to a reasonable offer after having one of his best years.  Every team needs players like Kyle Farmer.

Time to move on from the thought of Miranda and Kiriloff in the long term plans.  Package them in a trade deal for pitching or a CF.

I agree with keeping Farmer and moving on from Miranda.  I can't help but believe Kirilloff should stay.  I know, I know...the injuries.

2 hours ago, JD-TWINS said:

 

Don’t understand how the Staff is not up to speed? Losing Gray doesn’t help - understood!

We were 15-19 in Gray’s starts in ‘23. With a new arm, we have a good shot at equaling that success rate or better, especially with the offense you describe. The ERA will inflate & more HR/9 than Gray, but still competitive…….I AGREE, we should add an arm or two through various potential paths…….we’re not weak with existing roster though.

Potential Pen:

Balazovic - Thielbar - Funderburk - Alcala - Jax - Headrick - Stewart - Henriquez - Duran - Winder……..3-4 other guys on the fringe

Rotation:

Varland - Ober - Paddack - Ryan - Lopez

You do understand that we're going to need 8-10 starters throughout the season, right? If Joe Ryan goes down early, and then we have to shut down Paddack in mid-June because of fatigue- our rotation will be Lopez/Ober/Varland/SWR/Festa. If Thielbar and Alcala go down, our bullpen will be really struggling. We are losing Maeda, Mahle, Pagan, and Gray; that's three starters and our bullpen arm with the most innings. If you count Paddack, that's one starter back, but unless you think that SWR or Festa can come in and be MLB-quality starters instantly, we're going to be very unhappy with the pitching once players (inevitably) get hurt. 

The existing pitching roster is weak, because I do not want Jordan Balazovic, Cole Sands, Josh Winder, and Brent Headrick penned into an opening day BP role. I would also like Varland to start the year at AAA as depth, and I think we are overestimating Chris Paddack's ability to throw 160 high-quality innings next year- we should not count on it. 

2 hours ago, Jocko87 said:

 

I wouldn't extend Farmer as they can just go the arbitration route but I'm hard on record that he might be the most important guy they can keep for this coming season.

I think AK and Miranda deserve and get another shot to show they can hit in the bigs but at some point players like Farmer are just better players and better fits for winning teams. He raises the floor of the entire roster. His presence allows them to be patient with the youth at so many positions and if by some miracle all the kids hit he's got tremendous value at the deadline. Even if everyone is healthy and playing well I still think his versatility on both sides of the ball gets him in 120-130 games. Rocco won't be able to help himself and it will be the right move as the option is good.

Makes sense.  I just think where position players are concerned that bat should be a RH OFer or Jung-Hoo Lee / Kiermaier would be fine even though they are LH.  Martin could sure change this equation but he has some more proving to do.  The other big potential improvements are already here in the form of Correa and Buxton.  How good would our offense be if those two guys are healthy and play to their potential.    I know, big IF but wow would that be great.  

If Brooks Lee can back up 3B/SS/1B then we can trade Polanco & Farmer. Wallner is basically Kepler redux, so he could go as well. Then we would have $30M to spend on a slugging LF & a #2 starter via trade or FA.

Martin can certainly play CF and brings speed and a dynamic contact hitter bat. Less strikeouts will help, but we do need power from LF. Buxton? if he can play or hit, would be a bonus, but obviously can't be counted on.

20 hours ago, Cap'n Piranha said:

Unfortunately, the numbers by Fangraphs are inaccurate.  Over the last 5 full seasons, league-wide WAR has never been below 999.6, or above 1000.4 (the average is 999.9); this certainly suggests that the WAR formula by design spits out 1000 in WAR.  This makes sense, when you consider that anything a hitter does to increase their WAR decreases pitcher WAR, and vice versa.

When the figures Fangraphs came up with are totaled, it comes to 1063.5--clearly that's not going to actually happen.  That number also doesn't include any free agents (which FG pegs at an additional 148 WAR), meaning fangraphs is somehow expecting more than 20% more WAR than is possible in these rankings.  As such, I don't put much stock into these at all.

I'm not a stathead and I don't know the details of the formulas for fWAR or bWAR. I get that WAR is an attempt to put a uniform overall value on a player but what I don't like is the arbitrary nature of it. It's arbitrary in two ways. One, the formula itself, which ultimately comes from the opinions of the people who decide what the formula should be, and, two, the presumed level of the hypothetical replacement player.

It seems to me that the replacement player, whoever that is, would have a WAR of 0.0 because the WAR of a given player is literally Wins Against Replacement. But should the hypothetical replacement player be a league-average player or should he be a top-level AAA player since that's who would be most likely be the actual replacement? Moreover, the real-life replacement player varies so much from one team to another and from one player to another that it seems nearly impossible to project a single hypothetical replacement player. For example, in the Twins organization the replacement player for Ryan Jeffries would presumably be Jair Comargo. But the replacement player for Carlos Correa could be Willi Castro, or Kyle Farmer, or even Royce Lewis. The argument could then be made that it's whoever the 26-man roster replacement is. OK, then which replacement player was added, an infielder, an outfielder or a utility man? Or even a pitcher? What if the team makes a trade to replace a player? And I won't even get into the issue of contracts and options and so forth that affect who replaces whom.

So, to make a short story long, I'm with Cap'n Pirhana. I also take WAR with a huge grain of salt.

3 hours ago, Nine of twelve said:

I'm not a stathead and I don't know the details of the formulas for fWAR or bWAR. I get that WAR is an attempt to put a uniform overall value on a player but what I don't like is the arbitrary nature of it. It's arbitrary in two ways. One, the formula itself, which ultimately comes from the opinions of the people who decide what the formula should be, and, two, the presumed level of the hypothetical replacement player.

It seems to me that the replacement player, whoever that is, would have a WAR of 0.0 because the WAR of a given player is literally Wins Against Replacement. But should the hypothetical replacement player be a league-average player or should he be a top-level AAA player since that's who would be most likely be the actual replacement? Moreover, the real-life replacement player varies so much from one team to another and from one player to another that it seems nearly impossible to project a single hypothetical replacement player. For example, in the Twins organization the replacement player for Ryan Jeffries would presumably be Jair Comargo. But the replacement player for Carlos Correa could be Willi Castro, or Kyle Farmer, or even Royce Lewis. The argument could then be made that it's whoever the 26-man roster replacement is. OK, then which replacement player was added, an infielder, an outfielder or a utility man? Or even a pitcher? What if the team makes a trade to replace a player? And I won't even get into the issue of contracts and options and so forth that affect who replaces whom.

So, to make a short story long, I'm with Cap'n Pirhana. I also take WAR with a huge grain of salt.

 

To be clear, I think WAR has quite a bit of merit, in that it establishes a measure of value that is uniform across all players (different defensive positions are granted WAR bonuses to account for position value to ensure this).  My issue with WAR comes only from the fact that fangraphs is projecting an unachievable amount of WAR for 2024 (unless they have altered the formula to untether it from the 1000 number, which would mean they're actually downgrading the value of replacement players).

When defining replacement player, what I've always heard is that the idea is a player who is comparable to the type of player every organization would be able to call up at any given time.  In that sense, we need to stop looking at replacement as organization specific, but league wide.  In this case, replacement assumes that you only have your 26 man active roster; if someone goes on the IL, what quality of player would you be able to acquire?

5 hours ago, Nine of twelve said:

But should the hypothetical replacement player be a league-average player or should he be a top-level AAA player since that's who would be most likely be the actual replacement?

They actually try to set replacement value at the level of someone you can get off the waiver wire or buy for $10,000 cash from another organization's minor leagues.