You’re not a GM. You Shouldn’t Want to Trade Ryan Jeffers.

2 hours ago, nova_twins said:

Uh yeah the rest of the league is aware which is why the Twins won't get offered anything meaningful for Jeffers, so it's pointless to trade him. 

So what you're saying is every single team in the league already has a solid starting catcher? Catchers are at a premium because the league has so few quality catchers. Jeffers probably gives a team with a strong need at catcher a couple more wins on their schedule. That's a big difference and why another team would potentially overpay to get Jeffers.

I don't agree with a lot, maybe even most of what @Greggory Masterson writes but some of you took it personally. Way too personal.

I read it as one persons opinion. 

6 hours ago, chpettit19 said:

Jeffers has never, in his life, caught more than 81 games in a season. He's no sure thing to be some true starting catcher either. And they can trade him now and sign him after the season. Nothing says they can't offer him the best deal if they trade him.

Except for last year, when he caught 88. And in 2024, when he caught 86. And 2023, when he caught 82, And 2021, when he caught 84.

And most of those were load management years, when they made the choice to time share evenly. This year, when not limited by a hitting injury, he's caught three games out of four (37 of 48 team games before the hamate injury, 8 of 13 since). If he continues that pace and doesn't get hurt, he'll catch around  85 games despite a long IL stint. If not for dealing with a non-catching injury, he'd be on target for about 120 games. In today's game, that's a true starting catcher, particularly when you add a handful of DH games on top of that.

I do agree that they can resign him even if they do trade him, but it seems like that doesn't happen very often. A Google search gave me an article from last year's deadline that only came up with Jack Flaherty (2024), Aroldis Chapman (2016), Yimi Garcia (2024), Jay Bruce (2017), Kelly Johnson (2015) and Jason Hammel (2014). It didn't claim to be a complete list, but there aren't others that jump out at me. It seems there's a far greater likelihood a player resigns if the team didn't trade him.

6 hours ago, chpettit19 said:

...I enjoy or don't enjoy each and every game on its own merits. My desire to see Ryan and Jeffers traded plays no role in that. My desire to not see yet another below .500 team in 2027 is what drives my desire to see moves made....

@chpettit19, this comment may actually be better for another post, since it's not really Jeffers-specific, but it sorta is, so I'll put it here. 

I've been smackdab with you on a lot of your posts, but you've had several where you've named a preference for trading both Jeffers and Ryan under the premise that 2027 doesn't seem promising. I'm curious on your thought process on that. (And to show my bias, I lean toward keeping Jeffers for reasons that are mostly beyond this post, but am really interested in keeping Ryan, believing that 2027 actually does shape up well.)

I start from the premise of saying the Twins were 26-28 through the first third. They will be either 28-26 or 27-27 for the second third after Tuesday's game. I'd love to see them go on a run, but if they only match those, they will be essentially an 81-win team. 

I'm not sure your definition of "competitive," but in one of the strands, people (I don't remember if it was you) were using something like 90 wins. Is that a fair number for this exercise?

So as I think about whether the Twins can be nine games better next year, it seems pretty feasible. 

ROTATION: Lopez is an add, so a rotation would start with Lopez/Ryan/Bradley. Particularly when you consider that Bradley starts the year with a strong season under his belt, adding Lopez makes that trio a much better front half of the rotation than they've had this year. Then, when you consider some level of success from Matthews, Prielipp, the snippet from Abel, maybe even Rojas if they decide to/need to keep him as a starter, and that all of these guys are younger than average and would be a year more experienced, it feels like the back end of the rotation should also be stronger than it has been this year. This doesn't take into account that Lopez's injury has made Ober the de facto No. 3 starter this year, whereas a Lopez return slides Ober to No. 4 at best. 

BULLPEN: In the bullpen, much has been written about how bad/inexperienced they were at the beginning of the year. In a bunch of articles, I've applauded their approach of churning through bodies this year as a major part of their building a bullpen. I've had a hope that they will essentially identify one body per month that they can pencil in as an expected contributor for next year. So far, I've got Gomez, Morris, I would say Banda and Rojas if they go the pen route with him. Funderburk hasn't been up all year, Sands just came back and the first couple outings from Nance have looked promising. There's two more months left. If they can get another two to "count on status" and enter the offseason with as many as six solid relievers, that's a far cry from entering the season with what we did this year. 

HITTERS: I'm not going to go through the offense position by position, but it seems the net is that it would be better next year, even with just the internal folks. Buxton is the only real stud and returns. I keep thinking that Clemens is going to turn into a pumpkin, but the dadgum guy keeps performing. The current Lee at 3B seems substantially better than the Lee that started the year at SS. The current Lewis at 1b seems substantially better than the Lewis who started the year at 3B. It feels like I could make similar statements about others. And then it seems likely (or at least very feasible) that somewhere between Jenkins, Culpepper and others there will be some level of addition from rookies. The sum of the parts next year seems better than what the sum of the parts has been this year. And that's using a current offense that's somehow the AL leader in runs scored, so it's not starting from a bad spot.

A note on losses. At this point, I see Bell as the only known loss among contributors on the offensive side of the ball. I'm putting an asterisk on Jeffers. I think it's at least 80 percent that he's gone, but my personal preference is to hang on to Jeffers through the deadline and offer him a QO. I don't think he would take it, because I think he'll easily get at least 3/$60M or 4/$72M. But if he does take it, I don't feel bad about what might be a slight overpay of $23M on a one-year deal, and they'd enter the offseason in a great spot. Trade Caratini or Jackson if Jeffers surprisingly takes the QO.

As I said, I think it's most likely Jeffers is gone, so for the sake of this conversation, let's assume that. But I think Bell is easily replaceable internally, so losing Jeffers would leave catcher as the only known setback among the positions.

I think that even with no moves, there would be an improvement over this year's 81 wins. Enough to get to 90? I'm not sure, but perhaps.

You've said, "as currently constructed," so let's leave it there. But it seems like that's a roster that doesn't have huge holes to fill. Even with six or so knowns in the bullpen, I'd love to see additions there. I don't have a specific position in mind, but I'd love to see them add a bat that they could count on being the level of this year's Larnach.

Tom Pohlad has again made comments about spending and wanting to be competitive. I commented in another post yesterday that while much of TD is going to discount (or ignore or disparage) anything he says, I take him at least somewhat at his word. He's been smart enough to say the right things in terms of PR regarding recognizing the frustration of fans, yadda, yadda. I think he's smart enough to know that making the kind of statements he's made recently and then not following through would be an even bigger PR disaster than he inherited. 

So again, I've really liked your posts, but I've been curious on where you see things differently.   

48 minutes ago, chpettit19 said:

He caught IN 88, 86, 82, and 84 games those years. He didn't catch 88,86, 82, or 84 games. You can feel free to count games where he caught an inning or 2, but I don't.

And you could make an argument that they mismanaged him during those time share seasons if you'd like, but you'll find a bunch of people on here who will point out that he faded down the stretch in every one of them despite the time share. As I said in a subsequent post, I'd certainly bet on him over Caratini when it comes to their chances of being an everyday catcher, but the other poster pointed to Caratini's lack of more than 87 games caught as proof he wasn't a good bet. Age 30 Jeffers isn't a great bet either is all I'm saying. Being "on target" for 120 games doesn't impress me. We have no idea what he would look like over the stretch of the entire season at that pace. He doesn't get the benefit of the doubt from me based on his previous track record of not doing it.

Oh, it is definitely rare. But that's because most of the time you're trading someone it's because you already know you won't pay the player what they're asking. It's a naturally biased data set.

I'd much rather have Jeffers for the next 3 or 4 years than piece things together beyond Caratini and Jackson. But, I believe, if Jeffers and the Twins were on the same page for a contract he'd already be signed.

Fair responses all.

I don't know that I'd argue they mismanaged him (at least not substantially) in the past, even when they had Vazquez as the other. I would have liked to see them tilt a bit more to Jeffers. Rather than essentially 80/80 between the two catchers, I'd have preferred something more like 90/70 or even 100/60. For example, I would have liked them to use the off day as a boost to tilt the games toward Jeffers. In other words, by playing him every other calendar day rather than than every other game, that would probably gotten them closer to the 90/70. Going into this season, I was actually hoping for something like a 108/54 split, with Jeffers playing two of every three.

Also to note, Jeffers hasn't tailed off that much in the second half. His career OPS numbers are .762 and .742 before and after the break, so a modest decline, but I don't know how much difference makes it statistically significant. Last year helped in bringing those numbers together. He hit better in the second half -- .769 to .742. In 2023, he hit MUCH better after the break (.778 to .928).

In 2024, the decline was so large I have to wonder if there was injury or something at play, but in two of the three last three years he's actually hit better in the second half. I thought I read that his not wearing down last year was a factor in them planning to move away from the 80/80 to something that seems like it was at least intended to something like 110-120 starts.