Brock Beauchamp

But we're talking about the pitching staff. Buxton and Kepler have nothing to do with any of this. And we've covered Berrios extensively already.

I said Berrios was "very highly regarded", which is an obvious nod to his prospect status. But we're talking ABOUT THE END OF 2016 here without hindsight. Berrios was still promising but he wasn't just kinda bad in 2016, he was flat-out awful. We held out hope he would turn it out - which he thankfully did - but it was far from a given at this point. Not using Gibson's WAR is not misleading. He was a bad pitcher. We were all here for it, let's not pretend otherwise. Again, we HOPED he would pan out and become the top 100 guy we all wanted him to be but outside of 2015, he hadn't shown a glimmer of promise for more than a couple of starts at a time. Exiting his age 29 season, he had an ERA+ of 88. If the Twins had a better pitching staff after 2017, would they even have offered him the $4m+ it took to retain him in arbitration? There's no clear answer to that question, which again speaks to just how *not great* the pitching pipeline was at that time.

The thing is that fans always dream on prospects, whether they're good or bad. We all banked a lot on Nick Blackburn - even though deep down we knew better - at one point, too. It's part of being a fan, looking and hoping for the upside buried in even the most flawed prospect. The reality is that Baseball Prospectus ranked the Twins system 22nd to open 2017. Baseball America ranked the Twins system 21st to open 2017. I can't find MLB.com's rankings past the top ten but the Twins weren't in it. And the MLB pitching staff had the 19th best ERA in baseball in 2016 with few changes made to enter 2017. Those are the actual numbers. Were there promising players? Sure, there are "promising" players in even the 28th ranked farm system. Was it a good system, particularly in regards to pitching? Absolutely not, full stop.

And this is the catch for me. Gibson *thankfully* improved and gave the Twins one very nice season in 2018 but being 12% below league average while approaching 30 years old did not instill confidence in anyone to open 2017. And not only was he 12% below league average for his career - which wasn't an insignificant number of innings at that point - but in 2016 he was 17% below league average. At that point, is Dobnak's lack of innings and relative youth to 2016 Gibson a plus or a minus? I don't know, that can be argued either way but that's not what we're talking about here... we're talking about whether anyone was confident in Gibson being a rotation fixture after 2016 and that answer was unequivocally "no". So now we're down to Ervin Santana, who was a legitimately solid MLB starter but was also paid as such and was entering his mid-30s. Essentially, he was Kenta Maeda without the upside and paid *a lot* more, to boot.

I don't know if we can consider Gibson's 2014 "decent", though. He pitched to an 87 ERA+. He was decent in 2015, for sure. Then he regressed massively in 2016, pitching to an 83 ERA+. My point is that if you flash back to the end of 2016, no one looked at the career of Kyle Gibson and felt comfortable that he was an acceptable MLB starter going forward. Saying otherwise is purely hindsight. We HOPED he could become a decent pitcher but he didn't even do that in 2017, either. It was all the way into 2018 when he finally started performing at a consistent level (2015 was a yo-yo that gave us hope but had plenty of bad mixed with the good).

I... guess? Kyle Gibson had an 83 ERA+ in 2016. He also had an 87 ERA+ in 2017. If that's the bar we need to clear to be considered "capable", John Gant has a 91 ERA+ this season and is under control for next season should the Twins want to go that route. To elaborate a bit further, exiting the 2016 season, Gibson had a career 88 ERA+. Do you know who else has a career 88 ERA+? Randy Dobnak.

Gardy only managed Ortiz for one year. The thinking that led to Ortiz being released was due to a Twins philosophy from top to bottom, which was absolutely endorsed by the front office. And are they less adept at developing pitching because they traded an 18 year old Luis Gil in a move to supplement division-winning rosters? I understand the point that they've lost too much MLB talent - a point I agree with - but the loss of Ortiz was and will forever be a bigger blunder than the loss of any other Twins player because giving away first ballot HoF guys is an extremely rare occurrence.

If we're calling fresh-out-of-2016 Berríos capable, what are Bailey Ober and Joe Ryan? It's an honest question because Jose was highly regarded but was just so awful in 2016 that he was still very much a question mark entering the 2017 season. I don't see any way to consider Jose capable while not putting either/both Ober/Ryan in the same category, or at least strongly considering them to potentially be in the same category of "will likely be a solid MLB contributor". Standard Pitching Year Age Tm Lg W L W-L% ERA G GS GF CG SHO SV IP H R ER HR BB IBB SO HBP BK WP BF ERA+ FIP WHIP H9 HR9 BB9 SO9 SO/W Awards 2016 22 MIN AL 3 7 .300 8.02 14 14 0 0 0 0 58.1 74 56 52 12 35 0 49 5 0 1 281 53 6.20 1.869 11.4 1.9 5.4 7.6 1.40 Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table Generated 9/15/2021.

And this is all pretty reasonable, though it seems the Pohlad kids are looser than good ol' (bad ol') Carl. But really, ownership across baseball is pretty rotten. As for Berríos, I mostly agree. And if they trade Buxton, I'm going to be furious. Everything in baseball right now is about "efficiency" and "maximizing value" and all of it is code for "THE OWNERS DON'T WANT TO SPEND MONEY". The Twins should have paid Berríos, they should pay Buxton, because this is a spectator sport and those players and GOOD and FUN TO WATCH. I understand that a reality of modern sports is cheering for laundry but that doesn't have to be the case 100% of the time or even close to 100% of the time. If the team has a good player that fans like, pay the man and let fans continue to enjoy his on-field play for years. A big reason why I'm such a devout Twins fan is because I grew up knowing nothing but Puckett and Hrbek being on my favorite team until I was almost out of my teenage years.

Still a great hitter.

Dude. Dude. Mike Bell died on March 27th.

This is the wrong way to look at it, unfortunately. More Fortune 500 companies doesn't mean they pay more for advertising space because advertising pricing ultimately comes down to audience numbers. Not only do the Twins have, at most, a mid-market size of audience, that audience shuns cable television in greater numbers than other markets (going from older data from memory, I cannot find recent numbers). And that's where the money is, cable television. And the Twins are working at a disadvantage there even compared to most other comparable markets, much less larger markets like Houston, NYC, or San Francisco.

While I get your point about frequency, not a great example to use, man. Ryan let go of literally the best player the Twins ever lost for nothing, a first ballot Hall of Fame player. After the careers of every player you listed are complete, I'd bet that combined they don't equal 25% of Ortiz's career value.

We're all Twins fans who hang out on a Twins forum. Does this question really need to be asked?

That would be a hard play for 75% of MLB centerfielders. Buxton made it look boring.

Probably because they need to cover three innings and have very few good options.

I hope we get to see him again this season.

I also can’t keep track of this nonsense anymore but that’s my take on it, yes.

I’m so ****ing sick and tired of this stupid ****ing baseball season.

It was a risk but when the outfielder falls down, I think I'd lean toward sending the guy, too. And Rortvedt runs well for a catcher, 43rd percentile in sprint speed.

Ooh, I think he's out but I don't know how I'd overturn that.

That was way closer than I expected.

He hasn't been bad by any means, but he hasn't been typical Nelson Cruz and he hasn't been particularly good for a DH.

I also realized it's almost impossible. If the Rays face the Jays, it will almost certainly be in the ALDS.

Sure, but if Ryan is legit, that hurts to lose him for a rental who hasn't played particularly well for them. Still, I hope Tampa goes deep into the postseason and faces the Jays in the ALCS. Who wins from there, I don't care.