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jkcarew

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Everything posted by jkcarew

  1. jkcarew
    When you're really good for a long time, someone comes along and gives your system a name...like the 'Twins Way'. By the time they name the system, it's become obsolete. That's an accomplishment, not a bad thing. Meanwhile, the new regime can hope to have an obsolete moniker in 10 years. It's easy to have a system that's perceived as 'modern' or 'forward thinking' in the present. But, does it really provide a competitive advantage against contemporaries? Will it result in sustained success? And to that end, this regime will achieve meaningful success the exact same way the Twins Way succeeded from 2002 to 2010. By having superior players.
  2. jkcarew
    So, he didn’t last as long as the average starter...and this isn’t an issue for an ‘impact’ guy? Secondly, I said SLIGHTLY less pretty numbers. The extra innings are hugely valuable...especially when you are a number one or two. It gives the manager much greater flexibility to work match-ups when the bullpen is more rested...again, especially when the team is expected to start 2-3 ‘lesser’ starters every time through the rotation. If you can never get through a lineup more times than the 3, 4, and 5 guy...you limit the effectiveness of the entire staff in the long run. The Twins are a better team in 2020 if Odorizzi duplicates Berrios’s 2019 than if he duplicates his own 2019. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll take Odorizzi’s 2019 performance. It was good...better than expected. And if he could maintain effectiveness by throwing more strikes early in games...and pitch a bit longer into games, he’d be more impactful.
  3. jkcarew
    I’ll take slightly less pretty numbers...in exchange for about 40 more innings pitched. Occasionally get past the 5th inning (more than once a blue moon) and match Berrios with 190-200 innings pitched this season. Makes the bullpen that much more effective. Now THAT would be impact.
  4. jkcarew
    Win a playoff series.
  5. jkcarew
    Gonzalez is the definition of a bench guy on a team that expects to compete for a championship. Veteran who can provide near-average offense from either side of plate, and good defense at multiple positions. Adrianza was a revelation offensively in 2019, but, we don't know if he can sustain that. Cave has been even better offensively. Like virtually every bench player on every major-league roster, all of these guys likely suffer if exposed to extended periods of every-day action. For that reason, their redundancy is a good thing, not a bad thing. Meanwhile, if Adrianza can sustain the offense, and one or more of the prospects actually 'arrive', then in 2021 it will probably make sense to let Marwin walk.
  6. jkcarew
    Love this stuff. It does remind me that it would (hopefully will) be great to see these guys compensated a bit better while they pursue their dream. Some mentioned in this article got big signing bonuses, but that's not the case for most that Seth is watching on these back fields. And yet they show up early. Just goes to show you how much most of these guys love the game and what they're willing to go through to stay in it.
  7. jkcarew
    Yep. Informative, but still balanced. Thanks. Eddie's got his issues, but it's not unreasonable to expect an uptick in performance in 2020. Could be important. As good as it looks, the lineup becomes very right-handed, especially in terms of power, if Rosario isn't functioning.
  8. jkcarew
    Emergency? The team won 101 games last year with Kepler (mainly) and Cave playing 83 games in center field. They finished 35-19 (.648, 105 win pace) without Buxton. Why? Because hitting is way more important than the delta between average and great defense....and the guy that got his at-bats (Cave) was good offensively. (Cave provided a much better OBP than Buxton; Buxton a much higher SLG.) That's over 500 major-league PA now for Cave, with results that are pretty hard to find in a reserve player. If the FO thinks Celestino, or Lewis....or Kirilloff (actually more likely) are ready, then fine...bring one of those boys up. But it will likely take more than just a hurt Buxton to convince them to do that...at least until relatively late in the season.
  9. jkcarew
    I'll pile on. Worse idea ever to change approach. He's a a high contact and a high BABiP guy that waits and uses his hands. And it's worked all through his professional career. Is it a formula for having elite value? No. But it's still good and it's a perfect fit for the current Twins lineup.
  10. jkcarew
    "Bumgarner is going to fall off a cliff..." What exactly in Bumgarner's 2019 performance/numbers are you seeing that suggests this...heading into his age 30 season? Or is it just a feeling you have? Decent arguments are out there for Maeda instead of Bumgarner, both performance-wise and certainly contract-wise. But falling off a cliff?
  11. jkcarew
    Eliminate or inhibit shifting and further encourage/reward batters for trying to pull and launch every pitch, in every count, against every pitcher, and in every game situation? If you don't exact the maximum price for that approach, we're going to see even more of it. Ever more of the 3-true-outcome offensive approach. Diversity of offensive style/skill will go from dying to completely dead. No thanks. Back to the new rule... I think you'll see managers start to do some other non-traditional things. For instance, in your scenario...I would expect we will start seeing some instances where the left-handed batter is intentionally walked even if it means putting the go-ahead run in scoring position. I also think, in some scenarios, we will see intentional walks as the play for the 3rd batter. I think it will prove to be a drop in the bucket for impacting the length-of-game issue. Too many other things are contributing to that.
  12. jkcarew
    Just eliminate inter-league games....which serve no purpose in 2020, other than to create unfair/unbalanced scheduling quirks. You automatically have a game both fans and players are more interested in.
  13. jkcarew
    My sense without looking at numbers is that every time the Twins have experienced a multi-season stretch of being good, they've had a trio as good or better than this trio. Maybe I'll feel differently if Maeda surprises.
  14. jkcarew
    Having a hand-full of low-ceiling prospects, with one or two high-ceiling guys just getting their feet wet in AA ball, doesn't make you "famously strong" in starting pitching. In the meantime, if the FO is that worried about Buxton's health and/or performance that they're tempted to trade for a bench player...who isn't very good... they'd be better off simply trading Buxton for a good player.
  15. jkcarew
    Not exactly a huge regression, though. Very similar to what everyone should have expected from Gonzalez. He had one outlier year...and it wasn't 2018.
  16. jkcarew
    The inning in question went single, single, line-out, double, walk, ground-out (error trying to get a double-play), K. So, zero to five extra pitches depending on whether you want to assume a double play on the ground-out. He wasn't good. James Paxton handed his bullpen a shorter game that Berrios did his bullpen. And Berrios won't be matched up against James Paxton the next time the Twins play the Yankees in the post-season.
  17. jkcarew
    Tell me again...what do we get for being the best team in the league in February? I admit, it's nice to know that, even with reasonable regression from several pieces, you should still be in the hunt. But what we still need to hope for is that the favorable surprises outweigh the inevitable unfavorable surprises. If that happens, we're not just 'in a playoff hunt' like would have been the case...in like forever...instead, we'll have a real actual shot at something meaningful. Should be fun!
  18. jkcarew
    Marwin Gonzalez's OPS in 2019 was 3 points higher than it was in 2018.
  19. jkcarew
    Nice, objective article on a player that seems to be pretty much universally admired. Well done. I’m not convinced he can’t figure things out (especially with the change up) and take another step. But this article does a good job of illustrating why...if you have to give him something like #1 money to keep him beyond 2022...it’s not at all clear that you should at this point.
  20. jkcarew
    No. They wouldn’t. At least at this point. Cave now has an 111 OPS+ in over 500 major-league plate appearances.
  21. jkcarew
    I've seen this sentiment pop up a few times during our off-season "impact pitching" saga. Berrios got through 4 innings, having given up 8 base-runners (one on an error)...and he took 88 pitches to do it. His WPA was -.126. If that's how your best pitcher is going to fare in his first start in a 5-game series, your chances of winning that series take a material hit.
  22. jkcarew
    Because it leaves you zero margin for error...even with the 13-man pitching staffs. Last year, the bullpen averaged 3.5 innings pitched per game...and still there were periods when they were taxed, and/or the top arms weren't available. A 'plan' that calls for them to go 4 innings per game isn't viable. Maybe in the future when things (rosters) evolve even further...but for now, your best pitcher still needs to get people out at a decent rate, AND eat innings. And if you have two guys that can eat innings that's twice as good as having one. Right now, the Twins have one.
  23. jkcarew
    I like several of the concepts here...particularly reducing the number of games and moving up the conclusion of the playoffs. But, I think you can get most of what this is getting at in a much more simple way... Eliminate inter-league games. If you're in St. Louis and the 160 times per season you can watch/stream Mike Trout isn't enough...drive to Chicago.Reduce the number of games to 154 (or 148)Don't balance the schedule (that's what the wild card and playoffs are for); keep the regional rivalriesAdd 2 teams to the playoff format (making it 8 teams for each league) The biggest challenges with the ideas in this thread... There's not enough revenue sharing in the foreseeable future for some owners to agree to a format where they can end up playing significantly fewer games than the teams that they have to compete against"not knowing where/who you will be playing until a few days in advance" for a significant number of games played in the summer months? That's an absolute deal-breaker. A HUGE part of baseball game-day revenue is supplied by rural people/families on summer vacations/trips. Teams will reject risking July and August in this manner. Not reject...not even consider.
  24. jkcarew
    "...saying ZiPS is harder on those lower on the defensive spectrum, hated Kirilloff’s 2019 (due to injury and not hitting enough for corner OF/1B) and didn’t like Larnach due to his lack of power." Over half of Larnach's minor-league plate appearances have been in the FSL with Fort Myers. His small sample-power at Pensacola last year was the same as was Jeffers'. Jeffers is getting a big premium here for projecting as a catcher. We'll see. Interestingly, Blankenhorn's power numbers at Pensacola last year were better than both Jeffers and Larnach...and at the same age. And I agree that there was really not much in Kirilloff's 2019 numbers at Pensacola that scream "knocking on door". But he's also a year younger than the others (and having missed one entire year of development).
  25. jkcarew
    If you give Berrios a Jake Odorizzi workload (160 innings vs 200)...and his performance doesn't pop significantly...he becomes less valuable than Odorizzi. At this point in his career, no numbers stand out in driving value more than his innings-pitched numbers....his ability to give the bullpen a relative break on a consistent basis....and his ability to provide something close to decent even on bad days, as opposed to having to mix in 6, 7, 8 extra starts for a #5 or #6 guy...who's top-end is only decent...and short, at that. If limiting his innings doesn't move the bar big-time on effectiveness, you've simply taken a guy who's a number 2 because he can't consistently dominate...and you've made him a 3 because now, he doesn't eat innings, either. Let's hope for a different solution.
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