bean5302

Man, I wish some of you guys could be GM for a day (not of the Twins) so I could watch you absolutely ruin a franchise in under 2 weeks, LOL

Ryan no longer has organizational change value. The trade needed to happen before Skubal's arbitration result if Joe Ryan was going to bring back a load. That arbitration result probably reduced Ryan's value by about $12MM in surplus right there. On top of that, Ryan's peripherals and expected numbers are down this year and you add in an elbow injury scare? Now, should Joe Ryan be traded before the deadline? Probably not given the AL Central's weakness right now. The Twins are only 2.5 GB from the lead.

Sure would send a signal to all the players with options. You'd better hit a home run every single time you come to the plate or your job will be replaced by some AAAA journeyman hitting below the Mendoza line in St. Paul. It's a great message. The team has no faith in you and is not invested in you in any way.

First 12 games for Royce Lewis before IL 45PA .222/.378/.444 OPS .822 wRC+ 133 17.8% BB, 26.7% K, .273 BABIP Next 11 games after his return 44PA .122/.159/.195 OPS .354 wRC+ (7) 2.3% BB, 34.1% K, .154 BABIP Royce Lewis was hitting at an All Star level two weeks ago. Folks around here have their pitchforks flailing at everybody. Lewis is clearly hyper aggressive right now, and he has been since he came back up. He needs to settle down a bit. Also, it's hack writing to be making definitive statements about defensive prowess based on 20 games for DRS/OAA. As I pointed out on another thread yesterday, the best defensive 2B in all of baseball by a substantial margin right now is Luis Arraez.

and Luis Arraez is by far the best fielding 2B in all of baseball between OAA and DRS. Maybe a bit early in the season for these defensive metrics meaning anything...

I'm awfully skeptical of their assertions. It seems to me that Minnesota MiLB starting pitchers are often far behind other teams' innings. 100 innings isn't particularly noteworthy in my opinion. If the Twins are having a hard time getting their starters to 100 innings, they're not developing them right. For Tampa Bay last year, who is far and away more successful than Minnesota at developing pitchers, had 5 starters with more than 110 innings last year in AA and AAA alone. It's just not a big deal. Their biggest inning eaters were in the 160+ innings area. Our MiLB pitchers often need 15-20 pitches to get through an inning which means we're probably going to see them limited to 3-4 innings. Not sure how 40 starts at 3.2 innings and piggy-backing vs 30 starts at 4.2 innings gets prospects more innings or prepares them to be successful at the MLB level. The concept of piggybacking has been discussed ad nauseam around here. It doesn't add up. You wind up pitching your ace less in favor of your #6 guy more. There are only 26 rosters spots. This doesn't work in reality because you don't know when guys are going to pitch a good game or a bad one. This results in a bullpen which is too shallow, inconsistent workloads, routines and IMHO, elevated risk of injury.

I read things which aren't there sometimes too, lol. I should slow down and trust that extra 3 seconds won't make a difference to my life as I saunter over to the sofa later in the day anyway LOL

Nobody is taught to strike out. They're taught to swing hard at pitches they think they can hit hard, and not to swing at pitches they don't think they can hit hard. Joe Mauer and Byron Buxton are on record about how the velo for pitchers changed the game for hitters. In 2007, the median fastball was 90.7mph. The bottom quartile started at 87mph. Greg Maddux was highly effective throwing 80.9mph that year and the bottom of the charts saw fastballs in the 78mph range. 1995 probably had an average fastball of 85mph. Brain time to see the ball, 100ms Brain time to start a swing 25ms Muscle time to get the swing into the strike zone 150ms The time for a ball to reach home plate from release is about 385ms these days. The time to reach home plate in 1995 was probably 425ms. Decision time in 1995, on average for a fastball, was probably 145ms. Today, it's 105ms. Batters have about 40% less time to recognize a pitch today than they did back when slap singles and the average hitter could bat .290 with a 1/3rd of the league being .300 hitters. Now, a batter can go with the Luis Arraez method. Slow swings, slapping at the ball. The Tsuyoshi Nishioka approach. It doesn't work a lot.

Not sure why Wallner is the same as every hitter who has a high K rate. There's little in common between him and Amick. Amick hits right handed, hasn't generated power at lower levels and isn't taking walks at AA. Outside a short little spurt in AA, Amick hasn't consistently generated power. Wallner hits left handed, always generated a ton of power, and he took a ton of walks to push his on base percentage up at AA. If you want to make a better comp from a results and batted ball standpoint, Amick is a lot more like a right handed hitting Trevor Larnach. Amick needs to make a huge improvement at the plate to be a viable option at MLB

He's made of glass. This isn't a comment about being injured one time when he ran into a wall. It's from the constant trips to the IL. There's always a reason he's on the IL.

I didn't say that. I said "Cardenas" is looking like Wallner. Olivar might be taking Cardenas' place in AAA? Hopefully, maybe? Though Cardenas is considered a good defensive guy as I recall where Olivar is not.

So you knew at the beginning of 2021 exactly how the full season would go for those pitchers?

No, it's part of a mutual option to avoid arbitration. If Joe Ryan remains healthy and pitches the same as he did last year, he'll probably make $20MM in arbitration, provided there's no lockout and provided the rules don't change in the new CBA, both have uncertainty.

There's a mutual option, but the Twins have 100% control over Ryan. He's arb 3 next year. I'd imagine the Twins would decline the $13MM mutual option (insurance against the Skubal contract for both sides), and then the Twins would offer Ryan substantially less. Probably like $10MM or less. If Ryan comes back quick and pitches well this year, under the current CBA and the Skubal decision, he'd likely get $20MM as Arb 3 so he's all but certain to decline the $13MM option at that point. If Skubal lost his hearing, Ryan would have been in line to get probably $8MM in arbitration. Made sense for both sides to hedge their bets a little, I guess?

Bradley has looked great, and I sincerely hope he can keep it up. After Bradley, confidence is low now that Ryan is headed to the IL. Ober's smoke and mirrors have been well stocked, but I don't believe in his ability to keep this up long. Prielipp is getting his first taste of pro ball, and he wasn't completely ready. Hopefully, he's able to keep getting outs and he can learn and adjust on the job faster than the scouting reports build. There's a lot to like, but plenty to be wary of, too. SWR is certainly not looking like an MLB caliber rotation arm. As I feared, an inability to generate strikeouts and an inability to be stingy with the free pass has really exposed him this year so far. I'm not sure what there is in the tank to take a step forward. Matthews. He's sucked all year. Like bad. In Spring Training, in AAA to open the year. He wasn't getting good results as a starter at the MLB level last year or the year prior, either. Can his devotion to the sinker lit up by AAA hitters generate some GIDP's and save him from the inability to strand base runners? There's hope, but little confidence. Morris? I'll take my chances with Sim.

Love this line "...even while facing older..." It's the ultimate catch phrase which actually has little to no value. I would certainly hope any prospect worth talking about was playing against MiLB roster filler older than the prospect. Otherwise, they're not a prospect. Bummer to see Jenkins on the IL again. He's been walking more than striking out at AAA, and the bat heating up was relief to see. He's definitely made of glass, though. Kadim Diaw is the same age as the average hitter in the league. It's nice to see him have a warm up after an ice cold start, but he's an extreme longshot to make MLB. He doesn't have the bat to play outfield and he doesn't have the glove to be a catcher. Ricardo Olivar is .360/.458/.860 OPS 1.318 over his past 14 games in Wichita. Similarly challenged as Diaw behind the plate, but hitting well enough to see him make his way up the ladder. Cardenas needs to produce and get in some good contact. He's looking like Matt Wallner at the plate, only Cardenas is doing it in the minors. Olivar should probably supplant somebody in St. Paul soon. It's rough that there are so few bright spots in the MiLB system right now for Minnesota, but Miguel Briceno has quietly worked his way into an ever day player position this spring. Acquired as a rule 5 MiLB pick from the Brewers in the 2024 offseason, the Venezuelan doesn't have a lot of impressive history, but he's showing up to the tune of a .300/.391/.600 OPS .991 batting line since becoming a regular on 4/23. 2024 4th rounder, Jamie Ferrier, has belted 5 home runs over his past 15 games as well, helping him to a .319/.429/.702 OPS 1.131 stat line. The walks and power are way up compared to his previous seasons. I'd imagine he's on the short list to move up to AA.

You mean revisionist history like to start 2021 Kenta Maeda was coming off the the runner up for the AL Cy Young with a 2.70 ERA and Michael Pineda's 3.38 ERA in the previous season had them being serviceable while "awesome" Jose Berrios had a 4.00 ERA that year?

Sim has never thrown a 97.0mph fastball in his pro career. Not once in the thousands of pitches he's thrown has he hit 97. The fastest recorded 4 seamer of his career came on 6/21/2025 where he managed 96.5mph. He had 4 pitches at 96.0+ last year. He hit 96.0mph for a single time this year. Only 4 pitches all year have been at 95.0mph or higher. So as you point out, SWR sits at 92-93, with a max of 95 at this point, but a single inning pen move probably puts him at 94-96 which isn't going to move the needle much. Honestly, his biggest issue is he doesn't have any good pitches. They're all below average so he has to have pinpoint control to make them work, and he also needs great discipline to allow walks rather than trying to challenge hitters. Joe Ryan struggled with not being willing to walk a guy in his earlier years. Sim needs to paint it because hitters won't chase his stuff, and he can't get too far into the zone because they'll make him pay. Moving him to the bullpen where he can try to keep hitters off balance in smaller sample sizes and using a 5 pitch mix to keep them off balance might be the best option for him.

Tom Pohlad's job is not related to roster management. Thinking the owners are scrubbing toilets, walking the stands as concessions vendors, fixing the HVAC systems, and watering the lawn or doing player evaluations is the equivalent of tying them to player evals and roster decisions. The Pohlads have been bad owners. Joe Pohlad was a bad spokesman. The Pohlads should wear their mistakes, and I've walked the walk on that by not renewing my season tickets. Roster decisions are not the job of the owners. Tom Pohlad has been clear he's not comfortable making baseball decisions. He doesn't have the expertise, but he's active at his job, which is setting ownership goals, philosophies and communicating budgets and overall vision for the franchise. I grasp this. Payroll constraints have an impact on the roster. Luckily, there are more ways to build rosters or manage payrolls than only free agency. I grasp this. Trading Pablo Lopez would have freed up $22MM in payroll capacity which could have been used for the bullpen. Trading Walker Jenkins or Emmanuel Rodriguez or Luke Keaschall could have brought back talent to fill other roles, etc. I grasp this. Falvey was fired because he didn't make the kind of aggressive moves Tom Pohlad wanted. Pohlad has been clear he wishes he was in his role earlier so he could have directed the offseason plan more consistent with his philosophy rather than taking over late in the offseason where options were much more limited. I grasp this.

Viola was not part of the 1991 team, he was traded a couple years after the 1987 World Series team.

I can't imagine a worse use of resources for this team than trying to piece together a bullpen from the waiver wire or guys nobody wanted when half the position players are pretty much replacement level and the rotation is in shambles. I also can't imagine where somebody would think all these better bullpen arms are going to come from.

I am aware.

Here's hoping Ryan just has inflammation, although that seems like an longshot. To suddenly have a pop or something in the elbow at the start of the game? Does not look good. The Twins have shown exactly why you either commit to building a winner or you rebuild for the next window. Also, a huge loss for Ryan as he was likely going to be making big dollars this coming season.

and the 1989 Twins let Viola walk at the deadline only to win the World Series in 1991 again. Why would they do such a thing?! The 1989 Twins had a solid, inexpensive, projectable core. So did the 1986 Twins. The 2026 Twins? Nope.

The owners do not make roster decisions. There's a reason GMs exist. GMs make roster decisions. If you don't like the bullpen, that's not on the Pohlads, that's on Falzoll. Did you expect Tom Pohlad to pick up the phone and start calling agents and signing bullpen arms behind the GM's back?