bean5302

I'd be surprised if Varland was on the depth chart as a starter at all right now. He's been pretty awful as a starter, even at AAA this year.

Would be nice for the folks who have Comcast to be able to watch the games, but Diamond Sports is probably not coming out of bankruptcy or for long if they do manage to make it out, IMHO. It's clear their only major sports partner (MLB) is livid with them. I'm skeptical the Pohlads have learned their lesson so I think there's a good chance they will try to partner with Diamond yet again. From 2 months ago, when baseball owners were already furious. https://frontofficesports.com/mlb-weighs-media-overhaul-as-manfred-deals-with-dsg-turmoil/#:~:text=Manfred said he still anticipates,of you have missed that.”

I was on board with the Pohlads losing money until this year's analysis was released projecting the Twins having made $19MM in operating income last year. It made sense to be cautious to cut payroll down to where they did, but not to keep it here if the team was in contention and had needs for the playoffs. The Pohlads also chose to stick with Diamond Sports and Dave St. Peter despite the president and CEO missing goal after goal these past few years. The Pohlads chose incompetence so asking the fans to bail them out feels disingenuous.

It does not matter why Kirilloff is hurt or how legitimate the injury is. He misses huge portions of the season every year, and when he does play, he's been bad. You arguing that maybe, for the first time in his MLB career that Kirilloff will either A) not be hurt or B) actually tell the team how hurt he is and, that C) if he's actually playing while not under condition A or B that he'll be good enough to warrant a roster position as a platoon only DH seems far fetched. He's ARB2 and out of options after this year. In 900 plate appearances, he has generated ZERO WAR. Literally, you could replace him with any team's AAA 1B and they'd have been just as good as Kirilloff over the past 3 years.

DRS and UZR use the exact same data set from BIS. UZR is not the same as Total Zone so talking about UZR being decrepit while praising DRS isn't rational. Suggesting the use of Miranda against RHP and Kirilloff against LHP? That's not what was being suggested, and that would make even less sense. DRS doesn't cap difficulty level adjustments, and it breaks the data set down into more precise batted ball data, even if the batted ball data from BIS isn't exact enough to warrant the tolerance DRS attempts to achieve. Basically, DRS has the potential to have a bunch of extra noise in their factors. UZR caps the adjustments for difficult plays made or easy plays missed, and UZR tosses data from extreme shifts. UZR is more stable than DRS, but DRS may be better or worse on any given player due to more aggressive adjustments to value. Fangraphs isn't infallible, but there's good reason they chose to use UZR for WAR over DRS, which Baseball Reference uses for WAR. Using a single defensive metric, especially in small sample sizes of less than 2 full seasons (with the same home stadium for OF) is just asking for poor results. OAA is the new kid on the block, but it's the least stable of any of the new big metrics. OAA is all over the place. Using it stand alone is nuts, IMHO.

Kirilloff always has an excuse. Even if Kirilloff as good as you think he is, Miranda is just as good against RHP as Kirilloff is so there's no reason to push Kirilloff into the lineup, and it's not like you could count on Kirilloff to produce for more than 150-200 PA between "injuries" during the season. A career 0.1 WAR guy in 249 games and 884 plate appearances no matter how you look at it. Either Kirilloff hides his "injury" from the team and produces poorly or he reveals his injury and spends 6 weeks to 6 months on the IL. Choose your 0 WAR production method.

Personally, I'd trade Pablo Lopez, Chris Paddack this offseason and use the farm to acquire cost controlled upper rotation arms if they're so hard up for cash. If the Twins want to be like the "Rays" or "Guardians" this is how they operate. Zebby Matthews and Andrew Morris really need to work out.

Paxton to the Red Sox. https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2024/07/dodgers-trade-james-paxton-red-sox.html

Yes. Blake Snell is the guy. His $15MM salary this year is the only thing it's going to cost the Twins. While there is the $30MM opt in, it's just a formality, the same as the 2yrs/$70MM for Carlos Correa in 2022. Snell will 100% opt out unless he's catastrophically bad or he's going to lose the entire 2024 campaign to injury. The risk is partially what will make Snell affordable. Additionally, if Snell were to "opt in" it's not a big deal. His 2025 salary 50% deferred meaning the acquiring club is only on the hook for $15MM in 2025, deferring $15MM 2 additional years to 2027. That gives any acquiring team plenty of time to adjust their roster if they have payroll capacity issues like the Twins. Blake Snell received a 6yr $150MM offer from the Yankees last offseason. He'll receive at least a 5yr $100MM offer this year if he pitches well. He'll be 32 next year which will be at the limits of his long term contract potential, and he's got $17MM of signing bonus coming to him for 2025 regardless of the contract he takes so he can afford to use that as a hedge fund to prop himself up if he doesn't get the perfect contract he wants. Snell's opt out is just as minimally risky as it can be.

Amazon.com Comcast.com Microsoft.com Apple.com Google.com Walmart.com Tesla.com There's tons of opportunities to help the destitute billionaires.

I'd actually donate to this, just for the ability to hold it over the Pohlad's heads next time I see Jim headed through Club Level up to the suites.

Some players I think are more likely to be traded. Luke Keaschall Eduoard Julien David Festa Louie Varland Gabriel Gonzalez Marco Raya Payton Eeles

There is exactly one name on that entire list which has any trade value. Matt Wallner, and it would likely be a colossal mistake to trade him, IMHO. *Severino - He might have a little value. a24, AAA wRC+ 113 on the season. DFA guys *Farmer - DFA in waiting. He's cooked, at least in Minnesota. There are too many players on the Twins' roster to keep Farmer for a late inning defensive replacement or occasional slap single PH. Good guy, but being a good clubhouse guy fans can relate to doesn't keep you on the team on its own. Non-tender guys *Kirilloff, might as well DFA. Non-tender guys aren't bringing anything back. *Winder - Zero value here. I thought Winder was going to turn into a mid rotation arm, maybe even better a couple years ago. Huge fan of his, but I think his shoulder troubles finally caught up to his stuff. He hasn't been the same as he was so his projectability has dropped. He's almost certainly getting non-tendered this offseason as he's out of options after this year. *Henriquez - No value here. Never had any when the Rangers tossed him in with the Garver trade to clear space on their 40 man. Adequate bullpen depth, but no options beyond this year. *Canterino, if a team feels like they need more guys on their 60 man IL, Canterino's your guy. I think he's also a non-tender candidate, but maybe a little less-so because there's maybe some hope left still in regard to his talent and he's got options. Still, he hasn't pitched a single competitive inning since July 30th, 2022, and he only has 34.1 innings above the low minors at age 24.

LOL, I wouldn't say that. Martin's arm is average for a LF, well below average for a RF, but not the absolute worst or anything. Averages 84.8mph with a max of 94.3mph. The max is right in line with good RF's. Martin doesn't seem to have the right instincts for when he needs to put extra on the throws.

Carlos Santana's UZR is average. His RF/9 is low. His DRS is good and his OAA is great, but like this site is so apt to do, we find the very best metric, even if it's unreliable, for a player and treat it as gospel. Santana's been good this year. MIRANDA IS NOT A PLATOON CANDIDATE. At all. Like 0%, and it's super easy to discover that with 30sec of Fangraphs' split tool. I've seen Miranda be noted as a potential platoon guy over and over and over on this site. I guess it's out of absolute desperation to justify keeping Kirilloff on the roster or something? wRC+ Career vs. LHP = 108, vs. RHP = 120 2024 vs. LHP = 87, vs. RHP 177 2023 vs. LHP = 56, vs. RHP 57 2022 vs. LHP = 132, vs. RHP 110

Kinda kills any potential "platoon" benefit from pulling your best players for a backup, doesn't it?

Having a hard time with phrases like "likely playoff teams" and the concept of month of "May" and then it's hard to count, huh?

Won the Cy Young in 2020. Career 3.79 ERA. Career 3.87 FIP. Both similar to Pablo Lopez. Was earning $38MM a year with the most desirable team in baseball. Dominating his leagues the last two years he's been pitching, including leagues where the top pitchers signed this past couple seasons have: 2.92 ERA - Yoshinobu Yamamoto 2.84 ERA - Shota Imanaga 2.98 ERA - Kodai Senga 2023 A few other pretty decent pitchers who came out of Japan in the last decade or so. Yu Darvish. Shohei Ohtani. Kenta Maeda. Stick to virtue signaling, like I said. It makes you a bad person on the inside (where it counts), but it looks good on paper to the rest of the world when you need to pretend you're a good person.

Okay. Lets stretch this out: Reporter: Are you being told by ownership you cannot add any amount to the payroll at the deadline? Falvey: We're looking at a lot of different options, and if we find the right fit, we'll be open to making a move. I haven't been given a specific number by ownership, but I think we're happy with our roster and our payroll situation if we're not able to find the right fit. Reporter: Has ownership given you a ballpark number for you to add? Falvey: We evaluate every player and opportunity on its own merit. We don't come into a trade deadline or offseason with a set budget range in mind that we're trying to find players to get to a certain dollar amount. Like, oh, we have an extra 10 million we still need to spend to hit our target. It doesn't work that way for us. Reporter: Is there room to add an upper rotation arm like Max Scherzer or a Blake Snell at the deadline? Falvey: I can't comment on specific players under contract with other teams. As I talked about, we look at tons of different guys and try to evaluate whether or not a player is a fit with us here, can they help us win games here, and whether or not we the player's existing team is a willing trade partner for that player. Reporter: There's been a lot of speculation and reporting that ownership is set on the payroll and you'll have to subtract payroll to add even $5MM of remaining salary. Is that true? Falvey: It's going to depend on the specific player involved whether or not they give us a clear advantage. If we're in agreement with ownership about something being a great opportunity to acquire a player who might require us to expand the budget somewhat, I expect ownership would support the move, but again, we're happy with our team as-is, we think it's a competitive team we can take into the playoffs so the bar to add value to the guys we already have is going to be high. I hope you can see how this goes...

Joe Pohlad talked about other organizations being competitive with lower payrolls, specifically mentioning the Baltimore Orioles and Tampa Bay Rays. Joe Pohlad "I think in today's game you can see there are a number of different ways to win," Pohlad said when discussing cutting payroll during the offseason. "You see that both with the Tampa Bay Rays and with the Baltimore Orioles having lower payrolls, turning out very successful products on the field but also investing in other areas of the business. That is something that we are doing. But without a question the television situation is having an impact on our business but beyond that we're just trying to right-size our business. That goes into it as well." Now, the issue with this is nobody else has been as successful as the Rays with their approach. The Rays have terrible, horrible, awful attendance and live purely off revenue sharing. That's their approach. The Twins ownership committed to long term, big contracts like Carlos Correa, Byron Buxton, and Pablo Lopez. Two of those with NTC. You cannot reverse course suddenly after committing to that previous philosophy unless you can push those contracts off the books. Tampa Bay typically runs payrolls in that $70-100MM range, and they trade all their players away with 1-2 years of control left. The Orioles ran payrolls up to $175MM by 2017 before a commitment to a 5 year tank for a rebuild strategy where they were the worst team in MLB. Apparently, the Pohlads missed this part. The Diamondbacks ran payrolls as high as $171MM this year as well, plus $142MM back in 2017. Up until 2022, the Kansas City Royals had even run a max payroll larger than the maximum of the Minnesota Twins, hitting $142MM in 2016. The Guardians pushed to $143MM in 2018 as well where the Twins' max at that point was $121MM (2017). Almost all small/mid market teams will expand payrolls when they have a chance at contending. The Twins... well, the Pohlads have essentially said they won't anymore, but the Twins are NOT a small market team. They're a poorly managed (from an operations standpoint) mid market team. They're on par with Seattle.

If it takes 3 years for the MLB ready guys they acquired to play and none of the players acquired make an impact in the postseason results, not so sure. The NPV of that trade doesn't look great unless the Twins do something in the postseason soon, IMHO.

Castillo DFAd

It's $20MM, dude. I'd like to have a Jaguar F Pace in the garage. I have a Ford Focus. You have to live within your means and if ownership is dictating those means are $20-30MM lower, you make cuts you have to make, not that you like to make. Buxton has a NTC and the Twins don't have a legit CF replacement option. Correa has a NTC and the Twins don't have a legit replacement option (Lewis always hurt, Lee hasn't proven himself, Castro is nearing free agency and getting expensive)

The first steps to Flaherty is looking at his results vs. expected and Stuff+, IMHO. It kind of cuts through a lot of the speculation on whether or not he's the same pitcher getting oddly different results. ERA 4.99 -> 3.13 xERA 5.06 -> 2.95 (relies on batted ball data) FIP 4.36 -> 3.15 xFIP 4.36 -> 2.47 (normalized FIP for average HR rate) SIERA ->4.53 -> 2.59 (relies on batted ball data) His fastball is still league average 98 vs. 96 His changeup is dramatically better 68 -> 94 His knuckle curve is significantly better 93 -> 103 Location+ is slightly better 99 -> 104, and it's all based on fastball location. His other pitches are rarely used. Location and results F-Strike% is up Sw-Strike% is up O-swing is up O-contact is down Flaherty's 4 seamer is moving a lot better this year with a little less vertical drop and finally a little horizontal movement, and the movement has come from active spin rate where Flaherty is getting his fastball to move in unison with the spin he's putting on it. From a Stuff+ standpoint, it doesn't grade any better. That said... The changeup is moving the same, but it grades way higher because it's being compared to the fastball and there's now more separation of the two pitches, and the same with the curve. The change to Flaherty's fastball has made both the curve and the changeup far more effective. In bold are red flags for me. There aren't that many of them, but locating pitches and first pitch strike rates feel like a good/bad Liriano to me. It's tough for me to get on board with a veteran player really changing that consistently.

Reporter: Are you being told by ownership you cannot add any amount to the payroll at the deadline? Falvey: We're looking at a lot of different options, and if we find the right fit, we'll be open to making a move. I haven't been given a specific number by ownership, but I think we're happy with our roster and our payroll situation if we're not able to find the right fit. That's what a direct question/answer would look like. Dodge.