bean5302

Keirsey can't hit and I don't think he's going to be anything more than serviceable in CF.

Baseballtradevalues has Brendan Donovan at +25MM surplus. Probably in the ballpark of Brooks Lee, a little above a guy like Luke Keaschall. I don't like trading premium prospects for $2MM in savings.

Some overlap as Fangraphs quantifies "primary position" oddly. Assmuming you mean games and not "innings" so a quick search says 150+ games C - 3 1B - 11 2B - 9 3B - 9 SS - 13 LF - 11 CF - 9 RF - 7

A six man rotation makes no sense to me. As almost everybody has agreed, trading Pablo Lopez or Joe Ryan starts in favor of Randy Dobnak starts is a bad idea if you want to win games. Not to mention a couple of rotation arms will go down throughout the year. If you have a six man rotation, that means you need at least 9+ MLB caliber starters. The Twins have 7 guys on the roster I'd be comfortable with in even a spot start capacity. After that, totally unproven minor league depth. The only team who intentionally employed a six man rotation was the Angels when they had Shohei Ohtani. That's after years and years of speculation and pushing by people who just want to be "right" on the internet, but without any concrete or even real suggestive evidence a 6 man rotation carries any benefit for injury prevention or durability. The drawbacks for a 6 man rotation have far outweighed any potential gain for MLB teams so far, and I agree with them.

Yes, if you include the positions where he doesn't field well to hurt his defensive contributions, and look at him from the absolute worst possible projection possible, you can get him alllllllll the way down to 2 WAR.

The Rule 5 draft gives players under 19 an extra year before their eligible. Being on the 40 man doesn't mean debuting. Polanco was signed in 2009. He technically debuted in 2014 with a whopping 8 plate appearances mid-season, 5 years after signing. Polanco didn't spend any significant time on the roster until 2016, 7 years after his signing.

Buxton is a 3 WAR player. He'll play in about 80 games. He'll cover CF in 60 to 70 games. A "healthy offseason" doesn't exist for a guy with chronic migraine, knee, hip, and back issues. He's also had a few hamstring and wrist issues over the years. The chronic health issues aren't going away, they're "chronic" through no fault of his own. Some people get the short end of the stick. Buxton is a pretty freak athlete, IMHO. With that extreme physical capability, not all parts of his anatomy can keep up to his muscle strength.

With a healthy quad, Lewis "should be" quite a bit faster than Castro, but it's tough to know if Lewis will ever get back close to what he was before all the leg injuries. It's tough to gauge arm strength between the two with all the "positional flexibility" preventing them from playing a static position long enough to get throwing speeds listed at the same position on Statcast, but the two are pretty similar if you look at their infield throwing speed. Can't look at overall "arm" because it includes a lot of high velo outfield throws for Castro. Lewis probably has a 60 grade arm. Castro's throws from SS last year would put him in the 70 grade arm category, but there's no history of that. Kinda odd. I'm not sure what Lewis is thinking about 2B long term. I know he didn't like being suddenly and forcibly moved off 3B to a position he'd never played or practiced on a side of the infield he'd never played while he was fighting a slump in the middle of a playoff push in favor of a rookie who wasn't performing. I'm not sure why Baldelli just didn't put Jhoan Duran at 3B. Strong arm, that one.

Castro's pretty good, man. He's not the 6 WAR guy some TD folks were projecting after a month or two of lucky SSSS this year, but he is a solid wRC+ 110 type of hitter with plus defense at 2B. Easily a projectable 3 WAR guy. It's a money issue, and long term issue. Lee is probably around for 5 more years, Lewis around for 4 more. Castro costs 4-6x as much, and "he gone!" after this coming season.

Found you an energy guy. Name's Royce Lewis.

Colt Keith was 21 and had a 300 PA sample size at AAA when he was signed. At age 21, Keith had an ISO of .234 in AAA, and he has plus plus raw power. Brooks Lee was 23 when the Twins called him up, and between 22-23, he had a 282 PA sample size at AAA. Keith age 21 vs. Lee age 22-23 PA 301 vs 282 AVG .287 vs .266 OBP .369 vs .330 SLG .521 vs .500 ISO .234 vs .245 OPS .890 vs .830 Now on to MLB Keith age 22 vs. Lee age 23 PA 556 vs 185 AVG .260 vs .221 OBP .309 vs .265 SLG .380 vs .320 OPS .689 vs .585 wRC+ 97 vs 62 ISO .120 vs .099 EV 87.8 vs 85.8 Max EV 109.4 vs 107.4 Max Throw 81.9mph vs 83.1mph Speed 27.7 vs 25.6 Home to 1B 4.32 vs 4.56 Swing Speed 71.3 vs 69.3 In virtually every conceivable way Colt Keith is better than Brooks Lee. Stronger, faster, younger, better track record, better results, better expected results. Keith raked against fastballs, was well above average against offspeed stuff, but struggled a bit against some breaking balls. Brooks lee couldn't hit fastballs. That's an enormous gap in projectability. It's expected for a 22 year old rookie to struggle a bit against MLB breaking balls, but not nearly so much to see a rookie have major struggles against both 4 seam and sinking fastballs. Lee's bat speed may be a major issue in regard to that since his swing speed is far below average, likewise his max exit velocity suggesting Lee's power tool is well below average. He was one of the slowest runners in all of MLB. Lee's arm is better than Keith's, but Lee's arm is still well below average for a SS/3B. Keith's arm is a tick weaker than Julien's so it's going to be a major issue for him to work on if he doesn't want to be relegated to LF/1B/DH, but apart from that... I mean, what did Lee show? There were valid reasons why Lee struggled against MLB pitching. Limited raw power, slow bat speed, inability to catch up to MLB fastballs, large areas of the plate he couldn't cover, slow down the baseline to first. On top of that, while he was smooth, his physical skill set limited him defensively as well. This article absolutely bleeds desperation like a skydiver in a spiral pulling the emergency cord after cutting a failed main chute away. Even Jim Crane operating without a GM wouldn't give Lee a Colt Keith contract.

What's been talked about is how the Twins do not have any depth. AAA is a ghost farm for positional players. While the Twins could reach down into the depths of their farm system to package up some future guys, Baltimore isn't going to be interested since they're in their window of competitive play, and Mountcastle will cost $6MM the Twins can't afford to absorb, and he's not a great player. The Twins will need to trade from their MLB ready players to get Mountcastle, and to get the Orioles to eat salary will be expensive in prospect capital. Marco Raya/Zebby Matthews + Austin Martin or something like that might do it. That's also if you believe Mountcastle is actually an upgrade from Miranda, which I don't.

Pretty furious take there. The Twins do have a lot of potential starting pitching prospects on the cusp of being MLB ready, but I wouldn't bank on any of the AAA depth guys being as good as Lopez or Ryan. A year can make a lot of difference. Right now, the starting rotation looks like: Lopez, Ryan, Ober, Paddack, SWR. Already debuted depth - Festa, Matthews AAA depth - #5 Morris, #6 Raya, #13 Lewis

Honestly, this amounts to America telling poor countries what to do so as to not inconvenience a small portion of our entertainment. Median Household Income $1,000? - Cuba $2,700 - Venezuela $4,000 - Dominican Republic Those countries are where almost all international prospects come from and you're talking about countries with limited technology and recordkeeping. Internet access for those countries is 50-65% with rates dramatically lower in rural areas. Venezuelans are dealing with a nearly 20%hunger rate right now. When you're talking about going from your family almost starving to generational wealth overnight, you're going to have these scams. MLB teams do not benefit from age scams. MLB teams get hurt by age scams, which is why there are so many levels of background checking, and systems to address other issues like education and PED usage.

International players are often signed by age 16 so it takes a lot lot longer for them to make an appearance. Emmanuel Rodriguez leads a handful of Twins top prospects who came from international signings. Max Kepler, Jorge Polanco, and Miguel Sano all took between 6-7 years to debut.

I'm glad to see Santana win the award. I'm sure he takes a lot of pride in his defense, and he's played a long time in the league so this is something special he can hang his hat on. It wouldn't surprise me if this was a personal goal of his. He's probably kicking himself that it wasn't one of his escalators this year, but he did hit both $125k performance bonus goals, hah.

There are yellow flags with Miranda, and aspects of his game which put a real hard ceiling on him, but I think the floor looks pretty solid as well. With any pre-arb player, there are reasons to speculate on how sustainable performance is, but Miranda has as much going for him as any pre-arb background character guy slated for an every day starter position.

Add me to the absolutely no debate whatsoever crowd. There is utterly no question the Twins are going to either avoid arbitration with Jeffers or tender him whatever contract gets decided on during arbitration. 29 teams would line up to bring Jeffers in at $5MM. It'd be like non-tendering Joe Ryan.

If I were Derek Falvey, I'd have the trade form for Brooks Lee already for signature and sitting on my desk for every single team in baseball with just the opposing team's player(s) missing from the document so I could scan and email it before the end of the phone call. Just in case another team still viewed Lee as a potential elite value prospect.

5) Joe Ryan - I think Ryan would command a sizeable return, and he's likely much more coveted than Bailey Ober based on reputation and the way the Twins have deployed him. Dealing Ryan away with 3 years of team control and arbitration when he's considered the 2nd best pitcher in the rotation would be a pretty aggressive move. I think the Twins would only do this if they got an MLB ready ace potential pitcher in return like an Andrew Painter or Brandon Sproat (who I wanted to target in my offseason plan last year...). No way you can move Ryan without having the potential to get something back even better than he is expected to be. 4) Buxton's going nowhere. Full NTC, negative trade value. 3) Carlos Correa is shown with positive trade value on Baseballtradevalues.com, but I think the only legitimate potential trade partner is the Washington Nationals. If the Twins can move Correa's full contract, they will, but again, I think the Nationals are the only dance partner in MLB. Other teams already have "good" shortstops or payroll restrictions or aren't seen as possessing win-now potential. 2) Pablo Lopez. Unlike most people, I am not and never have been that high on Pablo Lopez. Historically, he's been a back end #2 or elite #3 guy in terms of actual results. He's unusual to classify because he does have longer straight stretches of dominance, but it's almost like he's either an ace or a #5 rotation arm and you roll the dice on which guy you get. A $22MM 3.75 ERA pitcher is a luxury which stretches the Twins' payroll situation, though I'm at a loss as to how the Twins would replace Lopez since Minnesota actually needs an ace. Baseballtradevalues also disagrees with me having Lopez at +37.4 surplus value, and MLBTR staff has been on record saying Lopez would instantly be one of the elite coveted arms available this offseason if the Twins were to make him available. I do think the likelihood of Minnesota going to back to the Terry Ryan/Derek Falvey roots and assembling a rotation full of #3-4 guys is high. It's also possible the Twins could package some elite talent (some they've acquired from moving Lopez) to pry a near ready very high ceiling starter prospect away from a team. 1) Royce Lewis. Though I'm not planning on being a season ticket holder, trading Royce Lewis would seriously impact my opinion of the team. He's the only guy on the roster I would bet on likely winning an MVP in his career, and the only guy on the team who has "it" when it comes to being the face of the franchise. Lewis could be the next Kirby Puckett. The way the Twins treated him last year is unbelievable. If anything showed why Baldelli should've gotten a pink slip, it's how he treated the face of the franchise as a number in a database.

I think you need to consider the overall objective. The Twins won't part with Wallner for prospects unless they're doing a full rebuild, in which case, Wallner makes little sense to move as he's pre-arb. If the Twins moved Wallner, it'd be for like Wilyer Abreu and Kyle Teel. Now that's an example trade that makes sense from the Twins' perspective on a huge overpay by Boston.

"All" the holes? Anyway, it doesn't matter since you're convinced the outcome would have been the same no matter what the Twins did it seems.

With an 8 man bullpen, that's 240 relief pitchers in MLB at any given time, but of the 167 relievers with 48+ innings pitched, Jorge Alcala ranked #62 in ERA at 3.24. Puts him as an average team's 2nd best reliever. xERA ranks Alcala quite a bit higher, but his SIERA, FIP and xFIP are all less bullish. In terms of actual results, Alcala was very good.

Another pretty much no brainer decision. Alcala is being brought back, especially at a highly team friendly $1.5MM option. MLBTR has Alcala slated at $1.7MM as an arbitration estimate. Declining the option is the same as non-tendering him, which would be pretty out there. Top 10% of MLB in exit velocity, expected batting average against, xwOBA on contact, hard hits allowed, and his Stuff+ grades out at near plus levels for all 4 pitches. He'd be a great option to turn into starter if he had the durability. He needs to locate his stuff a little better and he'd be dominant. The upside is way too high for $1.5MM.

If the Twins just declined the option on Polanco, they're in exactly the same spot, but with $5.25MM more to spend. If you like Gonzalez, that's fine, but he wasn't going to help fill any of the holes the Twins had in 2024.