bean5302

Polanco's a very good player and it's well recognized here and across the league. This year he's really made a big change in plate discipline and it's paid off with an elite walk rate which I wouldn't have expected, and I think that further elevates his game quite a bit. Defensive metrics continue to be very divided on him and it has a big impact on fWAR vs bWAR. I think the question on Polanco is about how much the Twins gain or lose by having Arraez as the starting 2B and what Polanco could bring to the team in terms of trade value.

The level of butt-hurt in here... It's as if this guy just slapped your mom and tripped your dad (who was using crutches at the time) in front of you before doing one of those douchey back up with the arms spread, head tilted "whatcha gonna do?" faces. The potential of the White Sox is undeniable. They're sleeping monsters right now. If their pitchers figure some stuff out and have a couple bounces go their way, that team could be unstoppable. Cease is an ace this year Kopech has ace potential. Giolito has ace potential. Lynn has ace potential Cueto is having a nice resurgence year Every single one of those guys is arguably potentially better than any pitcher we have. Certainly everybody excluding Cueto. Now, when it comes to the offensive side, they could use a little help, but Moncada appears to finally be waking up and Eloy Jimenez was just activated. Both have more potential than any player not named Buxton on the Twins. The White Sox could easily go on a .700 winning percentage to end the season and the Twins have been under .500 since mid/late May. The White Sox's schedule is more than 1/2 made up of series' against losing teams, most of whom are going to be sellers and will probably further regress. Rockies (.450, bad, sellers) Athletics (.376, terrible, sellers) Royals (.394 terrible, sellers) Rangers (.449 bad) Royals (.394 terrible, sellers) Tigers (.400 terrible) Astros (.650 excellent) Guardians (.510 good) Royals (.394 terrible, sellers) Orioles (.505, wow, I didn't expect that, go Orioles) Diamondbacks (.459, bad, sellers) Royals (.394 terrible, sellers) Twins (.531 good) Mariners (.540 good) Athletics (.376 terrible, sellers) Rockies (.450 bad, sellers) Tigers (.400, terrible) Guardians (.510 good) Tigers (.400, terrible) Twins (.531 good) Padres (.550 very good) Twins (.531 good) I do not like the White Sox, but I recognize how much money has been spent there and just how much talent that team has. The fact they're hovering around .500 this year feels like an act of God.

Martin hurt his elbow diving for a ball on July 7th. It wasn't expected to be long term.

Beckham has a long MLB track record. He's not serviceable away from 3B and has nearly 2000 plate appearances where he's been league average. He's got like a .556 BABIP right now. If his K:BB ratio were reversed, I'd be inclined to agree with you because that would signal a change in Beckham's approach. Instead, it just seems like all the balls he's hitting have eyes. To be honest, there's not much more a guy can do from a stats standpoint to have earned a chance, but at age 32, he had to know he was a long shot. It's just not a good decision organizationally to call him up, and I don't suspect any contender would be interested in a 32 year old scrub level veteran 3B, even if he is cheap.

Buxton has a huge contract in front of him and he's an All Star caliber player, not an MVP caliber player even when he's playing. Buxton was the 4th best CF in the AL by WAR at the All Star break this year and he's close to a pace for being qualified for the 2nd time in his career. Considering his big contract, Buxton doesn't generate a ton of surplus value. The dreams of a 10 WAR season are so far fetched...

I haven't seen a lot of evidence of any pitchers being able to depress the HR/FB rate long term and analysis shows xFIP is a significantly better tool at forecasting performance than FIP. All the metrics are flawed to a degree. Maybe there's a pitcher where xFIP isn't as accurate as FIP, but there's plenty of red flag on deciding Mahle will be super effective with the Twins. Especially if the playoffs go through a homer prone ball park.

I think the Red Sox are cooked at this point. They have a negative run differential and their only shot is a Wildcard spot where they're 5 games back right now. Eovaldi is interesting to me. Maybe Vazquez. I wish Buxton was actually healthy enough to play CF every day. It would potentially open the door for JD Martinez if the Twins could shuffle some guys.

His xFIP is 4.12. His ERA is 4.48, right in line with the career spreads. He's not way better. Mahle has a very good K rate, but his walk rate is pretty poor. Home and away ERA/FIP splits are pretty extreme 5.06/3.74 for ERA and 5.11/3.52 for FIP, but his xFIP away doesn't show the same advantage as it still sits in a back end rotation arm slot at 4.16 due largely to the fact he puts way, way more balls into play away from home. Mahle is also the poster child for never allow 3rd TTO. He may be better than 5th rotation arm, but he's not somebody I would expect to be solid in the middle or better spot in a playoff rotation.

I think it's safe to call Winder's career as a starter to be likely over right now.

Twins trade Keoni Cavaco and Aaron Sabato for Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani. That would be pretty ideal.

Let's be honest, Falvey has a fetish for bat only guys who could be outrun by a guy in a power wheelchair with a dead battery. Miranda, Urshela, Larnach, Arraez, Sano, Correa, Sanchez, Garlick, Celestino, Contreras... they're all well below average runners for their positions. The only quicker than average for their position guys we have are probably Gordon, Kepler and Buxton. There is very little speed on the team and it doesn't feel like there's an effort to stress base running awareness. Brian Dozier wasn't a fast guy, but heads up base running made him a positive value on the base paths. Conversely, Eduardo Escobar couldn't get a good jump on a base stealing attempt if the game was on the line. The team Base Running on Fangraphs is -13.3 and ranks 29th in MLB (worst in the AL). Texas is the best at +16.5. Top 10 is +3 or higher, bottom 10 are -3 or lower. It all adds up to the Twins coughing up probably 2 wins this year on base running, which isn't crippling, but 2 more wins would sure be nice.

Neither Miranda nor Kirilloff will allow pitchers to walk them so they'll both probably be streaky hitters and neither one of them are going to be plus defenders or will likely flash much athleticism. That said, Miranda's season has been more impressive than Kirilloff's in pure production. Since June 1, Miranda is .328/.373/.536 OPS .909 wRC+ 158 on an inflated .378 BABIP. Kirilloff's post June 17th is .290/.328/.439 OPS .767 wRC+ 116. Also on a likely inflated .326 BABIP. Statcast has both of them about the same in xWOBA this year with slightly higher average and max exit velocities for Miranda. The exit velocities (average and max) both trail extreme power hitter Nick Gordon by a fair bit so color me unimpressed. The lack of power from Kirilloff jibes with his history. He's only flashed plus power during his AAA stint this year while Miranda has shown good power at several stops along the way. TBH, Kirilloff kinda seems like the twin of Trevor Larnach. Supposedly advanced hit tool with raw power despite neither one of them flashing that power regularly and Larnach will take a walk when the pitcher insists on it. I'm not bullish on Larnach so I don't think it's surprising I'm not bullish on Kirilloff right now, either.

I'll try to remember to reserve all concerns short of a pitcher's arm spontaneously falling off.

YAAAASSSSSS, if only we could have 12 mid/back end starters, we'd definitely win the World Series. Mighty good thinkin'

He was added to the 40 man this year when he came up as a COVID replacement. That allowed him to be optioned back to AAA and removed from the 40 man without exposing him to waivers. You're entitled to your opinion that Palacios is MiLB roster filler so it doesn't matter if he gets any playing time.

You're right. Vegas has never been wrong about anything ever. Personal opinions seem awfully unwelcome to you.

Right now, today. White Sox 50% Guardians 30% Twins 20%

I was surprised the Twins were able to sign Palacios to a MiLB contract last year. Very surprised. While you look at his 750 OPS over the season, Palacios didn't show the pop in his bat to start. He's been hitting .798 at OPS (as a shortstop) wRC+ 113 I think, for the past couple months. I don't think it's reasonable to demand a shortstop to hit at an elite level. Palacios is also in his 2nd year of MiLB free agency and just turned age 26. There's really no development left. He's either worth a roster spot as a UI or shortstop or he's not and he's burning options at this point. I don't mind of Steer stays down provided his numbers don't trend up, but he's going to need to be added to the 40 man this year or he'll be lost in the Rule 5. He still has all his options after this year, but he's not young, either. Steer will hit age 25 at the beginning of December.

The first issue is who plays starting shortstop if Correa is traded? My bet is probably Jermaine Palacios. I like Palacios and I think he could play well enough not to be a real liability, but that's certainly no guarantee. Palacios has been more than holding his own in St. Paul posting a .286/.352/.446 OPS .798 wRC+ of 113 since June 1st once the pop he showed last year in AA returned. The K and BB rates are... okay. Handing him the starting shortstop gig for the rest of this year involves quite the leap of faith in a player the Twins weren't even willing to put on the 40 man last year. Nick Gordon is another candidate. I just can't see this happening. While the Twins have given Gordon a few innings at SS this year, it's clearly against their better judgement and he's viewed as an emergency SS. Without Celestino on the roster, Gordon is going to be the backup CF for when Buxton is out making this even less likely. If the Twins were trading for a passable shortstop, that would steeply gut any return for what's viewed as a rental on Correa as well. I just don't see the trade happening at this point.

Rosario did get 2yrs and $18MM for his run with Atlanta, but Rosario also had double Sano's WAR and provided more consistent value recently. I mean, worst case scenario, Rosario was always at least a role player whereas Sano is literally worse than a AAA replacement player across full seasons sometimes. Sano's track record is way uglier than I think people realize. He's been a scrub or worse than AAA in 3 of the past 4 seasons. The only season he's been worth rostering recently is 2019 with the juiced ball... Rosario vs. Sano bWAR 2015 = 2.2 vs. 2.4 2016 = 1.2 vs. 0.3 2017 = 1.6 vs. 2.8 2018 = 4.3 vs. -0.4 2019 = 1.5 vs. 2.5 2020 = 1.2 vs. -0.1 2021 = 1.1 vs. 1.0 https://library.fangraphs.com/misc/war/ Scrub 0-1 WAR Role Player 1-2 WAR Solid Starter 2-3 WAR Good Player 3-4 WAR All-Star 4-5 WAR Superstar 5-6 WAR MVP 6+ WAR I guess if I looked at it as technically an $11.25MM option (since the Twins are on the hook for $2.75MM regardless), yeah, no. Sano could absolutely light things up in the 2nd half and I don't think he'd get more than $6-8MM on a one year deal.

Are not going to or haven't been? Kirilloff and Polanco recently returned and Sano has just been added now. Considering the "DH" position, there are 5 infield/DH positions. I see 7 every day players who need at bats. Honestly, I'd like to see Palacios playing at the MLB level, but he's not on the 40 man because he got screwed by the COVID protocols allowing him to be added and removed from the 40 man without exposure to waivers. Steer is also not on the 40 man so seeing him in September would be more complicated as well, but both Palacios and Steer deserve some time in the lineup. Sano Kirilloff Polanco Arraez Correa Miranda Urshela Larnach could return as early as a couple weeks from now as well so that complicates the DH situation as well.

Cavaco has really fallen down the ladder to the point where he's probably MiLB roster filler at this point. He hasn't played a single game at SS this season so it's obvious the Twins have given up on that potential. Unfortunately, moving him off SS to 3B hasn't helped Cavaco's yips in the field as he owns a brutal fielding percentage yet again at .906. That said, there's some hope he can make the changes as despite his high error rate, his range factors are solid against his competition due to his mobility. It sure seems like Cavaco has changed something in his approach at the plate as his power has fully manifested out of the blue. But, like with the fielding, there's a big caveat. He doesn't get on base thanks to very poor plate discipline. Cavaco hasn't improved his walk rate which sits right around 5% and his K rate remains right around 30% in Low-A ball. That just doesn't project at all. Still, Cavaco just turned 21 and there's raw power and athleticism to work with. Is Cavaco's struggles with plate discipline related to just being overly aggressive like Royce Lewis or does Cavaco have a problem recognizing pitches? Time will tell.

The narrative that Arraez is some terrible black hole in the field is baffling to me since the metrics and logic don't really support the position. Arraez is fine at 2B and should be fine at 3B, though I certainly don't expect he'll win gold gloves at either position. Arraez doesn't have the range of Polanco, but has a better arm. Depth is good... but it only helps when you need it. When starting caliber players aren't playing regularly because they're "depth" and a team has holes elsewhere which need to be filled, the depth is a liability. Miranda -> Arraez -> Gordon -> Palacios -> Steer The Twins are overloaded on infielder depth right now.

Pretty logical move. The Twins would move Sano in a heartbeat if they had a buyer, and they'll probably be shopping Urshela hard as well. Moving Miranda to 3B, while keeping Kirilloff at 1B and Sano at DH technically works, but Arraez needs playing time, too. Quite the logjam. Guessing Sano has a very short leash before DFA if there are no buyers.

Neither do I believe analytics solves everything, nor do I believe a baseball player being popular makes them great. I believe only great players who were among the very best of their eras should be in the Hall of Fame. That's not Jim Kaat and it wouldn't have made a difference if he was my favorite player or if I watched him play every single game he ever played.