bean5302

Who does Sano replace? I expect the odd man out will be Celestino. With Gordon and Buxton on the roster and St. Paul just 30 minutes away along with Celestino scuffling at the plate recently, he's probably first on the list to go down. Garlick's 30 years old at this point, he doesn't take walks and has no speed. He's an easy roster cut as well, IMHO.

2021 2022 Two years.

I don't think Buxton was snubbed ranks #6 in fWAR for outfielders (including Alvarez) and is ranked 4th among Center Fielders. Judge CF - 4.2 fWAR, 3.7 bWAR Alvarez - 3.9 fWAR, 4.2 bWAR (voted in as DH. has played about 40% of his games in LF) Trout CF - 3.7 fWAR, 3.7 bWAR Rodriguez CF - 3.0 fWAR, 3.5 bWAR Tucker - 2.7 fWAR, 3.3 bWAR Buxton CF - 2.5 fWAR, 2.9 bWAR Cedric Mullins II CF - 2.1 fWAR, 2.6 bWAR On top of that, you have Cedric Mullins II, who is a center fielder and will probably represent Baltimore as it's only player. As far as 1B OR 2B, you could make the argument Arraez has been snubbed, but his value has increased significantly lately with him building a lot of WAR from the boost of playing 2B and hitting even better. As a utility infielder, it's hard for Arraez to get the recognition he deserves. Arraez is #2 for both 1B and 2B behind Abreu and Altuve, respectively, but Arraez was well behind several 1B earlier this year. If Arraez was the 2B all year, I'd say he would have been better than Altuve, but Altuve is a household name who is on the path to the Hall of Fame right now.

Byron Buxton is not the greatest batter in the history in MLB. You say you know he isn't, yet you expect his stats will say he is.

What's not to be excited about? The 4.00 ERA / 5.00 RA9 at A+ ball from a two year pro college draftee.

RBI's. Not at all valuable for an individual stat. Very important for a team stat.

Eduardo Escobar and Danny Santana both had more impressive streaks than Buxton's to start the year last year over the same number of plate appearances. Buxton is not the greatest hitter/player in MLB history. Fans should really appreciate him for what he is rather than taking the stat line from a handful of games and deciding that's who the player is. Buxton is a flawed hitter, who has poor contact rates, strikes out a lot and takes few walks. People asking for Buxton to change his swing to hit more line drives are actually asking for Buxton to go back to pre-2019 Buxton. You want Buxton to stop selling out for home runs? Get ready for a below average hitter at the plate. Buxton has done a remarkable job adapting his strengths to a plate approach which provides ANY value. This is as good as Buxton gets. In fact, I think Buxton is still exceeding his ceiling right now.

College arms are expected to dominate at Low A since Low-A is probably similar to the top Division I college baseball conferences in terms of competition level. High-A is a big step up, but if a college pitcher struggles there, it's a very bad sign. Generally, I don't get too excited about pitchers until they produce at AA because a single component of pitching can carry up until that point (stuff/control/command). Mechanics are obviously key to velocity as the right mechanics turned 5'10" 155lb Tim Lincecum into a 100mph fastball monster. Elite velocity can make a big difference below AA/AAA, but there are no MLB hitters who cannot put a 100mph straight-ball into the seats. Also, I don't really see the "filling out" as a good thing so I don't understand the obsession with everybody looking like Ben Rortvedt. Pitchers aren't impact players like NFL linebackers or something. The extra weight = extra strain on the body and body type means much less than mechanics in regard to velocity, but there seems to be a school of thought players who look like defensive lineman are ideal. Some people have wondered if the Twins pushing pitchers to change their mechanics to add velocity has led to the incredible level of injuries among Twins pitching prospects. It seems reasonable "filling out" could help in regard to building up certain muscle groups to relieve strain on joints, etc, but until the muscle groups supporting the mechanical changes are built up, I'd wager changes of injury increase quite a bit. I'm probably just babbling at this point. Back on topic... I'm not all in on the Povich bandwagon. Almost all prospects are younger than their competition and 1 year means nothing meaningful at any level of baseball. Povich is sitting at a 3.96 ERA (which isn't good) and considering he's a Division I college pitcher in his 2nd professional year at A+, I'd expect him to be good. Povich is a strike thrower so he doesn't walk a lot of guys, but he's not exactly skimpy on the walk rate, either at about 3/9. He also gives up a lot of hits so he's been unable to strand runners despite the high strikeout rate. His inability to strand runners has led to a rough 5.09 RA9. If a runner reaches on an error, it seems Povich isn't able to pitch out of the jam. Small sample sizes and less than stellar fielding in the minors no doubt contributes to the situation, though. Just have to wait and see.

Buxton goes 0-4, time for a trip to the IL! Buxton goes 4-4 with 4 HRs, he's back and his knee is perfect again! In any case, Buxton will likely always be a streaky hitter because he has pretty weak plate discipline. He doesn't take many walks and his contact rates are pretty poor. Buxton is not and never will be an MVP level player in my opinion. He's a potential perennial All Star talent, though. A 5-6 WAR full season player while his sprint speed and defensive value remains intact.

Gaetti didn't play for the Twins in 1991. He had already moved to the Angels.

Jhoan Duran sure gets a lot of love for a guy with 37 innings pitched at the MLB level. I don't know what the core of the Twins is going to look like. Buxton is a part of it. Apart from him, there's nobody on the roster I couldn't see being traded or regressing/declining off the roster.

It was when the Twins' farm system was so insanely bad that he got sent to the All Star Futures Game.

Correa resigning isn't about his willingness to play here, it's the Twins' willingness to pay here. The Twins are not going to come up with $150MM+ for Correa.

Great news for them! It seems reasonable to suspect Wallner may very well not head back to Wichita after the All Star Futures Game.

Swinging at a bad first pitch in the dirt.

Miami desperately needs outfield help now because they're building and we have those outfielders in spades. Also, the Marlins are deep in pitching prospects like Sixto Sanchez to backfill Lopez when he's gone.

Not sure why there are people advocating sticking with Joe Ryan here. He gave up 5 hits and 2 walks in 4.0 innings. That's a 1.50 WHIP while allowing 3 runs (2 earned) so it's not like Ryan was pitching particularly well out there. In regard to Ryan's struggles lately, it's not surprising considering how out of whack his ERA vs. FIP and xFIP were at the start of the season. It's just regression to the mean and he hasn't gotten there yet. Ryan owns a sparkly 3.00 ERA vs. his 3.68 FIP and 4.58 xFIP right now.

Not sure why this is so hard to comprehend, especially since the linked article supported my position... I do not necessarily care if the players at the high minors are younger than than competition they play against because it doesn't matter nearly as much as the level of experience the players have. Woods-Richardson was drafted at 17. He has 5 years of MiLB experience with the best coaches, trainers, equipment, sports medicine and analytics in the world. He's not a fresh off the high school diamond newbie. He's a 5 year professional baseball veteran who has played against elite talent to identify holes in his game and make adjustments. The 23 year old guy who's 2 years older than Woods-Richardson being pitched to has 1 year of experience out of college ball. It's obvious Woods-Richardson would have a massive advantage here. That's why Woods-Richardson's age isn't all that important to me. Talent is largely done being honed after 5 years. It's either there... or it's not. Top pitching talent usually takes 2-3 years out of college or 3-4 years out of high school to get through the minors, and rarely does it take 2 years more than that. Despite usually being 2-4 years younger, high school guys usually only take 1 year longer to reach the majors than college guys. Age does not matter nearly as much once players get into their 20s. That's my opinion, and my opinion was honed through many hours of investigating the subject. Then again, you researched to... like finding that article which agreed with me.

The (mean) average career WAR for a #5 pick is about 11ish with about 25% of first rounders never even making the big show. https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-sports-analytics/jsa200586 Gordon is such a hot topic because he's been so written off, and then he's struggled off and on. It seems like today, this minute, he's accepted as a good 26th man. I suppose that is a big step forward among this fanbase considering Gordon had a few vocal supporters with a lot of detractors wondering why Gordon should even be getting plate appearances going into last year. I also believe Gordon is going to have to take more walks. Going the Eddie Rosario route with plate discipline leads to a lot of feast and famine at the plate. He could get lucky and finish strong or he could slump hard and find himself on the edges of MiLB contracts. In any case, Gordon was slow to adapt to each level of play, but he always adapted. It seems like the MLB level is just the same. Gordon is slowly getting better and better. He's sitting at a wRC+ 108 on the season and I don't feel like he's necessarily reached his absolute ceiling, but it's really hard to believe he can keep up the growth. Since the start of June, he owns a .302/.362/.524 OPS .886 wRC+ 154 slash line with the help of a .348 BABIP which I don't think is sustainable, though the underlying metrics... aren't at all out of whack. Gordon has averaged an exit velocity of a near elite 92.6mph (max 110.7mph) over the span. His barrel rate of 20.4% and ridiculous hard hit rate of 59.2% coincide with a near optimal 15.6* launch angle. The line drive rate has been excellent at 24.5% with a relatively low 36.7% ground ball rate. The big issue, to me, appears to be the fact he's swinging at 45% of pitches outside the zone, but crushing them nonetheless. It's resulted in his performance being positive against every single off-speed and breaking pitch over that span and he's been destroying changeups and curveballs. I just don't feel like that's sustainable. Nor is the 82.6% first pitch strike situation he's gotten himself into. Fun to watch though.

I can appreciate how many hours went into this write up. Posts like this take a lot of time, but I really would have liked to see some performance figures mixed in. That said, it's not necessary for a quick ranking like this. I seem to recall the Twins re-thinking Martin at shortstop, but apparently, they decided to keep him there after all. Apr - 6 errors 8 games at SS May - 6 errors 16 games at SS Jun+ - 3 errors 20 games at SS This will be just a guesstimate, but let me try to extrapolate his RF/9 per month. 8.45 innings per game. 0.36 chances per inning based on his season numbers assuming 44 games started at SS. Apr - 67.2 innings, 24 chances 18 PO + Assists, 6 E = RF/9 = 2.39 and .750 FP May - 135.0 innings, 49 chances 43 PO + Assists, 6 E = RF/9 = 2.87 and .878 FP Jun+ - 169.0 innings, 61 chances 58 PO + Assists, 3 E = RF/9 = 3.09 and .950 FP Martin has brought his fielding percentage up to poor, but not unplayable for the minors. The rate of chances likely hasn't stabilized, but here are the individual team numbers for the most common SS. Travelers = 3.53 & .992 Missions = 4.48 & .990 Sod Poodles = 3.64 & .950 (yes, that's the team name) Drillers = 3.20 & .969 Naturals = 3.42 & .971 Rough Riders = 4.24 & .967 Cardinals = 3.18 & .923 RockHounds = 4.08 & .950 Hooks = 3.29 & .952 The extrapolated performance for the last month on Austin Martin would still be arguably the worst SS in the league with only 1 team's top SS having any stat worse than Martin's performance. Since we're talking about everything in the same league, playable balls should be relatively similar. In my opinion, these are some general-ish guidelines. 4.00 & .990 Plus SS 3.75 & .980 mediocre 3.50 & .970 borderline Martin has a long row to hoe. Either the Twins see something they really like at SS or they see something they really, really don't like at the plate.

Why did you link an article which supports my position if my position is "factually incorrect?" Did you not read the article or did you just not read my post? Besides that, even I'll concede my viewpoint is my opinion and now law, just like the article you linked talks about age being hotly debated in it's very opening so your comment about the importance of age being factually settled is "factually incorrect." My position is age doesn't matter nearly as much as experience. The article's position is also experience matters, not age.

Wells had over 10 K/9 last year and every single stop in the minors except 2018 in A+ before bouncing back the same year at AA. He's been stretching out this year and the K rate tumbled for sure. The Orioles have been trying to limit Wells pitch counts to the same extent the Twins have limited Archer so there are reasons to expect Wells has the ability to crank it up and get a few more strike outs. He remains a huge Rule 5 screwup by Minnesota.

I don't care if his face melted off and his eyes fell out. I literally do not care how badly a player is/was hurt when it comes to giving them a spot on the roster. It's a question of whether or not he was capable on the baseball field at the MLB level and the docs said yes. He was bad in 2020. I supported him being given a mulligan even though most of the folks here absolutely did not. Then, Cave played poorly at AAA in 2021 to start off the season .167/.239/.262 OPS .511 through May 12th before being diagnosed with a stress reaction in his back. Stress reactions are not the same as a typical broken bone, just FYI. Anyway, Cave was cleared to return to baseball activities after coming off the 60 day IL. I didn't have access to waterboard the team doctors and trainers on the conspiracy to get Cave out there even though he wasn't ready to play, and the fact Cave had a .367/.472/.500 OPS .972 return to AAA once he was removed from the IL seems to lend a little credibility to the Twins putting him back on the field. Cave proceeded to get called up as he'd earned it and he stumbled badly the rest of the season to finish with a .213/.259/.325 OPS .584 line from July 25th to the end of the year. I guess the stress reaction which was considered cured and was clearly not impacting his .972 OPS in AAA after his return mystically came back to life the moment Cave faced MLB pitchers again. What a coincidence! Based on Cave being bad in 2020, being terrible in 2021 and how stretched he is when playing CF, he simply found himself not generating MLB interest.

I supposed Cave getting a mulligan on 2020, but when he was helpless at the plate last year, it started to add up. Cave finished the season very strong in AAA, but there just isn't a spot for him on the Twins at this point. I could see some other team having some interest in Cave. The gray beard does utterly nothing for his cause...

Yes. I could see how respected veteran pitchers who are performing well and were brought in as free agents would be really excited to be moved to the bullpen for mediocre guys.