bean5302

Yep. All Palacios has done was put together a remarkably similar campaign in AAA as he had last year in AA. 2021 AA OPS = .779, wRC+ 109, 9.8% BB, 23.6% K 2022 AAA OPS = .796, wRC+ 111, 7.7% BB, 25.0% K Unfortunately, his fielding at SS is pretty poor. He's got just about the lowest RF/9 in the league and his fielding percentage is rough as well. I really don't understand why the Twins struggle so greatly when it comes to getting their shortstops to stop booting balls, but it's become clear to me it's an organizational problem.

If we're nitpicking... I know Bundy isn't people's favorite pitcher around here, but it's rough when you give him all the earned runs the Rangers pitching staff allowed, too. Earning 3 earned runs in a 2-1 win smacks of malice. LOL

Cole Sands struggles with control. I was at the aforementioned game where Sands went 3 innings against the Blue Jays and it always felt like Sands was just on the edge of getting annihilated, frequently missing his spots by wide margins. Maybe Sands can be a long reliever, but I'm not sold on his MLB level skills in longer outings. Sands average fastball went from 91mph to 93mph when he was given 1 inning appearances.

Bundy's pitch counts from beginning of the year to current. 67, 71, 79, 94, 74, 54, 85, 95, 67, 66, 107, 60, 83, 58, 77, 88, 77, 78, 65, 65, 71. Bundy's been pulled from games where he'd allowed 0-1 runs anywhere from 65 to 107 pitches. Doesn't seem like a pitch count limit to me.

Where would they market when nobody cares about going to the Twins game? LOL. There are so many great options to get into the game for individuals, families, special occasions, with combinations of food or drink, etc. The truth is, nobody even bothers to look which says a lot about the interest level in the Twins.

The Twins do have a great option for avoiding the schedule that as well. The Monthly Twins Pass is $60. Gets people into any/all games that month. Not sure how successful it's been, though.

Love to watch Arraez's plate appearances. Something's always going to happen, and often, it's something good or great. Looking at that chart, Larnach's whiff rate is scary considering his EV, but Larnach has drawn a fair number of walks, too. I'm hoping Larnach's early year successes against the slider and sinker weren't just SSS mirage, but when I isolate his performance against the slider, he crushed it in April and then started struggling after that.

Oh really? As a season ticket holder, my experience is very different than your perspective. I've gone to many games solo because I couldn't give my extra seat away. I had to ask nearly a dozen people if they wanted my seats free tonight as I have other obligations. Also speaking as a season ticket holder, the stadium was 1/3 to 1/4 full for the first 2 months of the season, even on nice weather days and on weekends, and it was absolutely dead from an ambiance perspective as a result. It hasn't been until recently the stadium has been energetic. The Twins were selling $5 seats to games and it was literally cheaper to get seats for the Twins than the Saints. So, from my personal observations as a season ticket holder who's attended many games this year, it is hard to get people to go to the game.

No. He's a rookie and there's plenty of reason to question whether or not he's playing a little above his head right now.

It's defense and base running related. First base has a negative defensive value in general, Miranda has mostly played first, and not very well. When Miranda has played 3B, he's actually right about league average in a very small sample size. If Miranda was a full time 3B and his defensive value (BIS DRS for bWAR and UZR for fWAR), Miranda would probably be around 2.0 bWAR/fWAR right now. Basically, 3B is worth +2.5 runs for Fangraphs and 2.0 runs for Baseball Reference and Miranda's been neutral at the position. 1B is worth -12.5 runs for Fangraphs and -9.5 runs for Baseball Reference. The net spread ranges from 11.5 to 15.0 runs in a full season between 3B and 1B. Miranda has 1/4 of a season at 1B so he's been hit with -3 to -4 runs by playing 1B instead of 3B. In addition, Miranda hasn't played 1B very well by Baseball Reference's standard (BIS Defensive Runs Saved) at -3 so far vs. neutral at 3B. The net spread for bWAR is -6 runs defensively vs. where he'd be if he exclusively played 3B and that's 0.6 bWAR. Base running costs him another run for bWAR for a total hit to WAR of 0.7. Something about like that anyway. Do keep in mind he's only started about 65 games this year. In a full season at 3B, he's pretty close to a 5 WAR pace right now.

Sounds like the Twins might be getting ready to call some guys up and they need some MiLB roster filler.

When I look deep into Balazovic's numbers, he wasn't generating a ton of swinging strikes. 40 strikes total, with well under half coming from swinging and looking combined which suggests a lot of balls being fouled off. In my experience, at bats with tons of foul balls often end in strikeouts or home runs. Considering just how awful Balazovic has been this year, I'm guarded in any optimism, but it's hard to believe some of Balazovic's struggles haven't been mental. Here's hoping he can build on the performance and confidence inspires better results. Woods-Richardson moving on up to AAA is exciting. I'm really interested to see how his stuff plays against more experienced batters who generally take more professional at bats than lower in the minors. Here's hoping Woods-Richardson proves his mettle quickly in St. Paul. It's been quite the whirlwind for him between all the trades, downtime and the Olympics. I bet he can practically taste his first MLB start.

Fangraphs 2022 - https://www.fangraphs.com/prospects/the-board/2022-in-season-prospect-list/summary?sort=-1,1&q=julien Click on the little black note/letter/clipboard icon to the right of his name for the report. Click on his name for his page and you can see his rated tools above his stats. MLB 2022 - https://www.mlb.com/prospects/twins/edouard-julien-666397 Prospects Live 2021 - https://www.prospectslive.com/lists/2021/4/3/minnesota-twins-2021-prospect-rankings Takes a second to load, but scroll all the way down to Julien and click on the blue clipboard icon to the left of his name to expand his scouting report. There are 3 I found quick. He's graded as a 40 run/field type of guy. Scouts tend to repeat the same numbers and they can certainly be off, but right now, it's universal on him. I think Fangraphs had an article where they talked about him recently as well where they note even Julien knows his value is in the bat.

It's a tough one between Miranda and Duran, but I'd take Miranda as of this point. Joe Ryan is well behind in my opinion.

This was the reason Nelson Cruz got Joe Ryan in the first place. Tampa Bay isn't exactly inept at developing pitching and they knew Ryan's MLB ceiling was limited even with his great fastball if his secondary offerings didn't improve. The Twins won the Cruz trade no matter how you look at it, but if Ryan cannot improve his secondaries, he'll be stuck as a #4-5 guy for his career. Still a steal for a few months of Cruz and what will at least amount to a nice MLB career like a Nick Blackburn.

fWAR shows 1.0 and 0.6 while bWAR shows 0.0 and 0.2, respectively. That said, the Twins haven't done Bundy or Archer many favors by allowing them to accumulate WAR. The only reason starters provide so much more value than relievers is innings. The fact starters are expected to go TTO and Baldelli almost always pulls them before then means the Twins have chained Bundy and Archer's WAR production significantly. No innings = no WAR. When it comes to calculating true value, I don't think the $8MM per WAR calculation is any good at all. It doesn't reflect true contributions to the team and it doesn't reflect what the team was hoping to buy. Teams have been trying to buy WAR closer to $6MM historically and a starting pitcher producing 2.0 WAR is just treading water in terms of actual team contributions. A typical team needs about 90 wins to make the playoffs. That's about 45 WAR. Starting Position Players - 9 at 2.0 WAR Starting Rotation Players - 5 at 2.0 WAR Bullpen Players - 8 at 0.5 WAR Utility Players - 4 at 0.8 WAR Injury Replacements - 10.0 WAR Less than that, and the team is short on WAR to make the playoffs and another player has to carry the load. A starting pitcher who can't get to about 2 WAR on the season is a net negative on a team's playoff chances, which is why signing those 1.0 WAR types of players is a waste of money. I think Bundy's ERA and WAR would both be quite a bit better if he hadn't gotten the early hook all the time. There have been many, many games this year he should have trotted back out for another inning or 3.

The MLB leader has 24 starts this year. Bundy has 20, on pace for 30 starts Archer has 20. on pace for 30 starts Ryan has 19. on pace for 27 starts. Gray has 17. on pace for 24 starts. I'm not sure if your world is realistic based on what you're writing. Do you expect relievers to never allow a home run? Jax has 44 appearances. In 39 of those, he allowed 0-1 runs... Thielbar has 46 appearances. In 43 of those, he's allowed 0-1 runs... and only 1 of the games where he's allowed more than 1 run has occurred in his last 44 appearances. Why not throw Jhoan Duran under the bus like Thielbar and Jax? Duran has 3 games where he's allowed more than 1 run too. We ditched Joe Smith, who had only allowed multiple earned runs twice this year, lol. 20% of the runs Smith allowed was from the fielders knocking balls down with concrete gloves. Perhaps you think that's sustainable and good relief pitchers are guaranteed to go out there and go 3 up and 3 down all the time? In any case, Baldelli has been afforded several reliable relievers. He elected to use Duffey and Pagan all the time instead of giving Bundy or Archer another inning. Duffey still has the 3rd most innings of our relievers...

Pagan is getting eaten alive. While you can look at his xFIP and say "oh, he's unlucky" the Statcast metrics do not look good. EV = 91.4mph, bottom 2% Hard hit = 49.1%, also bottom 2% Barrel Rate = 13%, also very bad. Walk rate is high The worst part about it? Looks just like last year in a lot of ways.

Good on him, though it's a minor league deal. So long as Duffey performs in their AAA club for a few games, he'll get called up quick.

The only Contreras the Twins are going to sign is playing in AAA for the Saints right now.

Nope. Judge is will stay in NY. Turner will stay in LA. Arenado is on pace to win the NL MVP this year and he's not in the Twins' budget or their needs. Correa will be out of the Twins' budget.

Every single scouting report from every single source on Julien says the same thing. Lacks speed. Mediocre to weak arm, mediocre to weak defense. Bat first player. From AA this year 13 stolen bases, 6 caught stealing. Julien has good instincts, but he lacks the physical ability to be good at stealing bases. Way, way easier to steal bases in the low minors. Julien's range factor is 20% lower than his peers and his fielding percentage is well below average. Which also aligns with all the scouting reports. Weak arm, no speed, bat first. Every. Single. One. Here's Julien at 2B compared to his peers with the most innings on each team playing 2B in the Texas League. Julien's numbers are truly terrible. Now, some of Juliens numbers are no doubt from being handicapped with highly defensively challenged Austin Martin at SS, but the sheer drop off between peers and Julien is pretty stunning. Player RF/9 Fielding Pct vs. Avg Leyba 5.03 0.989 21% Polcovich 4.45 0.978 6.70% Whitcomb 4.23 0.988 1.40% Stankiewicz 4.19 0.959 0.50% Dunn 4.16 0.979 -0.20% Massey 4.14 1.000 -0.70% Foscue 4.08 0.973 -2.10% Mann 3.89 0.973 -6.70% Julien 3.32 0.965 -20.80% Average 4.17 0.978

I agree the homestand is critical to the Twins' chances. While the Twins have a huge number of games coming up against the Guardians in September, it's not reasonable to expect a huge shift in the standings. The start of September sees the Twins playing 15 of 18 of their games against teams with winning records, the first 7 all on the road against the Yankees and White Sox. That's not a stretch where you'd expect a team that's played well under .500 since late May to make a run. If the Twins don't make up some ground this month, their odds are going to look pretty rough. As of right now, the Twins would have to pass 2 teams (Orioles and Rays) to make the 3rd Wildcard with the Blue Jays and Mariners also ahead. Those aren't good odds. The White Sox have the weakest strength of schedule of the AL Central competitors for the remainder of the year. Fangraphs, as it stands today: Guardians 47.3%, White Sox 28.1%, Twins 24.6% division winners. Blue Jays 86.6%, Mariners 85.0%, Rays 51.9%, White Sox 19.0%, Red Sox 17.4%, Twins 15.5%, Guardians 15.0% for the 3 Wildcards. At least Fangraphs expects the Orioles to tank with a meager 3.8% chance at the Wildcard.

Not sure about that. Enlow last started a game on 8/6. 4.0 innings, 4 H, 2 BB, 4 Ks, 1 ER. It was a decent start, but the Twins have clearly been keeping his pitch count to about 60-65 max. He's been used a reliever a little earlier this year as well but last night was the first time he's ever been asked to pitch a single inning. If Enlow is going to be a reliever, there's limited reason to keep him at AA. Just fast track him to the big show.

It's not about a slow start per se. It's about sample sizes. It's not like you can expect players to never have a rough 10 game streak. Julien is overrated right now, IMHO. While he's stolen some bases, he gets caught 1/3 of the time because he lacks any speed. He's an absolute butcher at 2B with a high error rate and poor range, massively trailing his peers in the league in defensive stats. I see Julien as a DH with a very high hit/on base tool and moderate power. The question Julien will need to answer as he moves to AAA next year and into MLB is whether or not his hits and walks come from being passive and waiting for mistakes or having great pitch recognition.