bean5302

He's not. Wallner had a slow start in 2022, but... 2023 AAA (3/31-4/15) = .280/.333/.600 OPS .933 wRC+123 2021 A+ (5/4-5/14) = .289/.378/.553 OPS .930 wRC+ 147 This spring Wallner is missing pitches by a bit. He's generating a lot of pop ups and not many line drives so it looks like there's a little hitch in his game he'll need to address. It's a non-issue at this point. Spring Training is nothing like the regular season.

Having a pitcher address a hitch in their mechanics or make an adjustment to tipping pitches or something in game is huge. Making those mindful adjustments carries over with muscle memory, and being able to make them during a game has got to be incredibly valuable. When it comes to the length of Spring Training, it's good. It should definitely not be shorter. We've seen what happens when Spring Training gets condensed, and it's a huge pile of injuries. Guys are starting their real on the field workouts for the first time in months, and veterans are especially susceptible to an odd pain or tweak here or there shutting them down for a week or two. Relief pitchers are probably the least in need of a long spring, but plenty of hitters develop a bad habit they need to work out or have some timing issues they need to work through.

I would be stunned if Wallner was left off the 26 man after being one of the best hitters producing on pace for a 4 WAR full season in MLB last year. Spring Training has nearly two weeks left. I'm confident Wallner will get it together, and even if he doesn't, there's no way to say he's not working on something. The Twins know what they have in Larnach. He's solid injury replacement depth, but he comes with maybe a 1.5 WAR ceiling due to his below league average bat. He's probably best considered a lefty version of Kyle Garlick on a team that doesn't need more lefty bats. It's a shame for Larnach because there are a few teams around the league where he'd have a better shot at some playing time.

I tend to agree. St. Peter does seem to be a weakness for the organization. From his inability to put people in the seats to his failure to find a better TV contract this past offseason.

Alex Kirilloff laid an egg and Sonny Gray didn't catch it softly enough as I recall.

Soto is literally 18, was drafted out of high school last year, and hasn't pitched a single game in the minors. He was pitching against some of the Rays very top prospects who all had MiLB experience last year, some of whom are even at the AA level. The fact the Twins put him out there to begin with is pretty impressive.

Shouldn't really be a problem. Kyle Farmer has also been a catcher at the MLB level.

It's an unusual take to treat a really high BABIP as a positive skill for a hitter. Generally, high BABIP is largely luck driven and a red flag for regression. Such is the case with Ryan Jeffers. There's a 99% chance he will not repeat last year's performance, and if he does get that 1% season, it'll be luck based again. There's not really a question in that regard. Jeffers has huge raw power, and well above average game power, but it comes with lots of swing and miss, and he doesn't hit much in the way of line drives. Combined with his lack of speed, his batting average should probably hang out in the .230ish area. I expect Jeffers will produce at a .235/.315/.445 or so pace through his prime. Good for a wRC+ of 105ish. He's about equivalent to Gary Sanchez with a little less power and a little more hit tool. I think Vazquez could bounce back to 2022 levels with the offseason work, but he's probably in the twilight of his career as a catcher entering his age 33 season.

Winning a World series sounds great. You have to get there to win it. If you do the straight math, a team should get to a World Series once every 15 years and win it once every 30 years. 2008 World Series (L) 2020 World Series (L) 2008 Division Champions 2010 Division Champions 2020 Division Champions 2021 Division Champions 2011 Wild Card (1 of 1) 2013 Wild Card (1 of 2) 2019 Wild Card (1 of 2) 2022 Wild Card (1 of 3) 2023 Wild Card (1 of 3) It's worth noting the Rays play in what is historically the toughest division in baseball trying to eek out wins against the monster market Yankees and Red Sox. Credit where credit's due. 9 playoff berths in 14 years from 2008-2023 and 2 World Series appearances. Compare that to the Twins. 6 playoff berths, 0 World Series. 0 AL Championship series playing in what has become the weakest division in baseball over the past 5 years.

Tampa Bay is an embarrassment to MLB. While their methodology technically works, it only works because the team is a charity franchise floated by the other teams in the league, and that's part of their strategy. The Rays' owner doesn't care about the fans, the attendance or fielding a team that supports itself. Many teams receive revenue sharing, including the Twins, but no team builds revenue sharing as a core component of the franchise's long term operation quite like the Rays do. In terms of the Rays' player development and roster strategies, the Twins do not closely emulate it in my opinion. The Rays draft pitching, pitching, and more pitching which is a major reason the franchise is so successful at continuing to produce quality starters. Controllable starting pitching demands a significant premium, and the Rays trade that controllable pitching away at a premium to make up for their lack of position player drafting and development. This is a market inequity the Rays exploit. The Rays then fill out their roster with short term, low dollar veteran players who are rebound candidates or guys who might have a year or two left before the wheels fall off. I'm not sure the Twins have followed the Rays in terms of on field strategies much, either. I think the Twins have their own evaluations for strategy. Kind of a convergent evolution where we see overlaps of similar strategies on the field.

Where did I argue Graterol is a "better" relief pitcher than Duran? Between the two, if they were both healthy, and had the exact same team control, I'd still prefer Duran. It doesn't mean Graterol hasn't produced similar results to Duran.

Yep, his one trick is keeping batters off the bases which is standard for elite relievers. Duran missed almost 2 years with his UCL surgery and he's pitched in 116 games in the past two years compared to Graterol's 114 games. Graterol had 7 saves last year because the Dodgers use a closer by committee approach, he ranked 2nd on the team in saves and was used in high leverage situations where he generated the most WPA on their pitching staff. Strikeouts are valuable to get out of jams, but not any more than pop ups which Graterol generates at 3x the rate of Duran. Also valuable is limiting home runs. Graterol is 2x as good as Duran at preventing homers. We can cherry pick, twist and turn, but when it comes to actual and expected results when all is said and done, Duran and Graterol are have been very similar. So again, if you're arguing Graterol hasn't been elite, that's fine, but it rationally means Duran hasn't been elite, either.

That's the prototypical power hitter in baseball these days and the exact philosophy the Twins are committed to building. He's better than "okay" at the plate and if we're shrinking sample sizes down, it's worth looking at them in portions, hoping for a trend. The trend I see from last year is he's likely a plus bat. There are definitely holes in his game that will prevent him from ever being an elite bat. April 1.262 OPS May .616 OPS June .620 OPS <--- this is where almost everybody thought "pumpkin" July .883 OPS August .700 OPS September .848 OPS

Miranda doesn't typically have huge splits and his 2022 splits against right handers was almost the same as Kirilloff's career splits against them. No need to platoon Miranda. He'll either get it done every day or he won't be able to make it work at all. That aside, it's encouraging to see Miranda hitting and saying he's 100%. Folks expecting Miranda will ever be a prototypical power hitter are probably in for a rude awakening. Miranda's a 18 HR guy in a full season. He'll have to make his way forward being a higher average, line drive hitter with medium power.

Rooker appears to be an okay starting OF. He was fairly durable last year and qualified with 526 PA. Something only 1 Twins player did last year (Carlos Correa) While playing in 137 games, he received an All Star nod, and he continued to hit, putting together a wRC+ of 127 which would have placed him above Max Kepler on the season. Even throwing Rooker's torrid April out of the equation, he put up a wRC+ of 107 with absolutely no protection in the lineup around him and his xwOBA was .340 last year. Rooker crushing baseballs was hardly a fluke. He ranked 85th percentile in exit velocity, 93rd percentile in barrel rate, and 71st percentile in xwOBA. If it weren't for his poor defensive instincts, he'd be a consistent 2-3 WAR outfielder (equal to Max Kepler).

Seems like the White Sox have made some big decisions for 2024 by announcing Michael Kopech is moving back to the bullpen almost immediately after trading Dylan Cease to the Padres. Seems like the White Sox have raised the white flag for 2024, but I was kind of hoping they'd slog through the season while simultaneously wasting their limited player trade value. Seems like the White Sox took a package with multiple later top 100s prospects and a fast riser in Zavala. Player, (Team Rank), (Overall) by Fangraphs, MLB.com's new White Sox rank a22 Jairo Iriarte (5), (61), Right handed starter prospect, White Sox #9 a19 Samuel Zavala (21) (NR), rangy left handed outfielder, White Sox #6 a22 Drew Thorpe (6) (73), right handed starter prospect, White Sox #3 a28 Steven Wilson, Right handed middle reliever. Here's the value comparison on BaseballTradeValues.com https://www.baseballtradevalues.com/trades/165041 Kopech to the 'pen https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2024/03/white-sox-michael-kopech-bullpen-reliever.html

That's not exactly what those values indicate. The $8MM value is basically the total money spent / total production for free agents that teams signed. It's the free agency market value. Not truly production value. I generally advocate for a $6MM per WAR value for free agents as it seems like teams generally pay about $6MM per WAR they expect to get. i.e. player is expected to be a 4 WAR player = $24MM AAV. 5 WAR player = $30MM AAV, etc. What happens is the player expected to produce 5 WAR for $32MM actually produces 4 WAR so the teams wind up paying about $8MM/WAR due to lower than expected production. In terms of valuing WAR directly, it is absolutely not a direct correlation in reality and most sources make that very clear. Fangraphs talks about that specifically in that 1 WAR for an 87 win team is worth an enormous amount more than for, say, a 68 win team or a 105 win team. I'd also say the more value a player generates over the expected every day player is truly worth more because the additional contribution they provide reduces the burden on the rest of the entire roster. The roster is fixed. 26 people. Those 26 people need to contribute a total of about 44 WAR to expect to get into the playoffs. 9 hitters 2.5 WAR, 5 backups 1.0 WAR, 5 starters 2.3 WAR, 8 bullpen 0.6 WAR. Something like that. A position player who generates 10 WAR means the rest of the starting position players only need to average 1.5 WAR instead of 2.5 WAR, and 1.5 WAR players are easy to come by for cheap.

Can't wait to hear the takes on Sonny Gray vs. Chase Petty in a year or two, haha.

I'm a big fan of Castro, and my offseason plan would have put Castro as the starting 2B out of the gate. Also, I would have rather the Twins not signed Margot and made Castro the backup CF. That said, Castro had 1,100 plate appearances across 4 seasons including back to back 400ish plate appearance seasons where he was very poor offensively. Then he has an explosion at the plate in 2023 despite a lot of poor contact, and an xwOBA 20 points lower than actual. It's worth tempering expectations for a guy who was non-tendered rather than paying $1.7MM before their age 26 season.

Miranda's been throwing since mid January and he's been 100% for a while.

No, Kirilloff has been a very poor defender at 1B. The hope was he'd play up there, but he hasn't so far. Not sure why Kirilloff is no longer considered a potential outfielder, but Falvey made a specific quote on that subject. In regard to Miranda, he had a long enough stretch in MiLB for the Twins to expose him to the Rule 5 draft before the 2021 MiLB season so there wasn't a lot of expectations around him at that point. It also means there's much more skepticism attached to great performances. Then, Miranda absolutely torched MiLB pitching at AA/AAA in 2021 without the Twins calling him up. He had a nice, but not great 2022 campaign at the plate, but his defense was just as rough as advertised leading to pretty low WAR totals. Miranda certainly had a lot of surplus value at the end of the year, but apparently, he hurt his shoulder that offseason and he was pretty terrible all of 2023. Cue the skepticism on 2021-2022. Also, there's reason to doubt Miranda's upside at the plate as his max & average exit velocities in 2022 were average, he doesn't take walks, and his swing doesn't tend to produce a lot of fly balls with launch angles that lead to home runs. He probably looked like a 18-23 HR a year full season guy. Average power, low walk rate, lots of pop ups. It's not a great projectable profile, and he was no longer considered a top prospect prior to 2021. That said, there's no real reason to suspect Miranda is a platoon candidate since he put up a wRC+ 110 vs. RHP in 2022, and hit them well in 2021, too. If they're sent down at all, both Kirilloff and Miranda are out of options after this year so it's definitely a make or break season for both of them.

Sure. We could watch Walker Jenkins put up a .100/.110/.100 batting line while generating -5.0 WAR. After all, he was pretty good in 56 plate appearances at Low A last year. He's ready!

Graterol throws a 100mph sinker, but sinkers don't generally generate a lot of strike outs. They generate slow rolling double play grounders and pop ups. Most people around here consider Duran elite so let's compare the two. Graterol vs. Duran 2022 = 3.26 vs. 1.86 ERA, 2.95 vs. 2.52 FIP, 3.12 vs. 2.11 xFIP, 0.99 vs. 0.98 WHIP 2023 = 1.20 vs. 2.45 ERA, 3.03 vs. 3.21 FIP, 3.53 vs. 2.75 xFIP, 0.97 vs. 1.14 WHIP Combined = 2.08 vs. 2.15 ERA, 3.00 vs. 2.85 FIP, 3.36 vs. 2.42 xFIP, 0.97 vs. 1.05 WHIP Graterol looks awfully similar to Duran in terms of results so if Duran is elite, it's awfully hard to argue Graterol isn't. Obviously, Graterol strikes out and walks fewer guys, but he makes up for it because when Graterol gives up a fly ball, it's often a pop-ups while Duran's fly balls allowed almost always leave the infield. In any case, I don't know as the Twins won or lost the trade. Maeda was a big part of why the Twins made the playoffs in 2020 and in 2023 as he was outstanding down the stretch for that matter.

Alex Kirilloff didn't hit LHP in the minors particularly well, either so thinking Kirilloff can make a big step forward into a position where he's not a platoon only guy is optimistic. Take his numbers at AA in 2019. vs. RHP .816 OPS vs. LHP .634 OPS Miranda probably isn't a candidate for platooning. Miranda had a wRC+ of 110 vs. right handed pitching in 2022 and an OPS of .908 against them in AAA in 2021. Miranda had no real significant splits vs. LHP or RHP in 2023, either. Honestly, Miranda's MLB numbers in 2022 vs. RHP were basically just as good as Kirilloff's career numbers vs. RHP.

Driveline did some biomechanics study on different pitches and the stress placed on the pitcher's arm. Overall, there were no pitches more stressful on the arm than the fastball. Basically, velocity was the main stressor in pitching. If curveballs were thrown as fast as fastballs, they'd be the most stressful pitch, but they're not so I'm not sure it's relevant. It's also worth considering how the increased velocity was modeled to determine whether or not it was even accurate. In young pitchers, the slider was most likely to generate pain. https://www.drivelinebaseball.com/2017/02/fastballs-offspeed-pitches-comparative-relative-elbow-stress/ In regard to how hard pitchers are throwing now vs. how hard they used to throw, I'm not sure how reliable older data was. Starters Avg Fastball 2002 - Max 94.5mph, 10th Best 92.3mph, Median 88.8mph, 10th Worst 84.9mph (85 Qualified) 2005 - Max 95.6mph, 10th Best 92.7mph, Median 89.5mph, 10th Worst 86.4mph (93 Qualified) 2010 - Max 96.1mph, 10th Best 93.5mph, Median 91.3mph, 10th Worst 88.2mph (92 Qualified) 2015 - Max 96.4mph, 10th Best 94.6mph, Median 91.9mph, 10th Worst 89.4mph (78 Qualified) 2019 - Max 97.7mph, 10th Best 94.9mph, Median 92.9mph, 10th Worst 90.5mph (61 Qualified) 2023 - Max 97.8mph, 10th Best 95.6mph, Median 94.4mph, 10th Worst 92.4mph (44 Qualified) I think there's a pretty clear trend. There wasn't a huge increase in average pitcher velocity through 2010, it was just a drop off on the lowest velocity guys. We start to see a trend of hyper focusing on velocity by 2015 with a significant jump in median and max velocities afterwards with a rapidly declining count of pitchers who are able to qualify. Max velocity for the top pitchers seems to have spiked out at this point, but there's still a hyper focus on pushing all pitcher velocity northward, and there's a plummeting number of them who will qualify as a result. While this method probably produces the best results in a playoff rotation, getting to the playoffs is maybe a different story. Unfortunately, all the way down into high school, pitchers know scouts want to see velocity, velocity, velocity. The number of pitchers who have developed 4 or 5 potential pitch offerings has declined while the number of 2-3 pitcher flamethrowers has seemingly increased. Even if there is more value in drafting and developing pitchers with somewhat lower velocities, but better stuff who could potentially be as good as mid-rotation, those pitchers may not exist in significant numbers.