bean5302

The answer to the question is... Yes. The Twins seem very incapable of developing shortstops who can field balls cleanly. I don't understand why the error rate for Twins infielders, particularly shortstops is so high, but it's an obvious issue in my opinion.

Woods-Richardson was an MLB's #93, Fangraphs' #76, Bleacher Reports #78 prospect in 2020/entering 2021 and was the cornerstone of the Marcus Stroman trade. While he's unranked this year among top 100 lists, he hasn't really changed. There's little surprise Woods-Richardson's struggled with control after losing 2020 and half of the 2021 season due to just sitting on a bench for his name to be called in the Olympics. People can point fingers all they want in regard to fault for that situation, but as a young prospect developing mechanics, the loss of playing time is about the worst possible thing which can happen. It also would explain why the Twins put him on the Development List rather than assigning him directly to AA after he arrived back from Tokyo last year. Woods-Richardson's MLB scouting report lists his pitches as Four seam fastball, curveball, slider, changeup. I haven't seen much in regard to scouting on his slider, but what's out there indicates it's an MLB caliber offering, just not his best. Woods-Richardson's curveball and changeup both have plus potential. Basically, Woods-Richardson has the stuff to get the job done and has shown impressive performances into the high minors despite aggressive promotions. There's some projection potential left in his fastball and the Twins have been very successful so far in getting a little extra velocity from mechanical adjustments on other prospects. There's a reason Woods-Richardson was so highly coveted by the Blue Jays and by the Twins. The negativity directed at his stock is unwarranted at this point.

It'll really be exciting to see Lewis take off in the minors this year. Listening to him in interviews he says all the right stuff and it matches with all the information out there on him. Fantastic work ethic, great personality, born leader, 5 tool athleticism. Just everything fans want to see.

I've also heard people believe the Earth is flat and that Russia isn't being aggressive and that truckers aren't blockading Canada because of mask mandates. The head of the MLBPA is officially on record the revenue split is acceptable. It's 50/50 split and MLBPA has no issues with the numbers which had been provided by MLB owners. Clark addressed the conspiracy theories in 2015 and 2018. “Despite what you may have read or heard at any given time, the quote-unquote ‘player share’ is as close to 50-50 as it has been in a long time,” Clark said. https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2018/2/21/17035624/mlb-revenue-sharing-owners-players-free-agency-rob-manfred

I'm cautious about Miller. I want to see some production before I get too excited.

A search I made suggested that MiLB are not paid and have not been paid for participating in Spring Training. So my argument is above is at least partially wrong. MLB is arguing MiLB players should not be paid and they do not have the intention of paying them.

Yeah... so the position has nothing to do with MLB planning not to pay players in Spring Training and everything to do with increasing their leverage in a pending class action lawsuit MLB will likely win. MLB is seeking to invalidate one of the arguments in the lawsuit, not necessarily make real changes. In other words, MLB is arguing it shouldn't "have" to pay the players, not that it is trying to "not" pay the players. In any case, companies make moves like this all the time. Years ago I ran a website which evaluated products and specialized in a specific manufacturer. The company sent us a cease and desist order and we were forced to make some changes. We didn't make any money and you could decide they were being ridiculous using all their power against a tiny little internet site, but you'd be wrong. Defending their structure and legal rights is required in all instances, not just whenever companies feel like it. If a company doesn't defend it's rights, those rights can be considered abandoned. By the way, MLB's argument seems pretty strong under U.S. law in my opinion and it's more reflective of laws which allow employers across the country to abuse workers. Fix the laws, don't expect companies to operate as charities.

Side note, the owners failed to offer a counter proposal after what could hardly be described as an offer by the MLBPA and I think would be much better categorized as an inflammatory statement lowering their request from $105MM to $100MM for pre-arbitration bonus pool. Not that the haters of the MLB owners would have thought about this, but other than the $100MM reduction to revenue sharing initially proposed by the MLBPA and their subsequent reduction by $30MM (which owners dispute is accurate), the $105MM bonus pool would also come out of revenue sharing making the proposal tantamount to a $170-200MM reduction in revenue sharing overall proposed by the MLBPA. To be honest, it's hard for me to respect any position critical of the owners and supportive of the MLBPA's positions in negotiations right now.

and those are large cap index's you're talking about. The mutual funds which are based on the S&P 500 are considered Large Cap Blend funds which are not aggressive, and you're talking about groups of stocks similar to mutual funds rather than individual stocks like Amazon or Tesla. In addition, if you're talking about internal profits, rates are typically much higher than you're expecting across many industries. Financial companies expect a ROE of approximately 12-14% for example, @Ted Schwerzler. It's common for me to speculate about things I'm not an expert about, but where I've formed some sort of hypothesis, but it seems you're really out of your element. It's easy to create scapegoats out of successful businesspeople, and depending on the complaint, your mileage may vary on how accurate it is.

I think Donaldson would have benefitted from a longer stint off recovering from his calf injury last year, but the Twins just didn't have the guys on the roster they wanted to cover the position. Glad to see Sano managed more plate appearances than ever before. I don't like to see anybody missing games because of injury.

I'm not sure that's true. The players I think the lockout hurts most are those on the fringe. The 40 man guys who cannot play or get a shot in the MLB. Meanwhile, the minor league players can continue to advance and those appearantly fringey guys may never get their chance at the big show as a result.

I disagree with that take on Rooker.

I have to... that video... did that guy ever hear about leg day? LOL!!!!

Levi Michael was far, far superior to Cavaco in his MiLB performance. I thought Michael was going to be taken in the rule 5 when he was left exposed in 2015 after his .804 OPS performance in AA. I don't think Michael was too far off from some MLB appearances with the Mets in 2018.

Cavaco is half a season from being declared a total bust and I think he could be released at the end of this year. Enlow and Lewis were both protected, and that should tell folks all they need to know about how they're viewed. Lewis and Enlow have been severely hampered by injuries, but even so, they're viewed as high end prospects.

While both sides certainly have their faults, owners especially for what I feel is inflaming tensions prior to the start of the negotiations and the asinine full team control until age 29.5 first offer back in September, since then, in my opinion, it's been almost all the MLBPA throwing a temper tantrum.

The MLBPA didn't counter-propose either. They left a one penny tip on a $20 bill. It was a direct insult.

I wonder how minor league signings for MLB veterans works in regard to the MLBPA? If owners went ahead with replacement players, Beckham isn't technically represented by the MLBPA right now is he? Not sure exactly how that works.

Winder was highly scouted but lost velocity in his sophomore year at VMI. It resulted in him falling way down the draft ranks and the Twins picked him up in the 7th round. Most scouting reports on Winder are from draft time. https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/josh-winder-comes-on-strong-at-instructs/ Since then, Winder has added 5mph to his fastball and improved his changeup due to the increased velocity alone. Plus his breaking pitches have supposedly gotten better. Winder could have 3 plus pitches at this point, and that's top of the rotation potential.

Kepler has nothing to prove. He's an average starting right fielder right now who is cheap, and that's valuable enough to keep a job. If Kepler stumbles further this year, his value will drop off so in that regard, he doesn't have a lot of wiggle room. That said, Kepler needs two consecutive years of increased performance against the shift and to regain a step in sprint speed to elevate himself to being viewed as All Star caliber again. An improvement just this year will be met with skeptisicm.

The casual fan doesn't even realize there's a lockout. Most people don't care about baseball (other than big name moves) until Spring Training officially starts. This lockout won't make even one iota of impact for the vast majority of casual fans of the game. At least that's my opinion.

Sabato played in 2019, 2020 and 2021. His last game in 2020 was on 3/11/20 with North Carolina vs. Virginia Military Institute and the rest of the season was canceled. His first game in 2021 was 5/4/21 and Sabato participated in MiLB Spring Training. There's a 1 year and not quite 2 month gap there, but Sabato also participated in MiLB Spring Training activities before that. If you're talking about missing time prior to 2019, I struggle to see how that's relevant in 2021. In the linked article, Sabato talks about his plate approach. "Sabato: “It’s hunting mistakes and strikes. You don’t want to swing at the pitcher’s best pitches. That goes for any hitter. You’re not going to be successful doing that. For me, it’s being patient, yet not too patient. I can’t be not swinging it fastballs that are in my hot zone, so it’s about being prepared on every pitch, knowing that if a mistake is coming, I’m ready for it. That and being disciplined enough to lay off certain pitches that might be a strike, but aren’t something I’m going to be able to do a whole lot with.”" https://blogs.fangraphs.com/twins-prospect-aaron-sabato-on-mashing-and-hopefully-not-dhing/ Sabato planning to not swing at strikes and waiting for mistake pitches doesn't seem like a recipe for success to me since, as I stated above, I believe those become far less frequent as batters progress through the minors. .189/.365/.357 at Low A for a 22 year old college-drafted bat only slugger is abysmal. Sabato performed far better at High A across 97 plate appearances with a .253/.402/.613 line to give some hope, but that stat line from Fort Myers doesn't just disappear. The 20% walk rate is nice, but unsustainable with a K rate in excess of 20% IMHO (and Sabato is north of 30%). Sabato admits he's a poor runner and it's clear 1B or DH is how he's viewed. 6'2" and 230lbs, Sabato claims he's leaner than he was when he was playing shortstop, but the height and weight would suggest extremely high athleticism (fast runner) if he actually was well conditioned. I've seen the "I'm not overweight, I'm athletic" line from Twins prospects and players before. It makes me skeptical and his own comments and scouts add to my skepticism. 6'2 and 230lbs = NFL Fullback. Fournette (6'1 and 228) was clocked at 33ft/sec during a 90 yard run... in pads. That's faster than Byron Buxton's listed sprint speed. The Twins also view Sabato as a 1B / DH only candidate from my understanding. If he was athletic and had SS skills, the Twins would at least be working him out at 3B. As much as you may personally like Sabato, his comments, apparent plate approach, apparent lack of conditioning and poor results at Low-A paint good reasons to be a bit bearish on him.

It would benefit Houston's MLB team. It would benefit Houston's prospect system. It would benefit Jake Odorizzi because he's guaranteed to pitch no matter how badly he performs. Those are 3 sides. Conversely. It would hurt Minnesota's prospect system It would hurt Minnesota's MLB team because Winder, Balazovic, Ober and Ryan are all better than Odorizzi It would hurt Minnesota's payroll because we'd be paying a player we don't want on the team.

There are red flags all over the place with Sabato. Had his results not improved dramatically to close the year out, I would have been okay with writing him off as bust. I think it's rare a successful MLB player struggles in the low minors and Sabato's plate approach is passive. He waits for mistake pitches and crushes them. Unfortunately for him, mistake pitches generally become fewer and fewer as you move up the minors. I think he'll be exposed badly in AA or AAA as the pitcher talent level jumps dramatically and their control and finesse take a leap up as well, but I think he did enough damage to close the year out to keep an eye on him. It's not like it matters, though. He doesn't need a 40 man roster spot right now so there's no risk to letting him play.

The most infuriating thing about Sano is, just like Rosario, he could be a plus defender.