bean5302

Alcantara... you mean Sandy Alcantara? ERAs at the highest level each season. Where were these 5.85 and 5.87 ERAs you're talking about? a19 Rk - 3.22 a20 A+ - 3.62 a21 MLB - 4.32 -> Traded to Miami from St. Louis a22/26 MLB - 3.44, 3.88, 3.00, 3.19, 1.76 Btw, I'm not saying sell low. I'm saying you cannot sell them for anything of high value right now because other team front offices are not stupid. If the Twins were able to get another front office to see Martin or Balazovich as a major piece in a trade for a front line starter, it would be a huge coup.

Low on innings, but otherwise... yes. Right now, ranked #10 at ERA and FIP for starters with 70+ innings. I'd say Alcantara, Rodon and Burns are probably favorites.

I don't think the problem is trade assets. I think the problem here is the attachment to the prospects who are performing. Essentially, the fans here don't want to give anything up. Larnach, Kirilloff, Kepler, Polanco, Arraez, Miranda, Ober... they're all established or semi-established and team controlled for a few years. The non-established guys like Lewis, Steer, Wallner, and Winder all have value. Some high upside, but further away prospects Miller, Encarnation-Strand, Hajjar, Povich. There's plenty of value, but the Twins have exactly 0 elite prospects who aren't injured at this point so trade packages are going to be tough to hammer out without parting with coveted pieces.

AA - a23 - 3rd professional year - .249/.378/.313 - OPS .691 - wRC+ 93 - 11.7% BB, 13.8% K. No power at all. Worst fielding percentage and range factors at SS in the entire league by a mile. AAA - a23 - 7th professional year - 10.13 ERA, 7.70 FIP, 5.01 xFIP, 8.28 K/9, 4.60 BB/9, 2.32 WHIP Selling that at all would be an achievement.

I suspect Larnach, Steer, Ober would be the ask.

Chase Petty is pitching pretty well in A ball right now as a 2nd year pro out of high school. Gray isn't exactly free with a $10MM salary this year and a $12MM club option next year, though he's definitely more than earning his keep. With Gray being a frequent flyer on the IL, he's about a 2.5 WAR pitcher with declining velocity. Good, but hardly excellent. A nice #3 guy when healthy who should be hauling in $15MM-ish per year. So there is some value with Gray, but it's not like he's a front line starter the Twins stole for a middle rank prospect. The Twins need the front end starter so dropping Martin and Balazovic is fine, but considering how they're playing, I'm not sure those would be the prospects the Reds would be asking about.

Brooks Lee isn't likely to stick at SS. Aside from that, Correa is 95% gone after this year, and that's a good thing. If Correa is here next year, it's because he had a catastrophic injury and won't be ready for the start of (or any of) the 2023 season so he decided to take his player option. Lewis has all of 41 plate appearances at the MLB level and will miss a couple months next season, at least. In addition, the Twins don't think much of Palacios, Cavaco is a bust and Noah Miller is at least 3 more years away. I'd say the cupboard is much more bare at SS than you think.

Sano could go 1.000/1.000/4.000 for the rest of his rehab assignment and I wouldn't have any interest in him long term and I suspect there's little Sano can do to pique the interest of other teams in terms of trade value. No idea what to do with him once the Twins activate him.

Kumar Rocker is interesting, but you have to hand it to the Mets on that one. They got absolutely trashed for not signing Rocker. Good 'ol Scott Boras insisted everything was fine and then... On Saturday night, teams received medical records pertaining to right-hander Kumar Rocker and learned that he had shoulder surgery last September. The Mets selected the former Vanderbilt star 10th overall last July and agreed to a $6 million bonus deal that fell apart when they balked at his post-Draft physical. After New York offered him a $0 bonus -- a formality so it could get the No. 11 pick this year as compensation for failing to sign him -- he opted not to return to college. Hard to return to college when you don't know if you'll be ready to pitch by then...

Yep. Not as rare as I remembered it being. About 20% of playoff teams have done it at 89+ wins. Under 88 wins gets the "rare" mark from me since it's unlikely any team with 87 or fewer wins makes it in a given year. It's why I threw the graph up there so it was easier to see what was really happening rather than cherry picking numbers. From 97-88 wins, it's a fast linear drop off with a steeper drop off for winning the division from 96-89 wins. Any way you look at it, the Twins are not in a great spot if they don't pick it up. Historically, 7% Wildcard, 0% division win at this pace. I was also looking at the trends on whether or not big win seasons (teams with well over 100 wins) increased the number of low win teams making the playoffs. I didn't see any correlations there or really any correlation between low win playoff teams and how the division winners performed or an obvious pattern as to how the teams in the division performed.

You only have to go back to 2018 for a team without at least 90 wins to make the playoffs. I'm assuming you chose 2014 as the cutoff for a random reason, right? haha. Using 2012 as the cutoff (when the expansion to 10 team playoffs happened) You can see the chances of the Twins team making the playoffs under the 10 team playoff system from 2012+ (ignoring 2020). One team has ever made the playoffs with the win total the Twins are projected to have at .500 ball continuing (85 wins). No team has won a division and only 7% of playoff teams have made it at the Twins' current pace. The added 2 playoff spots may or may not matter at the win totals we're talking about.

Well, if you're saying it's personal relationship information, I have no reason to doubt you. I don't think we get a ton of this kind of inside information as I'd imagine players don't like to have the team doctors thrown under the bus publicly this way, but it's fun to have the 6* of Kevin Bacon thing going on here.

It's kind of fun to imagine stuff like this, but I'm only interested in former Twins who the Twins actually would still control. Lynn Pineda Gibson Pressley May The Twins wouldn't have any control over those players so they all would have been signed in free agency or extended before getting there. I'd easily take Maeda over Graterol should Maeda return in September and Berrios is getting thrashed this year after getting paid.

It'll be great to have Maeda back this year provided there are no setbacks whatsoever. I think anything before mid September is probably overly-aggressive. The Mets pushed Syndergaard onto the mound last year but didn't allow him to throw a single breaking pitch. Similarly, Maeda has yet to throw a single breaking pitch and is just up to 85mph on his fastball. He's got a long way to go. As the article points out, he's hoping to face live batting practice starting next month some time and he's just started throwing off the mound and he hasn't thrown a single breaking pitch yet. A single setback/flareup and his season is officially done. Maybe early August for live batting practice? Rehab stint starts mid August once he gets close to max effort and can start mixing off-speed and breaking pitches in? Activation early/mid-September. I think that's probably an optimistic time table.

Can you provide a link to the source which said the Twins staff misdiagnosed him?

I'm assuming a team in the division will wake up because it's unusual to see team win a division with less than 90 wins on the season. Could be the Twins that take off. Could be the Royals (LOL, okay, so it's almost certainly not going to be the Royals). There are teams who play .500 ball for an extended length of time and make the playoffs. The Rockies in 2007 come to mind since I'm also a Rockies fan (because I'm apparently a sports masochist)... The Rockies were .500 for the first half of the year before finishing 46-29 in the 2nd half with an absolutely torrid finish. I think they would have beaten Cleveland in the World Series as well... if it wasn't for the 3-1 collapse by the Jacobs Field resident turf shitters playing out the series like they just had a discount Brazilian steakhouse dinner from Bridesmaids. I digress... the Rockies finished the season at 90-73. Point 1. It's rare for a playoff team to play .500 ball for as long as the Twins have. Point 2. It's rare for a playoff team to finish with less than 90 wins. Point 3. The best teams generally surge in the 2nd half. Like I said, totally possible the Twins are the team who catches fire in the 2nd half of the season. The Twins are not as talented as the White Sox, who I still believe will win the division on pitching. I think Kopech figures it out. I also think the top 4 starters for Chicago are better than any of the starters we have. Cease, Lynn, Kopech and Giolito have all been excellent in recent history. Cueto is probably their least talented starter right now... and he's as good as anybody we have. That team is a potential sleeping monster. The idea the teams in the division will all just continue to muddle along at .500 seems unlikely to me. You could be right, though. There's no guarantee things change dramatically.

So typically there are 6 games a week. 150 games is a good target for a full season with minimal to no injury time lost. Buxton has played in 70 of 91 games. He's on pace for 125 games or so right now. There are about 27 weeks to the baseball season this year. Buxton is missing 3 games every 2 weeks or so or about 1.5 games per week. Buxton is not missing 2-3 days a week (if we're really talking about games). He's missing half that number. Buxton will struggle to be a qualified hitter at this point, but he may well put together his 2nd highest plate total of his career. Larnach was not misdiagnosed. Larnach was playing with core soreness he did not report, and the soreness got worse over time. When he finally reported the soreness to staff, the Twins had him checked out and he was diagnosed him with a core muscle strain (hernia) which is exactly what he has. The second opinion was in regard to treatment options, not diagnosis to the best of my knowledge. Rest or Injection or Surgery. Larnach chose surgery. https://www.mlb.com/news/trevor-larnach-to-undergo-surgery-for-core-injury Sometimes players get misdiagnosed or the treatment suggested or chosen doesn't work well. Larnach doesn't appear to be one of those cases.

He's 30% better than the average hitter at the plate in MLB. How do you define that as a liability? Your position the Twins trainers, medical staff and coaching staff have determined it would be best to risk the health of a player who just signed a very big and very long term contract doesn't make a lot of sense. It would be reckless and negligent to operate like that, in addition to it being out of the character for the franchise. A 24hr job to be on the field doesn't mean he walks in for 21hrs of treatment at the hospital. I'm sure Buxton has to follow an annoying and detailed protocol to maximize the chance he can play. It probably involves things like diet, rest, activity restrictions, medication, icing and other treatments that have to be followed in a timely manner. That's a 24hr process. If his knee flares up, he doesn't play. If he feels good and is able to prove it in a workout, he does play.

"or so" as in maybe under .500? The Twins are under .500 since the Royals series ended on May 22nd. That's 50 games. It doesn't really matter if the Twins are playing .500 ball "or so" since there has never been a team in MLB history which has made the playoffs at .500. So .500 ball loses ground against the playoffs. It's not like the team is terrible. They've been treading water, but if that continues that probably won't make the playoffs. On May 22nd MIN 25-16 - .610 CHI 21-20 - .512 (4.0 GB) CLE 17-20 - .459 (6.0 GB) Since May 22nd MIN 24-26 - .480 CLE 27-24 - .529 (3.5 GB) CHI 44-45 - .480 (4.0 GB) So far, our division has sucked again. I didn't expect that, but one of the teams in the division is likely to wake up. Honestly, with the Twins barely in the division lead, a mile out of the Wild Card and mired in a swamp of mediocrity is about the worst position to be in for the trade deadline.

All Star Game OPS+ 133. Still has elite CF defensive stats when he's playing there. You're right. Buxton isn't helping. There's always Jake Cave!

I suspect the injury will require surgery. One of those, if he can play through the pain, can't make it worse type of thing. Tendon/ligament injuries are often that way. One day things feel okay. The next, holy crap, you can barely walk. Two days after that, you're good to go again.

...and I much more appreciate sportsmanship and professionalism.

Long stretches? It's been nearly 2 months since the Twins were at a cumulative .500 rate. Good teams generally don't play under .500 for 50 straight games.

Mostly I agree with you, but the truth is the Twins are under .500 dating back to the start of June. It's definitely time to be concerned this team doesn't have the legs to hold onto a playoff spot.

It's tough to gauge how hurt Buxton is. I wouldn't be surprised if this was one of those offseason surgery types of things where he can't really hurt it more, but it will require surgery to fix things. In any case, people seem upset that Buxton is an All Star caliber player. He's one of the best center fielders in the game. So what if he's not the guaranteed MVP if he plays 120 games level player many fans on this site want him to be? Correa's defensive numbers are what's holding his production lower than previous years. His bat is right about where it should be relative to competition. The best players on the team are not the reason the Twins aren't winning.