bean5302

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.

Yep. Reached on error is definitely more random than HBP. There are batters who crowd the plate and or have stances making it much more likely they're going to get plunked. In the absolute best case scenario, a hitter directing every single ball (if they could) at the 3rd baseman instead of a 2nd baseman would result in, what, a couple errors? The average qualified hitter gets about 600 plate appearances annually. They have a ground ball rate of 30-60% and a K rate between 10-35%, a BB rate between 5-20% and hit 5-40 HRs per year. That means, ground balls in play = 80 (absurdly low) and 300 (absurdly high). If the all ground ball, never walk, never strike out, never homer player could direct every single ball they hit at the third baseman's playing position, which is already insanely ludicrous, the third baseman would commit approximately 3 more errors in a season based on a median .970 fielding percentage for 3B and .980 fielding percentage for 2B. So are those extra 3 reached on errors worth the worst BABIP and SLG in the history of the game? Anyway, I see you have a very strong opinion on the subject. Perhaps it would have been more fruitful to have stated your opinion rather than asking people if they agreed with you.

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.

Sano hit 30 HR's so he's awesome!!!! Chris Carter hit 41 home runs in 2016. .222/.321/.499 wRC+ 113 In 2017, Chris Carter hit .201/.284/.370 across only 208 plate appearances wRC+ 74. In 2018, he was forced to sign a MiLB contract with the Angels, who traded him to the Twins where we stashed him in AAA. Carter would move onto the Mexican league, never to step foot on an MLB field again. In short, flawed players with unimpressive OBP and streaky power have a very short leash.

The small sample sizes apply to both Jeffers and his peers. I wouldn't have a big opinion on Jeffers if his poor hitting didn't stretch across a bigger series of plate appearances last year as well. If we expand the sample size to last year and this year, among catcher with 450+ plate appearances, Jeffers is 23rd of 32 at the plate. wRC+ 83 with the median at wRC+ 97 (who just happens to be Gary Sanchez). He's not a black hole at the plate relative to his peers, but he is far below average. It's not like Jeffers is going to tank the Twins' chances at competing or something, but he's not a guy you want to count on helping the team to make the playoffs, either. He's just a player the Twins should want to upgrade away from or at least hedge their bets against him, especially since Jeffers' only plus skill (catcher framing) is likely to be nullified entirely by robo umps in 2024.

Oh. To answer the question, no, it's not a skill worth mentioning. It's just speed and luck for Buxton. It's just pure luck for Celestino (who isn't all that fast).

Agreed, if a fielder is rushing the throw because they're trying to make a miracle happen, it shouldn't be ruled an error. In fact, I'm sure Buxton's OBP does reflect this already. Buxton creates a lot of personal opinion judgement calls for official game scorers. Some for ruling an error, some for ruling a hit because it wasn't reasonable to expect a fielder to make the play.

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.

The same way every team looks to upgrade. They look for available talent internally and externally, and if they can acquire it for a reasonable cost, they obtain it. Looking to upgrade is not some sort of requirement to upgrade. Side note, there are a dozen catchers significantly better than Jeffers on other teams' rosters. It's not like Jeffers is above average, even now when good catchers seem to be at a premium.

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 doesn't matter whether or not other teams also have underperforming catchers. What matters is whether or not catchers are pulling their weight as position players on the team or whether a team would be better off trying to upgrade. Jeffers isn't a good starting catcher and I don't expect he will ever be a good starter. He's on pace to provide about 1.5 WAR on a full season, which is similar to how he performed last year. That's not nearly good enough to warrant wanting to stick with him and not upgrade.

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

My post was not to say Joe Ryan is a bad pitcher and needs to be DFA'd. Fangraphs' basic stats in the game logs do not include xERA, and even though you feel xFIP is hot garbage in the sun, the reality is xFIP is a good stat and like it or not, it's rare pitchers perform significantly different than their xFIP over the long term. I would argue xFIP is superior to xERA because xERA does not normalize how many fly balls become home runs. Side note, xERA does NOT use actual balls in play, hard hit, barrel rate, launch angles or xBA data. The formula for xERA is: ((.575 * H/9 ) + (.94 * HR/9 ) + (.28 * BB/9 ) - (.01 * K/9 ) - Normalizing Factor) https://www.insiderbaseball.com/blog/2007/02/expected_era_xera.html xERA is essentially just FIP, which is inferior to xFIP in my opinion.

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.

Just because I love to stir the pot on the Byron Buxton is the best player in the universe comments, he's 2nd or 3rd best at the position in MLB this year. That does make him top 10% though

Joe Ryan has been getting ridiculously lucky for a long time now. He's not pitching a lot differently (SSS) since his return than he was before, but teams are actually scoring runs closer to the rate they should be based on the number of hits and the types of batted balls. 4/8 - 4.50 ERA, 7.10 xFIP 4/15 - 1.50 ERA, 2.52 xFIP 4/21 - 0.00 ERA, 4.68 xFIP 4/27 - 0.00 ERA, 1.61 xFIP 5/3 - 3.86 ERA, 5.99 xFIP 5/10 - 9.00 ERA, 8.34 xFIP 5/15 - 1.50 ERA, 4.42 xFIP 5/21 - 1.59 ERA, 3.89 xFIP Apr/May - 2.28 ERA, 4.45 xFIP 6/14 - 7.71 ERA, 5.34 xFIP 6/21 - 4.50 ERA, 3.26 xFIP 6/26 - 5.40 ERA, 7.49 xFIP 7/1 - 1.29 ERA, 3.88 xFIP 7/6 - 4.50 ERA, 6.47 xFIP Jun/Jul - 4.39 ERA, 5.06 xFIP Total 3.09 ERA, 4.86 xFIP

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.

It seems like a sound idea on the surface, but unless you adjusted for how batters performed against only the starter on the 3rd time through the order, it's not apples to apples. By the TTO, in a large percentage of cases, the starter is no longer pitching. This year there are 130 starters who've pitched 25+ innings 1st TTO, 123 who've pitched 2nd TTO, but even at just 10 innings, only 105 pitchers have gone 3rd TTO. The sample size changes because of fangraphs locked defaults.