bean5302

Palacios hasn't been hitting with any power so far this year, but his last 10 games have been much better with a .297/.381/.460 slash for an OPS of .841. Palacios was very consistent for most of the year last year, but definitely slumped in the last month. Hopefully, he identified an issue and was able to correct it. I don't view Palacios as having a role with the Twins long term at this point unless Gordon were to be moved, and I think Gordon is likely more versatile. It's a good opportunity for Palacios to make a little bit of a splash and garner some interest.

I think the White Sox are preparing for Lance Lynn's return to their rotation.

In general, I'd only look at players who the Twins would still have control as fair game in this one so Gibson and Cron wouldn't be on the list for me. Tyler Wells definitely would be with his 3.71 ERA starting games in the AL East. I really didn't like the Twins exposing him to the rule 5.

I think other people's argument is Sanchez is better than Jeffers. Shrinking Sanchez's sample size at the plate down to only games he played at catcher this year for the comparison comes across as disingenuous to me. Sanchez has over 2000 plate appearances, almost exclusively at catcher and he's been a better than league average hitter across his career. Ryan Jeffers has been decidedly much worse than average apart from a very small sample size of 62 plate appearances in his rookie campaign. While Jeffers has been and is a better pitch framer, Jeffers has been well below average across his career when it comes to controlling the run game where Sanchez has been better than average in his career. Catcher framing techniques can be learned whereas arm accuracy, and throwing speed are often physically limited. Ultimately, Jeffers is not a great defensive catcher; he's just middle of the road behind the plate, and across his career experience, he can't hit. Honestly, it feels like your position on Jeffers is a lopsided with wishful thinking than actual results. Unless Jeffers turns things around significantly at the plate, I wouldn't consider him to be acceptable as anything other than depth.

wRC+ has no positional adjustment. It's adjusted for the park and other batters' performances. It's only value is to determine a batter's run production at the plate relative to all other batters.

The Twins weren't even remotely close to the ballpark when it came to the offer the Blue Jays made so the extension was never going to happen, and quite frankly, the Twins didn't need to give Berrios an extension because he wasn't a pending free agent at the end of the season anyway. They could have kept him and traded him during the offseason or kept him on the final year of his arbitration as Berrios was still under team control through the end of this year. I'm happy with the trade the Twins made, but the smugness about how well the Twins made out doesn't feel warranted, partially because the scenario you are concerned about wasn't relevant (Twins extending Berrios at Blue Jays contract level).

I consider Nick Gordon to be a great utility player because he's inexpensive and will likely stay that way while being able to fill in at shortstop and center field. Exactly the type of asset who is valuable to fill in at premium defensive positions for 10 day IL stints and rest days without breaking the bank. I don't think Gordon is likely going to be the kind of player you want starting every day on a playoff team, but players like Kirilloff and Miranda have nothing to do with Gordon as neither can cover CF or SS.

The Twins increased the padding thickness in 2014 in response to Aaron Hicks and Sam Fuld giving themselves concussions by running into the center field wall. The new padding was thicker (4") than most stadiums so I'm skeptical the padding on it's own is the issue. Running at high speed into the wall and hitting it at an awkward angle is going have risk of injuries. Perhaps the wall construction itself behind the padding is stiffer than other stadiums, though, necessitating special order extra, extra thick stuff.

I have it on good authority Lewis asked if he could have the wall padding removed entirely because he was going to show that wall who was boss and he didn't want the wall to have an excuses for losing the fight. He'd never even looked at the wall before the game. He always averts his eyes because he wants to have all new immersive experiences.

Jeffers doesn't look like an MLB caliber starter at this point, and while he hasn't had enough plate appearances to close the book by any means, those plate appearances are definitely starting to accumulate enough to be concerned about his potential. Gary Sanchez has enough of a track record to know what he is. An above average value hitter with below average defense at catcher. He's good enough to be a starter if his catcher framing improvement isn't an aberration or robo umps are used. Since the Twins officially have nothing in the pipeline promising for catcher and Jeffers is very iffy on being valuable as a starter, I wouldn't be surprised to see them extend Sanchez.

While entertaining, poor Rortvedt has been hurt all year. He won't be playing at the MLB level for another couple months at least after having knee surgery.

Wait... what? Are you saying Royce Lewis' crashing into a wall and bruising his knee is related to him not playing last year while he recovered from a torn ACL? For the record, Lewis returned to action about as quick as possible from surgery last year. I can't remember anybody suggesting the Twins were holding him back unreasonably and should have taken chances with Lewis' recovery, but maybe my memory isn't perfect.

OOOOOFFFDDA. I really hadn't thought about that. I'm sure the Blue Jays will take that potential home field advantage though!

Here's the point... the trade hasn't been won or lost by anybody. Berrios is definitely having consistency issues, but I'd be a lot happier to see the prospects the Twins received in return playing well enough to warrant such a smug take on the trade right now. For that matter, I'd like to see Berrios pitching well because I think that's good for baseball in general and Berrios gave a lot to the Twins during his time here.

Oh really? Have you looked at the centerpiece of the trade recently? Austin Martin .258/.377/.333 = .710 with 11 errors in 24 games started repeating AA. Woods-Richardson, last 4 games = 6.30 ERA, again, repeating AA. Both sides have seen player stocks tumble.

Believed to be about 5 players. Hey, if we have to start Gary Sanchez at SS, no biggie.

Does he need to? The Twins are trying to find a way to get Lewis every day playing time based on how he's performed this year. Nick Gordon had virtually no CF time before the Twins stuck him out there as well. It's not Rocco's fault Lewis decided to bounce himself off the wall.

How lousy attendance has been, even on great weather weekend days. That's the biggest surprise to me. As far as players, unquestionably Royce Lewis' performance.

Austin Martin has profiled as a second baseman now for a while. He doesn't have the arm to play on the far side of the infield, he doesn't have the range to play center field and he's at a big disadvantage when it comes to power vs. prototypical corner outfielders and first base or DH. Obviously, he has no catcher skills. That leaves 2B, but he can't be booting balls left and right there, either. Martin has 11 errors in 24 games (22 started) at shortstop this year. 4/8 = 2 errors, 1 fielding, 1 throwing. 4/10 = 1 error, throwing. 4/13 = 1 error, fielding 4/22 = 1 error, fielding 4/27 = 1 error, fielding 5/12 = 1 error, fielding 5/14 = 1 error, throwing 5/22 = 1 error, fielding 5/27 = 2 errors, 1 fielding, 1 throwing Unfortunately, it's not a mental thing like a case of the yips airmailing baseballs. It seems like we've got some serious rock hands going on and it was a problem when he was with Toronto as well. That said, there are good reasons players might have elevated error rates. Trevor Plouffe was asked to learn to field at the shortstop position after he was promoted to MLB. Plouffe was passive, waiting for balls to come to him when he arrived in the big show and he was pushed hard to adapt his defense to be far more aggressive, charging balls, fielding bare handed and throwing on the run or off balance as needed to excel at SS. Learning a totally new way to field is bound to create a lot of errors. I'm sure the Twins' coaching staff is taking notes and they'll present their findings and recommendations to management based on what they're asking Martin to change. Maybe he just has rock hands or maybe he's learning on the job. Either way, Martin was always a long shot at short.

Greg Maddux had excellent control... along with a great changeup and hard, late break on a sinker. He touched mid-90s at the start of his career and perfected his craft as his velocity dropped, similar to Zack Greinke. Watch a video of Maddux undercover pitching batting practice to Kris Bryant, telling Kris where the ball was going where Kris still couldn't hit it. Bryant's constant comment was how good of a curveball Maddux had... while tossing batting practice. Maddux may well be the best pitcher in MLB history in terms of mechanics and location, but he had excellent stuff to start his career and continued to use his experience as his velocity faded.

Can't stress enough how scammy CL has been when it comes to event tickets. I've been scammed and everybody I know whose frequently used CL has been scammed. Police don't even follow up on crimes which aren't felony level. Even if you pay with a US Postal Money Order making it a federal crime, there will be no follow up so there isn't any deterrent it seems. This is my personal experience. The rest of what you said is good info

....and? He's played in 8 of the last 10 games which, again, works out to a 130 game per season pace. https://www.mlb.com/news/byron-buxton-battling-slump-knee-injury This is from today, not the past week to ten days. To paraphrase, it's mild, getting better and it doesn't hamper Buxton's play regularly.

Re: safety issues. Violent crime is up in downtown Minneapolis despite it being dramatically less busy. On top of that, there's the perception of Minneapolis as a whole (Uptown is a friggen disaster). Plenty of people experienced bricks being thrown through windows at restaurants they were dining at downtown restaurants when the Floyd riots started. Those types of experiences don't just get forgotten in days. Seemingly every month businesses announce they're closing due to safety concerns in Minneapolis and the owners of the businesses are scared to even speak about it. I'm close friends with a number of service industry workers who simply won't take jobs in Minneapolis because they do not feel safe based on their actual personal experiences. I'm talking about people who've taken solo trips to Africa and often travel out of the country alone... So is it really that bad? Maybe, maybe not. Reputation is what matters and people aren't going to risk getting held up at gunpoint, shot, carjacked or assaulted to find out, regardless of their shadowboxing skill level... I haven't been shot yet, but I do understand why people are afraid of Minneapolis.

Fun games like that will make for great memories Cavaco can look back on when he hangs up the cleats. Now that he's been moved off SS to 3B/DH, I think the book on Cavaco has largely been closed. He's a non-prospect, but I'm certainly not rooting against him.

Buxton has played in 8 games over the past 10 days/games. Works out to 130 games a year at that pace. If the argument is Buxton must be hurting because he's no longer putting up numbers which make him look like the best hitter in baseball history, my rebuttal would be, he probably never was the best hitter in MLB history. Slumps, even undeserved ones, happen. Buxton's expected numbers are better than his actual, but it's such a small sample size over the past couple weeks there's just noise. The IL doesn't fix luck and the minor knee tweak was over a month ago.